On July 16, 1980, Dale Nancy Wyman left her Ottawa-area home with a suitcase full of her belongings, took a taxi to a Greyhound bus station and vanished. She didn’t say where she was going and her family had no idea where to look.
More than four decades later, a woman from Ohio contacted Wyman’s siblings, who had never stopped looking for her. She had seen a video of Wyman’s younger sister, Brenda Larche, asking for information to help the family find peace and closure, and realized the woman Larche was looking for was her mother.
Wyman built a life in Ohio, had a family, and had died only a couple of months earlier.
“When they sent me the pictures, I almost fell over. There was no doubt in my mind it was Dale Wyman,” said private investigator Linda Davidson.
Ottawa police published a news release on Wednesday saying Wyman’s case had been resolved after someone came forward to report she had been living outside Canada and recently died. Police declined to comment further.
Davidson got involved in the missing persons case around three years ago. The retired RCMP officer is now the director of MUCCI, which stands for Murdered Unidentified Cold Case Investigations. It’s a group of mostly retired police officers and investigators who dedicate their time to trying to solve cold cases.
