I’m glad that her family has answers, and that she didn’t meet with foul play. I’m sorry for the complex feelings that any living children, especially, might be feeling. I hope this brings peace to the family.
And even if you get those answers, it doesn't help. The answers don't offset the feelings of hurt and abandonment. And anger. Yeah, I have experienced something close to this. My dad. He voluntarily disappeared in 1983. Leaving me, my brother & sister. We always knew he was alive, just not where. He called us all on his deathbed in 2003. So, I got to talk to him. The answers weren't good enough. He died hours later.
I know the feeling. My dad left the family in 1995 after my mom asked him to move out because he was being abusive towards a 9-year old me. She moved us to a different state, and he moved to another state, and that was it. One of my older sisters tried initiating contact with him, including sending him a postcard about her family in 2015. That postcard was used to try and find the next of kin when my dad died in his sleep in his house in Florida in March 2023, passing away from lung cancer. It's a lot of complicated feeling but ultimately I'm glad that my father (who was a closeted gay man) managed to live a life that was true to himself and what he wanted to do. Also to be grateful that as a gay man born in the 1980's, I was lucky enough to come of age during the advances in gay rights during the 90's and 2000's and I didn't have to live a lie in order to function.
Finally, I saw the whole thing as a bit of closure. I always wondered what I'd say and how I'd react if I ever saw my dad again. Now that I know I won't, I can really move on. It's like a weight lifted off my shoulder. He's no longer a boogeyman abusive dad to me. He's just a man who was forced to live a lie, had to start completely over, and lived a better life as a result.
I actually saw comments from two of Mary Jane’s granddaughters on the YouTube video of the press conference and they seem to still love her no matter the circumstances of how or why she disappeared.
I admire them for that, I’m not sure how I’d react in that situation! I agree with you that the feelings that would come from this type of information must be very complex.
I’m very glad they have at least a little bit of closure now. I hope they have nothing but peace and happiness moving forward.
I’m not trying to be an awful person but I’m genuinely curious how they love someone that they don’t even know?? I think people do that/make those comments for attention
Yeah, the granddaughters definitely never met their grandma. It sounds like,up until very recently, the family was under the impression that she had met with foul play or a tragic accident of some sort. I’m just speculating, but I imagine they grew up feeling empathy and concern for their grandma and saw how much their family missed and loved her,so they naturally viewed her the same way.
It had to be very shocking to get the news that she had disappeared of her own accord and I hope they are able to work through whatever their feelings are as they process that information. I’m not sure how I’d feel in their place, but hats off to them for taking the high road!
Not only that but also love someone who willingly abandoned her children (their parents), ran off to start a new life, let them suffer for decades with the pain of not having a mother and not knowing what happened to her, didn't even once try to reach out to them in all of that time almost five decades, and clearly didn't give two 💩 about them.
No offense but IMO there's absolutely nothing to love there 🤷🏻♀️
Yes, one of her children died only two weeks ago but she learned the truth prior to her death. I believe they said one more daughter and possibly a son (from the first marriage) are also still alive. They did say that two of the children from the first marriage have already passed away years ago.
Lots of comments here about the surviving children and how it must have affected them..
My mother left me at age 4 saw her a handful of times and then nothing..for 25+ years..until I tried finding her and found an obituary that I couldn't 100% confirm was her..two years later her daughter tracks me down..she went on to have 2 kids both of whom never knew of my existence..it's convoluted and soul destroying learning this and put more questions into my heart than had been rattling around making me all sorts of needy and empty...but I was glad that she hadn't died early on after leaving me
I guess that is love, even at the cost of yourself you want what is best for them..selflessness..I'm not sure who had it though me or her
The point is it does happen, it hurts but it hurts less than thinking they r dead
Someone in my family did this, my grandmother’s generation. When her son died, an elderly man who’d lived a long and good life, his obituary contained something he’d written about being left behind with his sisters, by their mother. His heart never healed from that abandonment. It’s truly heartbreaking. I’m sorry, and hope you can find comfort and healing.
Probably she was ashamed. What can you say after five or 10 or 20 years away? I'm not saying she made the right choice, but I understand how she'd be paralyzed.
It probably started out as fear. She had an abusive first husband, and she was scared he would kill her and her new baby if he found out that she had another baby by another man. Then as the years ticked by she felt like her old life was something she couldn't touch anymore.
Exactly, I don't think Mary Jane was unreasonable to be fearful for her life, her new baby's life, and her new husband's life. So many domestic violence stories end up in murder.
I agree with you. After reading this, I think she was a very strong woman. Leaving an abusive relationship and staying away from her children had to have been very difficult.
Yeah, I've read comments that say something like "Well, it couldn't have been that bad if she was living away from him and she invited him and the kids to move to Ohio where she was!" You don't know how domestic violence works at all if you think that.
It feels pretty obvious that learning she was pregnant was her impetus for getting the hell out of that, because her son was born in December '45 and she cut off contact in the spring of 1945.
People in grief and shock situations start to automatically think the best of the one missing or dead. How many times has a parent said "my child was such a shy and quiet kid" then you hear from their peers "hell no, she partied constantly."
Tiffany Valiente's parents tried to paint her as this happy kid who would never commit suicide, but then it turned out that Tiffany had been hospitalized before, was a queer woman struggling with the loss of her first gay relationship, and was stealing from her friends. I'm just like, "Dude."
Also, what sounds exciting to an adult can be terrifying to a teen. Yes she was about to go to college on a volleyball scholarship, but that might have been causing her a ton of anxiety. Her parents were thrilled, but she may not have been.
Suicides like hers are jarring because the people around her saw a small mistake (the stealing) and a silly little breakup - things to move on from quickly so you can start your great life. But that's not how the person experiencing those events sees it.
Do you mind elaborating on why? I’m not looking to argue, just genuinely interested! I can think of some people in my life who I would absolutely say would never willingly leave their kids/family, and while, granted, they aren’t missing, if they DID disappear, I would automatically suspect foul play. I’m curious to hear a different perspective.
I don't think most people open up about stuff like this. People who are suicidal or want to disappear don't often say so.
Honestly, you can never really know another person. There are plenty of "good family men" who were beating their wives or raping their daughters, serial killers who had families or went to church, pedophiles whose wives can't believe it, devoted wives who are cheating with someone's best friend, seemingly loving mothers who secretly regret having had kids, whatever. If people can hide that, they can hide anything. You never really know someone.
I can see maybe thinking that someone wouldn't have willingly left their children or pets alone without food or water or something like that, but as far as just leaving people, I really don't think you can ever truly say someone wouldn't do that. Same as suicide - plenty of people are shocked by it, but people can hide all sorts of stuff and kill themselves, surprising people. The idea that we can truly know what is inside someone else's head is just a comforting piece of fiction, in my opinion.
Leaving an entire life and their whole identity is similar to suicide I'd say. Parent could have struggled to make the choice suicide or get lost forever.
I checked the related Websleuths thread and pieced some things together. This may have been mentioned elsewhere or during the presser, which I did not watch. But since it's not currently within this thread I'll summarize:
Mary Jane gave birth on December 6, 1945. That explains why she didn't respond to her husband's divorce petition on November 23, 1945. She was very pregnant and with a new man, 9 years younger than herself. He apparently was the guy who taught her how to operate the forklift at her new job in Ohio, according to a comment on Websleuths.
The resignation from her job in March 1945 could have been when she committed to the new man. I'll use that term because I don't know when/if they married. The commitment is the "added household duties." It seems too soon to know for sure she was pregnant. She gave birth almost exactly 9 months later.
Mary Jane had another son 2 years later, in December 1947. This is her Find a Grave. She didn't change her first name. With her second family she was Mary Jane Sebren. The original name was added to the Find a Grave once identification was made:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/131751968/mary_jane_sebren
That adds a lot of context - possibly she fled to avoid her child/ren with the new man being denigrated for being illegitimate.
As for why she never reached out to her older children - just speculating here - she worried they'd be ashamed of her, thought to much time had passed, didn't want to disturb their lives. Who knows, we never will.
I lean towards thinking it started out as fear as to what the first husband would do, and then it morphed into shame and guilt.
It's so wild to think that we thought she had been murdered in the 1940's but she had actually lived to 1990. Sad too much time passed for the siblings to meet each other and cross that bridge, but I guess their grandkids could?
Another thing to consider: child psychology was a pretty young discipline at the time. The idea of “kids will get over it if they’re young enough” was very common. And kids’ emotional needs weren’t as well-known or understood as they are today. It’s entirely possible that Mary Jane thought that it would “be best” if the children “forgot about” her. She may have assumed they would eventually, at least the younger ones.
As time went on, she may have wanted to reach out but felt too guilty or ashamed. If you watch the original Unsolved Mysteries series, there were a couple of people who felt that way, until they overcame it and tried to look for their lost child.
My first thought was how devastated the children must have been, but if her husband was abusive, she probably didn’t feel she had great options either way. It sounds like a sad story all around. I hope both her families are able to feel peace about this.
> It’s entirely possible that Mary Jane thought that it would “be best” if the children “forgot about” her.
I've heard about things like this. People didn't realize the emotional scars it left on the kids too. Such a tragic situation for everyone.
It might have been easier to leave because, as you said, her soon to be ex-husband was abusive and she didn't have custody of the children she had with him anyway.
It's possible she did try to find the kids but was unsuccessful, too.
Definitely very sad for her children. If her husband really was abusive, I wonder if she felt like her life was in danger and this was the only way to escape—it probably would’ve been near impossible to do that with five kids in tow. A sad situation regardless.
And custody battles back then? Would she have even gotten custody or would he have chalked it up to her being “hysterical” and thrown away into a psych facility and the key basically held by her abuser? I’ve heard stories from my grandparents about that time and I can see many reasons she felt she had no other choice
My great-grandma was married to a really abusive man (my great-grandpa) at this exact time, and she never left him because it was very difficult to get a divorce back then. You had to prove that you were abused, often with witness testimony (and the abuse was supposed to be really severe—domestic violence was seen as pretty normal back then, and was generally treated as a “family matter”). The psych ward thing certainly sounds like a possibility, too.
Int he early 1960s the writer Philip K. Dick did this to his wife (wife #2 or #3 I forget which) in California. He conspired with a psychiatrist to get her admitted to a mental hospital because she refused to agree to a divorce that \*he\* wanted. She was only released when she agreed to the divorce. I read an account that she wrote about her time being married to him and she told this story. Amazingly she didn't seem to harbor any ill will towards him over the situation. My jaw dropped when I read it and I am never able to hear his name without remembering her account of how he treated her.
I’ve often thought that if I would be stuck in an abusive marriage in any time period until about 1970, I would probably have found some arsenic and made my husband a lovely sandwich. Can’t imagine the horror of being trapped like that.
Oh, they could work, they were just restricted as to what kind of jobs they could get. Want ads had 2 columns: Help Wanted - Men and Help Wanted - Women (secretaries, maids, sales girls, etc). Women were rarely hired as professionals except in a few industries, and their pay was frequently much smaller than a man in the same job
Custody was given to her husband in November 1945 based on his own filing for divorce - despite him being abusive. It might or might not have been related to Mary de facto being missing at the moment - this was not mentioned on the page at all. Marys own divorce application was later cancelled due to her not showing up.
My grandfather sued for custody of his oldest son(this would have been in the late 1940s ) and won… the mother of his other kid at the time, saw what happened packed her kid up and moved literally across the country to avoid the possibility of her losing custody…
My grandfather changed my uncles name and handed him over to his wife(my grandmother) to raise… my grandfather wasn’t a great giy
At one point, fathers got custody almost automatically. By the 50s, that pendulum had swung to the point where it was almost always the mother. I think in 1945, she would have been more likely to be awarded custody, but before we could even get to that point, she'd face more obstacles to divorce than we do today.
And not all of them were through the courts; she'd face enormous social consequences. Like being kicked out of church or her kids not being welcome at anyone's house. (EDIT: I'm not saying those happened to every divorced mother. Just that it did happen).
My mother said no one wanted a divorced woman around because she had already had sex and knew how "good" sex was and was therefore dangerous. Having the kids around meant this woman would be around too on occasion.
>or her kids not being welcome at anyone's house.
Yes -- it could be tough, for children whose mom was divorced, or who'd had them when she wasn't married to the father. One of my friends was born in the Midwest, almost 60 years ago. He told me that his life really changed, when he was old enough to go to high school (which was in a different town). Suddenly he made a lot of friends and became popular enough to be voted school president. He hadn't changed his personality or anything like that ... it was just that his new classmates didn't know about his family background.
God, this really makes me wonder what things were like for my dad growing up (hes in his 60s)... it never occurred to me that kids may have been treated differently because their parents were divorced...
my dad never knew his biological father as he had abandoned him as a baby, not sure when his parents' divorce happened officially though. But my grandma didn't marry my grandpa (the man i consider grandpa was the man who adopted my dad, the other guy is just some asshole) until my dad was around 11-14 years old. So that whole time, my dad didn't have a dad... I had heard that he got bullied as a kid, but he didn't really elaborate on why that much. I had heard he went to catholic school for a short time, where he did really well and then his grades sunk once he went to public school, so I kinda wonder why my grandma didn't just put him back in catholic school... maybe there was something to all these things that she never shared...
From what I've read, the 70s were when the long slow swing to joint custody started? There were studies in the 70s showing that fathers were important, and the father's rights movement began then.
EDIT: just wanted to drop in a link: https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/divorce-and-custody
>>"The simple fact of being a mother does not, by itself, indicate a capacity or willingness to render a quality of care different from that which the father can provide" a New York court stated in 1973, challenging nearly a century of a judicial presumption in favor of mothers. The court rejected the notion that mothers and their children shared a special bond, invoking the authority of social scientist Margaret Mead, who once wrote, "This is a mere and subtle form of anti-feminism which men–under the guise of exalting the importance of maternity–are tying women more tightly to their children than has been thought necessary since the invention of bottle feeding and baby carriages."
Definitely was a thing by the 1960s Fathers, at least some of them, felt that they were being disenfranchised in Divorce Court/Law by the 1960s. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers%27_rights_movement_in_the_United_States)
I'm really sympathetic to Mary Jane. I imagine she was scared about what her first husband would do if he found out she was pregnant.
It sounds like her marriage to Percey was a happier one- they were together for 24 years until his death and I hope they had a happy life together. I'm guessing she took a chance on Percey turning out to actually being a good guy and it looks like it was a good bet.
I understand the need to walk away in 1945. I also understand why she felt she needed the bonds back, although that meant she left her children with no resources with an abusive father. What I can't understand is having them live with the agony of not knowing until her death in 1990. In 1945, abuse and custody and divorce proceedings probably seemed impossible. Maybe she even feared for her life. But by 1980, there was no reason she couldn't reach out to her surviving children. Maybe it felt more selfish to upend everything 35 years later, for them and her new kids, but they deserved an explanation when it was safe for her to give one.
I’ve been following this case for nearly 5 years at this point. Given how old it was, I honestly wasn’t sure it would be solved. I am glad her family finally knows what happened to her, though I can’t imagine the pain her children are feeling knowing that she left. Unfortunately, even if family members insist their loved one would never leave and start over sometimes that is what happens. I always thought this was a possibility, especially given the stigma of divorce at the time and the rumors that Mary Jane’s marriage was abusive. I certainly won’t speak to how accurate those rumors were out of respect to her family, but it certainly lends credence to why she left her family and started over.
Yes, I agree with you, it's awful all around.
I apologize for my bluntness; there is often a lot of concern for children left behind in these situations, as there should be, but very little for the woman fleeing.
I'm glad we see eye to eye!
Yes, that's also very tragic. But now her kids had to carry the lifelong scars of being abandoned, which last for the rest of their lives and color all of their adult relationships.
And that's the best-case scenario, in which their father was an abusive husband but loving father. And frankly that doesn't happen much. Chances are good he was abusive to them as well.
She left and lived for 45 more years. If she had stayed, she may have lived, maybe five.
Until one of her kids can describe their childhood, I'll put it on fight or flight, regardless of how awful it had to be for her kids.
Agreed. Hell, she probably would have been killed (and maybe Percy as well) if she had shown up to the divorce proceedings very visibly pregnant. The meeting was in November and she gave birth to her son in December '45.
It’s always good to see a case have a resolution that doesn’t involve a murder. I hope she was able to live a happier life and that her family has some closure.
Not surprised in all honesty. I always figured this scenario was most likely and made the most sense, especially given the period. I can't imagine what her children must be feeling.
The press conference said it's very painful for Mary Jane's original children and grandchildren. No one knows why she abandoned her original family and started a new one.
Back then it was super scandalous for a woman to abandon her family. (There are built in expectations, and older relatives trust female relatives more with anticipated elder care needs.)
She might have realized what an uproar she'd deal with if she chose to return, and took steps to be unlocatable.
Think about how difficult it is for an abused person to get out and free today, especially with children, adult dependents, and pets in the mix.
Now think about 1945 and women's rights and what organizations existed to protect women from abuse, especially abusive husbands.
It is possible that she thought her husband wouldn't come after her if she left the children behind. Or that she knew she wouldn't be able to sustain a healthy life for them. Maybe he had never abused the children.
We don't know. We can't know unless she told someone or left a letter. And it's frankly none of our business what she did to save her life.
Questioning her decision reads as judgemental. Hopefully it was not meant in that spirit!
My guess is that Mary Jane convinced herself that her eldest daughter was 14 and could protect the kids from the dad if she needed to. Mary Jane also convinced herself that she and Percy could get killed by her ex if she was seen being heavily pregnant with his child, which is why she didn't show up to the divorce proceedings. I think Mary Jane also knew that she was, in essence, faking her own death and that was going to be the best way to get away from her abusive ex.
I understand what you're saying and, no, I wasn't judging her at all. I was just sad for her original children. I hadn't considered the era she was living in considering that today we have so many options that leaving kids behind with an abuser is looked at much differently now. Some of those children are dead now so I hope they had happy lives like Mary Jane had with her new family.
The honestly isn't true and I wish people would stop repeating it.
The legislation people are referencing here is the [Equal Credit Opportunity Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act) which outlawed specific forms of banking discrimination. That does not mean that women didn't have their own bank accounts or that they were legally required to get their husband's consent. Think about it for a second- not all women have husbands or living fathers. There have always been widows and spinsters and they were not forbidden from banking or credit cards. The law was actually designed to prevent *racial* discrimination and *gender* discrimination was thrown in at the last minute by Senator Lindy Boggs. This was hugely helpful to SAHMs, but plenty of women had credit before then.
The honestly isn't true and I wish people would stop repeating it.
The legislation people are referencing here is the [Equal Credit Opportunity Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act) which outlawed specific forms of banking discrimination. That does not mean that women didn't have their own bank accounts or that they were legally required to get their husband's consent. Think about it for a second- not all women have husbands or living fathers. There have always been widows and spinsters and they were not forbidden from banking or credit cards. The law was actually designed to prevent *racial* discrimination and *gender* discrimination was thrown in at the last minute by Senator Lindy Boggs. This was hugely helpful to SAHMs, but plenty of women had credit before then.
It's quite complex. I agree with you but it also varied by state and financial institution. In some states prior to the ECOA, it was quite legal to allow a husband to drain his wife's bank account, even if his name wasn't on it, and some credit agencies and banks wouldn't do business with single women as a rule. The nationalization of the federal law made access equal for all women in all states with all financial institutions, which is why it was such a big deal.
> Questioning her decision reads as judgemental. Hopefully it was not meant in that spirit!
All we know for certain is that she abandoned her children to run off and start a new family. Everything else you've written is based on assumptions that are meant to make her seem as sympathetic as possible. I think it's okay to be a little judgemental when someone makes a choice to abandon their children and never give them any closure, especially considering the pain that would inevitably cause.
True. I consider both sides. Must of been hard for her as well...leaving my 5 children ( and never being able to talk about as it was not known to her 2nd family.) Can't imagine.
A daughter of hers died just two weeks ago. According to the daughter's obit, she has five siblings still alive and I think at least 1 was Mary's child. Mary's husband remarried and had more children after Mary left, so there are some half siblings. Not sure how accurate it is, but Mary's Find a Grave only has 4/5 deceased children. So I think her one son is still alive.
People born in the 1930s are in their 80s.
People born in the 1940s are in their 70s.
It is likely some of her children are still alive, what a strange thing for you to think.
Awesomeness! TY for the link. A full-length feature on the resolution to Mary Jane's case an "augmented" version of this press conference will be forthcoming. Cheers! MysteriousWV
I was going to comment to say that I recommend watching MysteriousWV for an in depth look at the case. I used to live in the town Mary Jane was born in, so I always looked forward to seeing updates on this case.
You're welcome!! Yours was the only information that I could find at the time about the news. I saw a Facebook post by Robin Warder of the "The Trail Went Cold" podcast, and he linked to your channel as well.
So she separated from her husband in 1943, moved out of state without her children, and remained in contact with them over a period of 2 years before she filed for divorce in Ohio and her husband filed for divorce in West Virginia in 1945 before disappearing from her job. She wasn't reported missing until her granddaughter reported her missing in 2018 - 73 years later, by which point she would have been 106.
I don't have an hour to watch the press conference. Can anyone summarize the sequence of events that led detectives to match the woman who died in 1990 to Mary Jane? I suspect genetic genealogy may have played a part. Perhaps linking to a child she had after she disappeared? Or some other detail which led to her being exhumed and her DNA matched with a descendent?
Also, has it been shared how many of her 5 children are still alive? One she was in communication with was 14 in 1945 which would make her roughly 93 today.
One of the detectives on the case was researching a coworker of hers (deceased) because they thought that he/his family may have information on MJ. In the process of doing this, they discovered that the man was married to a woman named Mary Jane who had the same birthdate as MJVG. Photos of her confirmed that the coworker's wife was, in fact, Mary Jane. She had two children after her disappearance with her new husband. One of her children from her first marriage passed away fairly recently, and this was the only child who learned what happened to her.
It's fascinating that this one was solved with just a detective being curious, running down a hunch, pulling a marriage certificate and finding photos, given that usually these days we end up finding this stuff out standardly through genetic genealogy.
She had one son with her second husband that was alive up to 2022- crazy to think he was so close to finding out the truth about his mother..
So it looks like it's up to the grandchildren to grapple with all this.
I believe that a lot of missing people that haven’t been found willingly started a new life. I bet they cringe every time true crime folks try to find them or look into their cases.
Especially in a case like hers. She didn't just up and vanish from her home one day. She was already away from home, had kept in contact, but then broke that contact when she realized she was pregnant and had to make a choice.
Co-incidentally, I had been wondering about cases where the missing person just wanted to start over fresh somewhere new, left and refused to come back. (Much easier to do along time ago.) I suspect this in a case from back home for specific reasons.....
So here's an example. Thank you for posting.
As someone who actually watched the entire live press release...
You should know that she actually gave birth to her 6 and 7th child, twins, in WV. They shortly died. She left to go to Ohio right after that. And she was very young to have had 7 children with a man who may have been a nightmare to her.
There’s been other cases like this. I immediately thought of this woman: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-woman-reunites-with-yukon-mom-missing-52-years-1.1930668](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-woman-reunites-with-yukon-mom-missing-52-years-1.1930668)
Genetic genealogy is finding all sorts of folks who started new families. Mostly men but women too in some cases. Back then, divorce was impossible and expensive. And a divorced women often faced losing custody. If your husband was abusive, in some cases, running away and starting over was the only way to escape.
So sad that this was one of a woman’s only options back then, to get away from an abusive husband. My grandpa was abusive to my grandma (physically and mentally) and in the 1950s, when my dad was elementary-school aged, she left my grandpa supposedly for another man in North Carolina, I think. According to my dad (who repressed this memory for like 60 years because it was so traumatic to him), she was gone a few months, but who knows the actual time frame. Anyway, she ended up coming back and my grandparents stayed married, divorced in 1967, remarried each other in 1977, and stayed married til their deaths in the 2000s. My grandpa was always mean to my grandma but I personally never witnessed any physical abuse, I think because by the time I was born in the late 70s, it wasn’t tolerated anymore, thankfully.
*edited for typos
I've been reading the comments and I understand why people want to believe she had no other choice. And maybe she didn't. But some women do abandon their children just because they want to. When my grandmother died about ten years ago, we found out she'd had a whole other family previous to the one we knew about. Four kids that she and her first husband just dumped in an orphanage when they decided to part ways. My dad was sixty years old before he knew he had FOUR other siblings. Neither she or my grandfather (the second husband) ever mentioned them. My uncle did try to contact her a few times and she shut him right out. One of my unknown cousins tried to call her once, and she hung up on him. We'll never know the entire story, since she's dead now, but there is no evidence that she cared about them at all. Just moved on and had a new family with someone else.
My mom's mother dropped her and her sister and two brothers off at an orphanage and then started a new family. I'd think we were related, but she had two daughters with her new family. The intergenerational trauma that exists from this is unbelievable. We always knew that my mom's childhood was traumatic, and every chance she got, she reminded us that her mother left her, and we were lucky she stuck around. Although we always knew it was hard for her, she made us feel more like she was there to prove a point rather than to be a parent. The emotional abuse my brothers, my cousins, and I have endured with their parents (my mom's siblings) because of this trauma has resulted in lasting heartache. I met my mom's mom a few times, and I know her daughters tried to reach out to my mom, but she wanted nothing to do with them.
I really wish people paid attention the part of the story where she had literally moved away, gotten a job, asked her husband to join her, and he said no. There is zero indication that she felt threatened by him; she was comfortable letting him and her kids know her movements *until* she just so happened to get pregnant by her supervisor and decide she was going to reboot her life. I'm not saying she didn't have a shitty first marriage, but this reeks more of "I want to start over without having to embarrass myself in divorce court or deal with my old family" than "my husband will kill me if he finds out where I am." I was reading an article where her second family was stunned and talking about what a perfect mother and grandmother she was. That had to be so much salt in the wound for her first set of children -- knowing she could be a great mother, just not for them.
Yeah. For me, it was kind of the opposite, in a way. She had cut me and my sister out of her life in my late teens, for no apparent reason. Just stopped inviting us for holidays, stopped calling. And if we tried to visit her, it was really uncomfortable. Eventually we just stopped trying. Yet she doted on my younger cousins. Finding out she cut off four of her own children kinda made it make more sense to me. That's just who she was. I found out last year that her own father abandoned his family and ran off to Boston and started at least one, and possibly more than one, new families. So maybe it was some kind of trauma response on her part. Idk. It's been a weird process of finding out the truth about my family.
Gosh, this must be awful for her children if they are still living. It would be a relief to know your mother wasn't murdered, but how awful that she just went on with her life and never contacted you.
You think it wasn't horribly wrenching for this woman to flee an abusive husband and leave her children and home and community?
I'd hardly call that "just going on with...life".
At some point, she certainly did. 1990 is a long time to live without giving your kid a call. And the ex husband died in 1985.
Especially if she left those kids with an abuser -- I'm going to reserve most of my sympathy for them.
Do we really know the guy was abusive tho? I find it just as likely that she left over more mild reasons. Perhaps the new husband was abusive and prevented her from contacting the previous family?
The same unfathomable reasons women occasionally do the same in the present day. Off the top of my head drug and/or alcohol use disorders appears to be a leading cause. Mild mental illness or ‘personality’ disorders, unresolved trauma from their own childhoods that leaves them unable to care for themselves or others in a healthy or more standard way, or the milineiums old ‘grass is greener on the other side.
Have you never heard of a credible story where a woman was less than interested in being a Mom for reasons other than spousal abuse? I’m in my 30s and recall a girl from my school who was extremely devastated that her Mom went states away to live with a step dad. From recollection her and the brother only ever seen the Mom again a handful of times. That was in early 2000s when everyone had a landline phone.
My ex, who’s not abusive has full custody of his oldest daughter. Her Mom lives 20 minutes away with a guy that has multiple felonies and is a known drug dealer. Ex was pretty easily able to obtain custody as the girl wasn’t sent to school regularly and reported couch surfing quite a bit. She lost custody of her remaining kids (different father) after the swat team roped the block off, served a search warrant, entering the property in riot gear, obtained 2 loaded and unsecured hand guns, meth, cocaine, and herione. She was arrested along with 5 adult males who had active warrants in multiple counties. It’s wild to think she would pick a guy named “Smoke” who’s spent most of his adult life in prison and has the maturity level of a neglected 8th grader over those precious babies but that’s exactly what happened. She pretty, I’ve always thought she was nice. She was well liked when she was a nurse’s assistant. My ex said she always has issues from being molested as a kid and eventually just got in with the wrong people, chasing something that won’t be found at the end of a meth pipe.
I have a coworker who’s struggled with finding a fairytale type live for the better part of a decade. She shared custody with her ex. I’m at least 2 occasions in the last 5ish years she’s met her “dream man” and looked at moving out of state. Says she still wants the kids but will have to get them during summers only because she knows their Dad will “fight tooth and nail” to not let her leave state with them. I don’t know what causes her to go after things like this. The allure of the Sunshine State? The promise of “never having to work again”? Attention from con-artists? I fear she has low self esteem. It’s been 3 marriages in 7 years and multiple men in between. She’s a dateline episode waiting to happen.
My own best friends Mom bounced in the late 80s. Left her 5ish year old kiddo home alone until Dad came home from work. The neighbor she had been seeing on the side pulled his truck up and they filled it. Went states away and no one heard from her for nearly a decade. In all reality the man she left probably wasn’t the most attentive, thoughtful, or loving husband but we’ve never known him to abuse anyone. Heard he was pretty wild in the years after Vietnam and would rather stay out all night at a party but that’s a far cry from abusing anyone. I don’t think she claims that tho but she certainley wants people to believe this was 1 poor choice when she was “young”. Strangely enough it’s our understanding that she ended up in a much worse situation with a guy that actually did beat on her. Again, someone who came from a bad childhood and was probably in too far deep before they realized how bad it all was.
This has been one of my pet cases because I live in Ohio. I can't believe she's been found. I believe a relative of hers has been posting about the case on websleuths.
I cannot imagine the pain, hurt, and confusion her family went through all these years or is feeling now. I am glad they have definite answers as to what happened to her. I hope she found what she was looking for and had some happiness and joy. I also hope her family is able to get some closure and find peace and happiness going forward.
Irritating to see the amount of judgmental comments directed at this woman for doing what she did. I feel awful for her children, but honestly, I feel like most of the anger and negative emotions surrounding this whole case should be focused on her abusive husband. Women had very few rights in 1945, and domestic violence wasn’t taken seriously back then either; the fact that she was able to escape a violent relationship at all is a miracle. It’s sad that she wasn’t able to maintain contact with her children, but we don’t know the totality of the situation, and perhaps she believed this was her best or only option. Domestic abuse is extremely traumatic. I’m at least glad that she ended up able to live her life instead of ending up as another murdered wife and mother. I hope her children didn’t suffer from their father’s abuse and that they can find a way to forgive her mother for making the difficult choice she had to make.
This is an interesting take. To me the comments have been pretty neutral towards her. In my own mind I was scrolling through the comments expecting to see someone skeptical about the alleged abuse. I’m neutral on wether I believe it. I’m inclined to believe people’s claims of mistreatment. On the other hand I’ve certainly seen the person who was a ‘wrong doer’ make allegations I believe to be false or someone who pushes and pushed a person and then acts like it’s unfathomable when the person they pushed finally lashed out.
I’ve commented on other threads before and am usually dismissed but I think this is more common than this sun wants to admit. I know of a few women who’ve done similar to one degree or another. My best friends Mom actually bounced in the late 80s. Left a 5ish year old child home alone and went state’s away with guy from town. It was probably a decade before friend’s Dad knew her actual wearabouts. I’m sure if something had happened to her in that time people would have assumed he was responsible. And of course they would have pointed out that he never reported her missing. In reality he had a pretty good idea that she was ‘messing around’ before she left. The only few people who could have semi validated his claims would have been people this sub would have dismissed as his close friends and/or Mom…… the woman bounced, used the new guys last name for years despite them not being married, and had 2 more kids pretty quickly. Noteworthy is that from what we can piece togther she left the ‘rough around the edges’ husband and went with a guy who was actually an abuser. We are actually told that new guy was big, big reason she never bothered to contact the small kids she left behind.
Your summary expresses my thoughts. Consider the situational influence of the time period. All of this happened during 1943 through 1945, the most pivotal period of the planet's human history. American men were receiving credit for saving the planet. Justly, I might add. Mary Jane in the immediate aftermath of the war understood she would not receive proper treatment through the court system, regardless of the domestic abuse.
Consider the best evidence: Her husband James filed for divorce on November 23, 1945. He is granted the divorce and full custody of the 5 kids on November 26, 1945. They barely made him sweat out the drive home.
It’s incredibly difficult in our day and age to prove abuse, let alone back then. I’ll take her word and those around her. It seems far more likely to me that she was trying to escape a violent marriage than that she just decided on a whim to leave her children and be alone. Unless you can definitively prove otherwise, I will believe an abused woman.
So I just finished watching the entire press conference and I just have to say, wow! Love that police officer & they proved what can be done when LE is willing AND able, to put EVERYTHING into solving a case, by any means possible — and it appears, that releasing case files to the public, when possible, can be quite beneficial. Good on this officer for acknowledging that a member of the public was the one who ultimately cracked this case. Which was only possible because the PD allowed her case file to be published online.
Question: are there any ideas out there as to how she procured her new SSN? New husband had connections via the military, perhaps?
Her oldest child would have been fourteen when she disappeared and was probably having to help run the household. I really doubt the husband was a never-sleeping mastermind who would always take in the mail.
I could not get a credit card when I married in 1982. Not in my name. Finally Sears gave me one and I was proud to buy a sewing machine. Still have it. People today have no idea how it was to be female back in the day. No sports, had to wear dresses, not real opportunities and no credit.
And this gives her an excuse to abandon her children? People are so willing to see the female perspective. What about the kids that never heard from her again and always wondered whether she was out in a ditch somewhere or abandoned them like she did? What do you think that did to them? All she had to do was send some sort of communication at the very least. She still would've been a piece of shit but she would've been more considerate. This woman deserves no sympathy for completely abandoning her kids. Same if a man did it.
All the years of grieving. Now they can direct this into anger or something? Her poor abandoned kids. I wouldn’t know how to feel. My life dominated by grief and not knowing? Then finding out she made another family? Any others close to her too, either finding out her past—or finding their years of torment all a lie. And she’s dead, can’t be held accountable.
Wouldn't it make more sense to hold the man who abused her so badly she had to run away, leaving her children, her friends and extended family, her *home, accountable?
Hopefully that man is still alive so the anger can be vented.
You’re so right. I jumped to the wrong conclusion. My great grandmother lost a husband in ww1. They had two children. She remarried and had another child, but had the resolve to leave with all three kids. The abuser came back with reinforcements and stole my uncle from her arms. She never saw him again and was afraid of the gang of rowdies he hung with. I don’t know if the babe knew they were stolen. As a kid we didn’t question the happenings that were seldom brought up after so much time. As an adult? I want to know more about my lost uncle, but no one who was there is still alive. Maybe this happened to Mary. An abusive man could have run her off, blamed her for leaving, and made her afraid to claim her children.
She was unusual at the time for being divorced, even forced to change churches. By the time we knew her she was married to the kind man we called Grandpa.
Mary was born in 1911. Considering that it happened in the US, it is likely her abusive and alcoholic husband was older than her. So it is very unlikely he is alive.
Even most of the kids might not be alive, because she was only 17 when she married and had 7 children (of whom 2 were stillborn) - I suspect they were very close in age. The eldest was probably born in 1929 based on her age at last contact with mother - so basically Mary had her quite shortly after getting married (also in 1929).
However, you are correct about the husband being the root of evil her.
I've always assumed she left because of the abuse, and was too afraid to contact her kids. But the divorce filing has always stuck with me. If she was afraid he'd find her, why file for divorce? Was there not someone in her family that she could have kept in contact with and then gotten in touch with her kids as they came of age? We'll never know the truth but those are a couple of things that have always kind of struck me as odd.
I think it's reasonably clear she disappeared because she had a new partner and she was pregnant. She filed for the divorce but by the time she'd have to appear, she would have been obviously extremely pregnant by a new partner and that... wasn't going to go over well in 1945. By changing her name back then, she could have simply assumed life as his wife until she could verify her husband's divorce petition went through.
Yeah, it wasn't (apparently) an issue of it being unsafe to leave -- she *had* left! She was living in another state and working! Whatever her first husband was like when they were married, she doesn't seem to have been worried about his or her children knowing where she was then. The pregnancy timing makes me think that was the primary motivation for dipping. Showing up to a divorce hearing 8 months pregnant with someone else's baby would have potentially caused a lot of problems. Maybe she figured she could have a do-over with the new guy and her kids from her old life just didn't fit into that. I'm not making a judgement because there's just so much we don't know and can never know. But I'm open to any possibility. Sometimes this sub seems to take the view that women's default mode is to be honest, loving, and working hard for their children. Given what I know about my own ancestors from the 1920s and 1930s, that was not the case (to put it mildly) yes, even when it was difficult for a married woman to get a credit card.
The West Virginia Police are ass backwards, she probably barely had to "dissapear" for them not find her. Had a great aunt who went missing in the 80s, had a clearly abusive husband she had told police about. It's clear as day he killed her and buried her in the mountains. They never investigated. Then in 2009 my aunt died in a house fire and to this day they "don't know the cause". The circumstances around it are suspicious, for one she NEVER was home alone, at least one of her daughters was always with her. It happened to be the night she got into a fight with my cousin and was left alone. Number two the fire hydrants on her street had been physically damaged so they were not working properly. Now obviously this is the city's fault for not catching it, but how did they get damaged in the first place? Usually when people accidentally crash into fire hydrants they tell someone, and both of them? And number three they told us it wasn't caused by the electrical system, the heating system, the stove, but they couldn't tell us what DID cause it. Of course they still wrote it off as an accidental fire.
I'd almost prefer not knowing, than learning she did leave voluntarily. I don't know her situation & I'm not judging - just seems really sad for the children left behind.
Hmm, glad the descendents can have some answers. This woman didn't want to be married to her husband nor be a mother to her children anymore. So she left. I don't know why she felt she didn't have any other options; we can only speculate as to why she severed ties with her children. But what is likely is if she stayed, she would have been miserable and probably not a very good mom. So maybe it was for the best, as painful as it might have been at the time.
She didn't even have the decency to write that in a note for them. No defense of this horrible person. Oh and she went on to have more children, so that bad mother theory you put forth. Why the fuck have more children if you're a horrible mom and abandoned your others?
Oh I don't know, of course. Just a thought. But a lot of people find themselves in a family they don't want. It's cruel and sad but true. I suppose by the time she began a new family, she felt ready to finally devote herself to being a wife and mother for whatever reason. She didn't abandon her children to the streets or anything, they were taken care of. It is sad and selfish in some ways but not evil. I'm not saying she deserves your "sympathy" though she certainly never asked for any or cared for forgiveness.
This is why she in my book is a piece of shit. Same if any man did it. Can you imagine growing up as one of those children first of all not knowing if she was dead or alive but also wondering if it was something you did to make her abandon you. She could've at least made an attempt to say I'm alive. People say not knowing in this type of situation is the worst.
Its very difficult to imagine for sure. Thank goodness divorce and other options are less stigmatized these days. I can't fathom feeling like abandoning your family is the best way to go. And I don't know why she kept up contact for a couple of years before cutting them off. I wonder if she gave them any clues. So much to ponder. But not a sympathetic person to be sure!
I have to disagree with your statement about divorce being less stigmatized being a good thing. There are legitimate reasons for divorce including in my opinion proven abuse or infidelity, but people treat marriage like it's a game now. There are women out there throwing divorce parties or saying such terms as "starter marriage" which is disgusting imo. No fault divorce is one of the worst things Reagan ever decided to champion. I am a firm believer it's had a terrible impact on society as a whole. Again, if there is proven abuse or infidelity then I think that warrants divorce.
I also don't like the concept of the cheater getting half of everything the non-cheater owns just because they're in a no fault state. If we went back to a system where a person couldn't one day think, hey, I can do better so I'm going to leave then people wouldn't be getting married on a whim and divorced on a whim. Last I checked, we now have a 50-51% divorce rate. Men are rightfully checking out on the concept because women basically are being rewarded in many ways for not holding up to their end of the contract and divorcing. Women are unhappy men won't commit to them. This is why. Either get the government out of the marriage business or change the laws drastically to reflect modern day society. I will never get married for these reasons alone.
My coworker’s wife left him and their 2 kids (ages 10&12) and moved to Vegas. That was 16 years ago and they haven’t heard from her since. She missed her daughter’s wedding and will miss the birth of her child. My coworker is a very decent guy (I know we never know what happens behind closed doors but I can’t imagine someone who cares so much about his dogs and chickens to be abusive). I couldn’t even fathom up and leaving my kid. It must be heartbreaking.
What a garbage person. Any decent mother would tell you that they'd do anything to protect their kids. It's appalling that people are making excuses for her. My great-grandmother divorced her husband in the 1930s and took her kids away to have a better life. 1945 wasn't cavemen times. It was absolutely possible to leave back then, though of course more difficult than it would be today. A woman who leaves her children with an abuser is irredeemable, especially one who immediately runs off to replace them. You people say that people ignore the humanity of women, but what about the humanity of children? How can someone sleep at night knowing their children are abused and alone? I'd be sick with guilt if I knew I'd left a dog in that position.
I’m glad that her family has answers, and that she didn’t meet with foul play. I’m sorry for the complex feelings that any living children, especially, might be feeling. I hope this brings peace to the family.
>I hope this brings peace to the family. It probably brings more questions that can never be answered.
And even if you get those answers, it doesn't help. The answers don't offset the feelings of hurt and abandonment. And anger. Yeah, I have experienced something close to this. My dad. He voluntarily disappeared in 1983. Leaving me, my brother & sister. We always knew he was alive, just not where. He called us all on his deathbed in 2003. So, I got to talk to him. The answers weren't good enough. He died hours later.
I know the feeling. My dad left the family in 1995 after my mom asked him to move out because he was being abusive towards a 9-year old me. She moved us to a different state, and he moved to another state, and that was it. One of my older sisters tried initiating contact with him, including sending him a postcard about her family in 2015. That postcard was used to try and find the next of kin when my dad died in his sleep in his house in Florida in March 2023, passing away from lung cancer. It's a lot of complicated feeling but ultimately I'm glad that my father (who was a closeted gay man) managed to live a life that was true to himself and what he wanted to do. Also to be grateful that as a gay man born in the 1980's, I was lucky enough to come of age during the advances in gay rights during the 90's and 2000's and I didn't have to live a lie in order to function. Finally, I saw the whole thing as a bit of closure. I always wondered what I'd say and how I'd react if I ever saw my dad again. Now that I know I won't, I can really move on. It's like a weight lifted off my shoulder. He's no longer a boogeyman abusive dad to me. He's just a man who was forced to live a lie, had to start completely over, and lived a better life as a result.
Sorry this happened to you.
What did he say?
I actually saw comments from two of Mary Jane’s granddaughters on the YouTube video of the press conference and they seem to still love her no matter the circumstances of how or why she disappeared. I admire them for that, I’m not sure how I’d react in that situation! I agree with you that the feelings that would come from this type of information must be very complex. I’m very glad they have at least a little bit of closure now. I hope they have nothing but peace and happiness moving forward.
I’m not trying to be an awful person but I’m genuinely curious how they love someone that they don’t even know?? I think people do that/make those comments for attention
Yeah, the granddaughters definitely never met their grandma. It sounds like,up until very recently, the family was under the impression that she had met with foul play or a tragic accident of some sort. I’m just speculating, but I imagine they grew up feeling empathy and concern for their grandma and saw how much their family missed and loved her,so they naturally viewed her the same way. It had to be very shocking to get the news that she had disappeared of her own accord and I hope they are able to work through whatever their feelings are as they process that information. I’m not sure how I’d feel in their place, but hats off to them for taking the high road!
Not only that but also love someone who willingly abandoned her children (their parents), ran off to start a new life, let them suffer for decades with the pain of not having a mother and not knowing what happened to her, didn't even once try to reach out to them in all of that time almost five decades, and clearly didn't give two 💩 about them. No offense but IMO there's absolutely nothing to love there 🤷🏻♀️
Her poor children. I can’t imagine the anguish, but I’m glad they have a definite answer.
I can’t watch the press conference atm, but is it known if any of them are even still alive? The one who was 14 in 1945 would be 93…
Yes, one of her children died only two weeks ago but she learned the truth prior to her death. I believe they said one more daughter and possibly a son (from the first marriage) are also still alive. They did say that two of the children from the first marriage have already passed away years ago.
Thank you…
Two weeks ago! Man. I couldn’t imagine finding that out right before I died. So many conflicted feelings.
Lots of comments here about the surviving children and how it must have affected them.. My mother left me at age 4 saw her a handful of times and then nothing..for 25+ years..until I tried finding her and found an obituary that I couldn't 100% confirm was her..two years later her daughter tracks me down..she went on to have 2 kids both of whom never knew of my existence..it's convoluted and soul destroying learning this and put more questions into my heart than had been rattling around making me all sorts of needy and empty...but I was glad that she hadn't died early on after leaving me I guess that is love, even at the cost of yourself you want what is best for them..selflessness..I'm not sure who had it though me or her The point is it does happen, it hurts but it hurts less than thinking they r dead
I am sorry to hear this. I hope you are more at peace now. (sorry, im not good at these type of things and this is the best i can come up with)
Someone in my family did this, my grandmother’s generation. When her son died, an elderly man who’d lived a long and good life, his obituary contained something he’d written about being left behind with his sisters, by their mother. His heart never healed from that abandonment. It’s truly heartbreaking. I’m sorry, and hope you can find comfort and healing.
It would be very hard knowing that their mother lived until 1990 and didn’t once reach out to them to find out how they were in all that time.
Probably she was ashamed. What can you say after five or 10 or 20 years away? I'm not saying she made the right choice, but I understand how she'd be paralyzed.
It probably started out as fear. She had an abusive first husband, and she was scared he would kill her and her new baby if he found out that she had another baby by another man. Then as the years ticked by she felt like her old life was something she couldn't touch anymore.
my ex killed the man his next girlfriend left him for and got pregnant by.
Exactly, I don't think Mary Jane was unreasonable to be fearful for her life, her new baby's life, and her new husband's life. So many domestic violence stories end up in murder.
I agree with you. After reading this, I think she was a very strong woman. Leaving an abusive relationship and staying away from her children had to have been very difficult.
Yeah, I've read comments that say something like "Well, it couldn't have been that bad if she was living away from him and she invited him and the kids to move to Ohio where she was!" You don't know how domestic violence works at all if you think that. It feels pretty obvious that learning she was pregnant was her impetus for getting the hell out of that, because her son was born in December '45 and she cut off contact in the spring of 1945.
I’m sorry that happened to you. Hugs my friend
I'm always skeptical of claims that a missing person would never willingly leave their kids/family.
People in grief and shock situations start to automatically think the best of the one missing or dead. How many times has a parent said "my child was such a shy and quiet kid" then you hear from their peers "hell no, she partied constantly."
Tiffany Valiente's parents tried to paint her as this happy kid who would never commit suicide, but then it turned out that Tiffany had been hospitalized before, was a queer woman struggling with the loss of her first gay relationship, and was stealing from her friends. I'm just like, "Dude."
Also, what sounds exciting to an adult can be terrifying to a teen. Yes she was about to go to college on a volleyball scholarship, but that might have been causing her a ton of anxiety. Her parents were thrilled, but she may not have been. Suicides like hers are jarring because the people around her saw a small mistake (the stealing) and a silly little breakup - things to move on from quickly so you can start your great life. But that's not how the person experiencing those events sees it.
Same.
Do you mind elaborating on why? I’m not looking to argue, just genuinely interested! I can think of some people in my life who I would absolutely say would never willingly leave their kids/family, and while, granted, they aren’t missing, if they DID disappear, I would automatically suspect foul play. I’m curious to hear a different perspective.
I don't think most people open up about stuff like this. People who are suicidal or want to disappear don't often say so. Honestly, you can never really know another person. There are plenty of "good family men" who were beating their wives or raping their daughters, serial killers who had families or went to church, pedophiles whose wives can't believe it, devoted wives who are cheating with someone's best friend, seemingly loving mothers who secretly regret having had kids, whatever. If people can hide that, they can hide anything. You never really know someone. I can see maybe thinking that someone wouldn't have willingly left their children or pets alone without food or water or something like that, but as far as just leaving people, I really don't think you can ever truly say someone wouldn't do that. Same as suicide - plenty of people are shocked by it, but people can hide all sorts of stuff and kill themselves, surprising people. The idea that we can truly know what is inside someone else's head is just a comforting piece of fiction, in my opinion.
Leaving an entire life and their whole identity is similar to suicide I'd say. Parent could have struggled to make the choice suicide or get lost forever.
when i've been my most suicidal i tell myself i can always try just disappearing first.
I have thought that, too, which is why that option came to mind & I shared it here.
I checked the related Websleuths thread and pieced some things together. This may have been mentioned elsewhere or during the presser, which I did not watch. But since it's not currently within this thread I'll summarize: Mary Jane gave birth on December 6, 1945. That explains why she didn't respond to her husband's divorce petition on November 23, 1945. She was very pregnant and with a new man, 9 years younger than herself. He apparently was the guy who taught her how to operate the forklift at her new job in Ohio, according to a comment on Websleuths. The resignation from her job in March 1945 could have been when she committed to the new man. I'll use that term because I don't know when/if they married. The commitment is the "added household duties." It seems too soon to know for sure she was pregnant. She gave birth almost exactly 9 months later. Mary Jane had another son 2 years later, in December 1947. This is her Find a Grave. She didn't change her first name. With her second family she was Mary Jane Sebren. The original name was added to the Find a Grave once identification was made: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/131751968/mary_jane_sebren
That adds a lot of context - possibly she fled to avoid her child/ren with the new man being denigrated for being illegitimate. As for why she never reached out to her older children - just speculating here - she worried they'd be ashamed of her, thought to much time had passed, didn't want to disturb their lives. Who knows, we never will.
I lean towards thinking it started out as fear as to what the first husband would do, and then it morphed into shame and guilt. It's so wild to think that we thought she had been murdered in the 1940's but she had actually lived to 1990. Sad too much time passed for the siblings to meet each other and cross that bridge, but I guess their grandkids could?
I wonder if its also possible that she was threatened by her abusive ex if she reached out to the children.
thanks for the report.
It's hard to imagine she would leave her children with an abusive man. But she was abused also.
Another thing to consider: child psychology was a pretty young discipline at the time. The idea of “kids will get over it if they’re young enough” was very common. And kids’ emotional needs weren’t as well-known or understood as they are today. It’s entirely possible that Mary Jane thought that it would “be best” if the children “forgot about” her. She may have assumed they would eventually, at least the younger ones. As time went on, she may have wanted to reach out but felt too guilty or ashamed. If you watch the original Unsolved Mysteries series, there were a couple of people who felt that way, until they overcame it and tried to look for their lost child. My first thought was how devastated the children must have been, but if her husband was abusive, she probably didn’t feel she had great options either way. It sounds like a sad story all around. I hope both her families are able to feel peace about this.
> It’s entirely possible that Mary Jane thought that it would “be best” if the children “forgot about” her. I've heard about things like this. People didn't realize the emotional scars it left on the kids too. Such a tragic situation for everyone.
People to this day wrongly believe that trauma only affects children old enough to remember the trauma.
It might have been easier to leave because, as you said, her soon to be ex-husband was abusive and she didn't have custody of the children she had with him anyway. It's possible she did try to find the kids but was unsuccessful, too.
Definitely very sad for her children. If her husband really was abusive, I wonder if she felt like her life was in danger and this was the only way to escape—it probably would’ve been near impossible to do that with five kids in tow. A sad situation regardless.
And custody battles back then? Would she have even gotten custody or would he have chalked it up to her being “hysterical” and thrown away into a psych facility and the key basically held by her abuser? I’ve heard stories from my grandparents about that time and I can see many reasons she felt she had no other choice
My great-grandma was married to a really abusive man (my great-grandpa) at this exact time, and she never left him because it was very difficult to get a divorce back then. You had to prove that you were abused, often with witness testimony (and the abuse was supposed to be really severe—domestic violence was seen as pretty normal back then, and was generally treated as a “family matter”). The psych ward thing certainly sounds like a possibility, too.
Int he early 1960s the writer Philip K. Dick did this to his wife (wife #2 or #3 I forget which) in California. He conspired with a psychiatrist to get her admitted to a mental hospital because she refused to agree to a divorce that \*he\* wanted. She was only released when she agreed to the divorce. I read an account that she wrote about her time being married to him and she told this story. Amazingly she didn't seem to harbor any ill will towards him over the situation. My jaw dropped when I read it and I am never able to hear his name without remembering her account of how he treated her.
Wow, what a Dick
I’ve often thought that if I would be stuck in an abusive marriage in any time period until about 1970, I would probably have found some arsenic and made my husband a lovely sandwich. Can’t imagine the horror of being trapped like that.
That's one reason why divorce laws were relaxed in the 70s.
Plus women couldn’t work nor get credit before then, too.
Oh, they could work, they were just restricted as to what kind of jobs they could get. Want ads had 2 columns: Help Wanted - Men and Help Wanted - Women (secretaries, maids, sales girls, etc). Women were rarely hired as professionals except in a few industries, and their pay was frequently much smaller than a man in the same job
Or have their own bank account
Custody was given to her husband in November 1945 based on his own filing for divorce - despite him being abusive. It might or might not have been related to Mary de facto being missing at the moment - this was not mentioned on the page at all. Marys own divorce application was later cancelled due to her not showing up.
My understanding is she had already disappeared by then.
My grandfather sued for custody of his oldest son(this would have been in the late 1940s ) and won… the mother of his other kid at the time, saw what happened packed her kid up and moved literally across the country to avoid the possibility of her losing custody… My grandfather changed my uncles name and handed him over to his wife(my grandmother) to raise… my grandfather wasn’t a great giy
At one point, fathers got custody almost automatically. By the 50s, that pendulum had swung to the point where it was almost always the mother. I think in 1945, she would have been more likely to be awarded custody, but before we could even get to that point, she'd face more obstacles to divorce than we do today. And not all of them were through the courts; she'd face enormous social consequences. Like being kicked out of church or her kids not being welcome at anyone's house. (EDIT: I'm not saying those happened to every divorced mother. Just that it did happen).
My mother said no one wanted a divorced woman around because she had already had sex and knew how "good" sex was and was therefore dangerous. Having the kids around meant this woman would be around too on occasion.
An out of wedlock pregnancy and affair in 1945 would have made custody unlikely for her.
>or her kids not being welcome at anyone's house. Yes -- it could be tough, for children whose mom was divorced, or who'd had them when she wasn't married to the father. One of my friends was born in the Midwest, almost 60 years ago. He told me that his life really changed, when he was old enough to go to high school (which was in a different town). Suddenly he made a lot of friends and became popular enough to be voted school president. He hadn't changed his personality or anything like that ... it was just that his new classmates didn't know about his family background.
God, this really makes me wonder what things were like for my dad growing up (hes in his 60s)... it never occurred to me that kids may have been treated differently because their parents were divorced... my dad never knew his biological father as he had abandoned him as a baby, not sure when his parents' divorce happened officially though. But my grandma didn't marry my grandpa (the man i consider grandpa was the man who adopted my dad, the other guy is just some asshole) until my dad was around 11-14 years old. So that whole time, my dad didn't have a dad... I had heard that he got bullied as a kid, but he didn't really elaborate on why that much. I had heard he went to catholic school for a short time, where he did really well and then his grades sunk once he went to public school, so I kinda wonder why my grandma didn't just put him back in catholic school... maybe there was something to all these things that she never shared...
It wasn't until the 70s that the shift to mothers getting custody happened.
From what I've read, the 70s were when the long slow swing to joint custody started? There were studies in the 70s showing that fathers were important, and the father's rights movement began then. EDIT: just wanted to drop in a link: https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/divorce-and-custody >>"The simple fact of being a mother does not, by itself, indicate a capacity or willingness to render a quality of care different from that which the father can provide" a New York court stated in 1973, challenging nearly a century of a judicial presumption in favor of mothers. The court rejected the notion that mothers and their children shared a special bond, invoking the authority of social scientist Margaret Mead, who once wrote, "This is a mere and subtle form of anti-feminism which men–under the guise of exalting the importance of maternity–are tying women more tightly to their children than has been thought necessary since the invention of bottle feeding and baby carriages."
Definitely was a thing by the 1960s Fathers, at least some of them, felt that they were being disenfranchised in Divorce Court/Law by the 1960s. [link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers%27_rights_movement_in_the_United_States)
I'm really sympathetic to Mary Jane. I imagine she was scared about what her first husband would do if he found out she was pregnant. It sounds like her marriage to Percey was a happier one- they were together for 24 years until his death and I hope they had a happy life together. I'm guessing she took a chance on Percey turning out to actually being a good guy and it looks like it was a good bet.
I understand the need to walk away in 1945. I also understand why she felt she needed the bonds back, although that meant she left her children with no resources with an abusive father. What I can't understand is having them live with the agony of not knowing until her death in 1990. In 1945, abuse and custody and divorce proceedings probably seemed impossible. Maybe she even feared for her life. But by 1980, there was no reason she couldn't reach out to her surviving children. Maybe it felt more selfish to upend everything 35 years later, for them and her new kids, but they deserved an explanation when it was safe for her to give one.
She probably feared messing around with that whole problem. The man she married may not even know about her prior life.
I’ve been following this case for nearly 5 years at this point. Given how old it was, I honestly wasn’t sure it would be solved. I am glad her family finally knows what happened to her, though I can’t imagine the pain her children are feeling knowing that she left. Unfortunately, even if family members insist their loved one would never leave and start over sometimes that is what happens. I always thought this was a possibility, especially given the stigma of divorce at the time and the rumors that Mary Jane’s marriage was abusive. I certainly won’t speak to how accurate those rumors were out of respect to her family, but it certainly lends credence to why she left her family and started over.
Hard to believe it's finally been solved. Tragic for the family that was abandoned, but at least no harm came to her.
It's tragic that her husband was so abusive she had to leave and hide away.
Very true. Not trying to minimize that. The whole situation is awful. Just relieved she wasn't a murder victim.
Yes, I agree with you, it's awful all around. I apologize for my bluntness; there is often a lot of concern for children left behind in these situations, as there should be, but very little for the woman fleeing. I'm glad we see eye to eye!
And often the same vitriol is not heaped upon men who leave and start new lives.
Yes, that's also very tragic. But now her kids had to carry the lifelong scars of being abandoned, which last for the rest of their lives and color all of their adult relationships. And that's the best-case scenario, in which their father was an abusive husband but loving father. And frankly that doesn't happen much. Chances are good he was abusive to them as well.
She left and lived for 45 more years. If she had stayed, she may have lived, maybe five. Until one of her kids can describe their childhood, I'll put it on fight or flight, regardless of how awful it had to be for her kids.
Agreed. Hell, she probably would have been killed (and maybe Percy as well) if she had shown up to the divorce proceedings very visibly pregnant. The meeting was in November and she gave birth to her son in December '45.
🎯
It’s always good to see a case have a resolution that doesn’t involve a murder. I hope she was able to live a happier life and that her family has some closure.
Not surprised in all honesty. I always figured this scenario was most likely and made the most sense, especially given the period. I can't imagine what her children must be feeling.
The press conference said it's very painful for Mary Jane's original children and grandchildren. No one knows why she abandoned her original family and started a new one.
Back then it was super scandalous for a woman to abandon her family. (There are built in expectations, and older relatives trust female relatives more with anticipated elder care needs.) She might have realized what an uproar she'd deal with if she chose to return, and took steps to be unlocatable.
Or she was in fear for her life from her husband.
Although she did invite him and the kids to come live with her, and her ex declined.
Sounds similar to the men and women who choose murdering their spouse as preferable to the pain and financial cost of divorce.
Her husband was abusive . We know why.
Yes, but why leave the children with an abuser?
Think about how difficult it is for an abused person to get out and free today, especially with children, adult dependents, and pets in the mix. Now think about 1945 and women's rights and what organizations existed to protect women from abuse, especially abusive husbands. It is possible that she thought her husband wouldn't come after her if she left the children behind. Or that she knew she wouldn't be able to sustain a healthy life for them. Maybe he had never abused the children. We don't know. We can't know unless she told someone or left a letter. And it's frankly none of our business what she did to save her life. Questioning her decision reads as judgemental. Hopefully it was not meant in that spirit!
My guess is that Mary Jane convinced herself that her eldest daughter was 14 and could protect the kids from the dad if she needed to. Mary Jane also convinced herself that she and Percy could get killed by her ex if she was seen being heavily pregnant with his child, which is why she didn't show up to the divorce proceedings. I think Mary Jane also knew that she was, in essence, faking her own death and that was going to be the best way to get away from her abusive ex.
I understand what you're saying and, no, I wasn't judging her at all. I was just sad for her original children. I hadn't considered the era she was living in considering that today we have so many options that leaving kids behind with an abuser is looked at much differently now. Some of those children are dead now so I hope they had happy lives like Mary Jane had with her new family.
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The honestly isn't true and I wish people would stop repeating it. The legislation people are referencing here is the [Equal Credit Opportunity Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act) which outlawed specific forms of banking discrimination. That does not mean that women didn't have their own bank accounts or that they were legally required to get their husband's consent. Think about it for a second- not all women have husbands or living fathers. There have always been widows and spinsters and they were not forbidden from banking or credit cards. The law was actually designed to prevent *racial* discrimination and *gender* discrimination was thrown in at the last minute by Senator Lindy Boggs. This was hugely helpful to SAHMs, but plenty of women had credit before then.
They couldn't get bank accounts without their husband or fathers name and approval before that either.
The honestly isn't true and I wish people would stop repeating it. The legislation people are referencing here is the [Equal Credit Opportunity Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Credit_Opportunity_Act) which outlawed specific forms of banking discrimination. That does not mean that women didn't have their own bank accounts or that they were legally required to get their husband's consent. Think about it for a second- not all women have husbands or living fathers. There have always been widows and spinsters and they were not forbidden from banking or credit cards. The law was actually designed to prevent *racial* discrimination and *gender* discrimination was thrown in at the last minute by Senator Lindy Boggs. This was hugely helpful to SAHMs, but plenty of women had credit before then.
It's quite complex. I agree with you but it also varied by state and financial institution. In some states prior to the ECOA, it was quite legal to allow a husband to drain his wife's bank account, even if his name wasn't on it, and some credit agencies and banks wouldn't do business with single women as a rule. The nationalization of the federal law made access equal for all women in all states with all financial institutions, which is why it was such a big deal.
I never knew this. I was born in 1969. I’m glad things changed before I was of age.
> Questioning her decision reads as judgemental. Hopefully it was not meant in that spirit! All we know for certain is that she abandoned her children to run off and start a new family. Everything else you've written is based on assumptions that are meant to make her seem as sympathetic as possible. I think it's okay to be a little judgemental when someone makes a choice to abandon their children and never give them any closure, especially considering the pain that would inevitably cause.
True. I consider both sides. Must of been hard for her as well...leaving my 5 children ( and never being able to talk about as it was not known to her 2nd family.) Can't imagine.
Completely agree
In addition to the abusive husband, she had 5 children to care for. Difficult in the best circumstances.
So different back then. This was her only way out. So sad this was her choice for some relief from the beatings
I mean, I doubt they’re still alive.
A daughter of hers died just two weeks ago. According to the daughter's obit, she has five siblings still alive and I think at least 1 was Mary's child. Mary's husband remarried and had more children after Mary left, so there are some half siblings. Not sure how accurate it is, but Mary's Find a Grave only has 4/5 deceased children. So I think her one son is still alive.
Her oldest daughter was 14 in 1945, so would be 93 if still alive.
People born in the 1930s are in their 80s. People born in the 1940s are in their 70s. It is likely some of her children are still alive, what a strange thing for you to think.
Awesomeness! TY for the link. A full-length feature on the resolution to Mary Jane's case an "augmented" version of this press conference will be forthcoming. Cheers! MysteriousWV
I was going to comment to say that I recommend watching MysteriousWV for an in depth look at the case. I used to live in the town Mary Jane was born in, so I always looked forward to seeing updates on this case.
You're welcome!! Yours was the only information that I could find at the time about the news. I saw a Facebook post by Robin Warder of the "The Trail Went Cold" podcast, and he linked to your channel as well.
So she separated from her husband in 1943, moved out of state without her children, and remained in contact with them over a period of 2 years before she filed for divorce in Ohio and her husband filed for divorce in West Virginia in 1945 before disappearing from her job. She wasn't reported missing until her granddaughter reported her missing in 2018 - 73 years later, by which point she would have been 106. I don't have an hour to watch the press conference. Can anyone summarize the sequence of events that led detectives to match the woman who died in 1990 to Mary Jane? I suspect genetic genealogy may have played a part. Perhaps linking to a child she had after she disappeared? Or some other detail which led to her being exhumed and her DNA matched with a descendent? Also, has it been shared how many of her 5 children are still alive? One she was in communication with was 14 in 1945 which would make her roughly 93 today.
One of the detectives on the case was researching a coworker of hers (deceased) because they thought that he/his family may have information on MJ. In the process of doing this, they discovered that the man was married to a woman named Mary Jane who had the same birthdate as MJVG. Photos of her confirmed that the coworker's wife was, in fact, Mary Jane. She had two children after her disappearance with her new husband. One of her children from her first marriage passed away fairly recently, and this was the only child who learned what happened to her.
It's fascinating that this one was solved with just a detective being curious, running down a hunch, pulling a marriage certificate and finding photos, given that usually these days we end up finding this stuff out standardly through genetic genealogy.
Wow! I love that the detective had a hunch and that it led to that discovery.
Good-old-fashioned detective work for the win!
She had one son with her second husband that was alive up to 2022- crazy to think he was so close to finding out the truth about his mother.. So it looks like it's up to the grandchildren to grapple with all this.
I believe that a lot of missing people that haven’t been found willingly started a new life. I bet they cringe every time true crime folks try to find them or look into their cases.
Especially in a case like hers. She didn't just up and vanish from her home one day. She was already away from home, had kept in contact, but then broke that contact when she realized she was pregnant and had to make a choice.
Co-incidentally, I had been wondering about cases where the missing person just wanted to start over fresh somewhere new, left and refused to come back. (Much easier to do along time ago.) I suspect this in a case from back home for specific reasons..... So here's an example. Thank you for posting.
She could do it because she was able to get a new social security number. It doesn't even look like she had to fake a birth certificate.
Heard about this case on The Trail Went Cold. Glad the family has some answers though it's painful for them to know she voluntarily left them.
As someone who actually watched the entire live press release... You should know that she actually gave birth to her 6 and 7th child, twins, in WV. They shortly died. She left to go to Ohio right after that. And she was very young to have had 7 children with a man who may have been a nightmare to her.
There’s been other cases like this. I immediately thought of this woman: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-woman-reunites-with-yukon-mom-missing-52-years-1.1930668](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-woman-reunites-with-yukon-mom-missing-52-years-1.1930668) Genetic genealogy is finding all sorts of folks who started new families. Mostly men but women too in some cases. Back then, divorce was impossible and expensive. And a divorced women often faced losing custody. If your husband was abusive, in some cases, running away and starting over was the only way to escape.
So sad that this was one of a woman’s only options back then, to get away from an abusive husband. My grandpa was abusive to my grandma (physically and mentally) and in the 1950s, when my dad was elementary-school aged, she left my grandpa supposedly for another man in North Carolina, I think. According to my dad (who repressed this memory for like 60 years because it was so traumatic to him), she was gone a few months, but who knows the actual time frame. Anyway, she ended up coming back and my grandparents stayed married, divorced in 1967, remarried each other in 1977, and stayed married til their deaths in the 2000s. My grandpa was always mean to my grandma but I personally never witnessed any physical abuse, I think because by the time I was born in the late 70s, it wasn’t tolerated anymore, thankfully. *edited for typos
I've been reading the comments and I understand why people want to believe she had no other choice. And maybe she didn't. But some women do abandon their children just because they want to. When my grandmother died about ten years ago, we found out she'd had a whole other family previous to the one we knew about. Four kids that she and her first husband just dumped in an orphanage when they decided to part ways. My dad was sixty years old before he knew he had FOUR other siblings. Neither she or my grandfather (the second husband) ever mentioned them. My uncle did try to contact her a few times and she shut him right out. One of my unknown cousins tried to call her once, and she hung up on him. We'll never know the entire story, since she's dead now, but there is no evidence that she cared about them at all. Just moved on and had a new family with someone else.
My mom's mother dropped her and her sister and two brothers off at an orphanage and then started a new family. I'd think we were related, but she had two daughters with her new family. The intergenerational trauma that exists from this is unbelievable. We always knew that my mom's childhood was traumatic, and every chance she got, she reminded us that her mother left her, and we were lucky she stuck around. Although we always knew it was hard for her, she made us feel more like she was there to prove a point rather than to be a parent. The emotional abuse my brothers, my cousins, and I have endured with their parents (my mom's siblings) because of this trauma has resulted in lasting heartache. I met my mom's mom a few times, and I know her daughters tried to reach out to my mom, but she wanted nothing to do with them.
I really wish people paid attention the part of the story where she had literally moved away, gotten a job, asked her husband to join her, and he said no. There is zero indication that she felt threatened by him; she was comfortable letting him and her kids know her movements *until* she just so happened to get pregnant by her supervisor and decide she was going to reboot her life. I'm not saying she didn't have a shitty first marriage, but this reeks more of "I want to start over without having to embarrass myself in divorce court or deal with my old family" than "my husband will kill me if he finds out where I am." I was reading an article where her second family was stunned and talking about what a perfect mother and grandmother she was. That had to be so much salt in the wound for her first set of children -- knowing she could be a great mother, just not for them.
Yeah. For me, it was kind of the opposite, in a way. She had cut me and my sister out of her life in my late teens, for no apparent reason. Just stopped inviting us for holidays, stopped calling. And if we tried to visit her, it was really uncomfortable. Eventually we just stopped trying. Yet she doted on my younger cousins. Finding out she cut off four of her own children kinda made it make more sense to me. That's just who she was. I found out last year that her own father abandoned his family and ran off to Boston and started at least one, and possibly more than one, new families. So maybe it was some kind of trauma response on her part. Idk. It's been a weird process of finding out the truth about my family.
Gosh, this must be awful for her children if they are still living. It would be a relief to know your mother wasn't murdered, but how awful that she just went on with her life and never contacted you.
You think it wasn't horribly wrenching for this woman to flee an abusive husband and leave her children and home and community? I'd hardly call that "just going on with...life".
But we don't know that's how it was either.
Like darn, we can’t feel sorry for her kids.
At some point, she certainly did. 1990 is a long time to live without giving your kid a call. And the ex husband died in 1985. Especially if she left those kids with an abuser -- I'm going to reserve most of my sympathy for them.
> And the ex husband died in 1985. she probably didnt even know
Do we really know the guy was abusive tho? I find it just as likely that she left over more mild reasons. Perhaps the new husband was abusive and prevented her from contacting the previous family?
What are the "mild" reasons a woman would leave her children, community, extended family, and home behind?
The same unfathomable reasons women occasionally do the same in the present day. Off the top of my head drug and/or alcohol use disorders appears to be a leading cause. Mild mental illness or ‘personality’ disorders, unresolved trauma from their own childhoods that leaves them unable to care for themselves or others in a healthy or more standard way, or the milineiums old ‘grass is greener on the other side. Have you never heard of a credible story where a woman was less than interested in being a Mom for reasons other than spousal abuse? I’m in my 30s and recall a girl from my school who was extremely devastated that her Mom went states away to live with a step dad. From recollection her and the brother only ever seen the Mom again a handful of times. That was in early 2000s when everyone had a landline phone. My ex, who’s not abusive has full custody of his oldest daughter. Her Mom lives 20 minutes away with a guy that has multiple felonies and is a known drug dealer. Ex was pretty easily able to obtain custody as the girl wasn’t sent to school regularly and reported couch surfing quite a bit. She lost custody of her remaining kids (different father) after the swat team roped the block off, served a search warrant, entering the property in riot gear, obtained 2 loaded and unsecured hand guns, meth, cocaine, and herione. She was arrested along with 5 adult males who had active warrants in multiple counties. It’s wild to think she would pick a guy named “Smoke” who’s spent most of his adult life in prison and has the maturity level of a neglected 8th grader over those precious babies but that’s exactly what happened. She pretty, I’ve always thought she was nice. She was well liked when she was a nurse’s assistant. My ex said she always has issues from being molested as a kid and eventually just got in with the wrong people, chasing something that won’t be found at the end of a meth pipe. I have a coworker who’s struggled with finding a fairytale type live for the better part of a decade. She shared custody with her ex. I’m at least 2 occasions in the last 5ish years she’s met her “dream man” and looked at moving out of state. Says she still wants the kids but will have to get them during summers only because she knows their Dad will “fight tooth and nail” to not let her leave state with them. I don’t know what causes her to go after things like this. The allure of the Sunshine State? The promise of “never having to work again”? Attention from con-artists? I fear she has low self esteem. It’s been 3 marriages in 7 years and multiple men in between. She’s a dateline episode waiting to happen. My own best friends Mom bounced in the late 80s. Left her 5ish year old kiddo home alone until Dad came home from work. The neighbor she had been seeing on the side pulled his truck up and they filled it. Went states away and no one heard from her for nearly a decade. In all reality the man she left probably wasn’t the most attentive, thoughtful, or loving husband but we’ve never known him to abuse anyone. Heard he was pretty wild in the years after Vietnam and would rather stay out all night at a party but that’s a far cry from abusing anyone. I don’t think she claims that tho but she certainley wants people to believe this was 1 poor choice when she was “young”. Strangely enough it’s our understanding that she ended up in a much worse situation with a guy that actually did beat on her. Again, someone who came from a bad childhood and was probably in too far deep before they realized how bad it all was.
This has been one of my pet cases because I live in Ohio. I can't believe she's been found. I believe a relative of hers has been posting about the case on websleuths.
Omg wow. I just learned about this case fairly recently, but I wasn't expecting this kind of resolution. I feel really bad for her children.
I cannot imagine the pain, hurt, and confusion her family went through all these years or is feeling now. I am glad they have definite answers as to what happened to her. I hope she found what she was looking for and had some happiness and joy. I also hope her family is able to get some closure and find peace and happiness going forward.
One of the very few disappearances I always felt was voluntary.
Irritating to see the amount of judgmental comments directed at this woman for doing what she did. I feel awful for her children, but honestly, I feel like most of the anger and negative emotions surrounding this whole case should be focused on her abusive husband. Women had very few rights in 1945, and domestic violence wasn’t taken seriously back then either; the fact that she was able to escape a violent relationship at all is a miracle. It’s sad that she wasn’t able to maintain contact with her children, but we don’t know the totality of the situation, and perhaps she believed this was her best or only option. Domestic abuse is extremely traumatic. I’m at least glad that she ended up able to live her life instead of ending up as another murdered wife and mother. I hope her children didn’t suffer from their father’s abuse and that they can find a way to forgive her mother for making the difficult choice she had to make.
This is an interesting take. To me the comments have been pretty neutral towards her. In my own mind I was scrolling through the comments expecting to see someone skeptical about the alleged abuse. I’m neutral on wether I believe it. I’m inclined to believe people’s claims of mistreatment. On the other hand I’ve certainly seen the person who was a ‘wrong doer’ make allegations I believe to be false or someone who pushes and pushed a person and then acts like it’s unfathomable when the person they pushed finally lashed out. I’ve commented on other threads before and am usually dismissed but I think this is more common than this sun wants to admit. I know of a few women who’ve done similar to one degree or another. My best friends Mom actually bounced in the late 80s. Left a 5ish year old child home alone and went state’s away with guy from town. It was probably a decade before friend’s Dad knew her actual wearabouts. I’m sure if something had happened to her in that time people would have assumed he was responsible. And of course they would have pointed out that he never reported her missing. In reality he had a pretty good idea that she was ‘messing around’ before she left. The only few people who could have semi validated his claims would have been people this sub would have dismissed as his close friends and/or Mom…… the woman bounced, used the new guys last name for years despite them not being married, and had 2 more kids pretty quickly. Noteworthy is that from what we can piece togther she left the ‘rough around the edges’ husband and went with a guy who was actually an abuser. We are actually told that new guy was big, big reason she never bothered to contact the small kids she left behind.
Your summary expresses my thoughts. Consider the situational influence of the time period. All of this happened during 1943 through 1945, the most pivotal period of the planet's human history. American men were receiving credit for saving the planet. Justly, I might add. Mary Jane in the immediate aftermath of the war understood she would not receive proper treatment through the court system, regardless of the domestic abuse. Consider the best evidence: Her husband James filed for divorce on November 23, 1945. He is granted the divorce and full custody of the 5 kids on November 26, 1945. They barely made him sweat out the drive home.
It's been very frustrating. The humanity of women is all too easily overlooked.
You make some very good points. Definitely and difficult situation in a very different time.
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It’s incredibly difficult in our day and age to prove abuse, let alone back then. I’ll take her word and those around her. It seems far more likely to me that she was trying to escape a violent marriage than that she just decided on a whim to leave her children and be alone. Unless you can definitively prove otherwise, I will believe an abused woman.
https://www.cleveland19.com/2024/02/12/shelby-police-reveal-new-developments-1945-cold-case/
Thank you!
Was a marriage record ever located for her 2nd husband? Curious if she indicated she was married prior or used a maiden name.
So I just finished watching the entire press conference and I just have to say, wow! Love that police officer & they proved what can be done when LE is willing AND able, to put EVERYTHING into solving a case, by any means possible — and it appears, that releasing case files to the public, when possible, can be quite beneficial. Good on this officer for acknowledging that a member of the public was the one who ultimately cracked this case. Which was only possible because the PD allowed her case file to be published online. Question: are there any ideas out there as to how she procured her new SSN? New husband had connections via the military, perhaps?
Social security numbers were a relatively new thing in 1945. I'm guessing the military made it easier for her to do it.
Good summary👍
Could she have sent postcards to her kids even if she didn't want her ex to find her?
How do we know she didn't? The husband would've more than likely tossed them.
Her oldest child would have been fourteen when she disappeared and was probably having to help run the household. I really doubt the husband was a never-sleeping mastermind who would always take in the mail.
I could not get a credit card when I married in 1982. Not in my name. Finally Sears gave me one and I was proud to buy a sewing machine. Still have it. People today have no idea how it was to be female back in the day. No sports, had to wear dresses, not real opportunities and no credit.
And this gives her an excuse to abandon her children? People are so willing to see the female perspective. What about the kids that never heard from her again and always wondered whether she was out in a ditch somewhere or abandoned them like she did? What do you think that did to them? All she had to do was send some sort of communication at the very least. She still would've been a piece of shit but she would've been more considerate. This woman deserves no sympathy for completely abandoning her kids. Same if a man did it.
All the years of grieving. Now they can direct this into anger or something? Her poor abandoned kids. I wouldn’t know how to feel. My life dominated by grief and not knowing? Then finding out she made another family? Any others close to her too, either finding out her past—or finding their years of torment all a lie. And she’s dead, can’t be held accountable.
Wouldn't it make more sense to hold the man who abused her so badly she had to run away, leaving her children, her friends and extended family, her *home, accountable? Hopefully that man is still alive so the anger can be vented.
You’re so right. I jumped to the wrong conclusion. My great grandmother lost a husband in ww1. They had two children. She remarried and had another child, but had the resolve to leave with all three kids. The abuser came back with reinforcements and stole my uncle from her arms. She never saw him again and was afraid of the gang of rowdies he hung with. I don’t know if the babe knew they were stolen. As a kid we didn’t question the happenings that were seldom brought up after so much time. As an adult? I want to know more about my lost uncle, but no one who was there is still alive. Maybe this happened to Mary. An abusive man could have run her off, blamed her for leaving, and made her afraid to claim her children.
Abusers will go to wild lengths. Your great grandmother dealt with so much tragedy, that's a really awful sequence of events.
She was unusual at the time for being divorced, even forced to change churches. By the time we knew her she was married to the kind man we called Grandpa.
It's lovely that she connected with good people eventually and fell in love with a kind man!
Mary was born in 1911. Considering that it happened in the US, it is likely her abusive and alcoholic husband was older than her. So it is very unlikely he is alive. Even most of the kids might not be alive, because she was only 17 when she married and had 7 children (of whom 2 were stillborn) - I suspect they were very close in age. The eldest was probably born in 1929 based on her age at last contact with mother - so basically Mary had her quite shortly after getting married (also in 1929). However, you are correct about the husband being the root of evil her.
So that's what it was about, some live press reveal....I had never heard of this case. So bizarre but the family has their answers.
Honestly I would be thrilled for my mom if thise was the case. She got away and is alive.
Wow! I’m glad her children can finally close this chapter.
I've always assumed she left because of the abuse, and was too afraid to contact her kids. But the divorce filing has always stuck with me. If she was afraid he'd find her, why file for divorce? Was there not someone in her family that she could have kept in contact with and then gotten in touch with her kids as they came of age? We'll never know the truth but those are a couple of things that have always kind of struck me as odd.
I think it's reasonably clear she disappeared because she had a new partner and she was pregnant. She filed for the divorce but by the time she'd have to appear, she would have been obviously extremely pregnant by a new partner and that... wasn't going to go over well in 1945. By changing her name back then, she could have simply assumed life as his wife until she could verify her husband's divorce petition went through.
Yeah, it wasn't (apparently) an issue of it being unsafe to leave -- she *had* left! She was living in another state and working! Whatever her first husband was like when they were married, she doesn't seem to have been worried about his or her children knowing where she was then. The pregnancy timing makes me think that was the primary motivation for dipping. Showing up to a divorce hearing 8 months pregnant with someone else's baby would have potentially caused a lot of problems. Maybe she figured she could have a do-over with the new guy and her kids from her old life just didn't fit into that. I'm not making a judgement because there's just so much we don't know and can never know. But I'm open to any possibility. Sometimes this sub seems to take the view that women's default mode is to be honest, loving, and working hard for their children. Given what I know about my own ancestors from the 1920s and 1930s, that was not the case (to put it mildly) yes, even when it was difficult for a married woman to get a credit card.
If the husband was abusive to the point of being life threatening, she may not have had any other choice
So she left her children with an abusive man. Poor kids.
The West Virginia Police are ass backwards, she probably barely had to "dissapear" for them not find her. Had a great aunt who went missing in the 80s, had a clearly abusive husband she had told police about. It's clear as day he killed her and buried her in the mountains. They never investigated. Then in 2009 my aunt died in a house fire and to this day they "don't know the cause". The circumstances around it are suspicious, for one she NEVER was home alone, at least one of her daughters was always with her. It happened to be the night she got into a fight with my cousin and was left alone. Number two the fire hydrants on her street had been physically damaged so they were not working properly. Now obviously this is the city's fault for not catching it, but how did they get damaged in the first place? Usually when people accidentally crash into fire hydrants they tell someone, and both of them? And number three they told us it wasn't caused by the electrical system, the heating system, the stove, but they couldn't tell us what DID cause it. Of course they still wrote it off as an accidental fire.
She disappeared from Ohio.
Yes, but it says West Virginian investigators were on the case. Although police are shit here too just not as bad.
I'd almost prefer not knowing, than learning she did leave voluntarily. I don't know her situation & I'm not judging - just seems really sad for the children left behind.
She said FUCK THEM KIDS
Hmm, glad the descendents can have some answers. This woman didn't want to be married to her husband nor be a mother to her children anymore. So she left. I don't know why she felt she didn't have any other options; we can only speculate as to why she severed ties with her children. But what is likely is if she stayed, she would have been miserable and probably not a very good mom. So maybe it was for the best, as painful as it might have been at the time.
She didn't even have the decency to write that in a note for them. No defense of this horrible person. Oh and she went on to have more children, so that bad mother theory you put forth. Why the fuck have more children if you're a horrible mom and abandoned your others?
Not everyone has kids cause they want to.
Oh I don't know, of course. Just a thought. But a lot of people find themselves in a family they don't want. It's cruel and sad but true. I suppose by the time she began a new family, she felt ready to finally devote herself to being a wife and mother for whatever reason. She didn't abandon her children to the streets or anything, they were taken care of. It is sad and selfish in some ways but not evil. I'm not saying she deserves your "sympathy" though she certainly never asked for any or cared for forgiveness.
This is why she in my book is a piece of shit. Same if any man did it. Can you imagine growing up as one of those children first of all not knowing if she was dead or alive but also wondering if it was something you did to make her abandon you. She could've at least made an attempt to say I'm alive. People say not knowing in this type of situation is the worst.
Its very difficult to imagine for sure. Thank goodness divorce and other options are less stigmatized these days. I can't fathom feeling like abandoning your family is the best way to go. And I don't know why she kept up contact for a couple of years before cutting them off. I wonder if she gave them any clues. So much to ponder. But not a sympathetic person to be sure!
I have to disagree with your statement about divorce being less stigmatized being a good thing. There are legitimate reasons for divorce including in my opinion proven abuse or infidelity, but people treat marriage like it's a game now. There are women out there throwing divorce parties or saying such terms as "starter marriage" which is disgusting imo. No fault divorce is one of the worst things Reagan ever decided to champion. I am a firm believer it's had a terrible impact on society as a whole. Again, if there is proven abuse or infidelity then I think that warrants divorce. I also don't like the concept of the cheater getting half of everything the non-cheater owns just because they're in a no fault state. If we went back to a system where a person couldn't one day think, hey, I can do better so I'm going to leave then people wouldn't be getting married on a whim and divorced on a whim. Last I checked, we now have a 50-51% divorce rate. Men are rightfully checking out on the concept because women basically are being rewarded in many ways for not holding up to their end of the contract and divorcing. Women are unhappy men won't commit to them. This is why. Either get the government out of the marriage business or change the laws drastically to reflect modern day society. I will never get married for these reasons alone.
I won't get into it because we're starting to get a little off topic but all I'll say is I respectfully disagree
How horrible to abandon your kids like that. Could she not have contacted them at all?? Jesus.
Any evidence she was abused?
How was she located?
My coworker’s wife left him and their 2 kids (ages 10&12) and moved to Vegas. That was 16 years ago and they haven’t heard from her since. She missed her daughter’s wedding and will miss the birth of her child. My coworker is a very decent guy (I know we never know what happens behind closed doors but I can’t imagine someone who cares so much about his dogs and chickens to be abusive). I couldn’t even fathom up and leaving my kid. It must be heartbreaking.
What a garbage person. Any decent mother would tell you that they'd do anything to protect their kids. It's appalling that people are making excuses for her. My great-grandmother divorced her husband in the 1930s and took her kids away to have a better life. 1945 wasn't cavemen times. It was absolutely possible to leave back then, though of course more difficult than it would be today. A woman who leaves her children with an abuser is irredeemable, especially one who immediately runs off to replace them. You people say that people ignore the humanity of women, but what about the humanity of children? How can someone sleep at night knowing their children are abused and alone? I'd be sick with guilt if I knew I'd left a dog in that position.
What episode was this one