Hanover missing-person case has happy ending

A Mechanicsville teenager who vanished more than five years ago was located Wednesday in South Carolina after a Hanover County detective reworked an old lead in the puzzling case.

"It's a very good ending," said Hanover sheriff's Investigator Dave Klisz, who worked relentlessly over the years to find former Lee-Davis High School student Theresa Marie Meadows.

Meadows, now 22, has been living under an assumed name, without a birth certificate, Social Security number or other identifying documents. Authorities still don't know where she has been since 2004 or how she supported herself.

"I think maybe she started a new life; it was difficult to get information from her," said Klisz, who talked with Meadows by phone Wednesday from her friend's home in South Carolina.

Meadows then called her mother, from whom she had been estranged at the time of her disappearance.

"I'm happy and relieved," Margaret Swann said yesterday, weeping. "But it's going to take her some more time, and I probably won't be able to see her for a while."

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Meadows' was one of three missing-person cases still unsolved in Hanover and the oldest involving a person who disappeared as a juvenile. The county investigates about 50 missing-person cases a year, but most are resolved quickly.

Meadows, who was active in the Junior ROTC program at Lee-Davis, disappeared Sept. 30, 2004 -- six days after her 17th birthday -- after she had an argument with her guardian, who was a friend of her mother's. Swann was recovering from a substance-abuse problem and arranged to have her daughter live temporarily with the friend.

About a week after she disappeared, the guardian received a letter from Meadows saying she was safe, and she indicated she might be willing to return "if some things changed within the household," Klisz said.

But they didn't hear any more from her at the time.

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Meadows left without any of her possessions and never obtained a driver's license or got a job using her real identity, said Klisz, who tried to trace her through a paper trail.

After years of frustrating dead-ends, the young woman was located this week with the help of her former Hanover neighbor, whom Klisz tracked down Monday in Berkley County, S.C., where he now lives with his wife.

"I just reworked an old lead of someone that was supportive of her back in'04," the detective said.

The neighbor and his wife had lived next door to Meadows and her guardian in 2004 while the man worked here temporarily. Before she ran away, Meadows and her former neighbors apparently exchanged contact information, Klisz said.

When reached Monday, the former neighbor was surprised to learn Meadows still was missing and told Klisz he probably could find a phone number for her in Florida.

Three days later, the neighbor drove to Florida, where Meadows was living, and brought her back to his home in South Carolina. "I think he has a large heart," Klisz said. "He wanted to help her."

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When the detective spoke with Meadows by phone to confirm her identity, she was very guarded, Klisz said.

"I sensed that she was suspicious that somehow the police were going to make her do something, which wasn't the case," he said. As a matter of procedure, Klisz contacted the Berkley County Sheriff's Office to verify Meadow's presence at the South Carolina house.

There still are a lot of questions for which Klisz hopes to get answers in coming weeks. He doesn't know precisely where Meadows was living in Florida, how long she had been living there and how she moved around.

The friend who found Meadows told Klisz he had seen her last year at a tattoo parlor in Richmond.

Since her disappearance, Meadows' appearance has changed. When she disappeared, the 5-foot-7-inch high school junior wore glasses and weighed about 110 pounds. She has gained about 30 pounds and now wears blue contact lenses over her brown eyes, Klisz said.

Yesterday, Swann still was emotional about her daughter's sudden reappearance. During their phone call, her daughter didn't offer any clues about the past five years.

"It keeps me in suspense for five years not knowing where she was," she said.

Will mother and daughter reunite?

"I don't know," Swann said. "It all depends on what she wants to do. I'm going to let her take the next step."

Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or .