Dansville, N.Y. (WHAM) \u2014 Laurie Travis was just 22 years old when her sister Rose Marie Gayhart went missing. <\/p>\n
“Her and I wrote back and forth to each other,” Travis said. “And one day her letter came back ‘Returned to sender,’ and then right there I thought something’s not right.”<\/p>\n
She last saw Gayhart on Christmas Eve of 1984, before Gayhart moved to Cape Coral, Florida with her boyfriend for work.<\/p>\n
After getting her letter sent back, Travis quickly told her parents in Dansville, who notified authorities. <\/p>\n
“She said she was pregnant, and I guess her boyfriend didn’t want to have the baby and they got into a big fight,” Travis said.<\/p>\n
A short time after that, she lost contact with her sister.<\/p>\n
BACKGROUND: Remains of former Livingston County woman missing since 1985 found in Florida<\/a> | Livingston County Sheriff’s Office still investigating woman’s 1985 disappearance<\/a><\/p>\n For more than four decades, Travis and her family have been searching for answers.<\/p>\n “Every day, I thought of her,” Travis said. “I looked things up on the internet. I did backgrounds on people. I had to identify these dead bodies to see if it was her. It was not easy.”<\/p>\n According to the Cape Coral Police Department, a kayaker found human remains in a canal there two years ago.<\/p>\n In May of this year, police announced Friday, those remains were confirmed to belong to Gayhart.<\/p>\n “I got in the kayak, was coming down here just fishing, looked off to my right, and I seen something that kind of came into my mind of a human skull, so I look back and it was a human skull,” said Ryland Sands, who made the discovery.<\/p>\n Travis said her sister’s remains were found just five minutes away from where she lived. For two days last week, authorities returned to the scene to further investigate the open case.<\/p>\n “My family has lived in pain, questions and heartbreak for 41 years,” Travis said.<\/p>\n “I just lost my sister Saturday, another one,” Travis added. “But she was able to hear that (Rose’s) remains were found, so thank God.”<\/p>\n The Livingston County Sheriff\u2019s Office is urging anyone with information to call (585) 243-7100 or email Investigator James Merrick at JamesMerrick@livingstoncountyny.gov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dansville, N.Y. (WHAM) \u2014 Laurie Travis was just 22 years old when her sister Rose Marie Gayhart went…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-354358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}