Authorities Continue Search For Missing Former KGO Host

Missing: Ray Taliaferro

Many questions still surround the disappearance of longtime former KGO 810 AM talk host Ray Taliaferro, who was last seen Nov. 10 in Paducah, Kentucky, after likely driving away while his wife was checking out a back house window.

Authorities don’t have new leads and are hoping media attention will help locate Taliaferro.

Taliaferro, 79, maintains a residence in San Francisco, but he and his wife of six months were visiting a city called Brookport in southern Illinois on Nov. 10, checking out property she had inherited, according to a family spokesman.

Just before they were set to leave the home together, Taliaferro’s wife went to check on a window in the back of the house, and when she returned just a few minutes later, the car and Taliaferro were gone.

Massac County Sheriff Ted Holder told this news organization Monday that Taliaferro was reported missing on the morning of Nov. 10 by his wife, and an alert to be on the lookout for the car he may have been driving was sent out to nearby agencies.

Taliaferro was seen on foot later that afternoon in Paducah, just a short drive away across the Ohio River, Holder said.

Taliaferro spoke with employees of Independence Bank, the manager of the Mellow Mushroom pizza restaurant, and finally, the music director of the West End Baptist Church, all within a few blocks of each other in Paducah, Holder confirmed.

But since then, he has not been seen.  Taliaferro’s cell phone was found inside the car, and Holder said much of his office’s efforts in the first week he was missing were focused on trying to track any cell phone or credit card activity, of which there doesn’t appear to have been any.


Taliaferro became the nation’s first black talk-show host for a major market radio station KNEW 910 AM in 1976. For years, starting in 1986, the liberal Taliaferro commanded the Bay Area’s overnight airwaves, hosting the KGO Newstalk AM-810 show from 1 to 5 a.m.

Taliaferro was inducted in the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2011.