• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Missing Old Lady (Margie Dabney; 2001)

A

Anonymous

Guest
"I'VE long believed that the rings around Saturn are composed entirely of
bits of luggage lost at airports, but my copy of the soaraway Bangkok Post
tells me that American Airlines (whose safety record in recent years has
been dire) have gone one better. They've lost a passenger. It's true. Margie
Dabnie (an old lady suffering from Alzheimer's) was lost on December 5 in
Dallas (the airline's HQ) and, to the disgust of many, is still missing
three months later.

"We don't know whether we will take any responsibility for it," said their
press officer. Well, I suppose it's just another lost old bag to American
Airlines."

Source: Victor Lewis-Smith, The Mirror
 
Someone suffering from Alzheimer's shouldn't be travelling unaccompanied so whoever sent her on a plane alone is responsible. As you can't tell from looking at a person if they have the disease, staff wouldn't have known.

Are we sure the airline has 'lost' her? I wonder if something more sinister has happened. Maybe the family tired of her and dumped her (or worse), conveniently blaming the notoriously inefficient airline.
This 'granny-dumping' does go on in the US.

Here in the UK a few years ago, a car was famously 'stolen' from outside a newsagent's shop. In the back was an infant with Down's Syndrome. The car was found, minus Junior, and her carrycot later washed up on a beach. She was never seen again and her parents were found guilty of her murder. They just didn't want her any more and had arranged to 'lose' her.
 
escargot said:
Here in the UK a few years ago, a car was famously 'stolen' from outside a newsagent's shop. In the back was an infant with Down's Syndrome. The car was found, minus Junior, and her carrycot later washed up on a beach. She was never seen again and her parents were found guilty of her murder. They just didn't want her any more and had arranged to 'lose' her.
In that incident, there was enough circumstantial evidence to prove that the parents (or the father at least) actually had killed the child, disposed of the body in the coal-supply of a nearby power station, then invented the whole 'stolen child' story. It wasn't a "baby-dumping".
 
I didn't say it was a 'baby-dumping'. The incident sprang to mind because the child was claimed to be lost/stolen when she was already dead. It is surely even harder to misplace an adult woman who is known to be mentally incapable. I smell a rat.
 
I had expected from the title that this thread was going
to suggest that the Queen Mother had been transported
Calisto-like into space and become a new ring around
Saturn. :)
 
Another case, apparently the one above was never solved and an out of court settlement reached. One could cynically consider a scheme where you attempt to lose a dependent relative and gain a few million to the bargain.... nah, surely not:

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Delta Air Lines lost an 80-year-old man with Alzheimer's disease who was supposed to have been given an escort between flights in the Atlanta airport, his relatives said.

Antonio Ayala disappeared Monday after his flight landed and he was not found until nearly 24 hours later, near a bus station in downtown Atlanta, several miles from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

Police took him to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he was undergoing dialysis treatment Wednesday for a kidney ailment and was listed in good condition, officials said.

Family members said Ayala could have gone into a coma without dialysis.

Delta spokeswoman Peggy Estes said the airline was not told of Ayala's medical condition and it cannot be held responsible for the whereabouts of every adult passenger.

Ayala was flying from New York's LaGuardia airport to El Paso, Texas, and had to change planes in Atlanta.

"He was supposed to be escorted from one plane to another and it never happened," said Ayala's granddaughter, Cecilia Flowers of El Paso, Texas.

Delta officials said the airline is investigating but would not elaborate.

"We are working very closely with the family and we are very pleased the family has been reunited," Delta spokeswoman Peggy Estes said.

The airline flew Ayala's relatives to Atlanta and housed them in a hotel while they waited for him to be released from the hospital.

"He's just glad that I'm here," Ayala's son, Antonio Ayala Jr., said at the hospital. "He told me, 'I've been crying a lot,' but he can't recall what events" happened.

It is not the first time that a person with Alzheimer's has been lost by an airline. In 2001, Margie Dabney, 70, became separated from her husband during an American Airlines stopover at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Dabney was never found. Last year, her husband, Joe Dabney, agreed to an undisclosed settlement with American Airlines. He had sought $10 million.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/03/17/delta.lost.passenger.ap/index.html
 
A side incidnet on the first case was that they found part of a human skull near the airport where they lost her - it turned out not to be her:

Part of human skull found near creek bed

Investigators treating case as homicide


05:55 PM CST on Saturday, March 6, 2004

By LaKISHA LADSON / The Dallas Morning News

City employee Roy Cooper has found many things in his 10 years walking Irving streets and water banks: trash, washing machines, animal carcasses.

On Wednesday morning near Belt Line Road and Cabell Drive in North Irving, he and two other employees found something else: a portion of a human skull.

Irving police came to the scene, and Dallas County medical examiners are investigating the remains.

As of late Friday, authorities had not determined the age or sex of the person.

There was no sign of trauma to the skull, but Irving police are classifying it as a homicide to speed the investigation process.

"It just tells you that whoever it was, wasn't hit in the head," said Officer David Tull, the department's public information officer. "We will treat it as a homicide until we know different."

The skull was found about 20 feet from a dry creek bed, Officer Tull said.

"It had been where it was for quite some time," he said.

Since authorities found no other remains after searching the area, they believe an animal left the skull in the wooded spot near Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Mr. Cooper and others wonder whether the skull is that of Margie Dabney. Ms. Dabney, an Alzheimer's patient, has been missing from the airport since December 2001. She was 70 years old.

Authorities have ruled out Ms. Dabney. The skull was found with teeth, and Ms. Dabney had none, Officer Tull said.

Irving authorities are waiting for medical examiners to report before further trying to identify the remains.

No adult foul play/missing-persons cases are being investigated, although the department works several runaway teenager cases at any given time, Officer Tull said.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/irving/stories/030704dnirvskull.b534a.html


Posted on Wed, Mar. 03, 2004


Human skull found in northwest Irving

By Domingo Ramirez Jr.

Star-Telegram Staff Writer


IRVING -- A human skull was found Wednesday morning in an undeveloped area of northwest Irving near Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, police said.

No other remains were found at the scene near Belt Line Road and Cabell Drive, police said.

Authorities could not immediately determine gender or age.

A street department employee found the skull about 9:30 a.m. in a heavily wooded area, said David Tull, an Irving Police Department spokesman.

The employee immediately contacted police, who cordoned off the area. Irving patrol officers and officials with the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office searched the area for evidence for most of the morning.

"We didn't find anything else," Tull said, adding that there were no signs of clothing or any type of identification in the area.

There were no obvious signs of trauma to the skull, which was taken to the medical examiner's office for evaluation, Tull said.

Investigators said the skull was not that of Margie Louise Dabney, 70, who disappeared from the airport in December 2001. Dabney, who had Alzheimer's disease, disappeared during a layover from an American Airlines flight.

Irving police said they had no recent reports of missing people in the city.

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/8096506.htm

but it does make one wonder: If you started digging around would stuff like this start turning up? I have always wondered when watching stuff like CSI. Out detritus are palimpsets of years of living and I'm sure if they searched the average home they'd find blood and stange stuff around (I do hope this isn't just my house ;) ) and eliminating this in any investigation must be a nightmare.

Emps
 
Margie Dabney's remains were eventually found in 2008, some 15 miles away from the airport. She'd been murdered. It would not be until mid-2009 that the remains were identified as Ms. Dabney.

Police Investigate 7-Year Missing Woman Mystery
Remains identified as missing Alzheimer's victim
Published at 3:49 AM CDT on Jul 17, 2009

Police say remains found near Lake Lewisville have been identified as an elderly woman with Alzheimer's disease who disappeared from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in 2001.

The remains are of 70-year-old Margie Dabney.

Lewisville police Capt. Kevin Deaver said Monday that they were notified Friday of the remains being identified by DNA.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office found that Dabney suffered head trauma and ruled the death a homicide. Police said her remains were found about 15 miles north of the airport.

While the skeletal remains were found a year ago, it wasn't until some of Dabney's personal belongings turned up in an adjacent field in October that police determined the remains might be hers.

The California woman disappeared while she and her husband were changing planes at DFW Airport. They were headed back home to California after visiting Indiana.

SOURCE: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Police-Solve-7-Year-Missing-Woman-Mystery.html
 
“The California woman disappeared while she and her husband were changing planes at DFW airport.”

I don’t understand. If she was accompanied by her husband then how is it the airline’s responsibility that she wandered off?

Thanks Enola for following up on all these old threads!!
 
I assume that the reason was (from one of the links above):

An escort was requested for her but failed to turn up at the gate when the plane landed.

It was then that she became separated from her husband, who is confined to a wheelchair.

So the airline (I take it) had agreed to supply assistance, and then that help didn't show up. If/when she wandered off, her wheelchair-bound husband couldn't keep track of her.
 
So it seems Mrs Dabney wandered off when she should have been met at the airport, then was murdered and dumped in a field.

One wonders what the motive could have been. She doesn't appear to have dripped with tempting diamonds or otherwise attracted unsavoury attention.
 
Back
Top