After police found a body in a black steamer trunk in Florida 53 years ago, the mystery of the “trunk lady” captured the public's attention. Using DNA evidence, police have now identified the victim as Sylvia June Atherton, a mother of five from Arizona.
On Halloween 1969, St. Petersburg police were called to a wooded area behind what was then a restaurant named the Oyster Bar, Assistant Chief Michael Kovacsev said at a news conference Tuesday. He said two children reported seeing two White men in a pickup truck unload the trunk in the field and leave. When the officers opened the trunk, they found a woman’s body, wrapped in a large plastic bag, police said in a statement.
” Gates was about 5 years old when her mother left Tucson for Chicago in 1965, she said. Police said Atherton left with her husband, Stuart Brown, and three of her children: Kimberly Anne Brown, adult son Gary Sullivan and adult daughter Donna Lindhurst – along with Lindhurt’s husband David Lindhurst. Gates and her 11-year-old brother stayed in Tucson with their father, Atherton’s ex-husband. “We thought we would hear from them at some time, but life goes on. I was young,” Gates said.
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