More than three decades after mum Myrtle Brown vanished from an emergency room in Brooklyn, the mystery of her disappearance has finally been solved.
Brown was visiting her best friend in New York in 1990 when she had her purse stolen from her, with her epilepsy medication and identification inside it.
She told her family she wasn't feeling well and went to the ER at King’s County Hospital to get a refill of her medication, and after that her family never heard from her again.
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Speaking to NBC News about her mother's disappearance, Brown's daughter Eboney explained: “She ended up going by herself. And then that was the last moment, you know, we ever heard from her.”
Brown's family members spent weeks visiting local police stations and hospitals in a bid to find out what happened to her, but eventually Eboney, who was just 13 at the time, began to believe her mother had passed away.
Questions about Brown's disappearance remained unanswered for years, until April 2022, when her brother, Robert Brown, was watching a TV segment about the cold case squad at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner.
The segment included a picture on a missing person’s poster of a facial reconstruction, and Robert recognised the image possibly to be that of his long-lost sister.
"I said to myself, ‘Wow, I wonder if that could be her'," Robert recalled. He called the medical examiner's office, where Dr. Angela Soler, assistant director of forensic anthropology, began working on the case.
“I took a look at the reconstruction and noticed, OK, I’m probably looking for a middle-aged Black woman,” Soler said. “It all matched with what the family was telling us, and we were also informed that she went missing in May of 1990. So I knew exactly where to start my search.”
Soler spend two months looking over records of missing people or 'unverified unknowns' from around the time Brown disappeared, and finally uncovered a document she believed to be a match. The unidentified person in the recreation was not Brown, but the document found by Soler included information which matched what the family had told her about Brown.
The information included a date that Brown passed away, Soler explained, and she called Robert to announce that she finally had some answers.
Eboney said: “As soon as I saw the photo ... just, you know it, you knew it was her."
Brown, who was 35 at the time of her disappearance, suffered a seizure while waiting in the emergency room and sadly passed away. Three decades on, her family were finally able to hold a virtual memorial for their loved one and find peace in knowing what had happened to her.
Soler is now hoping the Browns' experience will encourage other families with missing loved ones to come forward.
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Emily Brown