In August 1975, Flora Stevens’ husband dropped her at a doctor’s appointment in Monticello, NY. When he went to collect her, there was no sign of her. Fast forward 42 years, and Stevens has finally been tracked down, living with Dementia in an assisted living home in Massachusetts. Police have no idea what happened to the now 78-year-old in the time between her disappearance and her discovery, but at least the cold case is now closed.

Woman goes missing after doctor's appointment

At the time of her disappearance, Stevens was 36 years of age and working at a Catskills resort.

On August 3, 1975, her husband dropped her for an appointment with her doctor in Monticello, NY, around 70 miles from New York City. When he later returned to collect her, she was gone. While a search was launched for the Missing woman, police had no success.

As reported by ABC News, police every now and then opened her cold case file to try and get further leads, but invariably closed the file again, up until recently. It turns out police were working on another cold case when they finally made a break in their search. An investigator with New York State got in touch with the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office in September this year relating to skeletal remains that had been discovered in Orange County, NY, which roughly fit Stevens’ description.

Police get a break in cold case file

Detective Rich Morgan with the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office performed a search on state and federal databases in an effort to track down a relative of Stevens to get a DNA sample to identify those remains. However, what they discovered was that someone had been using Stevens’ social security number in Massachusetts.

That person had the same first name and same social security number.

Woman found in nursing home in Massachusetts

Through that information they tracked Stevens down to the assisted living facility in Lowell, Ma, where she was living under the name of Flora Harris. However on interviewing the 78-year-old woman, they were unable to get any information relating to her whereabouts for all these 42 years due to her dementia.

However, according to Sullivan County Sheriff Mike Schiff, they rarely get to solve a 42-year-old missing person case, going on to say the main thing was they know she is safe.

As reported by Inside Edition, while Stevens didn’t know where she had been, or what she had been doing all that time, when Morgan visited Stevens at the assisted living facility she immediately recognized herself from an old photo ID from her time working at the Concord Hotel. Morgan said she responded immediately by saying just one word, “me.”

What investigators do know is that her medical records show her living in assisted living homes in both New Hampshire and New York up until 2001 when she arrived in Lowell, Ma. Police said due to her dementia, her story remains a mystery and they will never know why she went missing. According to police, her husband died in 1985 and she has no other living relatives.
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