Tuesday, August 27, 2013

My cousin who vanished

When I was a baby, Leonore, my second cousin on my mom’s side, and also my godmother, babysat me.


In August 1973, she went to a bus station in Connecticut, bought a ticket to somewhere, and did not come back. The reason may have been mental illness; the family later learned that she had been abusive to her children.

Her husband Larry (son of my mom’s uncle) hired private detectives to find Leonore. Despite years of searching, they never did.

Her fate remains a mystery, except, perhaps, to her.

Because of my own intensive (and, on many levels, successful) detective work in researching Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman as well as the topic of my book Vanished: True Stories of the Missing (I mention Leonore in the “About the Author”), my wife and I discussed the possibility of me trying to find out what happened to my cousin.



For a fleeting moment, this intrigued me, and I do like a challenge, but given the time that has passed and the circumstances surrounding Leonores disappearance, it is an effort I do not plan to undertake, at least not now.

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