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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/CameFromTheLake on 2023-12-27 13:56:21+00:00.
During the summer of 1952, 10-year-old Constance “Connie” Smith traveled with her mother from her home in Wyoming to Greenwich, Connecticut to visit her grandparents. Connie, the granddaughter of a former Wyoming governor, was enrolled by her mother (Helen Smith) in a summer camp known as Camp Sloane to keep her occupied, located in Salisbury. Her family would last see her on July 11, 1952, when her mother and grandparents drove up to the camp to celebrate Connie’s birthday. Just five days later, Connie would disappear.
On July 15, 1952, Connie suffered a fall at camp and broke her glasses as well as bruised her hip, which the camp dispensary gave her an ice pack for. The next day on July 16, she reportedly got into an altercation with other girls attending the camp, leaving her with a bloody nose. Following the fight, Connie told her tentmates that she was going to skip breakfast and return the ice pack for her hip to the dispensary. However, Connie never went to the dispensary, and the ice pack was found in her tent hours later when camp counselors noticed her absence. Panicked, the camp staff alerted the police.
The camp’s caretaker, August Epps, reported that he saw Connie picking flowers around half a mile from camp while driving to work that morning. Epps indicated that he believed Connie was a counselor and didn’t think anything of her being in that location. Connie was sighted and interacted with multiple people after this sighting. Connie knocked on a woman who lived nearby and asked for directions to Lakeville, Connecticut. The woman told Connie the route and said that she began to cry as she walked away from the house. Another couple reported seeing Connie walking down a road two miles from Camp Sloane and another woman reported seeing her on the north side of State Route 44. At one point, Connie was seen on the side of the road, holding out her thumb in an apparent attempt to hitchhike.
Police initially suspected Helen Smith of hiding Connie. Helen was divorced from Connie’s father and the two shared custody of their daughter. Police suspected she may have been attempting to keep Connie past the allotted custody time. However, this theory was quickly discarded. A massive search went underway of the surrounding area, however no sign of Connie was found.
In 1962, police officials exhumed the body of a Jane Doe in Arizona known as Little Miss X due to speculation the unknown girl could be Connie, however, this was determined to not be the case. Connie’s case has had several suspects. In 1953, a traveling jewelry salesman named Frederick Pope confessed to police that he, an associate named Jack Walker, and a woman named Wilma Sames picked Connie up along Route 44 and promised to take her to Wyoming. Pope then claimed that they killed her and dumped her body in Arizona, shortly after which Pope claimed to have murdered Jack Walker with a tire iron. While initially seeming promising, police began to doubt Pope’s story after no record of Jack Walker or Wilma Sames could be found. During later questioning, Pope claimed the story had been completely made up. Another suspect emerged known as William Redmon, who was convicted in the 1980s of strangling an 8-year-old girl in 1951. Redmond bragged to fellow inmates that he had killed four people. Redmond is also suspected in the 1951 disappearance of Beverly Potts from Cleveland, Ohio. Redmond was a carnival worker who lived a highly transient lifestyle, however, police have been unable to determine if he was in Connecticut during July of 1952.
As of 2023, there have been no new developments in Connie’s case. Connie’s father believed she was abducted while trying to hitchhike back to Wyoming. At the time she vanished, Connie was five feet tall and weighed around eighty-five pounds. She was last seen wearing a brown halter top, a red windbreaker, and blue shorts with plaid cuffs. Her clothes would have had nametags sewn onto them. She may have been carrying a purse with pictures of her friends. Connie was thought to look older than her age and was extremely near-sighted without her glasses, being nearly unable to read without them. She would have been 81 years old in 2023.
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