Sylvia Helen Carlson, age 39, vanished from Santa Monica, California on December 12, 1977.
There are no details about the circumstances of her disappearance that I’ve been able to find anywhere.
Sylvia attended Mt. Holyoke High School, and Upsala College. It was in April 1959, during her junior year of college, that she became engaged.
She married Dr. Edmund Carlson in New Jersey 1960. The couple moved to California where Edmund Carlson headed up development programs for Claremont Colleges and Loyola Marrymount Universities.
Edmund remarried in 1982, five years after Sylvia’s disappearance, and died from Parkinson’s related issues in 2014.
His obituary states that Sylvia passed away prior to his second marriage. However, there are two divorce records for this couple in the California index. One is from 1982, clearly initiated by her husband, in order to be clear to remarry.
But there is an earlier filing, from 1975 – two years prior to her disappearance. Whether this earlier filing for divorce was ever completed is not known, but it is an indication of some trouble in the marriage.
Sylvia’s 1977 Ford Thunderbird was found in January 1978, at 1922 Penmar Drive in Venice, California. Police were told it had been there since mid-december 1977.
1922 Penmar Avenue now appears to be an apartment building, and sites like Zillow show it was built in 1985. It’s not clear what exactly was there back in 1977.
I wish we knew the circumstances of her disappearance. Was she separated from her husband and living alone? Dating someone else, perhaps? Did she live in Santa Monica, where she disappeared from, or in Venice, where all public records I’ve found show her then husband living?
It’s difficult to even have a clue of where to look, or for a possible witness to realize what they saw or heard was relevant, when even the basic circumstances have never been reported.
If alive, Sylvia would be 80 years old at the time of this writing.
Sources:
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Why does his obituary say she is dead and not the truth which is she is missing.How does he know she is dead?
Why does his obituary say she is dead and not the truth which is she is missing.How does he know she is dead?
It’s actually not all that unusual, when the person is believed to be deceased by whoever wrote the obituary. I see people listed as surviving or deceased quite often in obituaries, when the person is actually missing.
I found it odd that the obituary said he remarried after Sylvia’s passing when it appears she filed for divorce 2 years before her disappearance, though. It’s very possible that they decided not to divorce and he filed again after she went missing.
I am Sylvias daughter and can add a lot of information.
Thank you so much for commenting! I would love to do anything i can to assist, but there is virtually nothing to go on. So any information you can share would be wonderful.
Mainly I would like to know if anyone has any information or saw her on or around the day she went missing. My mother was the most wonderful person I’ve ever known and I’m the sole survivor of our immediate family. I was a teen and have lived my whole life missing her. I know what happened to her but I cannot possibly say in an email and it’s too difficult for me especially now since my Down syndrome sister Brenda just passed away. My father passed away six years ago. We never had any type of service or gravesite for her. She loved her family too much to leave us. People may be curious and like hearing stories but the families suffer beyond belief.