Event Helps Families With Missing Loved Ones: 'I'd Tell Her I Love Her'
DENVER (CBS4) - The search continues for 1,191 active missing people in Colorado, according the to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI). For 40 years, the Blee family has been searching for their daughter Marie.
"She was a lovely girl, she just was a sweetheart. We had a real hard time after she was gone," said Ramona Blee. "She was 15 years old, she was a lovely young lady, she was just beginning her sophomore year of high school."
In November of 1979, Marie went to a school dance in the town of Craig and was never heard from again.
"It's something that I think about every day to start with and I pray about it, every day," Ramona said.
Marie's father, Paul, says he turned to his priest for help coping with the loss and pain.
"He asked me if I go to communion and I said, 'Yes, every Sunday,' he says 'Take her with you,' and I did and it works."
For the Blees, there is no justice, no closure and no place to pay their respects to their little girl.
"We'd like to know where she is. I'd like to know before I pass away, and I'm getting to the point where I'm going to be gone before too long."
They know they will never see her again in this life, but pray every day that it could have turned out differently.
"I'd tell her I love her," Paul said through tears. "And welcome her home."
The Blees were in Denver for a Missing in Colorado event hosted by the Longmont Department of Public Safety and CBI on Saturday.
The event provides support and resources for impacted families who were able to meet with investigators and share additional information including photos, dental records, DNA and as well as enter information about their loved one into the national missing persons database.
For more information about Marie's case you can visit http://charleyproject.org/case/marie-ann-blee.
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