2 Michigan Teens Vanished on Halloween 1969. A Cold Case Break May Help Explain Why

On the afternoon of Halloween in 1969, two teenage girls walked away from their high school in Oscoda, Mich. 

Pamela “Pam” Hobley and Patricia “Patty” Spencer never made it to the homecoming football game between Oscoda High School and Ogemaw Heights High School later that day, and they never made it home that night. No one ever saw or heard from them again.

Nearly six decades later, their disappearance remains one of Michigan’s oldest, active missing-person investigations.

Pam and Patty were last spotted around 2 p.m. heading east on East River Road away from Oscoda High. 

Pam was 15 with long brown hair and brown eyes, standing somewhere between 5 feet 6 inches and 5 feet 8 inches tall. That day, she was wearing a white fur coat with brown trim over a brown-and-white plaid skirt, along with white knee socks and chunky shoes.

Patty, 16, was a few inches shorter, with long blond hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a tweed or brown plaid skirt, a brown sweater and a gray and green plaid jacket, paired with brown shoes with thick heels. Neither had a purse or identification with them. 

They weren’t known to be close friends, but, after they vanished, investigators suspected the two girls had been skipping class together, possibly to get ready for the evening’s events. 

Police put out a statewide alert, and community members raised $600 (equivalent to approximately $5,500 in 2026) to offer as a reward. But those efforts turned up little to suggest where they might be.

“There just isn’t a trace,” William Tarnosky, the Oscoda police chief, told The Flint Journal three weeks after the girls disappeared. “They’ve got to be somewhere. Maybe somebody will see them.”

Running away was a possibility investigators had to consider, but the girls’ mothers didn’t believe their daughters had simply decided to disappear.

“We realize kids run away every day,” Arlene Spencer and Lois Hobley wrote in a letter published in The Bay City Times in May 1970. “But knowing our girls, we don’t think they could go this long without contacting us in some way if they are able…We have just run ourselves ragged and are getting so tired we are about to give up all hopes.”

In December 2023, the Michigan State Police announced they’d teamed up with Oscoda Township Police Department to try to solve the case. 

“This has been a cloud over the community for a long time,” Erik McNichol, a detective with the Oscoda Township Police Department, told ABC12. “It needs to be lifted.”

Students at Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program, a joint program between the university and the Michigan State Police, also started working on the case. They digitized and organized all of the case material for the detectives and produced several supportive investigative documents. 

The investigation took an unexpected turn in early 2026, when investigators caught a break in another cold case—the kidnapping, rape and murder of 16-year-old Sheri Jo Elliott in Flint, Mich., in November 1983. 

With help from Western Michigan University students, detectives discovered untested biological evidence in the Elliott case file. Despite the years that had passed, the evidence was still usable—and it eventually helped lead investigators to 75-year-old Roni Collins, a musician from Grand Blanc, a town about 10 miles south of Flint.

“Collins was identified using DNA testing in the Elliott case,” Ashlyn Keursten, founder and director of the Western Michigan University’s Cold Case Program, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Using forensic genetic genealogy and family trees, police were able to identify relatives of the perpetrator in the Elliott case and narrow down potential suspects.”  

But as authorities focused their investigation on Collins, he died by suicide in January 2026. His DNA, collected during his autopsy, was a match for the biological evidence found on Elliott’s body.

After Collins’ death, investigators throughout the Midwest began reviewing their cold cases to determine whether Collins might have been responsible. Back in Michigan, detectives began to suspect that Collins might have also had something to do with Pam and Patty’s disappearance in 1969.

“[He] was in a band that played for high schools across the area where both Sheri Jo Elliott and Pamela Hobley and Patricia Spencer lived,” Keursten says. “So he was in the area, and the girls were all about the same age [when they disappeared].”

In 1969, Collins was around 19 years old. He had been in the Oscoda area on Halloween, and, at the time, police had identified him as a person of interest. When investigators questioned him, he denied knowing anything about the girls’ disappearance.

“My emotions are up and down but I truly believe he took the girls,” Mary Buehrle, Pam’s younger sister, told ABC12.

In light of Collins’ possible connection, Michigan State Police have renewed their calls for information about Pam and Patty’s disappearance. Since their bodies have never been found, there is little physical evidence overall, making tips from the public especially important to the investigation.

In an ideal world, Keursten says, a witness who Collins spoke to about his actions might come forward.

“These little girls matter,” Keursten says. “Even minor tips could change this story and allow us to know what happened to them. If someone knows something or heard something about what happened to these two young girls and is willing to share that tip with police, it could move this case forward.”

Even if Collins is definitively linked to their disappearance in the future, Pam and Patty’s loved ones won’t be able to see him brought to justice. But just knowing what happened to the girls could still bring them some measure of peace, Keursten adds.

“They have no closure,” she says. “That is a tragedy. Knowing what happened and receiving closure for the family members is what motivates me.”