Paul V. Coates
Confidential File

April 22, 1957 

SUBJECT’S NAME: Stella Catherine Meyer.

SUBJECT’S DESCRIPTION: Age, 36. Height, 5ft., 1 in. Weight, 140 lbs. Black hair.
hazel eyes. Stocky build.

The county sheriff’s office reports that Mrs. Meyer left her home at 12118
Highdale St., Norwalk, on an errand on May 6, 1956, shortly after noon. She has
not been seen since.

  I visited Roy Meyer this week. He is the subject’s husband. They had been
married for 13 years.

He told me about a little incident which happened not too long before his wife
disappeared.

"We–she and I–left the kids with some relatives to spend a few quiet days
vacationing by ourselves. As we drove out of Los Angeles, she kept asking me if
I thought the kids would be all right without her.

"I said sure, but before 24 hours had passed she talked me into turning around
and going back for the kids. That’s how strongly she loved them."

Mr. Meyer admits that a bit of friction had built up between himself and his
wife before she disappeared. But she couldn’t, he says, stand the pain of not
seeing her children.

"She needed them," he says. "Just like they need her."

All five of them.

There are John, 19, Frankie, 17, and Suzanne, 15–all Stella Meyer’s children by
her first marriage.

And there are Bobby, 13, and Jacqueline, the "baby" at 10.

It has been 50 weeks since she’s seen them.

"It was a Sunday," Mr. Meyer recalls, "and I was painting the bedroom."

"Stella called her brother and asked him if he had a paint roller. he did, so she
said she’d go over and pick it up and come back and help me.

"She said, ‘You should be through with the high parts by then, and I can do the
low parts without getting in your way.’

"She took Jackie with her–just like always.

"But after a couple hours she hadn’t returned, so I called her brother. He lives
about a mile and a half away.

"And you know what he said?"

"He said she only stayed a few minutes. And she left Jackie to play with her
cousins, saying she’d pick her up later–when she brought the paint roller
back."

That was the last time anyone saw Stella Meyer.

But someone heard from her the next day.

It was a friend who lived across the street.

Stella, the friend said, sounded like she’d been crying. "I’m afraid," she spoke
over the phone. But she didn’t say afraid of what.

Never in 13 years of married life had Stella Meyer left home before. Her husband
is a mild-mannered man and it’s unlikely that she was afraid of him.

The next day police found Mrs. Meyer’s car. It was parked on Rosecrans Boulevard
near the Santa Ana Freeway. The key was in the ignition and the paint roller was
on the back seat.

Sheriff’s deputies talked to neighbors.

They learned that Mrs. Meyer had been quite nervous for a few months.

"She never seemed to be listening when you talked to her," one neighbor said.

Another woman, one of her closest friends, said: "If she was nervous and tired,
she might have run off–but she’d never stay away for as long as she has if she
was all right."

In the year she’s been away, Mr. Meyer has done his best to devote the proper
time to his family.

"I guess that I personally have made the adjustment," he says, "but with the
kids, it’s something else.

"It’s rough on any youngster to know he doesn’t have a mother.

"But I’d say it’s rougher when a kid thinks he’s got a mother but doesn’t know
where.

"Of even if she’s dead or alive."