On a warm June night in 1981, Alma Louise O’Con, better known as “Weezie”, came downstairs from her hospital room at the Overton Brooks VA Medical Center. She had been admitted to the VA hospital days earlier for what was called “stress and exhaustion.”
On every night since she had been admitted, she would meet her mother and her aunt in the downstairs lobby of the hospital. On this night, however, she came downstairs alone, carrying nothing but a glass of milk. The only person who reported seeing her was the hospital’s security guard.
That was the last time anyone would see Alma Louise O’Con again. O’Con simply vanished from the grounds of the VA hospital. A missing person report was filed with the Shreveport Police Department, but after a short investigation that yielded no leads, the case went cold.
And cold is how the case has stayed for the last 37 years. Several online groups who search for missing persons have tried to locate O’Con, or at least gather more details about her disappearance, but have so far been unsuccessful in discovering anything that wasn’t in the initial police report.
But, there is another organization that ensures that Alma Louise O’Con and another 392 missing and/or unidentified people in Louisiana are not forgotten, The LSU FACES Laboratory in Baton Rouge. FACES serves as a repository for all information about missing and unidentified people in the state.
In addition, the FACES lab helps law enforcement agencies and coroners identify human remains, and using techniques such as clay modeling and digitally enhanced facial reconstruction, can help investigators see what a person looked like before they died. The can also use techniques to age-progress a person’s face so investigators have a better idea what a person who disappeared years before would look like today.
While the FACES lab holds all of the records and assists law enforcement, they do not actively investigate the disappearances themselves. It’s ultimately up to law enforcement, and with cold cases such as O’Con’s, it’s up to the public to provide any information.
On the night of her disappearance, Alma Louise “Weezie” O’Con was 34 years old, today she would be 69. At the time of her disappearance, she was 5’3″ and between 115 and 130 lbs. She had black hair and hazel eyes. She was reportedly wearing a red plaid shirt and blue jeans, and a pair of tan shoes.
If you have any information about the whereabouts of Alma O’Con or any additional information about her disappearance, please don’t hesitate to call Shreveport Police at 318-673-7020 and reference case number T6-13488/T6-14568.
If you would like more information about the LSU FACES laboratory you can visit their website at http://identifyla.lsu.edu/index.php
