Lucy Ann Johnson
by Robert A. Waters
One
reason prosecutors hate to try cases where no remains have been found is that
the “victim” can always reappear—alive.
Lucy Ann Johnson is a case in
point.
The
British Columbia housewife went missing in 1961, but her husband, Marvin,
didn’t notify police until four years later.
That delay made investigators suspect he’d killed her and hidden her
body. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police conducted
various searches, eventually digging up his back yard in an attempt to find
Lucy.
Authorities
wanted to arrest Marvin for the murder, but just didn’t have the evidence. Even so, the beleaguered husband lived under
a cloud of suspicion until his death in the 1990s.
Lucy
had a history of estrangement from her family.
Born in Alaska, she moved away when she was eighteen and, according to
police records, “did not maintain contact with her family.” She married Marvin in 1954 and had two
children. Marvin worked on a tugboat,
though he was unemployed at the time of her disappearance.
As
the decades rolled on, no one from her family or community heard from
Lucy. Marvin said he thought she was
dead. Their son died, but their
daughter, Linda Evans, continued to wonder what had happened.
Finally,
after the RCMP listed Lucy as a “missing person of the month” in their
newsletter, Linda placed ads in newspapers across Alaska. A daughter from Lucy’s new family contacted
Linda with the information that her mother was living in Yukon. Authorities confirmed this report—Lucy was
now 72.
Brenda Heist went missing
for eleven years before contacting authorities.
She later informed police that she left her home in Pennsylvania with several
homeless people. They ended up in Florida.
Heist
stated that an impending divorce and the pressure of having to care for her
three children caused her to leave. For
eleven years, she lived under several aliases, stole identification cards,
forged checks, and violated her probation.
She occasionally worked as a house cleaner. Heist finally admitted her real identity, but
not before she had been declared dead in 2010.
While
Heist’s mother was forgiving, her daughter was not. Her husband, who was considered a suspect in
her disappearance, also declined to meet with Heist.
People
who vanish, then reappear, often cause more problems than they could ever
imagine. Take the case of Eric Myers.
In
1991, the married father of five flew off into the California sun and
disappeared.
Police
assumed that he’d been murdered by persons unknown.
Myers was eventually declared dead, and his two daughters collected on a
life insurance policy worth $800,000.
But
the former husband was alive and well all along. He’d gone underground, and had begun living
with a man Myers called his husband.
In
2007, he made a “miraculous” entrance back into the lives of his family. While Myers’ parents (and Liberty Life Insurance
Company) welcomed him, his wife and children were emotionally devastated. The insurance company immediately sued his daughters to recoup their money—several years later, the case is still making its way
through the courts.
How
many other vanished souls are still living under the grid? And how many innocent spouses have been
convicted of their murders?
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