(AM) PRESS-TELEGRAM (PM)
Families Wait
Word of Lost
Loved Ones
FAMILIES, from B-l
hours went into the desert search. The woman's mother in
Oregon had a dream in which she saw her daughter "dead'
on a desert hillside." As the months passed, the family despaired
of ever seeing her alive again.
The woman's abandoned car was found at a gas station
in a desert hamlet. The gas station owner remembered
•the woman and recalled seeing her hitchhiking.
A year later, a detective magazine ran a story about
Mrs. Bradley's mysterious disappearance. The owner of a
paper supply firm in Famington, N. M. read the story and
telephone the police.
WINIFRED BRADLEY, using her own name, was
working for the man as his bookkeeper. Mrs. Bradley told
authorities she remembered nothing about her past except
a cur fire and many people she didn't know.
The Winifred Bradley missing persons case had a happy
ending. Not all do.
Mrs. Delores Mae Siddal, then 29, left her Long.-
Beach home on Aug. 23, 1961 and has not been seen alive
since.
Three years later Hugh M. Pheaster blurted out a confession
in court that he had killed Mrs. Siddal and had buried
her body in the San Bernardino Mountains near Big
Bear City.
Pheaster took police to the area he said he had buried
the body. The body was never found. Legally, Delores Mae
Siddal is still missing.
"We close this case in August of this year," explained
Detective Wanda Crum, who heads up the Long Beach police
missing persons bureau, "this is the seventh year of
her disappearance and she can be declared legally dead."
Mrs. Fidelia Gonzales, an elderly Mexican-American
woman from Lima, N.M., has looked'for her daughter,
Olympia Rose, since she disappeared in 1949. She traced
the daughter to Long Beach in 1965, but despite an
extensive search, Olympia Rose, then 41, and who had
used many aliases, was never found. A relative said the
mother "wanted to see her daughter once again before she
died."
"A mother will seldom give up the search for her
child, no matter how old that person is," detective Crum
said.SHE RECALLED one case in which a Long Beach |
woman refused to give up the search for her missing
daughter even though all roads led to heartbreak. The final
heartbreak came when she found her daughter — in a pauper's
grave in Los Angeles. She had died alone and unkowri
just 30 miles from Long Beach in the Los Angeles
County General Hospital tuberculosis ward.
"But just finding her daughter, even though she was
dead, was a relief to the woman," the detective said.
After months, even years of work trying to locate a
missing person, detective Crum said, "you find them and
that's the last you ever see of the people involved. A few
will write thank you letters, but some don't even bother.
Being a missing person is not in itself a crime," she added.
"And if we locate a missing person who doesn't want to be
found, we just close the case."
Source : Independent Press Telegram, Long Beach CA 1968