A woman who was missing for more than three decades and declared dead in the United States has been found alive in Puerto Rico.
Patricia Kopta vanished suddenly from Pittsburgh aged 52, with her husband Bob telling of how he came home as normal but found no trace of her in 1992.
The case lay unsolved by police who eventually declared her as dead.
But now she has been found alive in Puerto Rico aged 83 with her real identity and background having been revealed when she started to suffer from dementia and she let slip some details to a social worker.
Her sister Gloria Smith said “I don’t believe it. It was a total shock.”
She continued: “We really thought she was dead all those years. We didn’t expect it. It was a very big shock to know that she was alive.”
Patricia had entered a care home in 1999 having told staff that she’d come to Puerto Rico from Europe on a cruise ship, Police Chief Brian Kohlhepp told CBS Pittsburgh.
He said that Patricia had been found wandering the streets before going into the home and initially refused to discuss her private life.
But an inquisitive worker contacted Interpol when she started to give away details of her past.
It took nine months through an Interpol investigation and the taking of DNA samples before Patricia’s real identity was found.
Her husband Bob says that he suspected that Patricia, who had been a street preacher in Pittsburgh, may have gone to Puerto Rico as she had been struggling from mental health problems and talked about going there for the warmth.
“I come home one night, and she’s just gone, and nobody knows where she’s at,” Bob told a news conference.
“It’s been going on almost 31 years it’s been bad. It cost me a lot of money, I even put advertisements down in the paper in Puerto Rico looking for her.”
Patricia’s sister Gloria said she was looking forward to going to visit her in Puerto Rico after what had been a “hard” time for the family.
She said: “It was hard on all of us because my mother, her [other] sister and myself worried about her constantly.
“We’re so happy and I hope I can get down to see her.”
