3 Decades Old Cold Cases That Perplex Me

I have a website that I use to profile missing person cases and unidentified people. I have operated the website for about five years but my interest in such mysteries goes back further. It mainly started as a teenager when I took an interest in forensic television shows.

I have gravitated toward cases that are forty years old or more recent, believing that they are the ones that are most likely to be solved. However, from time to time I have not been able to help but look at older and colder cases. These are three old and cold cases that stand out in my memory.

Paula Jean Welden Missing for 75 Years

Something happened to Paula Jean Welden on December 1st, 1946 that, at the time of writing, has not yet been traced. The then 18-year old student at Bennington College in Vermont left her home after telling her roommate, a young woman named Elizabeth Johnson, that she was going to hike a trail known as The Long Trail. Many others besides Elizabeth would see Welden that day but no one has seen her since December 1st, 1946. At the time of writing, the 75th anniversary of her disappearance is on the horizon.

My guess on what happened to Paul Jean Welden is that got lost while hiking. A plausible enough competing guess might hold that she was abducted. After all, she was known to have been hitchhiking that day, although she was spotted after exiting her driver's vehicle.

Paula Jean Welden, according to my research, was lost from the get-go. According to witnesses that saw her on December 1st, 1946, she was reliant on directions just to find the trail. When I examined this case in 2020, I found that she was still receiving directions to The Long Trail even as dusk quickly approached. My thoughts on her disappearance are that she got lost and in the resulting panic that night, she only went further and further into the forest due to disorientation. I think she would have tried to find a spot that felt safe, even off-trail, and that she then possibly perished  in the cold December night in a little bit of a hiding spot.

Beverly Sharpman Missing for 74 Years

Beverly Sharpman's case is one that has grabbed my attention on plenty of nights. This high school student disappeared and was last seen in Philadelphia on September 11th, 1947. The 74th anniversary of her disappearance, at time of writing, is nearing.

Sharpman's case details include a telegram that was sent from a train station. It read "Got married. Leaving town. Will not be back." If you don't question the authenticity of that telegram, then it seems like she meant business with the last sentence.

Questions with this case are aplenty. Firstly, why did Beverly Sharpman register for her senior year of high school the morning of September 11th, 1947 if she was running away that night? My suggestion is that she didn't want anything to seem amiss but that's just speculation.

Another question is what did she want to tell her mother the evening before she disappeared? Beverly appeared to have something to say to her mother, perhaps something difficult, but Beverly decided to keep quiet about what she had to say.

The question of the ages with this case is one that could crack it wide open. The telegram said she "Got married." Assuming she was telling the truth, then where is Beverly Sharpman's marriage certificate? I know I've spent hours combing through the records that you find at Ancestry looking for it but it has been to no avail. My efforts lead me to believe that it was not straightforward for a 17-year old (ie. a minor) to get married in Pennsylvania in 1947. I remember seeing other married records involving minors where parental consent was required.

This, in itself, brings a lot of questions into play. What options were there for a 17-year old to get married in 1947 without parental consent? How easy was it to assume a false identity?

With Sharpman's case, I've always thought that she really did leave town on her own volition. I think she married into a new name and was then able to live a life under a different identity, where no one ever connected her to the Beverly Sharpman missing person case precisely because she married into a new name -- somehow.

The Rahway County Jane Doe Unnamed Since 1887

Picture this scenario. Late one evening in March 1887, a young woman alights a train in Rahway, New Jersey. A short time later, she is murdered, a dog nearby in the darkness of night seems to be aware of the drama, and then four brothers find her the next morning. The resulting 'whodunit' and "Who is she?" stories are a coast-to-coast media hit and the details of the Rahway County Jane Doe story gets plenty of coverage. However, to this day she remains unnamed.

I looked at this case back in 2017. One angle I took that I hoped would lead to her identity was to search newspaper classifieds for someone that was looking for a missing person. Newspapers used to have a section where you could post information on someone you were trying to reconnect with. In fact, Beverly Sharpman's mother used such classfieds. 

What I hoped with the Rahway County Jane Doe was to find a classified advertisement where someone was looking for their friend, daughter, or wife who was last known to be traveling via train to New Jersey in March 1887 and has not been heard from since. I failed at that but this is a process that could be done over and over again as time goes by. That's because newspaper databases are constantly expanding.

I've always felt that the best chance for this case to be solved is just for a television network to take an interest in her case for nothing more than TV ratings. It would be a captivating hour-long television program to name a Jane Doe from the late 1800s using modern forensics, I think.