JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Two sisters, ages 6 and 11, who disappeared from their Jacksonville home 45 years ago Thursday are still missing.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office are asking for your help bringing Annette and Mylette Anderson home.
According to the Charley Project, their mother and older sister left them alone at home about 6 p.m. while she went to care for a sick relative. Their mother called them at 7 p.m. to check on the children and everything was normal during the conversation, but when their aunt called later, no one answered the phone.
The girls' father, a commercial fisherman, was supposed to arrive home from work at 7 p.m., but he was delayed 20 minutes by a faulty boat motor. When he did get home, Annette and Mylette were nowhere to be found.
Reports in the Florida Times-Union and other sources said neighbors saw a white car in the driveway of the Anderson home between 6 and 7 p.m. but nobody saw anything suspicious and no one saw the girls leave.
The doors to the home were shut, but not locked, and there were no indications of forced entry. Nothing was missing from the house except a baby doll Mylette owned. The family's small dog, which usually had the run of the house, was shut up in a bedroom.
Mylette and Lillian were never heard from again.
A Times-Union report on five girls ages 6 to 12 who disappeared within three months in 1974 says prosecutors eventually concluded that sisters were abducted and killed by Paul John Knowles, a 28-year-old Jacksonville resident, Knowles was killed in December 1974 while trying to escape authorities off Interstate 20 in Henry County, Georgia.
Knowles, called The Casanova Killer, has been tied to the deaths of 20 people in a dozen states. He claimed to have taken 35 lives.
But authorities never closed the case of the missing sisters. Mylette would be 51 years old today; Annette would be 56.
PRINT: NCMC missing persons poster
Anyone with information is asked to call 1-800-THE-LOST or the JSO at 904-630-0500.