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RIVER ROUGE — Forty-four-year-old Ruth Sharon Hoffman went missing June 20, 1986, but wasn’t listed as such by police until February 2005.
It then took until September 2013 for her remains to be identified through a national missing persons’ database.
No reason for the delay has been given to Hoffman’s family.
A River Rouge resident at the time she went missing, Hoffman was found dead in the woods in northern Monroe County in Dec. 26, 1986, six months after she disappeared. But because she had never been placed on a missing persons’ list, it took more than 26 years to identify the remains.
Her badly decomposed remains were found just off Hivon Road in Exeter Township in northern Monroe County, about 20 miles southwest of River Rouge.
Until Hoffman’s remains were identified, her daughter, Debbie Lynn Monsinger, had been searching for her since the day she went missing, 27 years before.
“She was the light of my life,” Monsinger said. “I’ve ruined so many other parts of my life searching for her, but she needed me. Her loss left a big black hole in my life.”
Hoffman had reportedly been raped the day before she went missing, and Monsinger believes that is the reason she was killed.
“Mom knew who both men were that raped her,” she said. “She wouldn’t let me make a report, but she knew who they were. They are the ones that killed her to stop her from reporting it.”
The night before her disappearance, Hoffman didn’t come home after a job interview at a local bar. Instead, she was brought home by a taxicab early the morning she went missing.
When she got out of the cab, she was covered in bruises and was wearing a hospital gown, according to Monsinger.
Hoffman told Monsinger that she had been raped by two men she knew after she left a bar where she had been interviewing for a job. She told her daughter that she had gone to a hospital to have a rape kit done and that hospital personnel had kept her clothes.
After convincing Monsinger not to call the police, Hoffman took a shower and decided to go for a walk. She left the house at about 2 p.m. — and was never seen by her family again.
Monsinger said her mother never would have willingly left permanently, as she had a granddaughter on the way.
“Back then, Mom and I, both divorced from abusive husbands, shared an apartment,” she said. “I was eight months pregnant, and Mom was even more excited than I was. We worked together on a nursery for my daughter. We were both feeling happier than we had in a long time as we helped each other rebuild our shattered lives.”
Records indicate Hoffman visited a medical clinic on July 3, 1986, just days after she left home. She was seen as a new patient and was given a diphtheria/tetanus immunization.
After that, the trail ran cold on Hoffman, but Monsinger kept looking.
“I went to the police station every day and spent hours there,” she said, “hoping for news about Mom.”
That news never arrived, because despite what officers at the River Rouge Police Department told her, Hoffman was never added to any missing persons’ list.
Monsinger hired private investigators and pounded the pavement herself, putting up fliers and talking to anyone who would listen. Through the years, she did manage to find a couple of leads, which she now knows were false.
The first lead popped up in 1993, when Monsinger got a copy of her mother’s driving record. Reportedly, the record showed that on Oct. 8, 1993, a traffic ticket was issued to “Ruth Sharon Russie” — said to be one of her known aliases — in Pennsylvania. The ticket gives Hoffman’s birth and an address in Belleville. It said her license was expired.
“We went to the address in Belleville,” Monsinger said. “At first they wouldn’t let us in, but I kept knocking and pleading that I just needed to see my mother. Finally, they opened the door. It was an older black woman who told me that my mother had never been there.”
There also was a record of a ticket for a wrong turn in Walker City in 1988, but there wasn’t any way to follow up on that at the time.
Police haven’t released any information on how someone with Hoffman’s information was able to get a ticket nearly seven years after her body was discovered.
In 1995, a cousin-in-law thought she spotted Hoffman at a grocery store in Finville, but couldn’t stop the green truck the woman was in before it pulled out into traffic.
During a visit to River Rouge in 2005, Monsinger stopped at the Police Department and asked to see her mother’s file. The officer at the desk came out of the file room with nothing but the folder. All of the contents were missing.
Monsinger said the officer told her: “I think your Mom came in here and removed the report” — and then told her to accept the fact that her mother “doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
Monsinger was devastated, but still didn’t quit searching for her mother.
Eventually, she was able to get the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department to take the case, convincing Sgt. Larry Crider that River Rouge police hadn’t done enough to look for her mother. That was in 2005.
Crider was able to get Hoffman listed in all of the national databases, which led to the identification of her remains.
Monroe County authorities had known Hoffman only as Jane Doe No. 17903, though they were still actively trying to identify her.
In 1992, a profile, including a clay model of the skull, was created by a forensic anthropologist. Despite widespread media attention, no one came forward with information at the time.
Then, in early 2012 the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, housed at the University of North Texas, made a potential match.
The decade-old system matches several points of information on a case against missing person reports to find potential matches. The database matched as many factors as it could, and Monsinger was called in to give a DNA sample for comparison.
“It took a couple of months after I gave the sample,” Monsinger said. “Then, one day I got the call that it was her.”
That call took a big burden off Monsinger.
“I’ve been looking for her for so long,” she said. “It’s a relief to finally know where she is. She’s at home with me now.”
Monsinger’s final resting place will be just outside Knoxville, Tenn., next to her deceased brother.
Just because her mother’s body has been found doesn’t mean the search is over for Monsinger. Now, instead of searching for her mother, she is searching for her mother’s rapists and killer.
“I won’t give up until they are found,” she said. “They need to pay for what they did to Mom.”
Karma Bitches...
Anyone with any information is asked to contact Monroe County Sheriff’s Detective Joe Hammond at 1-734-240-7765 or Wayne County Sheriff’s Detective Ken Muscat at 1-313-224-5741. Want to thank alot of you for being here for me and Mom thuout the longg years and for those who are falling my Mom's case you can find us on Google.ca or Google.com or Facebook.com Deb Lynn Monsinger / Debbie Monsinger / Molitor and for those of you that want my number cuz I am coming back to the states next month just private message me please or if you have any tips from June_ December 1986
