WA WA - Margaret Peters, 41, Seattle, 1962

Margaret Peters
Missing since 1962 from Seattle, King County, Washington.
Classification: Missing

Vital Statistics
Date Of Birth: August 31, 1921
Age at Time of Disappearance: 41 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'4"-5'5"; 110 lbs.
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Dark brown hair; brown eyes. Peters has tan/olive skin.
Medical Conditions: Alcoholic
AKA: Peggy

Circumstances of Disappearance

Peters was last seen by her daughter in the Seattle area during the Spring/Summer of 1962. When Christmas rolled around and she was not heard from, her children knew something must've happened to her. No matter where she went, she always called them at Christmas time.

Peters was an extreme alcoholic, and was dating a man in the Ballard area of Seattle when she was last heard from in 1962. The possibility exists that she may have returned to Nevada, where she lived from 1958-1961, however no one there associated with her at the time recalled seeing her. She has not been seen again.

Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact: The Doe Network

Source Information:
The Doe Network Case File 1264DFWA

Link:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1264dfwa.html

I wonder if this case might be related to that of the Mount Victoria Jane Doe found in Charles County, Maryland in January 1965?

Richard, I can't find anything on Mount Victoria Jane Doe. Could you point me in the right direction please? Thanks.

Richard, they found this skull in 1980, don't know if anything came of it, it wasn't the girl they were thinking it was...maybe it is one of these ladies from Washington....

http://www.katu.com/stories/83460.html

Didn't I see a post awhile back about a body found with cirrhosis of liver condition which would be one possible indicator of alcoholism? Now if I could only remember where I saw that one.

Edited to add:
I did a quick forum search and found the "Mount Victoria Jane Doe, 40-50, found 27 January 1965, Charles Co. MD" thread has one.
http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38219&highlight=cirrhosis

Stella said:

Richard, I can't find anything on Mount Victoria Jane Doe. Could you point me in the right direction please? Thanks.

Click to expand...

She is not in the Doenetwork site or any other sites that I know of. I put her case on this Cold Case Forum (see link in post above). I found her story in three newspaper clippings pasted into the pages of a scrapbook kept by the man who found the body. He had no further articles, other than the ones I posted. The man kept news articles on many different subjects, and was especially interested in keeping anything with his name mentioned.

I was pretty sure that he would have cut and pasted any updates in his scrapbooks, but there were none. Although there may have been further information published at some point, I have yet to find it. Perhaps one of you "Websleuths" who are familiar with newspaper searches might be able to find something further with a computer more advanced than mine.

The Doenetwork has a relatively few Missing Person Cases from the 1960's and earlier. This one was the only one which seemed to have some similarities. The dates might seem a bit far apart (missing person vs found Jane Doe) but I believe that the missing case was not reported until about 2002, so it is possible that some error has occurred over time.

Bumping case up. Here is an updated Doenetwork LINK:

http://doenetwork.org/cases/1264dfwa.html

It would be nice if there were more information about this case, such as:

How certain the family is of the disappearance/ last contact dates.

What was her maiden name?

Where did she come from?

Where is her family now? What was the history of her travels?

Who was this man she was seeing, and what became of him?

Is this case being pursed by law enforcement authorities in any specific jurisdiction?

Bumping Case Up...

Margaret Peters
Missing since 1962 from Seattle, King County, Washington.
Classification: Missing

Source:

The Doe Network: Case File 1264DFWA

LINK:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1264dfwa.html

Richard said:

Is this case being pursed by law enforcement authorities in any specific jurisdiction?

Click to expand...

Doubt it, people without a fixed address come and go all the time and it takes very long before police will consider one such individual as missing (see Robert Pickton's victims) especially in the Seattle area where vagrants frequently slip across the Canadian border to get to Vancouver which is also home to an extensive skid row subculture that is almost impossible to tell apart from that of Seattle. But Vancouver provides more social services to homeless alcoholics and junkies regardless of their citizenship status, making it an attractive place for the homeless of the whole Pacific Northwest area.These people usually don't carry ID papers and rarely use their real names so when one dies he/she is usually buried as a John/Jane Doe in a Vancouver cemetery.

The situation has been going on since the Depression of the 1930's and is growing along with Vancouver's near-prodigious population growth (it is now larger than Seattle) over the last 2 decades or so. I got this info from a documentary about "cities of the future" or something similar (it also included Houston and several other cities overseas). I believe it was on History Channel. If I recall well the figures mentioned that it was estimated that at least 30% of the homeless in Vancouver were US citizens, mostly from the Seattle and Portland areas. While a number of vagrants in other large cities in Canada are Americans the phenomenon to such a large scale is unique to Vancouver because it has mild snowless winters that doesn't force the homeless to seek shelter and risk getting caught and expelled from the country in short order. Shelters are often monitored by Immigration authorities which are quite more "expeditive" in Canada than they are here.

The above makes me think that Peters may have gone to Vancouver and either decided to stay there and not tell anyone for fear of being expelled, or that something may have happened to her in the sordid alleys of Vancouver's skid row area. This may explain the lack of info about her after she vanished, Perhaps someone should probe Vancouver police records and see if it leads anywhere. It's a long shot obviously, I imagine many unidentified vagrants die every year in that city, but since everything else failed...

KarlK said:

...in the Seattle area where vagrants frequently slip across the Canadian border to get to Vancouver which is also home to an extensive skid row subculture that is almost impossible to tell apart from that of Seattle. ...
...The above makes me think that Peters may have gone to Vancouver and either decided to stay there and not tell anyone for fear of being expelled, or that something may have happened to her in the sordid alleys of Vancouver's skid row area. This may explain the lack of info about her after she vanished, Perhaps someone should probe Vancouver police records and see if it leads anywhere. It's a long shot obviously, I imagine many unidentified vagrants die every year in that city, but since everything else failed...

Click to expand...

You make some good observations and suggestions. Although the Doenetwork case file mentions that Margaret Peters was an Alcoholic, it does not state that she was homeless, or that she had frequented skid row areas. The problem is that the narrative about her is very sparse with details. I have sent a number of inquiries to them for further information, but none has been forthcoming.

The Mount Victoria Jane Doe found in Charles County, Maryland is a very good possibility, but without more information on Margaret Peters, nothing can be done to pursue it. If any connections could be made between Margaret and persons in Maryland around and before 1965, it might provide the links needed to pursue the cases.

Margaret's disappearance may well have been a situation in which she went "underground" without an ID card, but still, the family must have more information which could help investigators.

Bumping case up.

It has been 49 years and Margaret Peters is still missing. She would be 90 years old now.

Margaret has been missing for 50 years now. The exact date she went missing is not known, but she was last seen in Spring or Summer of 1962.

Margaret Peters
Missing since 1962 from Seattle, King County, Washington.
Classification: Missing

Vital Statistics

Date Of Birth: August 31, 1921
Age at Time of Disappearance: 41 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'4"-5'5"; 110 lbs.
Distinguishing Characteristics: White female. Dark brown hair; brown eyes. Peters has tan/olive complexion.
Medical Conditions: Alcoholic
AKA: Peggy

Circumstances of Disappearance

Peters was last seen by her daughter in the Seattle area during the Spring/Summer of 1962. When Christmas rolled around and she was not heard from, her children knew something must have happened to her.

No matter where she went, she always called them at Christmas time.

Peters was an extreme alcoholic, and was dating a man in the Ballard area of Seattle when she was last heard from in 1962.

The possibility exists that she may have returned to Nevada, where she lived from 1958-1961, however no one there associated with her at the time recalled seeing her.

She has not been seen again.

Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:

The Doe Network
E-Mail: doenetadminteam@gmail.com

Source Information:

The Doe Network: Case File 1264DFWA

LINK:

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1264dfwa.html

Bumping case up...

Something to consider, for what it's worth, is the fact that Seattle was hosting a World's Fair at the time of Margaret Peters' disappearance.

Bumping this case up. Margaret Peters is still missing after 55 years.

Bumping.

Still missing