Found Deceased OH - Anita Drake, 15, Louisville, 15 Oct 1963

SheWhoMustNotBeNamed

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Anita Kay Drake

Endangered Missing from Louisville, Ohio since October 15, 1963

Age: 15 -- Height: 5'4" -- Weight: 110 lbs -- Hair Color: Light Brown -- Eye Color: Brown

Anita has a mole one inch below her lower lip.



Anita was last seen in Louisville, Ohio on October 15, 1963, which was her 15th birthday. She left to walk to a nearby soda fountain that afternoon and was never seen again. Her loved ones initially thought she ran away, but no longer believe this to be true.



NamUs

Charley Project
 
Family hopes DNA can find Anita Drake after 50 years

Anita Drake may be celebrating her 64th birthday Monday — or her life may have ended a half century ago.

[snip]

Four of her 11 siblings still living are allowing lab technicians from Fort Worth, Texas, to take saliva samples, hoping their DNA will enable investigators to determine whether remains found in Delaware — or anywhere else — are Anita’s.

[snip]

Roger Drake and Linda Boyd both recalled that, following Anita’s disappearance, their mother received a phone call — every Christmas Day for five years.

The caller never said a word.

“Mom always thought that it was Anita,” Roger Drake said.

Leonard Drake doesn’t believe it was.

“I believe that someone killed her and they’re now deceased. The telephone calls, I think, were made by the perpetrator themselves,” he said. He believes Anita’s killer was simply trying to cover his tracks, calling their mother in an attempt to make her believe Anita was still alive.
 
A very sad story. Unfortunately, there are so few details given here and maybe that's just because there is so little known. Was it ever determined if Anita ever made it to the soda fountain, anyone see her there that day or see her talking to anyone along the way, etc.? I wonder how long those Christmas Day telephone calls were that her mother received? Certainly this was long before any kind of caller ID, but was there ever any attempt to trace them during that five-year time frame?
 
I also thought of that Delaware UID...I hope DNA can help solve this disappearance.

Wonder why her family initially thought she'd run away.
 
I also thought of that Delaware UID...I hope DNA can help solve this disappearance.

Wonder why her family initially thought she'd run away.

I, too, wonder why her family initially thought she'd run away. They describe her as going through a "rebellious" phase, per her Charley Project entry, but rebellious means different things. If we could find out the ways in which they felt she was rebelling, we might be able to brainstorm ideas.

This is part one of a two part blog feature on Anita's disappearance within the context of Oct 1963:
http://seanmunger.com/2014/02/11/october-1963-a-prologue-to-anita-drakes-story/

so frustrating that there's NOTHING on her!!!
 

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I found a Google book that had a little more information on her disappearance.

Not much new info but we already had that someone claimed she was working under the name Nancy Woods at a jc Penney store in Columbus after she went missing. This book adds that Anita had "fictitious friends" named Ann Billings and Nancy Woods. It also says that the person who reported this tip was the person who had hired her, or at least that was who they claimed to be.

There is also a mention of one of Anita's siblings stating he was sure he had seen her himself at a nearby bowling alley, and that when he looked at her she immediately turned around and walked away. He tried to chase her but lost sight of her.

Lastly, it says while Anita had been babysitting her sister's child and visiting her sister, she had answered a phone call which turned out to be a wrong number. Apparently the caller was a young man and they chatted for awhile. He told Anita that he was traveling with a hypnotist from California. She told her parents about this call when she got home and said she was going to meet him, but nobody knows if she ever did.

Here is the link
https://books.google.com/books?id=U...=0ahUKEwiRsYeKve_OAhVERyYKHQsJDfY4ChDoAQgqMAc
 
The part about Anita having fictitious friends is intriguing. That could be a sign of schizophrenia or some other form of mental illness. Shizophrenia often surfaces during the teenage years. It's difficult to discount the possibility that she might have run away. If the Christmas phone calls were from her, she may have died or been institutionalized during the twelve-month period following the last call.
 
You could very well be right about the mental illness. I hadn't really thought of that possibility. The fictitious friends seemed to me as a possible explanation she would give her parents of who she was going out with if she was actually meeting a boy.

I had really not thought much about the possible sighting of her working at jc Penney under the name Nancy Woids but now knowing Anita had used that exact name for a fictitious friend, it seems more likely that it was her. This was 2 years after she went missing.

Maybe she really was a runaway and she was living as Nancy Woods. Would she have needed an SSN to work at that time? I'm thinking she would have and a big company like JC Penney wouldn't be paying someone under the table.

There is no way to be sure that the person who said they'd hired her was authentic, it could have been someone else trying to deceive investigators, I wonder if the person who reported that tip was confirmed to work at JC Penney. From the book, it seems that the family went to the JC Penney looking for her and didn't find her or any Nancy Woods but I'm not sure if police ever went there.

It did say the police file on her disappearance was only 2 pages.
 
If I were LE, I would be searching OH and KY involuntary commitment records from 1967--1970 for anyone named Nancy Woods or Ann Billings.

As for a social security number, I'm certain she could have supplied a fake one. There wouldn't have been any verification during that era.
 
drake_anita.jpg

Anita Kay Drake

Endangered Missing from Louisville, Ohio since October 15, 1963

Age: 15 -- Height: 5'4" -- Weight: 110 lbs -- Hair Color: Light Brown -- Eye Color: Brown

Anita has a mole one inch below her lower lip.



Anita was last seen in Louisville, Ohio on October 15, 1963, which was her 15th birthday. She left to walk to a nearby soda fountain that afternoon and was never seen again. Her loved ones initially thought she ran away, but no longer believe this to be true.



NamUs

Charley Project


Anita Drake was not murdered, she was a runaway. I have proof and have been in contact with the Stark County sheriff's office and with the surviving members of the Drake family to put this mystery to bed. I am not going to release any details publicly until the relatives I've talked to have had a chance to talk to the rest of the family, but I will say she lived out her life, and while it was short, it was secure and comfortable, and she was surrounded by people she loved and who loved her very much.
 
Please come back and tell us her story when you can. So nice to hear that someone wasn't abducted and murdered for a change.
 
Sorry to hear her life was short, but as long as it was secure, that makes me feel better. A "successful" runaway, I guess.
 
I am guessing this is what the post upthread was talking about:

http://www.cantonrep.com/news/20161114/stark-woman-missing-for-more-than-50-years---or-was-she

Stark woman missing for more than 50 years - or was she?

Anita Drake, 15, left her Nimishillen Township home in October 1963, never to return.

It is the oldest unsolved missing-persons case at the Stark County Sheriff's Office. And it soon may be officially solved 53 years later.

A woman from Minnesota believes Anita Drake was her mother and she's taking steps that could answer many unresolved questions about Anita's life and her connection to Stark County.
 
Anita Drake was not murdered, she was a runaway. I have proof and have been in contact with the Stark County sheriff's office and with the surviving members of the Drake family to put this mystery to bed. I am not going to release any details publicly until the relatives I've talked to have had a chance to talk to the rest of the family, but I will say she lived out her life, and while it was short, it was secure and comfortable, and she was surrounded by people she loved and who loved her very much.

Please be very careful with your moms cancer. Do whatever research you can to find the best place to deal with it.
 
I'm glad she got to live a happy life somewhere else.
 
Does anyone know the outcome of the DNA test? I didn't find any information when I googled.
 

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