Teen Vanishes After Stealing Father’s Money

Brenda Sue Davidson lived with her parents and four younger siblings at Gleaton’s Mobile Home Park in Woodbridge, Virginia. The 13-year-old attended Fred M. Lynn Middle School.

On March 4, 1974, Brenda did not return home from school. According to her mother, she had stolen $100 from her father’s wallet before leaving that morning. Brenda’s parents reported her missing to the police.

An employee at the local Greyhound bus station contacted police after she heard about Brenda’s disappearance. She recalled selling a ticket to a young girl on the afternoon Brenda went missing. She was not positive that the girl was Brenda and was not sure what her destination was.

Furthermore, this woman had taken the young girl to the bank with her. The employee had to run an errand but didn’t want to leave the girl alone at the bus station. The woman is also not certain that the girl ended up boarding a bus.

Reportedly, there is record of a couple of Brenda’s schoolmates saying they walked her to the bus station. But recently, both of these men claimed they had not been with Brenda.

It has also been discovered that a couple of Brenda’s schoolmates had overheard Brenda speaking to two other classmates about running away to Florida. Her classmates ended up running away on the day Brenda went missing. However, these girls were soon found in Georgia and had not been with Brenda.

Brenda’s youngest sister Lisa, who was just 7-years-old when she went missing, does not remember a lot from that time. Nevertheless, she has been trying to find out what happened to her sister and where she is since she became an adult. She believes her parents knew more about Brenda’s disappearance than they claimed.

The girls’ father was an alcoholic and very abusive towards his children. There is a possibility that Brenda was also being sexually abused by her father. On the day of Brenda’s disappearance, Lisa saw her father cry for the first time. Nonetheless, the family rarely spoke of Brenda again and did not keep any of her belongings.

Brenda was classified as a runaway by authorities. They claimed that Brenda’s mother had been unfit.

Brenda’s father passed away in 1985 after battling lung cancer. Shortly after his death, the family began receiving calls on their landline. No one would speak on the other end. Even though they couldn’t be sure it was Brenda, they told the caller that their father had died and that it was safe to come home.

Lisa has spoken to Brenda’s childhood best friend who told her about Brenda’s diaries. She had two of them, one real and one fake in case her parents found it. In the real one, she wrote about a boy she had sex with. Lisa was able to contact this man but he claimed to not have had that kind of relationship with Brenda. However, Lisa began to speculate that maybe Brenda had been pregnant or that their father found out she had sex.

Lisa has checked Brenda’s social security number, contacted all US states to check if she had gotten married or gotten a driver’s license. Even though her mother submitted her DNA decades ago, it was lost so Lisa and her sister submitted theirs. Sadly, all these efforts have proved to be fruitless.

Decades after Brenda disappeared, police reopened the case after Lisa insisted it become a cold case. Authorities interviewed Brenda’s mother and were told something interesting.

She claimed that police at the time had located Brenda at the nearby Lake Ridge but she told them she didn’t want to go back home. In an interview with The Northern Virginia Daily, Lisa rightfully asked, “How can a 13-year-old have that say so?” Their mother died in 2015.

Even though it is possible that Brenda voluntarily left her family, it is unusual for a runaway to go missing for such a long period of time.

NCMEC created an image of what Brenda may have looked like at 57-years-old. If alive, she is now 60-years-old.

Brenda Sue Davidson has been missing for 46 years.