In the spring of 1985, a 23-year-old woman named Deborah Lois Dean began a cross-country journey that would end in a mystery that has endured for decades. Having visited a friend in Pennsylvania, Deborah, also known as Deb or Debbie, was making her way back to her home in Tucson, Arizona, via a Greyhound bus. Her trip was seemingly uneventful until she reached St. Louis, Missouri. From there, she made a phone call to a family member in Tucson, confirming she had made it that far on her travels. This phone call would be the last time her family ever heard from her. Though her family believes she may have continued her bus journey towards Tulsa and then Oklahoma City, she never arrived at her intended destination in Phoenix, Arizona, where her family was anxiously waiting to pick her up.
The weeks and months following Deborah's last known contact with her family only deepened the mystery surrounding her disappearance.
In a strange turn of events, her single piece of luggage continued its journey without her, traveling all the way to Los Angeles before being sent back to her family. Even more perplexingly, her purse was discovered at a truck-stop cafe along the Greyhound route just outside of St. Louis. After going unclaimed, the purse was mailed to her address in Tucson in August of 1985. An examination of her returned belongings revealed a crucial and unsettling detail: neither her prescription eyeglasses nor her contact lenses were inside. This was a significant finding, as Deborah relied on them for her vision.
Deborah was a young woman with several distinguishing features. She had thick brown hair that was curly when short and wavy when long, and striking blue eyes. A childhood illness had left her with a unique physical trait; medication she took for asthma as a baby had given her teeth a permanent greenish hue. She had piercings in both of her earlobes, with several additional piercings in the upper part of one ear, and a scar on the third finger of her right hand. The investigation into her disappearance is being handled by both the Tucson Police Department and the St. Louis Police Department. The overview of her case remains a collection of troubling and unanswered questions. She was a young woman on a long bus ride home who made a routine call to her family and then vanished. The scattered recovery of her personal belongings, with the conspicuous absence of her necessary eyewear, suggests that her journey was unexpectedly and perhaps violently interrupted, leaving her loved ones to wonder what became of her after she left St. Louis.Last Seen: May 3, 1985
