The official ground search for Laureen Fabian who disappeared last October is long since over and the case now rests with the RCMP as a missing persons file, leaving daughter Catrina Andrews still wondering what happened to her mom.
“I just don’t know,” she said last week after putting up a Facebook post asking for information.
Andrews, the eldest of Fabian’s three daughters and who lives in Langley, says there’s not much she can do but that putting up occasional Facebook posts give her an outlet as to her worry and concerns.
Responses have been occasional and sporadic, something that follows along with the rumours and reported sightings far afield of Houston that came in the period after Fabian left her residence for a walk the morning of Oct. 28 and never returned.
Andrews said she’s fully familiar with the route her mom would have taken that morning as she would walk it with her mom during her visits to Houston.
Along the way, Fabian would always stop at a neighbour’s house for a chat and then continue.
“She’d leave at 12:30 p.m. and be back no later than 3 p.m.,” said Andrews.
“She had an arrangement with Egon that if she wasn’t back within an hour of that, he would come looking for her and that’s exactly what he did,” Andrews said of her mom’s spouse, Egon Rapp.
Fabian’s disappearance sparked an extensive multi-day search ground search of the Buck Flats Road area involving Houston Search and Rescue and members of neighbouring search and rescue groups along with the RCMP.
An aircraft and a RCMP helicopter also scouted from the air.
“They did find her tracks, but she just disappeared,” said Andrews.
“I just don’t see my mom getting up and leaving. She didn’t take any medication with her and there was nothing else missing.”
RCMP investigators, working on the premise Fabian may have left the area, even put out a call for any dashcam footage that may have been taken by drivers travelling along Buck Flats Road with Andrews noting it had turned into a busy road because of the Coastal GasLink pipeline construction project.
The ground search was terminated Nov. 2 with Fabian’s file transferred from the Houston RCMP detachment to the major crime unit at the North District headquarters for the RCMP in Prince George.
Andrews said she’s heard of reports that Fabian was sighted in Prince George and down into the Cariboo, but isn’t aware that anything substantial has arisen.
In one mysterious circumstance, Andrews added, a woman entered the Houston post office and took down a missing persons poster that had been produced and widely circulated.
Andrews said her most recent Facebook post looking for answers about her mom was sparked after she received a text on Mother’s Day, indicating human remains had been found at Cheslatta Lake south of Burns Lake.
“You can imagine my reaction, Mother’s Day,” said Andrews.
But that report turned out to be a finding of bones dating back to flooding of a Cheslatta graveyard caused by rising waters when Rio Tinto created the Nechako Reservoir to provide water to power its Kemano hydro-electric generators.
In the meantime, the RCMP says the investigation is active and ongoing and no further information is available.
If you have any information about Laureen or where she might be, please contact the Houston RCMP at (250) 845-2204 or Crime Stoppers at 1(800)222-8477.
Fabian is described as a Caucasian female, five feet four inches tall and weighing 143 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes.
If you have any information about Laureen or where she might be, please contact the Houston RCMP at (250) 845-2204 or Crime Stoppers at 1(800)222-8477.