Colleen Wood's Disappearance - What Happened After the Unsolved Mysteries Episode?

By: Shane Lambert

If you watched an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries from Season 12 with Robert Stack and are now looking to see if the mysteries have been solved since the program's air date, then this article is for you. Firstly, Episode 12 of Season 12 originally aired on Wednesday, August 15th, 2001. The opening unsolved mystery has to do with Colleen Wood and her disappearance.

As regaled in the episode, Colleen met a man named John Paul and she quit her job as part of a plan to sail the world with him. However, Colleen was not heard from after December 2000. Furthermore, John Paul had a criminal record for attempted murder that Colleen likely did not know about. As of the end of the episode from 2001, Colleen's whereabouts were not known and John Paul was not named as a suspect in her disappearance. However, he too was missing with the episode suggesting that his disappearance was of a voluntary sort while Colleen's was not. Detectives had also ascertained that some $40,000 had been taken from Colleen's credit cards without her consent. Other sources place this amount at $38,000.

As of the publication date of this blog post (July 15th, 2024), Colleen Wood still has a missing person profile at NamUs, meaning she is still missing. Below are her details with more research afterward.

Missing Person's Name: Colleen Wood

Last contact: December 28th, 2000 (exact date not known according to one source)

Age when she disappeared: 53

Sex: Female

Height in inches: 62 which is 5'2"

Weight in pounds (lbs): 115

Ethnicity: White/Caucasian 

Hair color: Gray or partially gray 

Eye Color: Brown 

Scar or distinctive characteristic: Nothing

Birthdate: Not certain. But I think it is December 2nd or 7th, 1948. These different birthdates appear on her marriage licenses from two marriages.

Alias: Colleen Pascu (married and then divorced)

Family: Michael Tandarich (son), who seemed to be named after his father

Details from a government source (might be paraphrased): Wood was reported missing to Fort Lauderdale Police on April 16th, 2001. Her disappearance is considered to be extremely suspicious. 

Link to government source: https://www.namus.gov/MissingPersons/Case#/23600?nav

Photos: Several available at NamUs

Commentary and Research

Colleen's disappearance date with NamUs has to be taken with a grain of salt. Her friend, Maureen Canada, said that they spoke on the phone on December 13th or 14th in 2000. That conversation puts her in a bar in Key West, Florida.

There wasn't any journalism after the air date of the Unsolved Mysteries episode to update this matter. I do not think that there is any significant update in this case since that time. But readers will likely want to know that John Paul does have a Wikipedia page. According to that source, the women who withdrew money from Colleen Wood's credit card identified John Paul as the man who accompanied them. According to his Wikipedia page, he is still missing and would be in his mid-80s if alive today.

There were classified ads that were placed in local newspapers using Colleen's credit card. One of them was from December 16th, 2000. That was two to three days after Maureen Canada spoke with Colleen. I would think that John Paul's claimed last sighting of Colleen cannot be trusted. My guess is that Colleen died somehow between December 13th and December 16th.

Has Colleen Wood Been Found?

One investigative angle amateurs can help with has to do with the classified ads. I tried pulling key phrases from the ads and searching for them in online newspaper databases to see if the same or very similar ads appeared anywhere else in the world. If John Paul placed the ads and used the same wording for other ads, then there might be a lead on his whereabouts. If you have a membership to online newspaper databases, then you can try this on your own in addition to my efforts. The ads appear in the embedded YouTube video below.

John Paul and Colleen Wood. 12 Jun 2001, Tue The Miami Herald (Miami, Florida) Newspapers.com