32-Year-Old Mystery Of Woman Who Went To ER In New York And Vanished Solved

Robert Brown was watching a segment on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt about cold cases when he came across a familiar face.  suddenly saw a familiar face.

He found the facial reconstruction somehow relatable and knew that it was his missing sister, Myrtle Brown. So, he reached out to the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner — and inadvertently solved his sister’s disappearance.

Brown Family

The face Robert had seen was not his missing sister’s. But thanks to some detective work by the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner’s cold case team, the mystery of Myrtle Brown’s disappearance was finally solved.

As per Today, Myrtle Brown’s family wondered all these years what happened to that young woman on a fateful day 32 years back. Back in May 1990, the young woman said goodbye and went to New York City to visit her best friend. But Myrtle never came home.

Brown Family

“I never thought she passed away,” her daughter Eboney, who was 13 years old when Myrtle disappeared, told NBC Nightly News. “I thought maybe she just wanted something different, maybe, out of life. I didn’t know, to be honest, I was just confused and sad.”

Before she disappeared, Brown left some clues behind. She had called Eboney’s grandmother to tell her that someone had stolen her purse, which contained her money — as well as her epilepsy medication. Myrtle said that she was going to try to go to the hospital to get a refill.

Brown Family

“That was the last moment that we ever heard from her,” Eboney told NBC. “It was very hard. You know, when you have your prom, and just, you know, becoming a young woman … it’s hard.”

“I saw a young lady that could be or could not have been my sister,” Brown's brother told NBC Nightly News. “And I said to myself, ‘Wow, I wonder if that could be her.”

Brown Family

Robert reached out to Dr. Angela Soler, the assistant director of forensic anthropology, at the medical examiner’s office. Soon, Soler started to look into Myrtle’s case. She quickly surmised that the face Robert had seen was not his sister — it belonged to a woman found buried beneath a nightclub in 2008 — but Soler compiled a case based on what she knew about Myrtle.

“I took a look at the reconstruction and noticed, OK, I’m probably looking for a middle-aged Black woman,” Soler told NBC. “It all matched with what the family was telling us, and we were also informed that she went missing in May of 1990. So I knew exactly where to start my search.”

Brown Family

Now Solar believed that she has cracked the case of Myrtle Brown's disappearance and called her family members Robert and Eboney to inform them about what she’d found, and sent them a picture of a deceased woman who she believed was Myrtle.

Both Eboney and Robert recognized their missing loved one. And Soler told them what had happened to her.

Back in May 1990, Myrtle had gone to a hospital in Brooklyn as she’d said. But while waiting for assistance in the emergency room, she had a seizure and died. Though Myrtle had given her name and birthdate, she didn’t have ID and the hospital never formally registered her.

Her disappearance had left her family grieving and finally, after knowing the truth, her family was finally able to mourn her death. They were able to lay her to rest through a virtual memorial.

“When someone’s in your mind missing, you don’t close the chapter,” Eboney told NBC. “We were able to do that.”

Now, Soler is hopeful that her team can help other families find similar closure.

“Even though it didn’t end up being the individual the recreation was based on, it helped us resolve a case,” she said. “It made a difference. And that’s the whole point is … to get people to stop and think for a moment and follow through and give us a phone call.”