The year was 1975. It was August, and a 36-year-old woman named Flora Stevens was dropped off in upstate New York by her husband. She was going to a doctor’s appointment. But when her husband came back to get her, she was nowhere to be found. He called the police, and they searched for decades. But she went down in the books as one more person who would probably never be found. After all, that’s a pretty long time for someone to be missing.
Those who loved her never really gave up hope, though.
Without knowing what happened to her, it was always in the back of their minds. And that can cause a family a lot of pain. That is why investigators never gave up hope looking for her.
Although her husband died only 10 years after she went missing, her case started to resurface again not long ago. The remains of a woman were found in Orange County, New York, and based on surface characteristics, it seemed to be Flora. It just matched so many of her features that investigators were sure that it was her. They sent off her DNA analyzed, but before they could declare her a match, they had to see if there were any other living people that the DNA could have matched.
That’s when New York investigators were lead to a woman who was also named Flora.
At first, they thought she was just a relative, but then they realized that she had been using Flora’s social security number. They had found her, after all, but those remains weren’t Flora’s – she was actually still alive.
She was living in an assisted living facility in Lowell, Massachusetts. She had been there since at least 2001. However, her last name was no longer Stevens. She had changed it to Harris.
You might think that at this point, the mystery had been solved.
But nobody knows what happened to Flora even now. She has dementia, which means that she cannot tell anybody what happened to her. And even though investigators were happy to find her alive and well, they are still wondering what happened to her. Where did she go after her doctor’s appointment? Did somebody take her, or did she go of her own free will? And, if so, why?
At this point, it seems like those questions will never be answered.
And it really is a shame because people have been looking into this case for over 40 years now. Generally, these kinds of stories never end with a lot of information. Most missing people who aren’t found quickly aren’t found at all, and when they are, they usually are already dead. After all, that’s what everyone had thought had happened to Flora. The question remains whether she continued to lead a happy life or if something awful happened to her. Either way, it’s unsettling to know that experts are still left without answers.
However, it’s clear that she remembers who she is.
When the investigators showed her a picture of herself when she was 36, the year she went missing, she took one look at it and said, “That’s me.” As far as the police department could tell, she doesn’t have any living relatives or know anybody else that they could talk to in order to get more information. Therefore, they will have to simply be happy with the fact that she is indeed alive. Although her husband can’t celebrate the fact that she was found, at least others know that she is safe and sound.
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