Sergii Kondrytskyi - stock.adobe.com- illustrative purposes only
A family in New Jersey has been heartbroken since a young mother of two left her sons with her mother to go on a date with a man they didn’t know, only never to be seen again.
Patricia or ‘Patty’ Wagner was a 26-year-old mother of two young kids living in New Jersey in 1972.
She had a powerful love of music and family, and her eldest son has fond memories of Patty being a loving, fun mother.
On October 20th, 1972, Patty brought her kids to her mother Marie’s house and asked her to watch them for the evening while she went on a coffee date with a man named Dennis. One of her sons allegedly remembers Patty telling him she’d take him to McDonald’s the next day to make up for her being gone that evening.
After Patty left for her date, it ended up being the last time her family would ever see her.
The following morning, after realizing she never came home, Marie was concerned and called the police to report Patty missing. At first, the police brushed off Marie’s worries and suspected that Patty had run off with this man, Dennis. But when Patty’s family informed them that she didn’t take enough of her belongings to run away and was highly unlikely to abandon her kids, they realized something was wrong.
Forty-eight years passed with no evidence of Patty or her fate during her investigation until her cousin Eileen came forward to the press in 2020 to give updates. Eileen allegedly revealed that she believed she found a man named Dennis who had gone out with her cousin that night in October and pressed him for information, but he refused to talk.
Eileen claimed to have shared this man’s identity with New Jersey State Police, although they’ve refused to comment on whether or not he was the same man who went out with Patty all those years ago.
Patty’s investigation remains open as investigators with the New Jersey State Police and her family still hold out hope for some information on what may have happened to her the night she vanished.
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