Along those same lines, I am convinced she didn't voluntarily disappear. Without the Internet, I don't think she would have known to cover all the tracks that would later surface on the internet.
I think someone who left voluntarily back in those days would have maybe moved to another state and kept an unlisted phone number... but the idea that she's never worked, never filed a tax return, married, gotten a traffic ticket, gotten a drivers license, voted, etc. makes me think it's unlikely. I just can't see her going to all that trouble to stay under the radar. She was college educated, and came from a good family, I suppose it's possible but I just don't see it...
JMO
Unless she changed her name....and started completely over....I don't actually think this, BTW. Just covering things that could be possible. There are also several possibilities I cannot post due to rules on whom we can and cannot sleuth.
ETA: It was not that hard in the 70's to get a different SSN. We didn't get them at birth back then.
Post 806, ASWDeerHunter, Thread One:
Sylvia was extremely predicable in as she was so straight lace you could set you clock by her. She lived with her parents and when she did go out, she said were she was going and when she'll back back on the money. Grade A student, deans list constantly, no cavities etc.
The night of the incident, the police were called after Eva returned from the Mall and not seeing Sylvia.
As far as the overall search has now proceeded, All mental hospitals in the U.S. were checked, passport office for a match, all airport, cruise ships, charters, any means of transport out of the U. S. were checked. All prisons, missing or unidentified bodies/coroner dept all states. To this present time all rocks have been turned.
Re Odyssey's post, I agree that it's more "possible" than "likely," but I guess without more information to fully discredit it, I'm unable to let it go. It also occurs to me that this is most hopeful of all scenarios, where SL is concerned, so I also
like that it still stands alongside the darker possibilities in my mind.
Hello, Ghostwheel -- This adds "meat" to the word "possibility" for me as well. The name change could have come easily, through marriage, or be her own creation. Maybe as a runaway, she went by an alias and it stuck.
Re the part BBM, I brought ASWDeerHunter's post forward for the new posters, as well as to refresh my own mind. I remember some discussion about the SSN in thread one that followed much along the lines of what is happening here now, that it was not something everyone got right away -- marriage may even have been when it would first be needed, but I am not sure of that. Do we even know she had one at 22?
I am guessing that the passport was needed for her to travel from Germany to the U.S. when she was very little. Did she need an SSN to get one from the consulate at that time? Or only her parents' say-so that she was their child? If she never had an SSN, she could truly have started fresh.
Also, I don't believe a driver's license was ever verified. ASWDH doesn't mention it. And while MMQC has described times when she drove SL places -- and when SL's father drove SL to Wagner -- I don't recall hearing any stories in which Sylvia drove.
Would a birth certificate be needed for a marriage license in those days? Would it be needed to get an SSN? A DL? I wonder, given the out-of-the-country birth, how this was handled. She would have been a citizen by virtue of her father's citizenship, right? Whereas her mother may have been naturalized? Did she have an official BC?
In any case, if SL's decision to flee was spontaneous, I doubt she would have had any of these documents in her possession (except a DL if she had one), so she would literally have had to start from scratch. It's possible she could have applied for new copies of existing documents, but would good would they be if she changed her name?
Yes, the best possible scenario, IMO, would be that she connected with a runaway network that helped young people create new lives for themselves, complete with all of this documentation. Not saying
likely, just
possible -- and clinging to it. (ETA: And it would be one way of explaining how she's managed to stay out of the limelight of the interweb.)
MMQC or ASWDeerHunter, can you tell us anything about these documents?
