Sixteen years after her disappearance and eight years after she was declared dead, Ada Jane Groomes finally got her wish.
Funds in an annuity account she'd set up in 1981 along with her business partner and husband, Donald Groomes, will be split between him and their four children. Last week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal brought by Donald Groomes, who had sought complete control of the annuity valued at $185,000 in 1996.
Ada Jane Groomes, then 54, was last seen Oct. 7, 1988, near Scottdale. Nine years later, she was declared dead by a Westmoreland County judge even though her body has never been found.
"One of the things Donald Groomes was asking the Pennsylvania courts to do was put this into the estate," said Jim Conte, attorney for two of the Groomes children.
Donald Groomes asked the courts to give him full ownership of the annuity. Three of the children -- daughters Susan Robinson and Linda Rumbaugh and son Thomas Groomes -- previously claimed their father already had assumed control of more than $1 million in family assets as a result of their mother's death.
Ada Jane and Donald Groomes had been married for 34 years and together owned the Groomes Transit Co., a bus company based in East Huntingdon Township. They were separated for two years prior to Ada Jane Groomes' disappearance but had never divorced.
Shortly after their separation in 1986, Ada Jane Groomes asked that the annuity she shared with her husband be split, according to court records. In October 1986, she also completed a will that listed only her four children as heirs.
As a result of her death, the four Groomes children inherited about $12,000 each from their mother's estate. In 1997, the children went to court asking that the annuity be disbursed.
Westmoreland County Judge Daniel Ackerman, in a 2002 ruling, split the account in half, with Donald Groomes getting 50 percent and the children splitting the remaining 50 percent. Donald Groomes, though, already had taken out a $50,000 cash advance from the account to pay for capital improvements at the bus company.
Ackerman determined that a letter Ada Jane Groomes had sent to the insurance company managing the account was valid. That letter asked the annuity be split between her and her estranged husband. Donald Groomes appealed that decision, first to Ackerman and later to Pennsylvania Superior Court.
Last December, the appeals court affirmed Ackerman's finding. Last week, the state's Supreme Court declined to hear yet another appeal.
Robert King, attorney for Donald Groomes, could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, state police still list the case as unsolved. Investigators previously said Donald Groomes was at one time a "primary suspect" in his wife's disappearance, but no arrests have been made.
Police looking for the missing woman searched ponds, swamps, creeks and rivers in Westmoreland and Fayette counties. A mobile home owned by the couple, reported missing around the time of her disappearance, was recovered in Tampa, Fla., in 1989.
