Balero Bar. Murph’s Tavernacle. Victory Tavern. Harbor Gate.

These were the four South Baltimore watering holes, most now shuttered, Kimberlee Bock and two friends visited the night of July 20, 1982, into the next morning, just hours before she was found dead.

A jogger found Bock’s dead body in the 5200 block of Shelbourne Road, a baseball field in Arbutus 5 miles from where her friends last saw her. The 21-year-old woman had been stabbed and her hands were tied, Baltimore County Police said.

Detectives questioned the jogger and Bock’s two friends. The friends have been questioned repeatedly over the more than 40 years since Bock was killed.

Baltimore County Police are still searching for who killed her.

One of the friends whom she spent that last night with has since died, Baltimore County Police said. That makes these sorts of cases more challenging, Detective Josh Battaglia said.

“Once you go back to the early ’80s, which is where this case is from, obviously everyone involved is getting older,” Battaglia said. “A lot of the people that we need to talk to have already passed away, so it makes it very difficult.”

Who was Kimberlee Bock?

Bock grew up in Brooklyn Park with four siblings, including a twin sister named Kate. Robert Bock, one of her two older brothers, said the twin sisters did everything together and even dressed alike.

“Kim would be Kate. Kate would be Kim,” Robert Bock recollected. “After my sister Kimmie was murdered, my sister Kate was never the same — all the way up to the day she died.”

Robert Bock said Kate Bock died in April 2023. Their older brother died in January 2022. Kimberlee Bock’s son, Adam, died in 2005, Baltimore County Police said.

Robert Bock is the last of Kimberlee Bock’s closest relatives who is still alive.

Growing up in Brooklyn Park in the 1960s and ’70s came with many challenges for the Bock family. Robert Bock recalls seeing many of them fall into substance and alcohol abuse.

Kimberlee Bock’s death ate at Robert Bock and pushed him to drink, he said. Being drunk made him violent, Robert Bock said, which he didn’t like.

When their father died around 1989, Robert Bock decided to leave Baltimore for good. He settled in Wisconsin and became a truck driver. Being on the road, he said, helped him find peace.

“Every morning I got up, I was in a different town, not worrying about what the past was, always looking to the future,” Robert Bock said.

‘No information is too small’

Battaglia is one of two Baltimore County Police detectives looking into the hundreds of cold case murder investigations. He joined the Cold Case Unit in 2019, which is when he began working on this case.

Detectives are banking on the advancement in technology to run tests of DNA evidence. And they promote cases to encourage more people to speak up.

“No information is too small. Anybody out there that knows anything, had contact with Kim Bock, or any of the family or any of her friends, we’re looking for any information at all, so please give us a call,” Battaglia said.

Robert Bock, who is retired from truck driving and living in West Virginia with his dogs, chickens and longtime partner, said he isn’t hopeful his sister’s murderer is alive. If they are, though, coming forward would give him closure.

“If it happens, it happens,” Robert Bock said.