Forty years ago, a husband dropped his wife at the doctor’s rooms for an appointment. When he returned to fetch her, she was nowhere to be found. A search of the premises turned up nothing. It appeared as if his wife had vanished off the face of the earth.
No Sign Of Her
He had arranged to pick her up after her appointment, so he had waited for her thinking she was still in with the Doctor. Their arrangement had been clear, so she would not have left on her own. It would take one word and a photo to finally solve this disappearance.
Just Seasonal Flu
His wife had made the Doctor’s appointment as she had a nasty cold. Her husband drove her to the appointment and they agreed he would fetch her again in an hour. Then the unbelievable occurred.
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The Missing Lady
Florence Stevens, known as Flora, was last seen by her spouse on August 3, 1975. She was a young 36 years old and was an active healthy young woman, who enjoyed life to the full. There was no reason for her to vanish as she did.
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Her Employer
At the time she went missing, Flora worked at a resort in the Catskill mountains called The Concord. It was a large sprawling holiday location boasting 1 200 rooms. Being so large, it was the go-to resort for most tourists wanting a break in the Catskills.
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Past Information Collected
Her job application to The Concord stated that Flora was a student at Lincoln High School in the past and that she was married to Robert Stevens. There was not much else on the application that detectives could use to build up a profile of her.
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Reporting her Missing
Flora had disappeared without a trace and the authorities opened a missing person’s case. All who knew Flora were really puzzled by the events that August day. Flora was well-liked by them all and no one could imagine anyone wanting to harm her. She was also no type of person to leave without telling anyone.
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No Progress On The Case
The police were stumped and had no clues to go on. Flora also has no living relatives in the area, so gleaning more personal information on her past, was impossible. The case looked like it may go cold.
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Would There Ever Be Closure?
The case did go cold and this appeared to be one of those missing people who would never be found and who’s family would never get the closure they needed to move on. None of those involved would imagine that the case would be reopened years later.
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A New Lead Investigator
In 2017, Yan Salomon was a New York State Senior Police Investigator. Despite not having any knowledge of the old missing person case, he had come across some vital information that may just blow the old cold case wide open.
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Many Questions Were About To Be Answered
The Senior investigator had stumbled on a lead that may just clear the Flor Stevens case. Of course, her husband and friends who had never stopped following her case had so many questions. Was she alive or hurt? Where had she been all this time?
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Bones
Flora’s friends and family were about to be disappointed. Whilst Yen Salomon had found evidence, it was in the form of skeletal remains that he needed help in identifying. If this was Flora, she was long deceased.
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Reaching out to His Colleagues
The investigator made some calls to the sheriff’s office in Sullivan County. He told a detective there, that human remains had been found in the Catskills and he would appreciate their assistance in identifying them.
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A Needle In A Haystack
Because around 70 000 female adults are reported missing every year, it would be impossible for Yen to single-handedly identify the remains. He had a plan though…
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A Place To Start
In January 2016, there were 21 894 active female missing person cases in the USA. All cases that went cold were kept in storage and all investigators were able to access the information in these files regardless of their jurisdiction.
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Looking For Her
Yen put together a team that would go through these 21000 odd files and looks for similarities to the remains discovered. He hoped the teams’ findings would lead to them identifying the deceased.
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The Site of the Discovery
Whilst his team poured over the cold case files back home, Yen traveled to Sullivan County to conduct a personal investigation. He planned to do local searches in an attempt to identify the woman.
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A Past Open Case
In the course of his investigations, Yen had determined that the woman who remains he had found, came from the Sullivan County area. He hoped to get further confirmation of this himself. He found that years ago, Sullivan County had an open case that had similarities to his.
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Searching for Clarification
Yen Salomon had a particular woman in mind and asked the Sullivan County detectives to show him her file. He specifically wanted information on the woman’s relatives so he could further his investigation by interviewing them. It did not cross his mind that the woman may not have had any.
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Bingo
The file was old and dated back to 1975. It also provided little to no information on the missing woman, but something caught Yen’s eye and he felt a hunch that he needed to follow through on.
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Fresh Eyes
Yen Salomon handed the file and his conclusions to the Sullivan County detectives, who assigned Detective Rich Morgan to follow through on the lead. His charge was to find a link between the missing woman from 1975 and the skeletal remains. He and two of his colleagues re-read the file and came up with some new findings.
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Solving The Puzzle
At some time over the years, the missing woman’s work ID had been added to the file. It was found at the same location as that of the human remains Yen was trying to identify. A coincidence that could not be overlooked.
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Intriguing news
Flora Stevens went missing in 1975. You are about to find out a gripping piece of new information about that old case. Get ready to be fascinated.
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Flora
A Detective Morgan worked on the re-opened case, he found that the skeletal remains were connected to the missing woman named Flora Stevens. He was about to solve the decades-long mystery
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Land Wide Searches
In 1975, Flora’s husband organized search parties and handed out thousands of flyers in an attempt to locate her. He could not accept that he had innocently dropped her off at her doctor’s rooms and she was just not there when he returned to fetch her.
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Few Leads No Progress
After opening a missing person’s case, no further clues were found and sadly Flora’s husband died ten years after she disappeared. The file remained closed full of dead-end leads.
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How Would Morgan Revive The Case
Detective Morgan had no living relatives to interview or indeed how to prove the remains Yen Salomon found and the missing woman was one and the same person.
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Everyone Has A Social Security Number…
As Morgan was perusing hundreds of databases looking for evidence, he discovered that someone was using Flora Stevens’ social security number!
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Tracking the ID Thief
After tracing the number to north Boston, Morgan confirmed that a person living in an old age home was using Flora’s social security number.
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A Change Of Name
The detective called the old age home. The staff told him that the social security number did belong to a resident named Flora, but that her last name was not Stevens. Their resident was named Flora Harris and she had been living there since 2001.
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Identity Artifice
Morgan and another detective took a drive to north Boston, to the old age home. Both were flabbergasted to find that the cold case they were working on, was not at all as it seemed.
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Was This ID theft?
The two detectives had found a lady with the same first name, date of birth and social security number as a missing person from 1975. Only the surname differed.
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Photographic Comparison
The detectives had brought with them, the only file photo of Flora that they had, just to compare in case the old lady turned out to be the same person. It was a photo that was on Flora’s work ID found earlier. Morgan and his partner wanted to meet and speak to this elderly lady!
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Confirmation
Upon showing the old lady the photo, she pointed at it and said: ‘me’. Just like that! They also showed her a photo of Robert Stevens, Flora’s husband. Her reaction to this was even more extreme, and the detectives knew that they had found Flora Stevens.
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Amnesia
The sad part of this amazing story is that the detectives could not get Flora to explain her disappearance in 1975 as she now had dementia. The past 42 years of her life were hidden away forever in her brain.
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A Not So Loving Marriage
The circumstances of Flora’s disappearance will never be confirmed, but a caregiver at the old age home, named Mabuva, did have a few details to share with the detectives that she had gleaned over the years. Flora had disclosed to her before dementia took over her mind, that she had been in an awful marriage that was abusive. The marriage had led to her having some psychiatric issues later on in life.
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Did She Up and Leave?
The consensus amongst the investigators is that Flora bought a bus ticket and left town so that she could escape from her husband. We will never know for sure as these details are lost in Flora’s mind forever.
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What Really Matters Now
What Sullivan County Undersheriff Eric Chabot says, is that all that matters now is that we know Flora is safe. She grew up in Yonkers an is not shy to say ‘mind your own business,’ to inquisitive people. He also states that finding a missing person in this way is reward enough.
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Missing Pieces
After 42 years, Sullivan County closed their missing persons file on Flora Stevens. They were sure that Flora Harris was Flora Stevens and were thrilled to finalize the case and advise the media of their success.
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Go Well, Flora
Finally, the Flora Stevens disappearance has been solved. The detectives would prefer to know all the finer details of her flight but are just as happy that she is safe. They took their leave of the 78-year-old Flora and wished her well. There are many stories with these kinds of endings. The following story of Matt and Laura, childhood sweethearts are one of them.
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Don’t Look For Me
Flora’s caregiver, Festus Mbuva has looked after her for 10 years now. She thinks that Flora never wanted to be found. She got the impression that Flora had escaped from something that she never wanted to return to.
