Stevens’ Concord Hotel ID badge
MONTICELLO – The Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office Detective Division has solved the case of a woman who was missing for 42 years.
State Police at Monroe contacted the sheriff’s office on September 15 concerning a cold case they are working on. The case involved the recovery of skeletal remains in Orange County that roughly fit the profile of a woman reported missing in Sullivan County in 1975.
The file was recovered from the county’s archives with detectives reviewing it in an effort to determine if any living relatives may exist that could provide DNA for a possible match.
The missing woman, Flora (Florence) Stevens, who was 36 at the time of her disappearance on August 3, 1975, worked at the Concord Hotel. She had been dropped off by her husband for a doctor’s appointment at Community General Hospital, which was located in Monticello at that time. When her husband went back to pick her up, she had vanished.
The case went through periodic reviews over the years with no leads being developed.
Sheriff’s Detective Rich Morgan worked with the New York State Intelligence Center as well as federal, state and local agencies to access databases in an attempt to local possible relatives.
Morgan discovered someone was using Flora Stevens’ Social Security number in the state of Massachusetts. The number was tracked down to an assisted living residence in Lowell. Staff there confirmed the number belonged to Flora Harris, who had been there since 2001.
Stevens with Detectives Clouse and Morgan
Detectives Ed Clouse and Richard Morgan went to Lowell on October 24 to interview Flora Harris. During the interview, they confirmed that Flora Harris and the missing Flora Stevens were one in the same person.
Flora Harris, who is now 78, suffers from Dementia. Her medical records go back about 30 years, but are sketchy after that. She previously spent time in a nursing home in New Hampshire and St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital in New York City.
She was able to recognize her Concord Hotel employee photograph that detectives had found in the case file.
Undersheriff Eric Chaboty said because of her illness, it is still a mystery how and why she disappeared from Monticello in 1975 and where she went.
To date, no living relatives have been located.
