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I'm Kristen Sevey. This is Murder, She Told. It was December of 1967 in Augusta, Maine, and 8-year-old Lori Socher was with her family downtown watching the annual Christmas parade. The family piled into the car and headed to the brand new Sears department store. Lori stuck her nose to the glass of the holiday window display.
Her eyes were filled with Christmas trees, ones made of silvery aluminum with branches that burst from its center in a stark geometric line, and more traditional ones with hundreds of individual strands of tinsel draped over their limbs and long, drooping loops of garland made of connected, shiny, colorful glass globes. But that only formed the backdrop to the myriad of toys: pogo sticks, train sets, and wooden toboggans.
She peered into the very back of the display. There was the prize: Twist and Turn Barbie, a doll that danced, or at least could be posed in dance moves. It reminded her of her aunts, Anita and Monique, who loved music and loved to dance. Aunt Anita had visited earlier in December. She told him that she was going on a long trip and wouldn't be home for Christmas.
She was going far away, to California, to Los Angeles, one of the furthest cities from Augusta in the US, over 2,500 miles away. Lori remembered her aunt and her mom talking while she played with the other children. Anita kinda looked like her mom. Anita was a grown-up, but she didn't have any kids or a husband. The other adults sometimes suggested that Anita wasn't quite like them.
She was always very fun and happy and had a mind of her own. Years later, when Lori herself grew up, she expressed regret at not paying more attention to this visit because it would be the last time she ever saw her aunt. The tinsel on her Christmas tree shimmered as Lori opened her presents. She was so happy that she almost forgot her aunt Anita wasn't there.
That is, until someone remarked how quiet it was without her, and she wondered how her aunt was doing in the faraway land of California. Anita Louise Petu was born in Augusta on March 9, 1942, the second child of George and Rena Petu. Anita's sister, Connie, was the eldest.
Like many other fathers at the time, he fought in World War II. But even after his service ended, George was largely absent, drinking and seeing other women. He didn't disappear completely, though. He was around enough to have seven children with Rena. George and Rena were unmarried at the time of Connie's birth in 1939, but they soon wed at the insistence of the Petus. They were devout Catholics.
When George abandoned his wife and children, it was his mother and sister who stepped in to help. Rina relied on the state to make ends meet. But despite their meager existence, Rina still managed to create a loving home. In a photo around 1960, Rina is surrounded by her children at the breakfast table.
It's a lively scene. She just made the pancakes and sausages that the kids are eating, and with a spatula still in hand, she pours herself a cup of freshly percolated coffee. Two of her teenage daughters sit at the crowded Formica table. It looks like a scene from a classic diner.
Anita is wearing a boldly patterned shirt, a chunky costume ring, and bright red lipstick. Reena has on a white apron cinched at the waist. She's the spitting image of a 1950s housewife. Her eyebrows are neatly arched in the style of the 1930s, the time of her youth when she first moved to Maine.
Anita's parents were part of the French-Canadian community, which is how they met. In 1913, Rena Levesque was born in the small town of Edmonston in the province of New Brunswick. Rena left rural New Brunswick for town life in central Maine to be closer to her sister, Bridget, who had already moved to New England. Since their mother had died and their father had remarried, the sisters made their own family. Shortly after Rena arrived in Maine, she met her future husband, George Petu.
As a minority in Maine, French Canadians experienced discrimination. They were considered lower class and racially, quote, other than white Mainers, despite their shared European origins. For the most part, Rena, who spoke only French, stuck to her Francophone Catholic community. Although the kids spoke limited French with Rena home, they spoke predominantly English.
Maine schools, until 1960, prohibited children from speaking French even during recess. There was constant pressure to assimilate. As a single mother of a large family, Rena expected the older girls, Connie and Anita, to help out. But Anita was still a kid and not ready for so much responsibility.
When Connie became a teenager, she was taken in by her paternal grandmother, and she was able to enjoy a better quality of life and focus on school. This is Connie's oldest daughter, Lori. It was different for my mom because she didn't live with her mother. She lived with her grandmother and her aunt. So she got better things than the rest of them.
This left Anita as the eldest of the six remaining children. Without Connie's help and company, Anita had no one to share the responsibility with. Connie's daughter, Lori, later explained, This also caused tension between my mother and Anita, because Anita wanted to be able to have nice things too and not take care of everything.
Lori thought that this resentment may have triggered some of Anita's rebellious behavior. In grade 7, Anita began skipping school, and both she and her mother were criminally charged. The Kennebec Journal reported that an Augusta mother was found guilty of a charge of being responsible for the truancy of her 13-year-old daughter. She was fined $20.
That was a lot of money in 1955 when the minimum wage was only 75 cents per hour. Today, that's about $230. How could Rena, who relied on state assistance, have paid this? The small-town paper also reported her name and address. Mrs. Rena P2, 43, of 45 1⁄2 Coney Street.
Rena's frustration and helplessness were evident in the courtroom. The Kennebec Journal reported that, quote, Mrs. Pitu refused to testify but did say, as the judge was preparing to issue his verdict, I didn't know she wasn't in school. The judge ordered that Anita be, quote, kept, disciplined, instructed, employed, and governed at the state's reform school in nearby Hallowell for eight years until her 21st birthday.
Anita's intake records from the school list only truancy as the cause for her commitment. But the fact that her family was so poor was doubtlessly part of the judge's decision. Not only were the public charges humiliating, but the separation of mother and daughter must have been traumatizing. Since Hallowell was so close to Augusta, Anita wouldn't have to travel far for home visits. Her mother might have even gone to the school if she could obtain a visitor's permit and transportation.
The government car drove slowly along the winding, hilly terrain. It was clean, new, and locked. Anita couldn't help notice the way it smoothly handled the bumpy, poorly maintained road. They passed through the town center and continued along a country road lined with old, clabbered houses separated by trees. They turned into a clearing in the woods.
Anita had a sinking feeling as they pulled into the circular driveway, surrounded by a cluster of old buildings that made up the main industrial school campus. She knew she would be there for a long time. In her book about Anita's life, which you can find linked in the show notes, Lori wrote, Everyone thought that her stay there would make her behave, because she hated that school. A month after her admission, she was AWOL for a few hours, according to her school records.
The main industrial school for girls had the appearance of a 19th century asylum. Neither a prison nor a mental institution, it was a little of both. Established in 1874, it was the oldest reform school in the state. Anita walked creaky hardwood floors, felt drafts through old windows, and looked up at a tin ceiling as she lay awake at night, wondering what lay beyond the borders of her small world.
The narrow halls led to rooms sparsely finished with leftovers from the previous century. In the recreation room, where the girls sometimes sat drinking Cokes and listening to rock music, an antique mirror and an ornate wooden frame hung over the boarded-up fireplace. They scared the younger girls with the story of its haunting. If you looked into the mirror in the dark, you might see the face of a woman who had died there.
Usually, though, they crowded around the black-and-white television set, sitting on the floor or an old worn sofa. A few years after Anita left, a report on the school read: "The bedrooms have thin, old and uncomfortable mattresses. There are no lamps, only ceiling light." The report described the girls' dorms as "depressing horrors" and concluded that the rooms of the girls are either "stiflingly hot" or "bone-chillingly cold."
All three dormitories should be torn down. It listed many other sad features of the underfunded school. But worst of all, quote, the dormitories did not have the required number of toilet facilities for the number of girls, and the plumbing was always breaking down. This was Anita's home for most of her teenage years. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. Oh!
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The school was a public institution and its students, wards of the state. Once a girl was placed there, in the words of the board of trustees, "Fathers and mothers lost their parental rights and responsibilities. This meant that parents could not remove their child. The school decided when and if they could be released."
Although Rena may have had problems with her daughter, they were very close. But from the point of view of the reform school, parents might be the cause of the child's problem. And separation from family influence was essential for rehabilitation. Anita would have been housed with girls from all over the state.
Some, like Anita, committed petty crimes, had been truant, or even been caught smoking in public. But many other fellow inmates had learning disorders, special needs, or neurodivergent, or experiencing mental illness, pregnant or simply poor. The school was a catch-all for girls who didn't fit into society and whose parents weren't wealthy enough to take care of them or pay for them to be committed to a private institution.
We went to Augusta to the main state archives and reviewed most of the publicly available records. It was pretty incredible to hold hundreds of original, irreplaceable documents under the watchful eye of their staff. We learned a lot about the school and the tragic stories of the children who were admitted there. And a lot of them are not pretty or easy to read.
For example, a girl who had been raped by her foster father might have been committed because her foster family said she was difficult to get along with. The girl might have then been labeled incorrigible. Many of the girls had histories of sexual abuse, although it wasn't necessarily why they were committed, and officials often overlooked the significance of these histories.
In those days, sexual abuse was often thought to result from a girl's character, and girls who experienced abuse were often considered morally corrupt. The reports often described the girls as diseased, mentally defective, and low-grade. We were unable to get the entirety of Anita's school records, which are held in the Maine State Archives and remain sealed along with a lot of other documents until 2035.
But with the support of the family, we were able to get a few of those confidential documents. The girls' school is an ugly chapter in Maine's history. 34 other girls were committed the same year as Anita. She was one in four in for truancy. The majority of the girls were said to be, quote, "...in danger of falling into habits of vice or immorality." Only a few of the girls had actually committed crimes.
The most popular reason for commitment in the previous year was wanton and lascivious. Although incorrigible was on the increase over the next few years, danger of falling remained a staple, as it had since the school first opened. All of these words and phrases are thinly veiled euphemisms that meant a girl was too promiscuous in 1960s officialese. In total, there were 151 students at the school.
Most girls were there for about a year. Anita's stay was unusually long. A few supervised trips into town made her painfully aware that everyone knew who they were. Reform school girls. The residents of Hallowell looked upon them with suspicion.
Anita rarely saw her family and stayed in touch through the mail. All of her communication with family was monitored by school staff. They read the letters she wrote or received. They also listened in on the occasional call on the shared house telephone. Anita would have loved to gossip with her sisters about some of the characters she was with, but without privacy, it was usually just stilted small talk before her time was up and the next girl hovering nearby took her turn.
Anita's sister, Connie, was to be married in the summer of 1958. She wanted Anita to be her maid of honor. Anita was 16 at the time and needed special permission from the school to go to the wedding. Connie went to negotiate with the school on Anita's behalf.
Although only 19, Connie was more confident speaking to school officials than Rena. Not only was she fluent in English, but like the staff, she also worked for the government and was used to being on that side of the desk. Anita was granted permission. The wedding was a spectacular occasion. It was something Anita enjoyed, not only because she could leave her confinement, but for the chance to see everyone.
In the wedding photos, the sisters smiled together. Connie was a composed and sophisticated bride, and Anita, proud to be her maid of honor, beamed with joy. Connie's wedding was also a significant moment in the family's public life. The event was written up in the Kennebec Journal, the same paper that had shamed them for Anita's truancy. This time, she was Miss Anita Pitu, sister of the bride.
Connie was moving up in the world in a floor-length gown of Chantilly lace and nylon tulle. She had watched her family suffer the indignities of poverty and the welfare system. Now, she worked at the Maine Employment Security Commission. She was marrying well to a man with a good construction job and a member of the National Guard. She was succeeding, and she planned to take her family with her.
Although Anita may have resented Connie's leaving the family in her early teens, it was clear now that Connie would never forget about her little sister. At the same time, the two sisters could not have been more different in their approach to life, as Lori explained that Anita was, quote, a free spirit, determined to live her life the way she wanted no matter what anyone had to say about it.
She was the complete opposite of Connie, lived a very traditional life as a wife and a mother, and followed societal rules. Anita liked to push boundaries. After the wedding, Anita went back to the reform school, but the memories of the event would linger in her mind.
Reports about the staff varied. Some were kind and others were not. Some were abusive and a few years after Anita left the school, several were fired because of their behavior. An official report claimed the severity of the punishment of the girls could not be tolerated. A memo, circulated at that time, listed punishments staff were not meant to use, meaning they had been used in the past, when Anita was there.
Common punishments used on the girls included hitting them, cutting their hair, forcing them to be confined in the dungeon, public humiliation like standing in the hallway and facing the wall, or forcing a girl to kneel on the hardwood floor for long periods of time. According to one report, some of the house mothers were the most appalling kind of persons. This was one reason girls often ran away.
Despite being a girls' school, some men worked there, and some had sexual relationships with some of the girls. During Anita's stay, it seemed that life at the school was strictly scheduled, and girls were discouraged from talking while working. Leaving their rooms during leisure hours was a privilege. There was an emphasis on religion, and girls were encouraged to attend church and evening devotions.
The girls were well-dressed, but always in skirts, never rolled up jeans or shorts, and less doing outdoor chores. For someone as spirited as Anita, this atmosphere was stifling, maybe even depressing.
Although Anita reportedly hated the school, and it's likely she experienced cruel treatment, she may also have derived some value from her time there. She would have learned practical skills like sewing. She liked to dress well, and homemade clothes were the cheapest way to do that. While the curriculum stressed homemaking skills transferable to work in hotels, factories, and domestic service, she also would have been able to complete high school, like her sister Connie.
Though its academic program was poor, the school sometimes hosted banquets and other public events on the grounds. Students entertained guests with plays, dances, and musical performances. Anita would have had regular meals, medical and dental care, and other resources that may not have been available to her on the outside. School officials reported that most of our children have very poor teeth and prior to coming here, have had very little, if any, dental care.
For three years, there were few entries in her log other than the occasional home visit. But when she was 16, there was a new address listed for Anita in Connecticut with her aunt and uncle. About a year later, she was picked up in Lewiston by the police for having left the state of Connecticut without permission from the authorities there. After which, she was returned to the Maine Industrial School for Girls.
After bouncing around between Connecticut, the reform school, and other relatives in Maine, she was finally discharged by the school on September 29, 1960, when she was 18 years old. When she was finally free for good, Anita was not reformed. Lori explained that she came out even more determined to get what she wanted and live on her own terms without anyone telling her what to do.
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When Anita left the reform school, she lived with her mother in Augusta and worked, but she didn't hold down any particular job for too long. Lori explained in her book, she jumped from job to job, staying long enough to learn it, get a couple of paychecks, and then moved on to the next thing.
She liked to have fun. She liked to go out dancing. That was one of her favorite things. She would go out with my Aunt Winnick, her sister, and they would go to local bars or nightclubs in the area and go dancing and have a few drinks. She was a handful. She liked to just do what she wanted to do. She was pretty stubborn and headstrong.
Painting the town red was how Monique met her husband, Archie. And according to Lori, the three of them spent a lot of time together going out dancing and drinking. Saturday night dances were held at community centers, dance halls, and barns. And there was always live music.
Some featured swing and big band music popular in Rena's youth, but younger audiences were also supporting new rock and roll acts. If they could get a ride, it might go to the Pal Hop in Lewiston where garage bands from all over New England entertained a hip young crowd looking for a good time on Friday night. Dance events were the center of Maine's nightlife and attracted talented musicians from all over the country. Lori explained that Anita knew many people from her time going out.
This was how she met the guys that she went to California with. They asked her if she wanted to go with them, and she said yes, knowing it was likely her only chance to get there, because she couldn't afford to go there on her own. The guys may have been inspired to travel because of the looming threat of the draft. Earlier that year, Martin Luther King Jr. had spoken out against the war in a controversial speech, arguing that low-status Americans were disproportionately sent to die.
There had been a draft since the award began, but the guys had been younger then, and as time went on, conscription numbers ramped up. As single men without dependent families or college prospects, they were likely candidates. With that looming possibility, they decided to seize the day. They might never get another chance for an epic road trip, and they figured it was worth missing Christmas with their families.
Anita may have also felt a little out of place with her family. She had been separated from them for much of her youth. She'd always been different and wondered where she belonged. Her siblings had started families of their own, but Anita didn't have a steady boyfriend, and she drifted from job to job. It's possible she may have wanted something more for her life than settling down to marriage and children, especially after she watched her mother struggle.
One day in early December of 1967, the guys pulled up to the apartment house she shared with her mother. There wasn't much room for luggage, but she didn't have much anyway. She backed her clothes, a hairbrush, cash, and the sandwiches Rena made. Rena was anxious about losing her daughter again, but remembered that she was about that age when she left New Brunswick, with no mother to say goodbye to. She hugged her daughter and told her to make sure to write. They got to California in a hurry.
In January, Anita wrote in a postcard to her sister Monique that it only took a week to get there, which meant that they spent most of that time driving. To save money, they took turns sleeping in the car. Once in a while, they stopped at motels. They ate at diners, gas stations, and fast food joints. The majority of the journey was frigid, especially when they rolled down their windows to light a cigarette. They talked about their favorite movies and which stars they might run into in LA.
At first, they were in familiar territory, and the towns they drove through were much like Augusta. But as they drove further, accents changed and the people were different. Anita always managed to strike up a conversation with locals wherever they stopped. They passed houses decorated for Christmas and wondered what everyone at home was doing while they were on their adventure. It must have taken some time to mark the passing of the holidays.
Maybe they enjoyed a turkey dinner at an all-night diner while Jingle Bell Rock played on the jukebox. If they were lucky enough to get the radio in the car, they might have listened to music, although most of the time, all they got was static and country preachers.
Anita was used to being one of the guys, but over time, her status as the only woman in the car was evident. There wasn't a lot of privacy or personal space, but they all came from big families and tried their best to get along. Anita barely knew her travel companions when they left, but after a week in the car together, they would have been well aware of one another's quirks.
Maybe that's why they parted ways shortly after they arrived at their destination. But as far as we know, their parting was amicable. After Christmas, Anita's family wondered how her trip was going. In January, Monique had some exciting news to share. She'd received a postcard from Anita in California. In the postcard, dated January 9th, Anita wrote that she'd been in California for two weeks and promised to write more soon.
In February, Anita wrote a letter to her mother with more details about her travels. When Anita first arrived in LA, she met a woman who helped her get a job and offered her a place to stay. The guys wanted to return to Maine, but Anita wanted to stay and work for a while. She assured them that she'd be able to get back on her own once she made a little money.
It seemed like Anita was safe and happy, so they said their goodbyes, and the guys, after doing a little bit more of travel, started heading back to Maine themselves. The woman Anita lived with had two sons and lived in Whittier, a rapidly expanding bedroom community just outside Los Angeles. The endless California sun shone down on shiny new cars that drove along wide, flat streets that never buckled or wrinkled under snow and ice.
Colorful signs advertised fast food, supermarkets, and big-box retail stores that dwarfed Augusta's new Sears outlet. Here, everything was new. It was a shopper's paradise, and everyone seemed to have money to spend. Anita's new home was on Sunshine Avenue, aptly named, a street lined with single-story homes and palm trees in the working-class neighborhood of South Whittier.
The woman she lived with worked in a restaurant in LA and got Anita a job at another restaurant across the street from that one. Without a car of her own, Anita relied on her roommate for transportation to and from the city. If that fell through, she might have hitchhiked or gotten a ride from a co-worker. When she finally wrote to her mother in February, Anita had already moved on to another restaurant job. "This time," she wrote, "not far from where I live."
When she wasn't working, Anita traveled around the state, often with the woman she lived with. In her letter to her mother, she wrote that they had visited tourist attractions in LA, like the homes of movie stars, and they also planned to go to San Francisco. They'd taken color photographs together that Anita promised to send to Rena once they were developed. She also dated. Her relationship seemed to follow the same pattern as her jobs. Nothing really stuck.
She wrote that she wasn't going out with anybody, but that she'd previously dated a Mexican truck driver and had just met a very nice nightclub singer. Anita enjoyed the local nightlife and wrote to her mother, "They sure have some nice places to go out and dance." Her mother thought that it sounded like she was having fun. It seemed like she was doing fine, and she had an address: 13426 Sunshine Avenue.
Although Rena knew nothing about the woman Anita was staying with, it sounded like a safe place. Her daughter would come home soon anyway. Anita wrote that she would return to the East Coast in about May, first to her Aunt Bridget's in Connecticut and then to her mother Rena's in Maine. Although she was having a good time, she wanted to come home eventually. Without a ride, she would have considered bus tickets or even hitchhiking part of the way, but she would need to come up with enough money to make the trip.
In the same letter, Anita asked about the family, Connie's new baby, her little sister Teresa, and her brother Bobby's wife, Lorraine. She also wrote that Bobby would like it down here. He could get a good job. Anita clearly missed her family. In case her mother didn't pick up the hint, she ended her letter with, I miss you. This February letter addressed to Rena was the last time her family heard from Anita.
Anita was a small-town girl with the habit of trusting people she had just met, and she was meeting a lot of people. They came from all over, like Anita, chasing adventure, opportunity, and warm weather. But this may have also appealed to her, the chance to be anonymous. No one knew her as a reform school girl, or as somebody's daughter or sister. For the first time, she could define herself.
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That's NYX.com promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's K-N-I-X.com. The month of May came and went without a word from Anita. Her mother had never received the second letter with color photographs she'd been promised. No one else had received a postcard or a phone call. The letters they had sent to the Sunshine Avenue address had gone unanswered.
Without a phone number, they had no way of getting in touch with her except through the mail. They didn't know the last name of her roommate, and they didn't know if Anita still lived there. They pored over her last letter, seeing if there were some morsel of information that they had missed.
In June, the family became increasingly worried. Lori remembered that there were a lot of phone calls as her parents and other adults tried to figure out what to do. Anita's sister, Monique, and her husband, Archie, called the Whittier police.
The police were able to find a phone number for Anita listed in the city directory. They tried calling the number, but there was no answer. The family also called the number many times, but they could never reach Anita. So they called the police again, and Archie insisted they go to the house to check on her. As far as we know, the address listed in the directory with her phone number is the same Sunshine Avenue address that Anita gave her family.
I don't really have a lot of good stuff to say about them because that was the last place we knew she was because that's where she said she lived. We tried contacting them numerous times. They didn't seem like they wanted to help at all, which I thought, you know, was kind of weird. But my uncle had to pretty much force them to go to the house where the address that we had that she had written from and talk to somebody there and see if they knew what happened to her.
if they remembered her, you know, whoever was there. And they didn't want to do that, but he insisted. So they finally went over and then they called him back and said, there's
There's nobody at that address. It looks like it's an abandoned house. It looks like there was a commune there and they left abruptly because there's stuff everywhere. It really wasn't anything that they could do at that point. The police just assumed that she lived in a commune and that she had left.
Seeing nothing wrong but another irresponsible young person who had come to California and joined a growing subculture, the Whittier PD did not consider Anita a missing person.
To Anita's family, it did not up. Though she was a free spirit, she loved her family and would have informed them if her plans had changed. On the other side of the country, the family's fears grew. They had no idea where Anita was. And as Lori explained, no one had the money to make the trip to California. So they waited. Without an answering machine, Rena made sure she was available to pick up the phone.
One day, the phone rang. My grandmother said, well, who's this? And she said, Anita. And she started crying and was like, oh my gosh, she finally called. And she goes, are you my daughter? She told my grandmother who she was. And my grandmother was like, oh, I thought you were my daughter.
The woman had to explain that she was not Rina's long-lost daughter. She felt awful and apologized. Rina had had her hopes raised only to be disappointed. According to Lori, this incident really left a mark on my grandmother. It seemed to take out the last bit of hope that she would ever hear from Anita again.
When Raymond, Anita's younger brother, ran into one of the guys she traveled with, he only confirmed what Anita wrote: that she had indeed met a woman in LA and moved in with her. After that point, they had no further contact with Anita. Anita seemed to have vanished, and time moved on without her. The family celebrated Christmas of 1968 half-heartedly.
Anita had come and gone many times. To the reform school, to bars, to all-night dances. But she always came back. This time was different. More nieces and nephews were born who would never meet their aunt. Years went by and still no one knew where Anita was or how to find her.
They might have called Whittier PD and tried to report her missing again, but we have no record of it. They knew the chances she was still alive were slim, but they didn't give up hope of finding her. Lori remembered growing up with this family mystery.
She was always a topic. It always came up, wondering what happened to her. My grandmother was always so sad if they brought it up, but my aunt would always talk about, we wish we knew where she was and what happened, and I hope we hear from her. They always had that hope that one day she would call or she would show up. When I was growing up, when they didn't hear from her again, they'd
They just always wondered, where is she? She wouldn't do this. She wouldn't go this long without contacting us. She was very close to her siblings, especially Monique and Bobby. She was always with them. And, you know, she really loved my grandmother. So there's no way she would have just up and disappeared and not said anything. They always feared the worst that something had happened to her. But...
You can't even fathom something like that. They didn't want to think about that.
even though they knew that she was probably not still alive. I thought that she was probably buried out in the desert someplace. I mean, you live in Maine, you don't know what California looks like, so you just have this picture that you see from television or something. We always thought that maybe because she had mentioned the truck driver that she had been dating. We thought maybe he went into Mexico, brought her there, and then she just never came out.
In 1984, 16 years after that anxious summer, Lori's parents asked her to take up the search and gave her the information they had collected so far. Lori was an adult now, a mother and a college student. She first contacted the Salvation Army, which had a missing persons branch in the Social Security office. Anita's social security number hadn't been used since 1968.
In the late 1980s, TV shows like America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries were instrumental in solving cases. Broadcast across North America, they reached a wide audience, and viewers could call in tips. So Laurie contacted America's Most Wanted Missing Persons. They were willing to help, but found no records. They said that there was nothing they could do.
Lori befriended a woman in her apartment building whose brother coincidentally worked for the L.A. County Sheriff's Office, which included Whittier and South Whittier. He checked their files, but found no record of Anita even being reported missing. In 1996, Rena died not knowing what happened to her daughter. Part of her had still hoped that Anita might show up one day.
Her obituary listed Anita as a surviving relative living in California. I mean, they were all affected, but I think it affected her the most. She was just very sad her whole life after Anita left.
Lori started using the internet as soon as it became available, and by the early 2000s, she started looking through missing persons databases, searching for any mention of Anita. She came across a posting on a message board made by Anita's younger siblings, Ann and Raymond. As she scoured the web, they were looking for Anita, casting lines into the ocean of data just like Lori.
She kept looking, and eventually, her daughter Dakota got involved. Together, they investigated a family rumor about Anita's father, and by looking through archives and birth records, discovered that Anita had two half-siblings, a whole other family they never knew about.
Like her mother before her, Lori passed down the project of looking for Anita to her daughter. By the 2010s, the internet had grown. Her daughter Dakota searched through Jane Doe listings online, a time-consuming process. One night, she called Lori over to the computer and showed her a photo.
Dakota showed her a woman with dark hair and a round face.
The description next to the sketch included blood type, weight, and height. The woman had pierced ears, brown eyes, brown hair, and was described as white and/or Hispanic. Her teeth were in poor condition, but she had otherwise been healthy. Jane Doe had been found on March 14, 1968, one month after Anita's last letter.
The sketch was a recent one, but the site also included older sketches that had been made in 1968. When Lori and Dakota took it all in, they felt there was a good chance that this Jane Doe was Anita. This was the first promising lead they'd had in years. But the site did not tell them which law enforcement agency to contact. Not sure where to turn, they called the Whittier Police.
When I started doing my investigation for her and I contacted Deb, the first officer that I spoke with, the first detective, he was pretty nice. And he said, let me look into it. I'll get back to you. And then I didn't hear anything. So I contacted them again and I left a message for them to call me and nobody called. So I called them back again.
And this other detective answered and said that the one that I had spoke to before was no longer in that office. And I said, well, I'm looking for my aunt. And this was in 2010. My daughter and I decided to go on the California Jane Doe, John Doe website. And so I called and I said, there's a picture on the website. And
I think it's maybe my aunt. Could you look into this? Can you get me some information about that person? And he's like, no, I don't have time for that. You're going to have to hire a private investigator to come find that out. We don't do that. I don't have time. You know, nobody was going to be able to come up with enough money to hire a private investigator to do that.
In 2016, Lori's mother, Connie, died. This was a crisis point for Lori. She wrote of that time, "...I was heartbroken. Yet another family member gone without getting the answers they looked for."
I felt like I had failed to deliver one of the things my mother had wanted more than anything else. After her death, I was dealing with my own grief and other aspects of my life, and I felt like I had run out of options and avenues to find Anita. I began to think that we would never find out what happened to her, and I felt hopeless.
By this time, Monique had also been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and her memory was quickly deteriorating. It seemed unlikely that I would find Anita before Monique's condition got too bad. At this point, Lori thought that none of Anita's siblings would ever find out what happened to their sister. What Lori didn't know was that another search was underway, one that would finally solve the mystery that had plagued her family all these years.
Just around the corner was the answer they were looking for. What happened to Anita after the last letter? The one she wrote in February 1968. Just 17 miles south of Anita's last known address in Whittier, a terrible discovery was made. The Huntington Beach PD found a body. A body they would spend 50 years trying to identify.
the body of Anita Pitu. Join me on March 12th for the conclusion of Anita Pitu's story and dive into the investigation, what happened, and the suspect. If you want to learn more about Anita, check out Lori's book, The Last Letter, linked in the show notes.
Thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful that you're here. Find Murder, She Told on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. A detailed list of sources and photos from this episode can be found at MurderSheTold.com.
Thank you so much to Lori for sharing her memories with us. Thank you to Anne Young for her writing, Byron Willis for his research and writing support, and to Samantha Colthart, Bridget Rowley, and Sarah LaFortune for their research support. If you want to suggest a case, you can email me at hello at murder, she told.com. I'm Kristen Sevey. Thank you for listening.
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