42 Years After This Mom Of Three Went Missing, An Investigator Made A Jaw Dropping Discovery

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forty-two years after this mom of three went missing an investigator made a jaw-dropping discovery it's 1974 in the small town of Laurel Indiana and Lula Gillespie Miller disappears from her family home leaving her young children behind she vanishes without a trace and for more than four decades her loved ones remain in the dark about her ultimate fate until one investigator makes an incredible discovery frustratingly details about Lula's life before her disappearance are scarce according to some sources she was mother to three young children including Tammy and a newborn baby however in December 2014 a post surfaced that claimed to give a very different account of events written by a now grown Tammy host claimed that Lulu had four children not three moreover it stated that her husband Joe gamble died in a road accident back in 69 if this version of events would have left Lula a widow at a very young age and if she had given birth shortly before her disappearance would have into the child of another man moreover the post went on to claim that Lula was beaten and sexually assaulted while on a night out in Laurel in 1973 apparently she managed to survive and was able to tell police the name of her attackers however no formal report was ever made in a 2016 interview with People magazine Tammy confirmed the story about Lola's difficult past explaining that her mother was a survivor of sexual assault moreover she claimed her mom was an alcoholic who was struggling to come to terms with her husband's passing interestingly Tammy also added some more strands to the already convoluted family history Tammy also claimed that she had been the result of Lula's affair with another man although the other kids were apparently fathered by her late husband but whatever the truth Lula's disappearance from Laurel one day in 1974 left the family devastated and when she failed to return they filed a missing person report again accounts of what happened next according to the police Lilla signed custody of her children over to her own parents however the reporting people claimed that grandma Catherine the mother of the missing woman's deceased partner raised Tammy and her siblings my grandmother who raised me did an awesome job Tammy continued she never went one day without letting us kids know she loved us however as the months passed they heard no word from the mother who had left her children behind then in 1975 a letter arrived that could shed some light on the mystery apparently Lula had written the letter and posted it from Richmond Indiana a small city located an hour's drive north east of Laurel but after that the trail went cold and his Tammy and her siblings grew they began to wonder about the mother that they had barely known however the family didn't give them many details about what had actually to their mom back in 1974 according to Tammy she grew up believing that Lulu had abandoned her children but over time she came to believe that there might have been a reason behind her mother's disappearance given the rumors about Lula's difficult past might she have been running from some kind of threat apparently International Center for unidentified and missing person's head Todd Matthews agreed he told people it could be everything from trying to escape some type of family situation they feel is impossible to mental illness to crime she might have been trying to protect her children for all we know but as the years passed the family came no closer to solving Lula's disappearance meanwhile with no closure to speak of Lula's family continued to hold out hope regardless and apparently her mother Emma never stopped believing that one day her daughter might return Tammy told the Indianapolis news outlet WTHR in 2014 she always left her porch light on every night because she always thought that Lula would come home and Tami often caught herself daydreaming over a photograph of Loula the only thing that she had to remember her mother by she continued you sit and analyze the picture do I have her eyes do I have her cheekbones and do I look like her at all however she eventually came to presume that the missing woman was dead then in 2010 Tami decided to do an internet search on her mother's case but what she found only served to deepen the mystery that had haunted her all these years she told WTHR I googled her name and then all this stuff started coming up about how she was assaulted in Laurel and thrown over a bridge at some point Tami decided to turn to a friend with experience in unsolved mysteries back in 1991 Tomi Schmidt's brother Jason had died outside Connersville a city just ten miles north of Laurel officially the death was recorded as an accident caused by a driver who had hit the teenager while he was passed out on the road however Tomi believes that her brother Jason was tortured and that the car accident was staged to cover up the crime desperate to get to the truth she established justice for Jason Bolton a web site dedicated to the various leads and rumors surrounding the case in fact it was on that page that Tami posted her own account of Lula's life before her disappearance over time Tomi's crusade brought her into contact with other unsolved crimes from the area and at some point she told Tami about a case from 1975 apparently an unidentified body had been discovered in Richmond the same place where Lula's last letter to her family had been posted suspecting that the body could be that of her mother Tammy contacted the International Centre for unidentified and missing persons or do II in turn they reached out to the Indiana State Police who assigned Detective Sergeant Scott Jarvis to the case by then it was January 2014 almost 40 years since Lulu had disappeared following up on the Richmond lead Scott confirmed the existence of an unidentified woman buried in the city's Earlham Cemetery in 1975 and the December he finally acquired a warrant to exhume the unmarked grave taking a sample from the body he sent it off for comparison with Tammy's DNA meanwhile for Tammy it was a tense time if her mother really was dead it could change what she had believed about her all these years she told WTHR I grew up thinking that she just could not handle the responsibility of being a mother and she left we could never understand why she never came back however in 2015 Scott received a call from another law enforcement agency while he was awaiting the results of the DNA test apparently they believed that the remains might belong to another individual and suggested that the detective investigate other possibilities and soon the science confirmed their suspicions apparently the two sets of DNA were not a match confirming that the body in Richmond was not Lula in fact the mystery woman buried in Earlham cemetery remains unidentified to this day however Scott had already begun to look elsewhere for the missing mother picking up on a promising lead according to a police statement Scott had managed to identify a woman who bore a number of similarities to Lula apparently she had spent much of the 1980s in Tennessee before relocating to South Texas there she had set up home in a small town in the state possibly under an assumed name apparently Scott followed a paper trail of public records and he suspected that this mystery woman could be Lula alive and well after all these years and even though she was using a different name there were a number of personal details that connected her to the missing mother then in March 2016 Scott finally reached out to law enforcement in Texas who traveled to the unnamed woman's home amazingly she soon admitted that she was Lula the same person who had disappeared from Laurel over 40 years previously however she refused to elaborate on why she had chosen to leave her family behind according to the statement the woman simply told the authorities that she felt she was too young to be a mother at the time and she requested to retain her anonymity indeed Scott told people if someone to disappear they can do that however the woman did allow Scott to pass her details on to her daughter but when Tammy discovered that the authorities had found her mother she felt conflicted her friend Debbie Dyer told people she was just hurt and angry and happy she was alive she's going through a rollercoaster of emotions after years of not knowing Tammy now faced an uncomfortable truth Lula had chosen to stay away from her family and at first she gave her mother the benefit of the doubt however Tammy reached out to Lula the day after the authorities discovered her mom but the experience left her disappointed according to Tammy Lula only managed to make time for a brief connection over the telephone she explained to people it was less than a two-minute conversation she said I'll call you when I'm able to talk however the estranged mother never reached out leaving her daughter feeling rejected once more afterwards Tammy expressed her anger with her mom she continued I will never call her again I'm glad she's alive but it hurts emotionally knowing this was her choice moreover the heartbroken daughter dispelled any rumors about a blissful reunion adding this isn't going to be one of those happy made-for-tv movies meanwhile investigators have not revealed many details about what Lily was doing during her missing years sergeant john bowling of the indiana state police told people it is believed that she had at times lived under an alias but also along the way had been married and remarried meanwhile though Tammy and Lulu have not reunited it remains an incredible achievement that the authorities could solve this mystery after all these years however their situation is far from unique in fact cases of missing people reappearing after decades often appear around the world for example back in 1961 an Alaskan woman named Lucy and Johnson disappeared from Surrey British Columbia in a case that closely echoes Lula's like Tammy's mother she left her young children and Daniel behind however in this instance her husband was suspected of murder without evidence however police could not make a conviction and Lucy's disappearance remained unsolved for 52 years then in 2013 Linda placed an advertisement in a local newspaper in the Yukon where her mother had lived before moving to British Columbia and amazingly a woman claiming to be the daughter of the missing woman answered apparently Lucy had fled her home in fear of her abusive husband after trying but failing to take Linda and Daniel with her eventually the younger woman flew to Yukon and enjoyed a reunion with her mother a conclusion far happier than the end of Lula and Tammy's story interestingly a similar story played out back in 2011 when missing Judith bellow showed up in the city of Fontana in California apparently she had disappeared 18 years previously from Stanwood Washington over 1200 miles from where the authorities eventually found her and just like Lula and Lucy she had apparently left her young children behind in another similarity to Lucy's case it transpired that Judith's husband had allegedly abused her prompting her to disappear indeed over the years similar stories have emerged from every corner of the globe but could these cases shed some light on Lily's actions and why she vanished all those years ago although there is no evidence to suggest that Lula was in an abusive relationship there is some uncertainty surrounding her disappearance for example in Tammy's 2014 post she claimed that the story of Lula's assault was well-known in the town however it seems as if there was never an official investigation whatever might have happened in the past Tammy seems set on enjoying life without her mother today she has four children of her own and works as an administrator in Indiana she told people I'm going to have a wonderful life I know it wasn't my fault it was her loss tragically Lula's own mother died in November 2015 just four months before the authorities finally found Lula and sadly she went to her grave without ever knowing what happened to her missing daughter now Tammy and her siblings are carrying on with life although it seems as if the past will be difficult to forgive you

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Channel: Americans Channel

Views: 726,317

Rating: 4.6048598 out of 5

Keywords: 42, years, after, this, mom, of, three, went, missing, an, investigator, made, jaw, dropping, discovery, Americans Channel

Id: EXyjipWB7G8

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Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019

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