In 1974, after giving birth to her third child, Lula Ann Gillsepie-Miller, then 28, signed her children over to her mother and then walked away from her home, never to be seen again. “She felt she was too young to be a mother at the time,” police said.
Reports say, Gillsepie-Miller was last heard from a year later, when her family received a letter from her postmarked in Richmond, Indiana.
In 2014, State Police Detective Sgt. Scott Jarvis took on the missing persons case. During his investigation, he found that the Richmond Police Department Records Division had a case of a deceased unidentified female found in 1975. According to USA Today, the woman’s remains were dug up in December 2014. Sgt. Jarvis was determined to match the DNA from Gillsepie-Miller’s biological daughter to the unidentified woman. Awaiting the test results, Jarvis began to investigate the trail of a woman with similarities to Gillsepie-Miller, who had lived in Tennessee in 1980, then later Texas, the report states.
On Thursday, (March 24) Texas Rangers visited the home of a 69 year old mystery woman. She admitted that her name is Lula Gillsepie-Miller, now using a different name. Police say, Gillsepie-Miller has the right to remain anonymous, however, she did allow Jarvis to give her contact information to one of her daughters, Tammy.
Tammy was a young girl when her mother left and does not remember much about her. She assumed her whole life that her mother was dead.
“She was just hurt and angry and happy she was alive,” a friend says. “She’s going through a roller coaster of emotions.”
Could this be a happy ending, mother and daughter reunite after 40 years, or do you think maybe Lula Gillespie-Miller didn’t want to be found? So far the two have not made plans to meet, but anything is possible.
