In this new series, author and researcher, Marilyn A. Hudson explores some missing persons cases.Early May of 1955 in the south plains area of Hale Center, Texas, a charming bride of 19 took the family Lincoln into town to complete some errands. A Mexican national whose family made the annual migration circuit had caught the eye of the farmer and now, a year later, she was a happy wife and a soon to be mother. Her life, however, was soon to take very different direction. Andrea Lopez Phares never returned to her home with her 43 year old husband and local farmer.
Her car was found abandoned, the key still in the ignition but the wires yanked under the hood. The speedometer showed it had exceed 100 miles an hour in its last journey. A huge posse crisscrossed the countryside looking for the woman. Her jewelry was found buried far from the car. Over the months and years both her husband and her brother-in-law would be charged in the case but both times juries failed to find enough evidence. After a time her husband moved to Arizona citing the need to get a fresh start as the search for his wife had ruined his farm. The truth was he moved back to family in Oklahoma.
Oddly, an anonymous letter arrived at the police at one time claiming having seen the woman in a Laundromat in Guymon, Oklahoma. This is an area jut north of the panhandle area where Phares had lived. Texas Rangers and an Oklahoma private investigator could find nothing to prove any link.
For 21 months ...for 17 years....for decades...the mystery of where she was and what had happened to her lingered like a fragile scent on a summer evening. Skeletons were found several times in the desert and hope sprang up but always it was some other poor soul.
Is there a lonely road out there where in the mystical hours of dusk, a solemn parade of lost people continues their last...and endless...journey home? Keep the lights burning on the front porch; maybe some will make it home ...at last.
---Marilyn A. Hudson , c2014
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