Yahoo Sports Florida Police Identify Slain ‘Trunk Lady’ as Mom Missing Since 1969
They called her the Trunk Lady.
She was found in 1969 in a steamer trunk in the woods behind the Oyster Bar in St. Petersburg, Florida. She had been strangled with a bolo tie and was wearing only a pajama top.
On Halloween day, two kids saw a pickup truck roll up and two men haul out the trunk and dump it. Detectives called to the site opened the black trunk and found what would become a five-decade mystery.
Newspapers and TV stations did stories on the Trunk Lady in hopes of shaking loose a clue that would lead to her identity and the name of her killer, but nothing ever materialized and the case went cold.
But on Tuesday, police announced they had finally solved at least one part of the case.
“After 53 years, the Trunk Lady finally has a name,” Assistant Chief Mike Kovacsev said, identifying her as Sylvia June Atherton, a remarried mother of five who vanished from Chicago when she was 41.
The break came the way so many other cold cases have been solved in the last few years—with advances in DNA testing and genealogical sleuthing.
Police exhumed the Trunk Lady in 2010, but found the DNA on her remains was too degraded to provide any useful information. Then last year, a detective found an original tissue sample from the autopsy, including a hair sample that had never been tested.
That was turned over to a private lab that works with cold-case investigators. It obtained a DNA profile from the sample and followed the genetic road map to create a family tree.
Police contacted one of the people believed to be Trunk Lady’s children, Syllen Gates, and learned that her mother had disappeared.
“We had no idea what happened to her,” Gates told WFLA.
According to Florida cops, Atherton lived in Tucson, Arizona, with her five children but left for Chicago in 1965 with her second husband, Stuart Brown, and three of the children—two daughters and her adult son.
Brown died in Las Vegas in 1999 without ever reporting his wife’s absence; he did not list her on a bankruptcy filing before his death. Police also said the steamer trunk belonged to the couple.
“There are still unanswered questions in this case. Who killed Sylvia Atherton?” St. Petersburg police said in a press release. “Also, the other two children who left for Chicago with Sylvia, little Kimberly, and 20-year-old Donna Lindhurst, haven’t been located and they may have additional information regarding the case.”
Kovacsev said the department is hoping someone comes forward with more information about the case that will help tie up the loose ends.
“We may not always be able to bring an arrest forward but we need to show we care,” he said.
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