Marguerite Erin Hoffman, 76, disappeared from her home in Alabaster, Tennessee in the late autumn or early winter of 1989 while in poor health and experiencing vision loss. Widowed three years earlier, she had been joined at the house by her only child, her 56-year-old son John Louie Hoffman Jr., who moved in roughly three weeks before she was last seen.

No one reported Marguerite missing until February 1991, after her brother-in-law filed a report. John told family she had left for Florida in a light gray van with a woman he called Cousin Jane and that Marguerite visited occasionally, but no other family members knew or had met anyone by that name and John could not describe her. Investigators later concluded Cousin Jane was a fabrication; John also at one point said they had gone to a Seminole Amish Indian Reservation, a place that does not exist. Police searched the shared property, even digging the yard, but found no trace. John’s health later declined and he was moved to a nursing home, limiting further cooperation.

The circumstances of Marguerite’s vanishing remain unclear and unsolved. Did anyone in or around Alabaster at the time ever see a light gray van or a woman matching the vague description of Cousin Jane?