A Tale From The Past: The Lucy Johnson Case
A puzzling disappearance occurred in the small city of Surrey, B.C IN 1961. According to C.B.C news, Lucy Johnson was last seen by a neighbour in September 1961 at 10300 block of 145A street in Surrey, a small city with only 500,000 people, part of metro Vancouver.
Lucy was 36 years old, originally from Alaska and had lived in Skagway, Bennet, Pennington and the Yukon community of Carcross before marrying Marvin Joohnson in 1954. Together the couple had two kids: Linda (1954) and Daniel (1955).
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Lucy was reported missing on May 14, 1965 by her husband, Marvin (some speculate he reported her missing only because he wanted to remarry, which explains the four year gap). A neighbour then came forward and said they saw Marvin digging in his yard not long after the time of her disappearance. That indicated foul play, causing Marcin to become a suspect. He got charged and the police excavated his yard and found nothing. Marvin died in the 1990s. Unfortunately Daniel (Lucy’s son) had also died in his late teens. Over the years the police compared DNA of unidentified remains to DNA of Lucy’s children. When they made no progress they sent out a public appeal, Linda (Lucy’s daughter) also sent out adverts in the newspapers.
One fateful day, a woman tipped the police through a phone call saying she recognized the missing lady. The woman had seen the adverts in the newspaper and recognized the missing woman as her mother. How exactly did that happen?
It turns out Lucy left by her own will and never realized that people were searching for her. She was found on July 13th 2013. Lucy said that she left because Marvin had been abusive and had been cheating on her with other women. She claimed that he told her to leave and would not let her take the children with her. Now, 77 years old (in 2013) Lucy has remarried, and had three more children. She lived in North B.C before moving to Yukon during her supposed “disappearance”. Linda and Lucy have finally reunited after several years apart.
