Man missing for 30 years helped to solve his own disappearance after having flashback
A man who was missing for 30 years started having flashbacks which eventually helped solve his own disappearance.
In September 1986, Edgar Latulip, then 21, suddenly vanished from his home in Kitchener, Canada.
His disappearance left his family, especially his mother, Sylvia Wilson, 'sick' as he'd reportedly last been treated in a hospital after attempting to take his own life, PEOPLE reported.
She told The Record in 2014: "When Edgar disappeared, I became quite sick. I had to take a leave of absence from work. I was near a nervous breakdown."
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The case went cold for a while as law enforcement failed to discover a body, before an incredible discovery was made some 30 years later.
A 50-year-old man who'd been living in Niagara for 30 years had recently began to have memory flashbacks, according to the Niagara Regional Police as per CNN, before realising that he had been living under a different name.
He brought up his flashbacks to a social worker who then Googled his name - leading them to uncover that he was at the centre of a missing person's case, and so they contacted the authorities.
“We brought in a team of detectives who sat down with him and had a chat and an interview,” Constable Philip Gavin said.
“They found the missing persons case and communicated with the other police agency.”
Subsequent DNA tests later confirmed that he was, in fact, Latulip - but what exactly happened to him?
According to a spokesperson for the Niagara Regional Police, he had apparently jumped on a bus heading to Niagara Falls, CNN reported in 2016.
Police eventually came to the conclusion that Latulip had sustained a serious head injury sometime after he left his home - leaving him with no memory of who he was.
He had absolutely no idea that his family, who were just a few towns away, were frantically trying to search for him.
Duane Gingerich, of the Waterloo Regional Police, told CTV: "It’s the only case, that I know of, where we’ve been able to find someone who has been missing for this period of time.
"I did speak with one of the family members yesterday and today, and … they're obviously very happy about it, and they’re making plans to get together with Edgar and speak with him further."
"I had hopes that he was out there somewhere," he later told The Record. "For us as investigators, this is great, this is awesome. It's satisfying because most of these cases don't turn out this way. You expect the worst when a person is missing for that period of time."
Wilson was also said to be 'overwhelmed' at her son's unexpected return, as per The Independent.
Callum Jones