Patricia Kopta was classed as a ‘critical missing person’ when she vanished in 1992.
The husband of a woman who went missing for over three decades made an emotional statement after she was miraculously found.
Patricia Kopta went missing from her neighbourhood of North Hills, Pittsburgh, US on 20 June 1992, and was reported missing by her husband Bob on 27 November 1992.
Bob waited a few months before reporting her disappearance as she was known to wander off for periods of time due to her deteriorating mental health.
Patricia, a devout Roman Catholic, was known as a ‘free spirit’, and claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary, while preaching messages related to her religion and telling strangers that we were all going to die in a worldwide nuclear holocaust.
But after police couldn’t find her, she was classified as a ‘critical missing person’, with an urgent search being launched.
At the time, the ‘eccentric’ Patricia was 52 and was said to ‘love the ocean, the beach and the warm sunshine’, enjoying trips to Puerto Rico before marrying Bob, according to information given by her sister Gloria.
She firmly believed that her sister may have fled to start a new life that matched that description, but no-one had any way of knowing as Patricia had gone radio silent, which worried her husband who though she could be ‘laying in a ditch somewhere’.
Bob even paid a psychic to try and find answers and put adverts in Puerto Rican newspapers to try and find his wife, whom he had been married to since 1972, 12 years before a doctor diagnosed her with ‘delusions of grandeur’, with suspicions of schizophrenia.
Seven years after she vanished, Patricia’s family were given a legal declaration that considered her dead.
Bob later said: “I come home one night, and she’s just gone,”I went through a lot. Every time they’d find a body somewhere [I wondered], ‘Is it Patricia? Is it Patricia?'”
However, in 2023, 31 years after she vanished, Patricia was located in a nursing home in Puerto Rico, after a social worker found out more about the woman and contacted authorities.
When news broke, Bob, who never remarried, spoke at a press-conference, stating: “It’s a sad thing, but it’s a relief off my mind. When your wife goes missing, you’re a suspect.”
The 86-year-old was then asked how he felt about being a suspect for the case, to which he responded: “After 30 years, you try to forget about it.
“Now, I can forget about it. We know what happened, and she is taken care of now. She could have come home any time. But that’s what she wanted. She always said she wanted to go to a warm climate.”
Patricia was wandering aimlessly around the home in 1999, before being taken in, and though she stayed tight-lipped about her past, she began to open up more as she suffered from dementia.
A DNA test confirmed that the woman was indeed Patricia, with her sister Gloria also relieved when she found the news out as she flew straight to Puerto Rico to see her long-lost sister.
Gloria told WMTW: “We’re very thankful to know that Patty is alive and well.”
“She’s being well taken care of. We really thought she was dead all those years. It was a very big shock to know that she’s still alive.”
Police suggested that she may have left her husband and country behind after she realised she might be institutionalised due to her mental state.