It’s not that she believes her sister,
Janice Pockett, who disappeared at 7½ years old on July 26, 1973, is still alive. But Engelbrecht, two years younger than Janice, does hope her sister’s remains will be found so she can give her a decent burial.
“I don’t feel as though I’ve ever really felt she was still alive,” she said. “I’ve never had that kind of feeling. I don’t think she is. Of course, I could be wrong. You never know what can happen, but just my gut is no, she isn’t.”
Still, she put her DNA on ancestry.com just in case someone responded. No one has.
“In my sister’s case, we don’t have any DNA. We don’t have a body. We don’t have DNA. Nothing really,” Engelbrecht said.
“In meeting with the police so many times and just knowing what my parents believed and everything, there’s always that slight amount of hope, but I don’t hold on to that,” she said.
“I’m more where I just would like to find her and bring her home for a proper burial and that’s my number one hope at this point,” she said.
Engelbrecht is planning a 50th anniversary memorial this summer at Janice’s bench at the Cross Farms Recreation Complex in Tolland, but hasn’t firmed up a date yet.
“It’s actually literally very close to where she was last, where her bike was found, where she disappeared from, literally right around the corner from that location,” Engelbrecht, 56, of Manchester, said.
Eight-year-old Janice Pockett of Tolland rode her bike to find a butterfly on July 26, 1973. She was never seen again.
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