When someone has been missing for a long period of time, hope of them ever being found alive
begins to dwindle and with good reason, as they are very often never located.
In some cases, however, the unthinkable happens when missing people turn up alive, decades
after they vanished.
5.
Judith Bello
In December of 1993, 28-year-old Judith Bello was working at the National Food Corporation
in Stanwood which is located in Washington.
One morning, she arrived at work as usual, but abruptly left without reason and didn’t
return.
When she didn’t arrive back at home and didn’t pick up her 3-year-old-son from daycare,
she was reported as a missing person.
Her car was later found outside of a post office in Stanwood, but there was no trace
of Judith.
Snohomish County Sheriff’s Detectives were convinced that she had been the victim of
a crime as they thought it to be very unlikely that she would just abandon her three-year-old
son.
This triggered a massive search effort and a crime investigation that would carry on
for the next 12 years.
When she had not been found years later, her profile was added to a deck of cards along
with 7 other people who had vanished under suspicious circumstances, Judith featuring
as the eight of hearts.
She was the first person among those featured in the deck to be located.
Then, in 2011, 18 years after her disappearance, detectives received a call from Judith in
which she told them that she was alive and well.
She was living in Fontana, California and had started a new life for herself with a
new family.
She stated that she had seen herself on the sheriff’s website and decided to put the
mystery to rest.
She explained that she decided to disappear because of serious problems between her and
her husband and she didn’t contact her family again because she was scared of him and feared
that he would cause trouble for her siblings.
She would then learn that her husband also disappeared, 3 months after she did and he
was not heard from again for several years until he contacted his grandmother in Mexico
before she passed away.
Since Judith did nothing wrong, she was not charged with any crime and police stated that
they were relieved to finally put an end to the mystery and close the case for good.
4.
Bakhredtin Khakimov
Widely regarded as one of the last confrontations of the Cold War, the Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan on Christmas Eve of 1979 in an effort to protect the Soviet-backed government
against rebels who had received their training from both Western and Islamic countries.
Bakhredtin Khakimov (Bahk Redd Teen - Cok Eee Mowv) was one of the soldiers who were
deployed to Afghanistan during this time and during one battle in September of 1980, he
was struck down.
He survived, however and was spotted by Afghan tribesmen who picked him up and removed him
from the battlefield.
After that, his fate remained unknown and for the next 33 years, no one had any idea
what had happened to him and he was considered to be a missing person.
Then, in February of 2013, a team from Warriors Internationalists Affairs Committee, an organisation
from Moscow who searches for former Soviet Union soldiers that are missing in action,
found him alive and well, still living in Afghanistan.
When he was tracked down, he didn’t have any identification papers on him and he could
barely speak any Russian.
He could, however, converse in his Uzbek language and was able to identify photos of other Soviet
soldiers who served with him at the time.
The effects of his time at war were still apparent as his hand trembled and he had a
visible tic in one of his shoulders.
He explained that, after he was rescued by the tribesmen, he was nursed back to health
by a village elder who was a herbal healer.
The healer taught Khakimov his trade and he would eventually go on to marry one of the
women in the village after converting to Islam in 1993 and changing his name to Sheikh Abdullah.
He stated that he was keen to meet up with his relatives who he hadn’t seen since he
was deployed.
Local reports on the incident differ from those reported by the Russians, however.
A local reporter who spoke to Khakimov stated that the man separated from his unit after
stealing one of their weapons.
They claim that he then handed it over to enemy forces and deserted.
Khakimov now lives a semi-nomadic lifestyle alongside the people who rescued him.
3.
Melvin Uphoff and Jacquelyn Rains-Kracman
Jacquelyn Rains-Kracman and Melvin Uphoff both disappeared from Nebraska in 1965.
First, Jacquelyn vanished from Columbus on the 24th of September, followed by Uphoff
who vanished exactly one month later from Rising City.
Jacquelyn told her family that she was leaving for a wedding in Iowa with a girlfriend, but
while she was packing, her younger sister, Sharon, noticed that she was packing everything
she owned into two large suitcases and she knew something was out of place.
She started to feel uneasy, especially since Jacquelyn had stated months earlier that,
when her ship came in, she would be leaving to go somewhere where it was sunny and warm.
Later that day, Sharon and a friend were driving around when they spotted Jacquelyn in a car
with three friends.
She was crouched down in the backseat, as if she didn’t want to be seen.
After her disappearance, when her friends were asked where they had taken her, they
refused to answer and for the next 40 years, she would remain a missing person.
In 1999, Jacquelyn’s other sister, Becky who was working at Walmart at the time, spotted
a woman in the store who she was certain to be Jacquelyn.
Before she could make sure, she was called away to help another checker and when she
returned, the woman, who was wearing jean capris and a pink blouse, had left the store.
When she told her fellow employees what had happened, they told her that she had probably
seen an angel, but Leslie was adamant that it was her sister, given that she had the
same parting in her hair, the same mole above the right side of her lip and the same dark
brown eyes.
It would later come to light that, three months before Uphoff disappeared, Jacquelyn’s husband
had told Myrna Uphoff, Melvin’s wife, that the two were having an affair, an allegation
that Melvin vehemently denied, but he then started acting differently.
On the 24th of October, Melvin told Myrna that he was going out for a beer and that
was the last time that she saw him.
He took no clothes with him or any of his other possessions, save for his coin collection.
When she told his family that he hadn’t come home and didn’t show up for work, they
told her to go back into town and keep quiet.
They would finally file a missing persons report the following day.
Jacquelyn wasn’t reported missing until 1994 as her family decided to keep her disappearance
quiet.
Then, in April of 2009, Jacquelyn and Melvin were found living together outside the State
of Nebraska.
They declined to give any more information on their disappearances and have stated that
they just wanted to be left alone.
2.
Flora Stevens
In 1975, 36-year-old Flora Stevens was an employee at The Concord Hotel at a Catskills
resort in Monticello, about 70 miles outside of New York City.
One afternoon in August, her husband dropped her off for a doctor’s appointment and that
was the last time that he would ever see her.
Flora was reported as a missing person and she would remain missing for the next 42 years,
long after her husband passed away, not knowing what had happened to her.
Police were certain that the case would never be solved and that Flora had probably passed
away by this time, but in 2017, they got a break in the case.
A state police investigator contacted the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office when remains
matching Flora’s profile were found.
This prompted Sheriff’s Detective Rich Morgan to start searching for any living relatives
of Flora’s and he was shocked by what he found.
After searching through federal, state and local databases, he found that someone in
Massachusetts was using Flora’s social security number.
He drove up to Lowell, Massachusetts accompanied by his partner, Detective Ed Clouse.
They made their way to a local nursing home and found a woman living there who matched
Flora’s description.
When they showed her an old employee photograph from the Concord Hotel, her face immediately
lit up and she seemed to recognise herself.
Flora was suffering from late-middle stage dementia and was only able to speak one or
two words every now and then.
She looked at the photograph and was able to utter a single word: “Me”.
That’s when they were certain that the 42-year-old mystery of her disappearance had finally been
solved.
They tried to get more information from her about the day that she vanished, but due to
her disease, she wasn’t able to provide them with any more details and the circumstances
surrounding her disappearance will forever remain a mystery that only she has the answers
to.
1.
Alex Cooper
65-year-old Alex Cooper was a local businessman from Cranbrook, British Columbia who worked
in the cleaning industry from 1974 to 1983.
He was also an accomplished musician and was much loved by his family.
In 1986, he took a job as a salesman, which meant that he spent a lot of time on the road.
On the morning of the 4th of April, 1987, his daughter Liela and his son-in-law, Pete,
left Cranbrook to do some shopping.
As they drove across a bridge, they spotted his car parked on the side of the road and
they decided to pull over to talk to him.
They walked past his car and down to the riverbank where they assumed he was fishing; however,
when they got there, he was nowhere to be found.
Liela started to worry, since Alex had a heart condition and she immediately phoned her mother,
Margaret.
She asked her mother if she knew where Alex was, but she stated that she hadn’t seen
him for about 24 hours.
They contacted the hospitals in the area to check if he had been admitted, but this proved
fruitless and they contacted police to file a missing persons report.
When police arrived at his vehicle, they found no footprints or evidence suggesting foul
play.
The car was locked and inside, they found some of his clothing and fishing equipment.
Authorities launched an extensive land and air search, but this too was to no avail.
They would later learn that Alex had eaten lunch at a nearby restaurant on the same day.
Margaret told police that he was in the habit of paying from a large roll of cash and she
was concerned that someone may have seen the money and robbed him.
Leila, on the other hand, feared that he may have suffered a heart attack and fallen into
the river.
When his disappearance was covered by the media, witnesses came forward to tell police
that they had seen a man matching Alex’s description hitchhiking in the area where
his car was found and police assumed that he had left of his own free will.
Margaret would later learn that there was no birth certificate, military or medical
history in Alex’s name and that he was not the man he pretended to be.
On the 10th of January, 1992, he was located in Hamilton, Canada where he revealed that
his real name was Albin Arsene Arsenault.
After being falsely accused of a robbery in 1948, he fled, changed his name and disappeared
for 44 years.