Cold case investigators rekindled the search for a long-missing Texas teenager, then got a shocking phone call from a woman living on the other side of the country, news outlets reported.
Jessica Delgadillo was 14 years old when she went to school and never came home in 2010, Amarillo police told the Amarillo-Globe News on April 11. Her family reported her missing, authorities searched and investigated, but leads dried up and she was never found, the newspaper reported.
“The case of Jessica’s disappearance was diligently worked on by many Investigators throughout a ten-year span,” APD told the newspaper.
But the search for Delgadillo started again in 2023, shortly after the department formed a new Cold Case Unit, police told KFDA. It selected three unsolved missing persons cases, and Delgadillo’s was among them.
Detectives got in touch with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for assistance, and two members began working with police, poring through the cases and sharing information on social media, investigators told the station.
Then, in November, detectives received a call from a woman saying she was Delgadillo, KAMR reported. She’d heard they were searching for her, she said, adding that she was now living on the East Coast.
Investigators took DNA swabs and confirmed the caller was who she claimed to be — Jessica Delgadillo, now an adult and living a very long way from her former home, police told the outlet.
She asked police not to share what happened to her or where she ended up and how, the station reported. But “this case can finally be closed,” police said, and the investigation has brought “closure for the family.”
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