What happened to Patricia Meehan?

[LooksLikeCRicci]

The review for finals continues... and I'm currently watching the Patricia Meehan segment. For those of you who don't remember, she is the woman who was involved in a car accident outside of Circle, Montana and wandered away from the scene. There have been numerous sightings of her since the time of the accident in 1989, but she has never been found.

People on this site do such a great job of speculating what may have happened, so now I pose this question: What happened to Patricia? Did she wander out into the prairie, only to meet a fate like so many others that have been trapped out in Montana's prairies? Are the sightings of her credible, as she has been sighted numerous times between Bozeman, MT and Seattle, WA? Or did she suffer from amnesia as a result of the accident and meet with foul play later?

Discuss. I'm interested. Here's a link to her Doe Network page, for those of you who need the memory refresher.

[WatchYourLips]

Originally Posted by LooksLikeCRicci

The review for finals continues... and I'm currently watching the Patricia Meehan segment. For those of you who don't remember, she is the woman who was involved in a car accident outside of Circle, Montana and wandered away from the scene. There have been numerous sightings of her since the time of the accident in 1989, but she has never been found.

People on this site do such a great job of speculating what may have happened, so now I pose this question: What happened to Patricia? Did she wander out into the prairie, only to meet a fate like so many others that have been trapped out in Montana's prairies? Are the sightings of her credible, as she has been sighted numerous times between Bozeman, MT and Seattle, WA? Or did she suffer from amnesia as a result of the accident and meet with foul play later?

Discuss. I'm interested. Here's a link to her Doe Network page, for those of you who need the memory refresher.

I'd like to believe the sightings were credible, but it seems that in similar cases, once the true fate has been found, the sightings were almost always completely off base.

It's been a long time. I would think that even if she had amnesia, somebody would have helped her find out who she was by now.

However, as Andy Dufresne wrote to Red in "The Shawshank Redemption," Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies."
:tehcool:

[mistagee]

I would say she probably died out there, i dont trust any witness testimony ( it never pans out to be the same person) so she probably feel asleep somewhere and was eaten by wolves or was murdered by a truck driver.

[The Third Man]

I did find one thing on Patricia Meehan in a Google search. It looks to have been a false lead, though. Didn't realize that Meehan had a boyfriend...the episode made it out to seem like she was single and lonely.

http://s13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/ar/t1360.htm

Sunday, September 02, 1990


Northwest Briefly

Is She Or Isn't She Patricia Meehan?

Times Staff: Times News Services

A transient arrested for littering remained in jail yesterday while a key witness says she probably is not a Montana woman who disappeared last year after walking away from an automobile accident.

Police have been unable to determine whether the woman who identified herself as Morning Star is Patricia Meehan, 37, who vanished after walking away from a car crash near Circle, Mont., on April 20, 1989. Relatives fear she is suffering from amnesia.

Officer Steve Koskimaki spotted the woman in a restaurant Thursday and was sure she was Meehan, whose photograph has been circulated widely in the Pacific Northwest. Koskimaki arrested her after she threw a newspaper on the street.

However, Kurt Flechel of Spokane, a former longtime boyfriend of Meehan, told police Meehan is not the woman in custody, although ``there was a strong resemblance and the voice was similar,'' Lt. Don Jiran said.

In an appearance Friday before Magistrate Neil Walter, the woman said she was a missionary for God and stopped in town en route from Seattle to Montana.

``I really think it's her. This woman is the spitting image of Meehan,'' said Lt. Greg Surplus. ``If this isn't her, then we've still got a missing person from somewhere.''

[wiseguy182]

Arrested for littering? That's a pretty harsh penalty for that offense.

[The Third Man]

Originally Posted by wiseguy182

Arrested for littering? That's a pretty harsh penalty for that offense.

Sounds to me like the "transient" was also acting...well, strange, and it was a "arrest for her own safety" deal.

Meehan is still listed as missing on the Doe Network and other sites, so this likely wasn't her.

[AVERMAN]

When was the last known sighting?

Has she been declared legally dead if she hasn't been seen in a long time?

I think she was trying to commit suicide by causing a car accident, when she saw that nobody died and that she realised what she had done, she panicked and just wondered away. I think she feels she is a fugitive and the claim that she has amnesia is not true. I do think she remembers what happened but is either too scared to go back, or she has started a new life somewhere and hopes to never be found.

Any updates?

[The Third Man]

More on Meehan (November 14, 1994...strangely, from the Dallas Morning News)

HEADLINE: Lost Lives;
Family's search for daughter proves futile

BYLINE: Colleen O'Connor

BODY:
More than five years ago, Patricia Meehan walked away from a head-on traffic accident in eastern Montana and disappeared.

"A lot of people say she's still up there in the hills," said Jack Limesand, the undersheriff who has worked the case since the start.

"But as much as we covered it, it's dang near impossible. There are ranchers up there every day. Someone would have seen an item of clothing or a fragment of bone."

Family and friends worry that she is no longer alive.

"I did just about everything I could to find her," said her father, Thomas Meehan, who lives in Pennsylvania. "It leads me to think she's not out there. That's what I've come to accept. Of course, we still hope."

In the first year after her disappearance, more than 5,000 people in the Pacific Northwest reported seeing a woman who looked just like Ms. Meehan.

Every time her story is replayed on television, more leads come in.

"I've got a new stack of sightings here about four-foot high," said Undersheriff Limesand. "When she was around here, she sometimes worked as a ranch hand and liked horses. So any lead about working on a dude ranch or resort of some kind is pretty good."

The petite strawberry blonde was 37 when she disappeared, and she was in trouble.

"She was under some sort of stress, and her doctor was sending her to a psychologist that morning," said Mr. Meehan, who received a phone call from her the night before she disappeared.

"She asked if she could come home, and I said, Sure.' She didn't like to fly, and I didn't want her driving by herself in her condition. I told her to call after she saw the . . .

(psychologist) that day. I wanted time to figure out how we could get her home."

She never called.

One of the last people to see Ms. Meehan was her landlord.

"He said she was really out of it and wasn't making sense, that she seemed real hyper," said Mr. Meehan.

The car accident occurred in Circle, Mont., in a desolate stretch of hilly ranch country bisected by a big flat-bottom creek.

The car Ms. Meehan was driving collided with that of a local police dispatcher, a woman trained in acute observation.

"She said Patty's eyes were starry, like she was in shock already," said Jean Flechel of Spokane, Wash. Ms. Flechel's son, Kurt, is a former boyfriend of Ms. Meehan's. Through him, she became involved in the search for the missing woman.

"Then she turned and ran back across the hill."

Undersheriff Limesand remembers taking out the dogs that night, searching for her by moonlight. Suddenly, her trail just disappeared.

By dawn the next day, "whole piles of people lined up to search," he recalled. They took horses and four-wheel-drive vehicles, going out every day for more than a week.

"There are old coal mines around here. We even had guys go down in those old mine shafts," he said.

Her family flew out from Pittsburgh to join the search and hired a helicopter.

"We damn near pretty quick knew every rabbit and bald eagle by name," said Undersheriff Limesand. "The pilot put us down so close we could damn near count the fence posts."

Today, despite his extensive efforts, the lawman is not without self-doubt.

"You're always wondering what you could have done different," he said quietly. "It's a tough deal to think, Well, maybe we should have done something different.' "

Today, Mr. Meehan is less involved in hunting down leads.

"You have to get away from it and forget about it," he said.

"You just can't dwell on it, or it will drive you crazy."

Still, he hasn't given up. Last month, he contacted a new organization in Florida that hunts for missing people.

"When a person is missing, you keep wondering, Are they ever going to turn up?' " he said. "If you just knew if they were all right, it would be a load off your mind, that they weren't suffering and having hard times."

Ms. Flechel fears that the "sensible girl" she knew is now dead.

"She'd been seen hitchhiking," said Ms. Flechel, recounting one of the leads, "and that's a very dangerous way for a girl to live."

[LooksLikeCRicci]

Thanks for posting that article. I, too, think it's interesting that UM didn't mention that she had a boyfriend. I wonder if they were together at the time she disappeared. Perhaps they broke up and she was upset about that...

I tend to disagree with the theory that she was trying to commit suicide. My best guess, based on the way Meehan was acting, was that the accident was truly an accident and she freaked when she thought she might have killed someone.

[The Third Man]

I don't know why this case got to me, but I've done a fair bit of research on it and here I'll piece together what I found and my conclusions based on it.

I think there are only two theories that make sense:

1. Meehan died some distance from the crash and her body was never found.
2. Meehan hitched a ride somewhere and is either suffering from amnesia or has died somewhere unrecognized.

Sadly I think the answer is #1, for the following reasons:

--Meehan worked on a ranch and presumably was used to being outdoors. The crash happened in April, and, although April can be a cold month in Montana, it's likely that she could have survived for several days. If she was on the move for a significant time she could have walked for 10-20 miles, easily. It's hard to imagine that the search party could have covered that distance. As you can see from the map of Circle, MT (http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp...te=mt&zipcode=) there's not much out there and it's possible she never saw anybody in that 10-20 miles.

--As you can also see in the map, Circle is close to 50 miles from the nearest interstate, and the only main road in the area is the same Route 200 she crashed on. It's possible she looped back to Route 200, but it's then more likely that her ride would have been a local who would have known about the missing person. Route 200 is a two-lane highway that goes through a very remote area of Montana...there isn't much non-local traffic.

--By most accounts Meehan was a shy person who preferred animals to people. She doesn't sound like the kind of person who would be brave enough to hitch a ride with a stranger, especially if she was in a panicked state.

--If you accept that Meehan has been hitching rides all over the Northwestern US, you have to explain how she's been supporting herself, how she's keeping herself clean, etc. She doesn't sound like someone streetwise and savvy enough to keep herself solvent.

There's an interesting backstory with the boyfriend, Kurt Flechel. It sounds like they were at least close at some point--his mom was still greatly involved in the search in 1994, so it doesn't sound like a casual fling. I can't go into detail, but I have some reason to believe that their relationship was long-distance. I think there's some significance to the fact that the UM segment didn't mention Meehan had a boyfriend. What I think might have been going down was that Meehan wanted Flechel to move out to eastern Montana and he didn't want to go. (Flechel and his family still live in Spokane, so it's obvious where he wanted to stay.) Whether that caused Meehan's breakdown, nobody will ever know. Perhaps Flechel felt guilty about it and didn't want to be interviewed for UM.

I want to emphasize that I don't blame Flechel or want to make him out to be the bad guy. I've been in a long-distance relationship too, with my now-wife, and it's a hard situation. My sincerest sympathies go out to him...it seems like he's still hurt by Meehan's disappearance.

[Awsi Dooger]

Originally Posted by mistagee

she probably feel asleep somewhere and was eaten by wolves

I always enjoy a post that paints a visual picture.

Actually, I think this was one of the worst produced UM segments. They never gave any indication why they think the sightings are credible, or "confirmed" in the case of the waitresses who reported she was eating breakfast.

Recently eyewitness reports and testimony have come under more scrutiny and skepticism. I think if UM were in production today it would properly include many more phrases like "reported sightings," and not point blank claim the person has been seen dozens or hundreds of times. UM used caution in that regard in some segments but not here.

[Gangreen]

sad case

She probably ended up like michael henley

[The Third Man]

Originally Posted by Awsi Dooger

Recently eyewitness reports and testimony have come under more scrutiny and skepticism. I think if UM were in production today it would properly include many more phrases like "reported sightings," and not point blank claim the person has been seen dozens or hundreds of times. UM used caution in that regard in some segments but not here.

I'm pretty certain that the sightings are mistaken as well. One of the newspaper articles referred to "more than 5,000 reported sightings" of Meehan. Honestly, if even 1% of those were legit, shouldn't she have been found by now?

[rerungirl]

I'll always remember the picture Patricia took of herself shortly before she disappeared.

[mozartpc27]

Originally Posted by The Third Man

I don't know why this case got to me, but I've done a fair bit of research on it and here I'll piece together what I found and my conclusions based on it.

I think there are only two theories that make sense:

1. Meehan died some distance from the crash and her body was never found.
2. Meehan hitched a ride somewhere and is either suffering from amnesia or has died somewhere unrecognized.

Sadly I think the answer is #1, for the following reasons:

--Meehan worked on a ranch and presumably was used to being outdoors. The crash happened in April, and, although April can be a cold month in Montana, it's likely that she could have survived for several days. If she was on the move for a significant time she could have walked for 10-20 miles, easily. It's hard to imagine that the search party could have covered that distance. As you can see from the map of Circle, MT (http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp...te=mt&zipcode=) there's not much out there and it's possible she never saw anybody in that 10-20 miles.

--As you can also see in the map, Circle is close to 50 miles from the nearest interstate, and the only main road in the area is the same Route 200 she crashed on. It's possible she looped back to Route 200, but it's then more likely that her ride would have been a local who would have known about the missing person. Route 200 is a two-lane highway that goes through a very remote area of Montana...there isn't much non-local traffic.

--By most accounts Meehan was a shy person who preferred animals to people. She doesn't sound like the kind of person who would be brave enough to hitch a ride with a stranger, especially if she was in a panicked state.

--If you accept that Meehan has been hitching rides all over the Northwestern US, you have to explain how she's been supporting herself, how she's keeping herself clean, etc. She doesn't sound like someone streetwise and savvy enough to keep herself solvent.

There's an interesting backstory with the boyfriend, Kurt Flechel. It sounds like they were at least close at some point--his mom was still greatly involved in the search in 1994, so it doesn't sound like a casual fling. I can't go into detail, but I have some reason to believe that their relationship was long-distance. I think there's some significance to the fact that the UM segment didn't mention Meehan had a boyfriend. What I think might have been going down was that Meehan wanted Flechel to move out to eastern Montana and he didn't want to go. (Flechel and his family still live in Spokane, so it's obvious where he wanted to stay.) Whether that caused Meehan's breakdown, nobody will ever know. Perhaps Flechel felt guilty about it and didn't want to be interviewed for UM.

I want to emphasize that I don't blame Flechel or want to make him out to be the bad guy. I've been in a long-distance relationship too, with my now-wife, and it's a hard situation. My sincerest sympathies go out to him...it seems like he's still hurt by Meehan's disappearance.

I just saw this segment for the first time. I was going to throw in my two cents, but it looks like The Third Man has really done a good job covering this one. If I were going to bet on this case, I would say that, if her body or any trace of her is ever found, it will be out near where she crashed, likely dead from exposure, as The Third Man suggested. Eyewitness testimonies in these matters are usually frought with error, and looking at the map paints a fairly stark picture. Unless she wandered back to that highway fairly quickly (i.e., before everyone in town would have heard of the missing girl), she would have to have wandered off in a direction away from the road. The possibilities for someone in that situation, in an area that remote, are pretty bleak.