Patricia Howard disappeared in 1980.
Forty-four years is a long time for a family to wait. Forty-four years wondering. Forty-four years searching for answers.
Patricia’s brother, Rodger Howard, never relinquished hope for closure about what happened to his sister, and the time took a toll. His life went on during those 44 years, working as a TV news cameraman in Southern California and living in Westlake Village. But he always recalled Patricia’s loving personality, her perfectionism, her impeccable handwriting — and he deeply wished his kids had gotten the chance to know her.
It was one of Rodger’s children, Danielle, who had been too young to remember her aunt and who took on the quest to find out what happened to Patricia. Danielle didn’t take on the daunting task for herself, but for her father. And she was persistent.
Thanks to Danielle’s commitment, the involvement of the FBI, and DNA testing — and a detailed rendering of a long-dead corpse as Patricia may have looked while alive, the 44 years of searching are over. The Howard family has found Patricia and they’ve found closure.
There are more than 25,000 open missing persons cases in the United States. Patricia Howard was one such case. But she was also a loving sibling, a hard worker and a30-year-oldwoman who lived a tragically short life.
“Danielle is the hero of this story and if she hadn’t pursued this, we would have never known what had happened,” said Rodger, 71. “And I hope Pat knows we didn’t forget about her.”
The saga of Patricia Howard’s disappearance began when she moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1980 after living in Los Angeles for most of her life.
A chiropractor, Patricia left in search of job opportunities and a lower cost of living. She moved in with a friend in Atlanta and her family in L.A thought everything was fine.
But then her father got a call. Patricia somewhat frantically asked for money to help pay her bills, so he went to Western Union and sent the money to her.
She never picked it up.
Patricia had no history of mental illness or drug use, according to Rodger. “She was really great. She always had a clean room, not like me at all. She never took drugs, never smoked, never did anything like that,” he said.
As the days passed, Patricia’s family grew worried. Her father called the local police in Atlanta, who opened a missing persons case. Eventually, the police found her car, which had been impounded. But no further news came in, so her father flew out to Georgia.
“He stayed for a few days, and there was no sign of her,” Rodger recalled. “(The authorities) assured him that they were doing everything they could. He came home and we never heard anything. I don’t know what made him say this, but he said he felt like she was dead. I don’t know why.”
Eventually, her disappearance became a cold case. The years went on, and Patricia and Rodger’s father died. But the questions lingered.
“I couldn’t imagine what it’s like to have a child or a family member and not know what happened to them or where they are,” said Rodger’s daughter Danielle, 46.
Thirteen years after Patricia disappeared, a construction crew found human remains in the forest where they were clearing out trees and brush to build new homes in Marietta, a suburb of Atlanta.
The remains found in 1993 had decomposed and all that was left was a skeleton and a few bits of jewelry.
It was Patricia. But no one knew it.
According to the local police, no foul play was suspected but the specific cause of death was unclear. The Marietta police worked to publicize their findings, hoping to locate the family of the deceased. A sketch artist drew a representation of what her face could have looked like — every centimeter of her lips, cheeks, eyes and warm smile.
The news and the sketch spread locally, but the rendering of her face did not make it to Los Angeles. Rodger and his family remained in the dark, wondering, waiting and hoping.
“They used forensic technology to reconstruct what she may have looked like,” Rodger said. When he finally saw the detailed sketch years later, he said,“I was astounded by how accurate they were.”
As Danielle grew up, she saw the pain that Patricia’s disappearance had caused her father in each story he told about her.
“Not knowing her and not knowing where she was, it kind of left this hole,” Danielle said. “Every time I looked back at pictures, everyone kept telling me how much I looked like her.”
Danielle took up the search for Patricia. She made calls, she asked around and she tried to piece the story together. Once the internet became widely-used, she spent hours poring over thousands of missing persons photos from across Georgia on the medical examiner’s website. But she didn’t have any luck.
In 2017, Danielle heard about genealogy websites like Ancestry.com. Not knowing what to expect, she signed up. She took a DNA test, and got nothing but dead ends.
Back in Georgia, the Marietta Police Department had received a grant to investigate cold cases. The local detectives used DNA investigative techniques pioneered by the FBI to search for answers to their long-unsolved mysteries.
In 2022, Danielle got a call from a detective in Marietta. The police had identified Danielle’s DNA test as a possible familial match to the remains they had found 29 years ago in 1993.
“It was really surreal,” Danielle said. “You never expect that call. We always thought she was going to show up one day, and we hoped she just was out enjoying her life. Then, you get that call and it closes that chapter, but it opens a whole new set of questions of what happened.”
The detective asked for a sample of her father’s DNA to verify the match. Rodger sent his swab in and for more than a year he waited as the FBI worked to confirm the reality — the remains were his sister’s.
“We just kept wondering, when are we going to get some finality here?” Rodger said.
Danielle and Rodger finally heard from the FBI in January 2024, who told them the remains found in the woods were identified as Patricia Howard’s.
The FBI shipped Patricia’s remains to Rodger, and the family held an emotional burial in San Fernando where his mother was also buried.
Closure, after 44 years.
Patricia Howard’s family is not alone in their story, with DNA investigation becoming more and more common to help solve the thousands of cold cases in the United States.
Akil Davis, the FBI’s assistant director in charge at the Los Angeles Division, said that DNA investigative techniques “can give hope to families of people who went missing or were murdered, that we can bring justice or shed some light on what happened.”
The L.A. division of the FBI was one of the first offices to use DNA-matching eight years ago when the office helped investigate the case of the Golden State Killer, a serial murderer and rapist who was finally identified and caught based on his DNA.
“It really is cutting edge and it can help point us in the right direction,” Davis said of DNA matching. “We typically use (DNA) to create a list of leads. If you think of a needle in a haystack, this technology allows us to narrow it down to a needle in a needle stack.”
Rodger Howard said he hopes the DNA tools that helped his family can help others too.
“There’s always an answer,” he said. “You might not like it, but you need to find it. You can’t forget about them, and if they’re out there, one way or another, you need to know.”
Originally Published:
