The two obituaries were quite different. One had more personal information as well, I'm assuming that the funeral home that sent out that obit assumed she was dead after being gone a lot longer than she had been around.
or it could be that Carol/her husband, and therefor her family/kids felt more strongly that she was dead. Carol knew Charlotte was dead because she had something to do with it, or Carol saw Charlotte board the plane and therefore knew something bad must have happened to Charlotte when she did not make it home.
There is so little to go on, I wouldn't even know where to begin. For starters, did her sister walk up to the gate and see or board? Did she stay at the gate until the plane took off? (She could do that back then) While Newark wasn't as big then as it is today, it was still relatively large and , it would have been easy for Charlotte to get off the plane once she boarded and go somewhere else. Or to head off toward the plane, but not actually get on it, if her sister didn't watch her get on.
With such a large number of siblings, I would think that in the 40+ years since her disappearance, she would have felt a close bond to at least one of them and been in contact. If not carol, who she may have felt rejected her by making her go home, then one of the younger ones.
If Carol hid her so she didn't have to go back home, I am sure at some point as the decades passed, she would have said something to someone about it and let them know where she was. So I don't think that is what happened.
I am leaning toward foul play, though there is always the possibility that she had such a horrible relationship with her family that she decided to cut ties forever.
