The MISSING Pattersons

pics from Herald Post archives at UTEP, graphic commissioned by Capstone Productions.

In March of 1957, a married couple who resided in El Paso, Texas suddenly “vanished.” No clue was left as to why and how they disappeared, even among their family and friends. In the proceeding years, the mystery of their disappearance grew into El Paso lore. Did the Patterson’s, who were business owners, have a double-life? Were they murdered? No one knows for sure to this very day. EP History has compiled newspaper articles from the El Paso Herald-Post, beginning with the first reports of the Patterson’s strange disappearance in 1957, to follow-up articles written in the mid-1960s. Those latter articles will be posted soon.

Below are many of the original Herald Post newspaper articles that came out starting in August of 1957. The Pattersons went missing on March 5, 1957, but nobody reported them missing until five months later. The Pattersons would go to Mexico monthly, and also took trips all of a sudden, so them missing was not really noticed for months.

It is a more than a weird disappearance. They left their wallets and her purse on their bedroom dresser, their pet cat was found wandering the neighborhood hungry and locked out, and Patterson associates had cleaned out the place and actually rented it out. Then the sheriff was notified. It was a closed case, but in the early 200os El Paso Sheriff Leo Samaniego re-opened it. It is still open today. Sheriff Samaniego said he thought, without proof, that the Pattersons were spies and ran afoul of their parent organization.

The MISSING Pattersons

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