Missing New York woman found safe in Massachusetts 42 years later
A New York woman who had been missing for 42 years has been found safe in Massachusetts, the Times Herald-Record reports.
Flora (Florence) Stevens was 36 when she disappeared from Monticello, New York, on August 3, 1975, the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office told the newspaper. Her husband returned to pick her up after dropping her off for a doctor’s appointment, but she wasn’t there.
Last month, a New York State Police investigator contacted the sheriff’s office about a set of unidentified remains of a woman found in Orange County whose body vaguely matched Stevens’s characteristics. When Sullivan County Detective Rich Morgan tried to find relatives for a DNA sample to identify the body, he discovered Stevens’s Social Security number was being used in Massachusetts, according to the Times Herald-Record.
Morgan found the number belonged to 78-year-old Flora Harris, who lives in CareOne, an assisted-living residence in Lowell, Massachusetts, according to NECN. He and another detective confirmed that Harris and Stevens were the same person during a visit to Lowell on Tuesday.
Missing Sullivan woman found safe 42 years later — in Massachusetts https://t.co/dU3sTmfd7k pic.twitter.com/qyGlSt4UQw
— Times Herald-Record (@recordonline) October 26, 2017
“We’re excited to help with the case,” CareOne administrator Nathan Norton told the station. Harris has lived in CareOne since 2001, but the facility did not know she was ever considered a missing person until the detectives visited.
Since she suffers from dementia, police were unable to fill in the gaps of her disappearance, but she recognized her decades-old work ID, the Times Herald-Record reported. She had also lived in New Hampshire and New York City nursing homes, according to her medical records that go back about 30 years.
NECN reported authorities believe that, at one point, Harris suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling out of a window.
No living relatives have been found.
