Alberta Leeman’s family has spent 43 years looking for closure after her mysterious disappearance in 1978.
On Friday morning, the Gorham woman’s daughter and grandchildren gathered along the edge of the Connecticut River in Lancaster as a New Hampshire Fish and Game dive team searched a silt-filled Pontiac LeMans found overturned in water 14 feet deep.
After decades of wondering if she was dead or alive, they hoped to finally get some answers.
“You never give up,” said her daughter, Nancy McLain.
The day-long search in the area of the car that authorities believe belonged to Leeman resulted in the discovery of human remains, Fish and Game Lt. Robert Mancini Jr. confirmed early Friday evening.
The remains have not yet been positively identified, but the discovery is the closest Leeman’s family has come to ending the decades of pain they’ve endured. They have spent years following up on possible sightings and reports of human remains found elsewhere — only to learn that they weren’t related to Leeman’s disappearance.
Her granddaughter, Roxanne McLain, was 16 when she vanished. She and other family members live in Gilman, Vt., which is just a few miles away from the site of the submerged car.
At the time, her grandmother was living 40 miles away in Gorham.
“We never thought she was here. They had looked in Maine. They were getting sightings in New Hampshire. … The sightings were terrible at the time. They spotted her everywhere,” said Roxanne, who is Nancy McLain’s daughter.
Leeman’s family learned Thursday night that a vehicle registered to Leeman was found last week by a Fish and Game remote-operated vehicle with an underwater camera and sonar team during training.
Mancini said a dive team conducted an initial search of the river Wednesday and matched the vehicle. The license plate had fallen off, but was still sitting nearby.
The exhaustive search was the result of efforts by Fish and Game Conservation Officer Joe Canfield, who found a vehicle submerged in the Androscoggin River in the Errol area a few years ago using the specialized technology.
Since then, he learned about Leeman’s case and has undertaken regular search missions in the Androscoggin and Connecticut rivers along areas close to the roadway, Mancini said.
“He’s taken time, along with other team members on the sonar team, and they’ve taken their training days to come up here and search portions of the river. And last week they came with that sonar and the underwater camera, and th
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Out of all the famous old European American colonies, Florida is the only one to have three famous royal houses. The Austrian Habsburgs, the French Bourbon, and the German Hanover.
Ironically enough, two of these houses ruled Florida because they eventually ruled Spain. The other ruled it because the German Hanover house would eventually become the kings of Great Britain.
The Habsburgs ruled in the 16th and 17th centuries, and then Spain became Bourbon and then eventually Britain got it for 20 years before giving it back to the Bourbons after the end of the Revolutionary War.
While the other former Spanish colonies were ruled by the Habsburgs and the Bourbons, they weren't ruled by the Hanovers. The 13 original English colonies that were ruled by the Hanovers weren't ruled by the Habsburgs or the Bourbons.
This means that not only is Florida not only the exception in the US but also it's the only region in all of the Americas that had a history with these famous three houses.
Somehow, I won both New Hampshire and Virginia in the 2020a mod. I didn't think it was possible, but holy crap it is.
