Boyle County grand jury indicts husband, mother in 1992 disappearance

A Boyle County cold case that left Anna Lee Manning’s family waiting for more than three decades moved sharply forward this week, when a grand jury indicted her estranged husband and his mother in connection with her death.

Anthony B. Manning, 59, was indicted on murder, tampering with physical evidence, and abuse of a corpse. Barbara T. Manning, 76, was indicted on murder, complicity to murder, complicity to tamper with physical evidence, and complicity to abuse of a corpse. The Boyle County Sheriff’s Office said the indictments were returned Monday, May 18, 2026, and arrests followed on May 19, 2026. Both are being held in the Boyle County Detention Center on $2 million cash bonds and are due back in court next month.

The case now centers on 148 Spring Valley Road, Barbara Manning’s property in Boyle County. Reporting from the scene described the land as a little more than five acres, with public works bringing in an excavator and several holes visible where digging had already been done. The same property was searched under a warrant in 2016, but nothing was recovered . This time, investigators have publicly treated the search as part of a renewed push to find Anna Manning.

Court records say Anna Lee Manning died sometime between September 14, 1992, and November 7, 1992, in Boyle County. Other records place her last known sighting on November 19, 1992, in Junction City, Kentucky, and another account says she was not reported missing until February 25, 1994. However the timeline is read, the mystery stretched on for years while family members kept pressing for answers.

Anna was 23 when she disappeared, and her family says the loss never stopped. Her aunt, Elsie Williams, said for years she believed Anna’s body was buried on the property now being searched, and she had repeatedly asked law enforcement to look there. Williams has also said she is battling cancer and wants to see her niece brought home before she dies.

The new indictments also bring back a darker part of the case history. Anthony Manning was previously charged with kidnapping Anna and served about one month of a six-month sentence. One account says he went to her apartment in Junction City with their daughter, handcuffed her, and led her out the back door before she escaped when he went to get her purse and the child. Anna married Anthony Manning in 1985, when she was 16, and the couple had separated by 1992.

After more than 30 years as a missing-person mystery, the case is now being handled as a homicide, with the search at Spring Valley Road standing as the clearest sign yet that prosecutors think the answer may be in the ground.