A mother who disappeared over 50 years ago from her home in Surrey, British Columbia has been found alive, the Daily Mail reports, located roughly 1,000 miles away from her family in the Yukon. The First Nations of Canada woman, Lucy Johnson, was believed by police to be murdered by her husband, Marvin. The case has remained cold until now.
Johnson's daughter, Linda Evans who is now in her late 50s, was seven or eight at the time her mother disappeared in 1961, last seen by a neighbor in the city of Surrey.
Lucy Johnson was found in the Yukon Territories of Canada after Evans put advertisements in the Yukon News, an area in which her mother had lived as a child. Evans knew her mother was born in Alaska, so she asked around and put up ads on a whim. Soon after, Evans received a shocking phone call from a woman who had seen the ad and believed she knew her mother. Lucy Johnson is now 77, alive and well, and has another family.
"I'm still walking around in shock," Evans told the Surrey Leader. "I thought she was dead because there's been no contact. Nothing."
In an interview with NBC News, Evans said she had a lot to ask her mother whom she has not seen in over 50 years. "I have a lot of questions," she said. "And they're all 'Whys?'" Because the disappearance in 1961 was not reported by Evans' father Marvin until May 1965, police suspected him of being involved and possibly murdering his wife. Police considered charging him but lacked enough evidence.
At the time, Marvin Johnson was unemployed and later remarried. He was never able to help police his missing wife and died in the late '90s. He had met Lucy Johnson, who is of First Nations descent and from Skagway, Alaska, while working on a tug boat as a first mate. The two married in Washington in 1954 and soon after moved to Surrey.
As Linda Evans went on to have children and grandchildren of her own, her curiousity about what exactly had happened to her mother grew stronger. She scoured the internet for information and sent tips to as many places as she could.
"[She] went above and beyond to promote and try to generate tips all over B.C., actually somehow connected with a step-sister who she did not know she had at the time," Corporal Bert Paquet, of Surrey Mounted Police, told CBC News. "We received a phone call from a woman in the Yukon who called and claimed that she had seen the picture of the missing person in the free newspapers and said the missing person we were looking for was actually her mother. The stars aligned, the timing was perfect."
Evans said that despite being abandoned, she does not hold any grudges against her mother, and is instead eager to see her again and introduce her to her own children and grand-children.
"I just hope I can be part of her life," she said. "I'll just give her a big hug and hope the words come easy."
Click here to see an old photo of Lucy Johnson, the mother who had been missing for over 50 years.
Source: Daily Mail
