After 38 years, is the Televangelist's Daughter close to being identified?I've spent months digging through mountains of information, praying that I come across the most elusive needle in a haystack that's grown over nearly 4 decades. And I think I may have found something promising. I had almost given up hope of finding any new-to-me missing people, reported or otherwise. I'd been through dozens of pages of Ancestry family tree records, growing more disappointed with each dead end. My search was both very general and quite specific: people born between 1935 and 1945, within the United States, with "missing person" being a required phrase. I was looking for anyone who, by memory or experience, was noted as being missing by family. Some were great-grandchildren told stories by relatives, merely adding that small detail among hundreds of familial records. Some were distant relatives who had heard stories of that "great aunt's cousin's half-brother's child" who went missing decades ago. Very few could be matched with available missing persons reports. Deep within those photos, stories and records was a photo of a young woman. The family tree mentions of her all listed "Unknown - Missing Person" in place of information about her death. We'll call her CC for now, keeping in mind that nothing is confirmed and I'm still working on contacting any living relative to fill in some blanks.
CC lost both of her parents, her mother when she was just a toddler and her father shortly after her 18th birthday, then her step-mother a few years after that. Her siblings were transplants to Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Kentucky. All marrying and having families of their own. I wondered how long CC was missing before anyone began to worry. Why her husband hadn't filed a missing persons report with police, why it seemed that she was allowed to disappear one day and presumed dead after years of no contact. Did her husband think that she had simply run off, leaving behind her life as a wife (and, possibly, mother)? Did her siblings attribute the lack of contact to the miles between them, or a relationship that had never been particularly close?
I don't know the answer to many questions surrounding CC, her life or her disappearance. But I do know that she went missing sometime between 1978 and 1999, shares some facial features with the older Jane, lived in the region of South Carolina, is the right age range and, from photos, seems to have the same build as our Jane. As I continue to attempt to fill in the blanks and put the pieces of CC's story together, I remain hopeful that she could be a match. With the overwhelming lack of information available about her, it's been a tricky and frustrating task, but a contact within the Columbia PD agrees that she ticks enough of the boxes to warrant further digging. If we knew, without a doubt, that CC went missing after 1982, it would be an immediate brick wall for this line of inquiry. She'd be taken off the list and never considered a possible match again. But, alas, we don't know when she disappeared. We don't know when she got married, if she had any children, or what her husband's first name is. But that doesn't mean that we'll never know. And when I know, you'll know. Until next time... EC |
EmilyTrue crime, cold case, long-term missing/unidentified, and all things mystery. I've always been interested, but now I'm involved in the search. Archives
June 2023
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Photos used under Creative Commons from Jinx!, Damian Gadal