I would like to take a moment to tell you about Sandra Horwath who vanished from her Ann Arbor Michigan home in October 1973.
Sandra or Sandy as she was affectionately called was known as a loving mother with patience and kindness for her three daughters who were close in age about two years between them all.
Her daughter Robin said she has vivid memories of her mother who was always well put together and refined. As a mother, she never yelled and made her children feel very secure and loved in her presence.
In 1973 Sandy 33 and the girl’s father had been divorced a few years and the arrangement they agreed on was Sandy would have the girls on the weekdays and they would spend the weekends with their father who resided in Detroit.
Robin says in the first years of their divorce she can remember sledding in the winters at the student housing they resided in. She has fond memories of her mother spraying Sun-in in the girl’s hair in the summers and that Sandy always had music playing in the car wherever they went.
Looking back at pictures now Robin can see how much effort Sandy put into dressing up her girls and how cute they all looked in photos. Sandy was a very involved mother who enjoyed being with her kids.
The night before Sandy vanished she and the girls had made a trip to the Briarwood Mall which the family often visited. They would arrive home that night around 830 pm and around 930 pm Sandy would receive a call from a male friend.
At 10 pm Sandy was getting the girls ready for bed, Robin who was 8 years old at the time remembers asking her mom if she could sleep with her in her bed.Robin always wanted to sleep in her momma’s bed but that night Sandy told her no and tucked Robin into her bed.
That was the last time Robin saw her mother. The next morning October 1st, 1973 Robin was the first to wake up at 630 a.m.,
she walked to her mother’s room to find it empty. Sandy’s bed was made and her car was in the driveway but she was nowhere to be found.
Robin at just 8 would decide to first call her mom’s work to see if she was there. Her mother did clerical work at a local hospital but when Robin spoke with them they informed her that her mother had not shown up for her shift that morning.
Robin then called the girl’s babysitter who rushed over and called the police to report Sandy missing. The babysitter would then get Robin and her sisters ready for school while the adults jumped into action.
When investigators first arrived they did not note finding anything out of the ordinary in the home but had mentioned the flower bed outside the home looked like it had been trampled.
Sandy’s purse was gone but a watch she always wore was home and her vehicle was there as Robin remembers seeing when she woke up.
Investigators would organize ground and Air searches immediately while officers canvassed the neighborhood and business that Sandy frequented. One of Sandy’s neighbors would mention hearing a strange noise the night Sandy vanished around 1050 p.m. but not much more detail than that.
Family friends and co-workers would be interviewed by investigators and they conducted many more interviews and polygraph tests, however the days turned into weeks with no answers.
Robin’s father would end up coming to Ann Arbor to stay with his daughters as investigators began the search for Sandy.
Robin remembers in those first days running home from school every day hoping to see her mother had returned home.
She said the adults in their lives tried their best to protect them from what was going on around them but eventually the girls had to pack up and move with Dad and Robin said at one point she knew her mom wasn’t coming back.
Investigators do have a possible suspect in Sandy’s disappearance he’s been a suspect since 1975. Ann Arbor resident Gary Addison Taylor a known serial killer was living close to Sandy’s house the year she disappeared and it is confirmed that Taylor and Sandy knew one another, what their relationship was isn’t clear. What investigators do know is when Sandy vanished so did Taylor.
Taylor would be arrested in Texas in May of 1975 and through his lawyer they would discover that Taylor had murdered and buried 4 people at his previous home in Onsted, a small town just 30 miles from Ann Arbor.
They were able to recover those remains but none of them were Sandy. When investigators interviewed him he admitted to knowing Sandy but denied having anything to do with her disappearance.
Robin has always believed Taylor had something to do with her mother’s disappearance. Taylor has not been cooperative with investigators and despite DNA and more digs, they haven’t gotten any closer to finding out what happened to Sandy. Robin wishes Taylor would just speak to the police and allow her family to have closure.
Today Taylor is still the main suspect in Sandys case. Robin does want to emphasize that the Ann Arbor police have consistently investigated her mother’s disappearance. She said the AAPD has never forgotten her mother. The FBI did become involved and released a new flyer in 2021. I’ll be adding the links for that flyer to the comment section as well as my webpage.
At the time of Sandra’s disappearance, she was 33 and had long brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a house dress or blue tank top and pullover shirt, blue stretch pants, a white blazer, wooden-based sandals with a beige strap, and was carrying a purse.
The AAPD is asking anyone with information about Sandys’s disappearance to please contact the tip line at (734)794-6939
I’ll be linking the source article in the comments as well as below. Thank you for taking the time to get to know Sandy today and don’t forget every time we share a face we get closer to solving a case.
Source and Informative Links:
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/missing-persons/sandra-june-horwath—ann-arbor-michigan
https://www.newspapers.com/image/759396770/?terms=Sandra%20Horwath%20&match=1
amplifyingtheirvoices.com 