The Disappearance of Rosa Maria Valentin (Connecticut)

When 16-year–old Rosa Maria Valentin didn’t return home from work in Hartford, Connecticut one July night in 1986, her family jumped into action to try and find her. But at every turn, the family’s fears were dismissed and Rosa was regarded as a runaway…That is, until more than a year later when another teenage girl disappeared under similar circumstances.

July 26, 1986

It was 8 p.m. on Saturday night July 26, 1986 and 16-year old Rosa Maria Valentin still wasn’t home from her shift at work. According to reporting by Theresa Sullivan Barger for the Hartford Courant, Rosa’s father Juan was strict with all of his kids, especially his daughters who lived in Hartford at the Charter Oak Terrace public housing project with him. His girls weren’t allowed to be out after dark, so with the clock ticking later and later, Juan began to worry, and so did Rosa’s sister, Gudelia.

What Gudelia knew, but their father didn’t, was that Rosa’s shift at Battison dry cleaning actually ended at 5 o’clock that day, not 7 like she told her father. Rosa was known to pad her hours a bit so she’d have time to hang out with friends before dad expected her home. So, by the time Juan was waiting at the door for Rosa, three hours had already passed since the end of her shift.

With the sun setting, Juan started trying to track his daughter down himself. When his efforts to figure out where she went after work came up empty, Juan contacted police. Hartford Police, however, did not share in the Valentin family’s concern. Juan was told by an officer that he needed to wait 24 hours before Rosa could be reported as a missing person. So, he went home and counted down the hours, and then once again contacted Hartford Police to file an official report on July 27th.

In that initial missing persons report, Juan told police what he knew about the hours leading up to his daughter’s disappearance. The day before, on July 25th, Rosa’s sister Gudelia had seen Rosa talking to a man in a white Ford Mustang Cobra. The guy’s name was Pedro Miranda, and Rosa told her sister she thought Pedro was nice. On the morning of the 26th, a neighbor reported seeing Rosa talking to Pedro again. Later that evening, when she should have been walking home from work, Rosa was seen outside of a convenience store called Shorty’s Superette, talking to the same man in the Mustang again. She climbed into the car and that was the last known sighting of her.

After that initial report was filed police did…pretty much nothing. According to Dave Altimari’s reporting for the Hartford Courant, although it’s unclear exactly when, police did talk to Pedro and he said he talked to Rosa the day before she disappeared. The witnesses must’ve been confused or something.

So, with that, Hartford Police Sergeant Richard Smith reviewed the details of the report and then made a decision about the circumstances of Rosa’s disappearance. Sgt. Smith reasoned that Rosa was a teenager and it sounded like she knew whoever she was talking to and she voluntarily got into his car. As far as police were concerned, Rosa ran away

There was a big problem with this quick conclusion drawn by the police though. Rosa had never run away before. She had no problems at school or at home and was generally a responsible, reliable teenager who may have bent her father’s strict rules a little, but she wasn’t someone who would take off without telling someone where she was going. What’s more, her father was battling cancer and for Rosa to not be there, spending time with him and her family didn’t make any sense.

With little recourse though, and little attention from police, the Valentin family just had to wait and see if Rosa returned from wherever she went. And then two days after she went missing, the phone started ringing at the Valentin household.

The Phone Calls

The first phone call came on or around July 28th, the day after the official missing persons report was filed. The caller said his name was Davy and that Rosa was with him. He said she was doing alright but she didn’t want to talk to anybody. Gudelia insisted on speaking with her sister, but Davy never put her on the phone.

After that call, Rosa’s family went to Hartford PD and asked them to set up a tap so they could figure out where this person was calling from and maybe track them down to get answers about what happened to Rosa, but police did not follow up on the calls. In fact, Hartford PD said they had no written record of further conversations or interactions with the Valentin family after the initial missing persons report.

This “Davy” character kept calling throughout late July and mid-August. During one conversation with Gudelia, Davy told her that Rosa wanted to come get her clothing and paycheck, but she never showed up. On three separate occasions, Davy gave Rosa’s family an address where Rosa was living. They doubted the caller was telling the truth, but went to every single address just to be sure. One address led them to a burned down house. Another was a vacant building. The third was occupied, but the people living there didn’t know who Rosa was.

On August 16, Juan Valentin passed away at the hospital following his cancer battle. That same day, the phone rang again with a call from Davy. Gudelia’s boyfriend picked up and told Davy that if Rosa was really with him, then she needed to get to the hospital to pay her respects and be there with her family during this time of grief. Despite the loss of her father, Rosa never turned up, and that was the last time the Valentins ever received a call from the mysterious person who called himself Davy. But it wasn’t the last phone call from an unidentified person claiming to have information about Rosa.

On September 9, 1986, the phone rang at the youth services unit of Hartford Police Department. The caller had good news. A missing teenage girl, Rosa Maria Valentin, had returned home. With that, Hartford Police administratively closed Rosa’s missing persons case without any further investigation or confirmation. They didn’t even call Rosa’s family to verify she was home. If they had, police would have learned that the call was a hoax. Rosa was definitely still missing.

Rosa’s family says they had no idea her case was closed and that police weren’t doing anything to find her. They wouldn’t find out the reality of Rosa’s case until another teenager from the Hartford area disappeared more than a year later.