Lori Jean Lloyd was 14 when she vanished from Kettering, Ohio, on the evening of February 11, 1976. She was babysitting a nephew at home with a friend; her mother, Anita Smith, briefly stopped by with a pizza. Lori reportedly left to walk three blocks to a convenience store to buy cigarettes and never returned. When her mother came back around midnight she found the friend and child asleep and Lori gone.

Lori had a history of running away, but the family says this disappearance felt different: she left behind her purse, personal belongings and a small amount of untouched savings. The only item missing was a knapsack. Early investigation was affected by her runaway history. A friend later said Lori planned to meet a boy who was to take her to California to live with her father; that person was never identified.

A 1980 possible sighting in a California documentary prompted a follow-up film in 1981 but produced no leads. In 2016 a detective found overlooked dental records that appear to match a Jane Doe recovered in Grant County, Kentucky, two months after Lori’s disappearance; the family has acknowledged that identification, but official confirmation has been complicated by the fact the remains were buried in a mass grave.

Does anyone have memories of Lori in Kettering in 1976 or information about the unidentified boy she might have been meeting?