AZ AZ- Ann Caldwell, 18, Tucson, Pima County, March 13, 1956

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UnlicensedPI said:
I don't think NamUs ever deletes submissions, they just stay restricted.

I tried reaching out to people who knew her brother. These are people who might have known if she was still missing, but wouldn't have known her before she went missing. No one responded to me.
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Does Ann have any surviving nieces or nephews? Obviously I don't want you to identify them, just curious.
 
Palm Springs Desert Sun (April 30, 1957)
ann.png
Idk if this has been posted but this article says her mother "won" on the TV show. They spent 20 years worth of savings looking for her.
"We have a home in Tucson and Mr Caldwell has a ranch out from there-we did go back and forth a lot-maybe she didn't feel too settled... I don't know. i just don't know"
 
@SimsGuy67 - did you say you’d entered Ann into Namus awhile back? If so, did they ever respond?

Just curious because I just happened across a thread from a few years ago where someone said the’d entered a person, then got an email the next day saying it had been deleted because the case was “either a duplicate or unverifiable”.
 
cenazoic said:
@SimsGuy67 - did you say you’d entered Ann into Namus awhile back? If so, did they ever respond?

Just curious because I just happened across a thread from a few years ago where someone said the’d entered a person, then got an email the next day saying it had been deleted because the case was “either a duplicate or unverifiable”.
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No, this has gone for every MP I've tried entering in NamUs, even those confirmed to still be missing. They were just restricted and never touched again.
 
The very fact of her never even being mentioned in obits for the brother and father suggests that her family wrote her off - and the only thing I can think of that would prompt that response is that she left voluntarily and maybe made no bones about coming back. I base that opinion on the fact that LE say they found her and were going to let her go back home of her own volition, something it appears she chose not to do.

I'd like to think that she lived her life on her own terms and may still be alive, anonymously.
 
branmuffin said:
I base that opinion on the fact that LE say they found her and were going to let her go back home of her own volition, something it appears she chose not to do.
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Where do they say that?
The last mention of Ann iirc is an 1960s article where police are wondering if an UID is Ann. It was later identified as someone else. Shouldn't this mean Ann is still missing?
Imo whether or not Ann left voluntarily and lived her life elsewhere or had something happen to her she is still a missing person and should be in the databases.
 
Diavola said:
Where do they say that?
The last mention of Ann iirc is an 1960s article where police are wondering if an UID is Ann. It was later identified as someone else. Shouldn't this mean Ann is still missing?
Imo whether or not Ann left voluntarily and lived her life elsewhere or had something happen to her she is still a missing person and should be in the databases.
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The article saying police had "found" her was published in 1957, three years before the last article detailing her disappearance, which yes, compared her to a UID, later ID'd as Yolanda Gomez. The article shows the police hadn't closed her case after the Plainview development.
www.newspapers.com

Missing girl Ann Caldwell compared to an unidentified skeleton.

Clipping found in El Paso Times published in El Paso, Texas on 1/20/1960. Missing girl Ann Caldwell compared to an unidentified skeleton.
www.newspapers.com www.newspapers.com
I also use quotes when I say "found," because from reading the article, it was never stated police made contact with her. It's quoted as saying "Miller (Warrant Officer) said the girl had not been picked up as yet."
www.newspapers.com

Ann Caldwell found?

Clipping found in Arizona Daily Star published in Tucson, Arizona on 3/30/1957. Ann Caldwell found?
www.newspapers.com www.newspapers.com
Either way, her fate after 1957 still remains unknown, and the seeming lack of contact in 1959 and 1960 is not a good sign.
 
branmuffin said:
The very fact of her never even being mentioned in obits for the brother and father suggests that her family wrote her off - and the only thing I can think of that would prompt that response is that she left voluntarily and maybe made no bones about coming back
Click to expand...

Ann wasn't mentioned in the obits of her: father, mother, brother, and at least one maternal aunt who died after her parents and brother (and her obit DID mention Ann's brother.). It's just so puzzling (as is this whole case). Why did she leave? What happened to her? Why is there no mention of her in newspapers past 1960 or so (comparison with UID @SimsGuy67 mentions above)? Her father gave at least 2 interviews with the Tucson paper in the '70s and never mentioned his missing daughter.
I have a sort-of theory that around that time (1960ish) the family did discover what happened to her. Whether they wrote her off (the whole family, though?) due to some scandalous discovery or whether they discovered something else, we don't know. So frustrating.

We do know that:
- Ann never had a social security card (at least not under her name) issued
- I've never found a legal declaration of death statement in the papers, and she's basically non-existent in any Ancestry trees. I created one, hoping to link up with others who might have more info, but as far as this writing, mine has the most info. :p - Not in FindaGrave.
- there's some question about her last verified sighting. In the article @Diavola posted above ("Queen for a Day", 1957) her mother states they traced her as far as El Paso. Other reports have her buying a ticket for Amarillo and getting on the bus in El Paso and seen drinking coffee in Alamagordo, NM at a break along the way.
- the Plainview (near Amarillo) report is sort of interesting in that there doesn't seem to be any follow-up. (An reported sighting in Colorado was followed up with 'it wasn't her'.)

I haven't been able to find (so far) any UIDs who are possibly interesting and otherwise unreported in modern DBs, from 1956-1965 in Arizona, NM, Texas, Colorado, or Oklahoma.

My thoughts going forward, because I can't seem to stop checking in on this case every few months or so:
- do more tightly focused newspaper searches in: Arkansas, Missouri, Utah, Nevada, Mexico.
- search border crossing records (if possible)
- email every LE jurisdiction who commented on the search in the papers in the very thin hope they may have remaining case files.
- email Willcox and Tucson, AZ historical societies to see if they have any info on the Caldwell family in general (really digging in the haystacks here, but they were prominent ranchers at the time, and Ann's parents appear in the Arizona Pioneer Histories, vXIV)
- one day, take a trip to Tucson to dig around the Arizona Historical Society archives, the University of Arizona student newspaper archives (just curious about whether they wrote about her disappearance), the Pima and Cochise County courthouses/historical societies, etc. Basically, a fishing expedition to look for any paper record/trail that isn't online.
 
Diavola said:
Where do they say that?
The last mention of Ann iirc is an 1960s article where police are wondering if an UID is Ann. It was later identified as someone else. Shouldn't this mean Ann is still missing?
Imo whether or not Ann left voluntarily and lived her life elsewhere or had something happen to her she is still a missing person and should be in the databases.
Click to expand...
The 1960s article is a rehash of earlier articles with the timeline adjusted.
I think we need to reconsider what the definition of 'missing' is in this particular case. Not being in contact with your parents doesn't necessarily mean you are missing. When LE said they had found their daughter in Plainfield, Texas, they were leaving it up to Ann and her parents as to what her status would be. That would suggest that she didn't consider herself missing, maybe she considered herself AWOL forever. Her parents considered her missing up until that time period. Because after that, she just seemed to be eliminated from the Caldwell family history: no mention of her in either parents obituary (or prior infant deaths) and more peculiarly for me, no mention of her at all in her brother's obit.

I find it odd, because when her parents were interested in finding their missing daughter they seemed to remind everyone how she was a very good student, and outstanding athlete, etc. but went to radio silence after contact with Plainsview,Texas LE. They went from saying their daughter was a victim of amnesia to saying they don't necessarily want her to come back just want to know where she was.

When I was looking through the yearbooks for pics of Ann I did find a couple of her not posted here. In one of them, which I think is important, she's wearing glasses. It's in the 1953 yearbook in the first page after the sophomore group. She looks younger and more studious. I can't seem to attach it here. Maybe someone else can.

The school she attended was an all girls school with a pretty small student population. So it would be really difficult to have volleyball teams or basketball teams with such a dearth of options so an
'outstanding' athlete would feel pretty frustrated with that scenario. She doesn't have a high profile like some of the other girls. Many are referred to repeatedly in little quips and quotes like you see in old yearbooks, eg.the popular girls. She was extremely beautiful, imo, and in a small environment like that could have been the subject of jealousy.

I looked up the address of the home that was listed on the FBI release of her missing status. I don't know what it may have looked like back in 1956 but it is an extremely humble home. Which makes me wonder how her parents paid for the tuition that was pretty steep at that time. It appears there was some facility to provide tuition fees for those girls whose families struggled during the Depression but don't know if that was continued afterwards. I just know that sometimes kids that go to elite schools on a bursary or scholarships sometimes don't always fit in with the more affluent kids. It was also a boarding school back then so I wonder how Ann dealt with being away from home.

I found this little bio of the school, its origins and mission statements. There's a statement made by the Brigadier General of Fort Bliss sometime in the 1930s when he was invited to a banquet. "Let Radford educate the girls, our young officers will marry them, for the ideals taught girls in the school fit them to be mothers of future generations of men." Yikes, a pretty staid view of girls learning Latin, French, Spanish who have an 'unusual level' of fluency as well as geometry, algebra and physics, etc.


I wish we could find copies of the '55 and year book to see whether Ann had a higher profile as a junior. I also wish we knew why there is no evidence of her presence at the University of Arizona. I'm trying to remember when the whole yearbook thing started gearing up when I was in high school. I think it was definitely toward the end of the school year, maybe March-ish since so many of the pics included images of basketball, football and volleyball games over the year, both intramural and intermural games plus the requisite plays and school trips to museums, etc. Would schools delete images of students who no longer attend by the time the yearbook is issued? Kids moved, transferred, quit. Would they take the time to edit images out of students who no longer attended?

I think the fact we can't find a SSN for Ann is not a red flag for me. We are assuming, if she is still alive or was at least living after her disappearance, that she continued to live in the US. If she was one of those students who was fluent in a foreign language, whether Spanish or French, she may have gone to Mexico and managed to get documentation that could pass muster while traveling. Back in those days it was probably easier to get fake ID. So many stories of people looking in cemeteries for children who died young so they could request birth certificates to create a new persona. The whole issuing of SSN originally was to those already working although many types of employment weren't required to use SSNs like agricultural workers, domestic servants, government employees, and educational institutions so there was a large area where someone could work without having an SSN be issued. Here's a link:

The Story of the Social Security Number

Social Security Administration Research, Statistics, and Policy Analysis
www.ssa.gov
 
cenazoic said:
Ann wasn't mentioned in the obits of her: father, mother, brother, and at least one maternal aunt who died after her parents and brother (and her obit DID mention Ann's brother.). It's just so puzzling (as is this whole case). Why did she leave? What happened to her? Why is there no mention of her in newspapers past 1960 or so (comparison with UID @SimsGuy67 mentions above)? Her father gave at least 2 interviews with the Tucson paper in the '70s and never mentioned his missing daughter.
I have a sort-of theory that around that time (1960ish) the family did discover what happened to her. Whether they wrote her off (the whole family, though?) due to some scandalous discovery or whether they discovered something else, we don't know. So frustrating.

We do know that:
- Ann never had a social security card (at least not under her name) issued
- I've never found a legal declaration of death statement in the papers, and she's basically non-existent in any Ancestry trees. I created one, hoping to link up with others who might have more info, but as far as this writing, mine has the most info. :p - Not in FindaGrave.
- there's some question about her last verified sighting. In the article @Diavola posted above ("Queen for a Day", 1957) her mother states they traced her as far as El Paso. Other reports have her buying a ticket for Amarillo and getting on the bus in El Paso and seen drinking coffee in Alamagordo, NM at a break along the way.
- the Plainview (near Amarillo) report is sort of interesting in that there doesn't seem to be any follow-up. (An reported sighting in Colorado was followed up with 'it wasn't her'.)

I haven't been able to find (so far) any UIDs who are possibly interesting and otherwise unreported in modern DBs, from 1956-1965 in Arizona, NM, Texas, Colorado, or Oklahoma.

My thoughts going forward, because I can't seem to stop checking in on this case every few months or so:
- do more tightly focused newspaper searches in: Arkansas, Missouri, Utah, Nevada, Mexico.
- search border crossing records (if possible)
- email every LE jurisdiction who commented on the search in the papers in the very thin hope they may have remaining case files.
- email Willcox and Tucson, AZ historical societies to see if they have any info on the Caldwell family in general (really digging in the haystacks here, but they were prominent ranchers at the time, and Ann's parents appear in the Arizona Pioneer Histories, vXIV)
- one day, take a trip to Tucson to dig around the Arizona Historical Society archives, the University of Arizona student newspaper archives (just curious about whether they wrote about her disappearance), the Pima and Cochise County courthouses/historical societies, etc. Basically, a fishing expedition to look for any paper record/trail that isn't online.
Click to expand...
In that Pioneer History document, it's mentioned that Ann's parents moved from Cochise to Tucson in 1966 so her two children could attend school there. On one hand, this seems like ample proof Ann was found between 1960 and 1966.

On the other hand, by 1966, Ann and possibly her brother had likely already finished school. They were also living in Tucson in 1956. Maybe a typo on the document's part?
 
branmuffin said:
I think we need to reconsider what the definition of 'missing' is in this particular case. Not being in contact with your parents doesn't necessarily mean you are missing.
Click to expand...
I agree that there is a good chance Ann left voluntarily for whatever reason.
I hope I'm not coming off too pushy, but with how many UID's turned out to be missing people who slipped through the cracks even when they were reported missing I would really hate to see that happen in this case.
 
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