Anna Lee Manning's aunt told a newspaper that her niece's husband cut her off from her family members after they got married in 1985Show Caption
More than three decades after Anna Lee Manning vanished without a trace, police in Kentucky have arrested her husband and mother-in-law in connection with what police say is her murder.Anthony Blaine Manning, 59, is charged with murder, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse, the Boyle County Sheriff's Office announced on Thursday, May 21. His mother, Barbara Anne Manning, 76, is charged with complicity to three crimes: murder, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse.The Mannings are each being held on a $2 million bond as they await court proceedings. USA TODAY is working to find whether they have attorneys for comment.Multiple news outlets are reporting that police are digging behind Barbara Manning's home and searching for evidence. The sheriff's office didn't immediately respond to USA TODAY's request to confirm that the search was underway.WKYT-TV reports that the property is about 5 acres, that an excavator had arrived and that several holes were visible where digging had been done.Anna Lee Manning was 23 years old when anyone besides her husband or mother-in-law last saw her alive on Nov. 19, 1992, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. That day one of her aunts, Elsie Williams, reported seeing her outside of a jewelry shop in Junction City, about an hour southwest of Lexington.The women didn't get a chance to speak but Anna Lee Manning yelled out to Williams that she had to tell her something, the missing persons database says. Williams never found out what that was because she never saw her niece again."I've been praying every night, every night for the last few months that they would find her," Williams, who is battling cancer, recently told WLEX-TV. "I wanted to find her before I died."Here's what you need to know about the case.What do we know about Anna Lee Manning?Not many details are available about Anna Lee Manning's background, and her family members didn't immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for more information about who she was.Archived news reports say that she began living with her aunt when she was 13 and that she married Anthony Manning in 1985. That would have made her about 17 years old.Williams told local newspaper the Advocate-Messenger in 1994 that Anthony Manning would not let his wife see her family and that the estrangement was so deep that Williams didn't even know where the couple lived.In April 1992, the newspaper reported that Anthony and Anna Lee were estranged when he was arrested on a kidnapping charge. Anthony Manning had gone to her apartment with the couple's 2-year-old daughter and told Anna Lee that he wanted to have sex, the newspaper reported.When she refused, he handcuffed her, but she escaped to a neighbor's house, called police and pressed the kidnapping charge against him, the newspaper reported. He was later sentenced to six months in jail on an unlawful imprisonment charge, the newspaper said.Mother-in-law's property was searched previouslyIn 2016, detectives were digging up Barbara Manning's property related to Anna Lee Manning's cold case but authorities released few details at the time.Earlier that year, Boyle County Sheriff's deputy Phillip Dean told the Advocate-Messenger that he was actively working to solve the case."It just piqued my interest," he told the newspaper. "I started trying to build up a case to see if I could give the family closure."Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers the death penalty, cold case investigations and breaking news for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
