By Diana Washington Valdez
El Paso Times
The
disappearance of William and Margaret Patterson has been a mystery to
the police and El Paso for nearly 50 years. It has inspired urban
legends, wild stories of espionage and even tales of UFO abductions.
Their
old house in the 3000 block of Piedmont was known by generations of El
Pasoans as the "haunted house." Over the years, several theories
emerged to explain what happened to them: They were kidnapped, they met
with foul play, they left everything behind to start a new life
elsewhere, they were spies or they were abducted by space aliens.
Now
the mystery has taken another turn: The El Paso sheriff's and police
departments are taking a new look at the case, which began in March
1957.
"We're assembling all the information in our files and
archives," said Sgt. Jim Belknap of the sheriff's
Crimes Against
Persons unit. "At some point, we will get together with the Police
Department people again, lay out everything we have, see what we have
and figure out where we can go from there."
Representatives of
the El Paso County Sheriff's Department and the El Paso Police
Department met during the past week to discuss the possibility of
working together to solve the case, which has baffled law enforcement
for nearly half a century.
"We're willing to follow any leads
that might help to solve this case," said Carlos Carrillo, a missing
persons detective for the Police Department. He said Detective Darrel
Petry and police spokesman Javier Sambrano are helping him.
Theories of espionage
"I
think they were spies," El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego said. "The
way they got up and just walked away and left everything behind. The
Russians, or whoever sent them, probably told them to drop everything
and go back. Some people said they had seen Patterson take photographs
of Fort Bliss and of military shipments on the trains that came here."
The Pattersons owned Patterson Photo Supply near Downtown.
"It
was a high-profile case, very unusual," Samaniego said. "The original
theory was that they were kidnapped. There was no sign of a struggle.
It's like they went out for a walk and never came back."
The Pattersons' disappearance received widespread publicity and became one of El Paso's best known cases.
In
their quest to find the couple, El Paso officials sought help from the
FBI, Los Angeles Police Department and Mexican authorities, among
others.
El Paso FBI Special Agent Art Werge said he couldn't find
any information in the agency's files that go back that far to could
indicate whether the Pattersons ever came under surveillance for suspected espionage.
Associates of the Pattersons
told authorities in the 1950s that the couple left to go on an extended
vacation to Florida, and later, that they sent word that they weren't
coming back.
Cecil Ward, a friend of the Pattersons,
reported the couple missing Aug. 15, 1957, five months after they were
last seen in El Paso. Ward filed the report with then-Sheriff Jimmy
Hicks.
Court of inquiry
El Paso authorities convened a rare
court of inquiry, also known as an inquest, to look into the couple's
whereabouts, but the inquiry failed to find them.
According to
news archives, Patterson's 75-year-old father, Luther Patterson,
traveled from Chicago to El Paso to testify at the court of inquiry.
He
said then, "I always knew Pat and Margaret would take off like this
some day, but I figured it to be four or five years away. ... They're
not dead. ... My boy has done things like this before. ... He made his
living doing sleight-of-hand tricks."
However, several years later, after failing to hear from his son, Patterson's father said he suspected the couple was dead.
Adding
to the mystery was the fact that Patterson associates told police that
William Patterson had sent written instructions on how he wanted to
dispose of his business and private properties.
A letter signed
"W.D. Patterson" stated that Patterson wanted his properties to be
distributed among Doyle D.G. Kirkland, a friend and manager of Duffy's
Photo Supply store; Herb Roth, his business auditor; and Art Moreno, an
employee of Patterson who was 24 at the time.
Police lost track
of Kirkland after he left El Paso, and Ward and Roth have died. Moreno,
who is on vacation out of the country, was unavailable for comment.
At some point, sheriff's Sgt. Belknap said, a signature on one of the letters Patterson allegedly sent was challenged.
Belknap
said it was unusual for Patterson to leave his property to those
people, considering that he had at least two living relatives at the
time, his father and a sister.
Besides the Patterson Photo Supply
store in Downtown, Patterson also owned an interest in a high-end boat
company, property in Guaymas, Mexico, the house, a boat and a Cadillac.
A girlfriend
During
the initial investigation, police interviewed Patterson's alleged
20-year-old girlfriend, Estefana Arroyo Marfin, who lived in Juárez.
She
said she last saw William Patterson early March 6, 1957, and said that
he told her he had important things to tell her, and that "when they
come for me, I'll have to go in a hurry." Belknap said she recanted her
statement later.
Ward was the last person to talk to Margaret
Patterson, who reportedly had a drinking problem. And Kirkland, they
said, was the last person who was at the Patterson house before the
couple vanished.
"Kirkland was helping Patterson work on
(Patterson's) boat in the garage at the house," said Freddie Bonilla, a
former homicide detective who now works as a private investigator. "I
can't believe they just took off. They left their house, business,
money and their cat. I heard they fed their cat caviar."
The feline turned up when new tenants leased the house.
Several sightings
Several
sightings of the couple were reported in Mexico and the United States,
but sheriff's officials said they were never able to confirm any of
them.
Bonilla suspects that the Pattersons
were killed. In 1984, when he was a sheriff's captain, a new witness
emerged who gave credence to that theory. His name was Reynaldo
Nangaray.
Bonilla, who also was a homicide detective for the El
Paso Police Department, said the case was reopened quietly. "I wanted
to take the case to a grand jury and get an indictment," he said.
"Nangaray told us he found blood in (the Pattersons')
garage and a piece of human scalp on the propeller of Patterson's boat.
He found a pair of jeans with a Rolex watch that belonged to Patterson,
and said he also saw one of Patterson's (associates) remove bloody
sheets from the home and put them inside the trunk of a car," Bonilla
said. "He did not talk to police sooner because he was an illegal
immigrant at the time, but when he came to see us, he was a U.S.
citizen."
Two weeks ago, current residents of the Piedmont house
allowed Bonilla to look over the property and photograph the exterior
and garage. He has never lost the desire to solve the case.
Nangaray
died in a car accident two years after giving his statement to the
Sheriff's Department. Belknap confirmed that Nangaray's statement is on
file.
Bonilla said his employment contract with the Sheriff's
Department was not renewed in 1985, and he thinks the investigation
lost steam after that.
Ghost stories
The mystery also fueled rumors that ghosts of the Pattersons
haunted their former home. Another detective in the early investigation
suspected that their bodies might be there, according to news archives.
"When
I was a city patrolman, the house on Piedmont was in my district,"
Samaniego said. "I would get a hundred calls ... all these kids would
stop by the house because they thought the house was haunted, and they
would scare this poor old lady who (once) lived there."
Frank
Manning, a former chief sheriff's deputy, was in charge of the earlier
investigation in the 1950s. Former El Paso County Sheriff R.L. "Bob"
Bailey told the El Paso Herald-Post that "at one time Frank thought
maybe the bodies were buried right there in or under the house, but he
could never find any evidence of it."
Timeline
1957
• Couple disappears March 5 or 6, 1957.
• Business associates tell the public they went on an extended vacation to Florida.
• Cecil Ward, a friend, files a missing persons report in August with Sheriff Jimmy Hicks.
• Authorities convene a court or inquiry, or inquest, to investigate the Pattersons' whereabouts.
1959
•
Sheriff R.L. "Bob Bailey" traveled to Valle del Bravo in the state of
Mexico to check on a reported sighting of the couple. He was unable to
confirm it.
1984
• Sheriff's office reopens the case
quietly. Detective Freddie Bonilla interviews a man who claims he
cleaned blood from the Patterson's garage and saw one of the
Patterson's associates remove bloody sheets from the home. Bonilla was
hoping to take the case to a grand jury for an indictment.
1989
• Sheriff's office takes a statement from a woman in Colorado who knew the Pattersons several years before they were reported missing. It does not advance the investigation.
Theories
Over the years, speculations on what happened to the Pattersons have ranged from the serious to the outlandish. Some of the theories and legends their 1957 disappearance have inspired:
• They were kidnapped.
• They left everything behind to start a new life elsewhere.
• They were spies and had to leave suddenly.
• They met with foul play.
• He killed her intentionally or accidentally and left town.
• She killed him intentionally or accidentally and left town.
• They were abducted by UFOs.
• Their spirits haunt their old house in the 3000 block of Piedmont.
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