Girl Who Vanished Without a Trace 50 Years Ago Found Alive and Well

A woman who disappeared in 1972 at age 16 has just resurfaced 50 years later. According to LBC, Sheila Fox was discovered safe and sound elsewhere in the U.K. after a new appeal from police. The search was sparked after a photo of Fox from the time of her disappearance was uncovered.

“We’re absolutely delighted to have found Sheila after more than five decades. We searched through every piece of evidence we could find and managed to locate a photo of Sheila,” Detective Sergeant Jenna Shaw said. “We are a small team of officers and I’d like to recognise the work of DC Shaun Reeve, who managed to resolve this case with help from the public. Every missing person has a story, and their families and friends deserve to know what happened to them and, hopefully, be reunited with them.”

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Fox’s family claimed to have kept an “open mind” on her disappearance over the years. At the time, police believed she had been in a relationship with an older man.

Funny enough, this discovery might actually be a slice of delayed reaction by the police. As it turns out, the family already had reconnected with Fox back in the 1980s and got a good chuckle from the renewed police search.

“When it came on the news that police were issuing a new appeal after 52 years, we all had a good laugh and I’m not sure who put them right,” Rob Kevin told The Daily Mail. Kevin is Fox’s cousin.

“She got back in touch with her family in the 1980s. But by then the whole family had moved to Canada…I’m a bit surprised to see them [West Midlands Police] patting themselves on the back for the investigation,” Kevin told Mail Online. “We all thought at the time that her parents would have informed the police that she’d been found, but who knows? Maybe they did and the message got lost in the records.”