Daughter finds missing Houston mom after more than 50 years

HOUSTON - A Houston woman who’s been looking for her missing mother for more than 50 years is finally getting answers.

Patricia Thomas-Wardell was just 18 years old when she went missing way back in 1970. At that time the Beltway 8 Toll Road didn’t exist.

Her daughter Cynthia was just a year old, and she’s been searching for her mother her entire life. Now DNA confirms a woman found dead in the woods near what is now the Beltway, was confirmed to be Cynthia’s missing mother. "It’s been just like a bad nightmare," the grieving daughter says.

FOX 26 Anchor Kaitlin Monte explains the pain families of those missing go through when their loved one goes missing.With no real memories of her mom, Cynthia has been clinging to photos of her mother, preserving old newspaper clippings about her disappearance, and holding on to stacks of letters, like the one she showed me from Unsolved Mysteries, after years of begging for help to find her mom, to anyone who would listen.  "As I became an adult I was able to hire private detectives and things like that," Cynthia explained. "My family has been scammed by people who contacted us saying they have information about where my mother is, and they ask for money." MORE MISSING PERSONS COVERAGESeveral family members gave DNA samples to Houston Police investigators in 2016 in hopes of locating Patricia. "We’re able to solve more missing person cases with the use of DNA, familial DNA." Houston Police Department Missing Persons Detective Darrin Buse explainsThis past Friday, Detective Buse told the family DNA confirmed Patricia had been buried minutes from where they live, in a county cemetery as a Jane Doe, for years. "It's hard to understand.