New York woman missing since 1975 found alive near Boston
MONTICELLO, N.Y. — A woman who disappeared from upstate New York after being dropped off for a doctor’s appointment 42 years ago has been found suffering from dementia and living in an assistedliving facility in Massachusetts, authorities said.
The sheriff’s office in Sullivan County, N.Y., said Flora Stevens, 78, was using the last name Harris when detectives tracked her down last week at the residence in Lowell, near Boston. Officials said they’ve been unable to figure out details of what happened to her between the time she disappeared in August 1975 and when she was finally found.
Police said Stevens was a 36-year-old employee of a Catskills resort when her husband dropped her off for a doctor’s appointment at a hospital in Monticello, 75 miles northwest of New York City. When he returned to pick her up, she wasn’t there.
Police periodically reviewed her missing person case but kept hitting dead ends. They got a break in September, thanks to a query from a New York State Police investigator working on a different cold case. The unidentified remains of a woman had been found, and the investigator said they roughly matched Stevens’ characteristics.
The state police investigators asked Sullivan County for help tracking down any relatives who could provide a DNA sample for possible identification. During a records search, Detective Rich Morgan discovered someone was using Stevens’ Social Security number in Massachusetts.
Deputies tracked the number to the Lowell assisted-living residence, where staff confirmed the number belonged to a resident named Flora Harris. Morgan and another detective went there Tuesday and confirmed Harris was actually the Flora Stevens who had disappeared in 1975.