Cold Case Files: Body has never been located of Montgomery County resort employee considered drowned in 2005
In the quartz-laden landscape of Montgomery County where the Ouachita Mountain terrain meets the still waters of a rural lake near Housley, a summer afternoon in 2005 ended in silence that has never been broken.
On June 14, 2005, 42-year-old Katrina Denise Anderson--also known as Katrina Tillery or Tillery-Anderson--climbed into a boat with two female companions. She was a white woman of medium build, about 5 feet 6 inches tall and 125 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes.
A small scar marked the area above her right eye. Her ears were pierced. On her right ankle she carried a butterfly tattoo. That day she wore a pink-and-orange two-piece bathing suit.
The three women jumped from the boat to swim. The other two were pulled from the water. Katrina never surfaced.
Searchers scoured the lake channel. Divers and surface crews worked the area. Nothing was found. No body. No clothing. No definitive answers. Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office opened case number 0506234. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System later assigned it MP10367. Investigators classified the case as a lost or injured missing person—presumed drowning--yet the absence of remains left the file open.
Katrina was born May 8, 1963, in Hot Springs. She was the daughter of Jimmy and Sharon Tillery of Pearcy. She had lost her only brother, Kevin Dale Tillery, years earlier. Friends and family remembered her as a “people person” who never met a stranger.
She worked for several years at Brady Mountain Resort, where co-workers and customers became an extended family. She loved horse showing. She had studied banking, land management, real estate, and computer science, earning an associate degree, yet she chose the work that put her among people.
She was saved and baptized at Memorial Baptist Church. Her greatest joy, those who knew her said, were her two children: Kasey Denise Wacaster and Jacob Kash Wacaster.
Within days of her disappearance, an obituary appeared treating her as deceased. Memorial services were held June 30, 2005, at Davis-Smith Funeral Home in Hot Springs. The family grieved as if the lake had already returned its final answer. But official records never closed the case.
Without a body, without physical evidence that could confirm the manner of death beyond presumption, the file remained active.
More than twenty years later, the case still sits in the open files of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. It appears on NamUs and the Charley Project. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has publicly noted her name in missing-person awareness posts, directing anyone with information to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office at (870) 867-3151.
No new public details have emerged about possible witnesses beyond the two companions, about the exact location of the boat, or about any physical evidence recovered. In a rural county of scattered homes and wooded shorelines, leads can vanish as quickly as a person in deep water. Security cameras were rare in 2005. The lake kept its silence.
The questions that remain are the same ones asked in the first hours after the search boats returned empty: What happened in the water that afternoon? Why was only one of the three never found? And will the lake—or someone who knows something—ever give Katrina Denise Anderson back to her family?
Anyone with information, no matter how small or how long ago it seems, is asked to contact the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office at (870) 867-3151 or the Arkansas State Police. In the quiet hills near Housley, a mother, a daughter, and a sister is still missing
. The case remains open.
