It was a beautiful summer day on July 25, 1985. Two sisters, Rozlin Rochelle Abell, 18, and younger sister Fawn Marlene Abell, 15, were last seen at their home in the vicinity of 59th and Rockwell in Bethany, Oklahoma. Rozlin had told her parents she was going to look for a job that afternoon.
The girls’ brother, Otto Abell, Jr. came home that afternoon and overheard his sisters talking as they were headed out the door.
According to the Oklahoman, Otto Jr. remembers one of the girls saying, “Hurry up, they’re waiting for us down the street,” as they walked out.
That was the last time he ever heard his sister’s voice. They vanished that afternoon and their disappearance has mystified their family and authorities for nearly four decades.
No Foul Play?
According to investigators, there was no evidence of foul play in 1985. However, members of the family said the girls regularly hitchhiked, and they believe they were victims of foul play.
Back in 1985, hitchhiking was common, especially with young girls. It would not take long for a stranger to stop and offer a ride to a destination in another town, and sometimes these trips could take hitchhikers across the country.
Hitchhiking could be incredibly dangerous. Many disappearances of young women and men can be attributed to hitchhiking in the 1960s through the ’80s. Many cases remain unresolved to this day.
Decades passed, and in March of 2010, Otto Abell, Jr., the brother of the girls, called Lt. Austin Warfield, formerly of the Bethany Police Department. Strangely, he asked if any bones or skulls had ever been found at the Stinchcomb Wildlife Refuge just off Interstate 66 outside of Bethany.
When police questioned the brother, he brought up his two missing sisters. Lt. Warfield investigated and found only one police report on file. Fawn was listed as a missing child, but her older sister Rozlin did not have a police report.
It took almost 25 years to discover that Fawn’s case was treated like a runaway and never looked into, and Rozlin, because her age made her an adult, was never listed at all.
Lt. Warfield found that Rozlin had never been entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, while Fawn had been entered and removed in error. After further discussing the case with the girls’ brother, Lt. Warfield entered both into NCIC and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC).
NCMEC created age progressions of the girls in hopes they were still alive. However, there has been no activity on Rozlin or Fawn’s Social Security numbers since they disappeared in 1985.
In addition, Lt. Warfield collected DNA swabs from Rozlin and Fawn’s mother and brother with the help of the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification (UNT). The UNT Missing Persons Unit is part of an accredited laboratory specializing in DNA analysis of skeletal remains and other types of evidence for missing and unidentified persons cases.
“We sent DNA swabs down to the University of North Texas from the brother and the mother and have not received any confirmation that there are human remains sitting in a vault somewhere in a medical examiner’s office anywhere in the nation,” Lt. Warfield told the Oklahoman in a 2013 interview.
The fact is there is nothing much to go on with the Abell girls’ disappearance. Their story never made the national news, and with that, frustration grew for their family.
Sister Speaks Out
The girls’ older sister, Lorelie Nelson, spoke in an exclusive interview with Bob Carson of Missing in America.
“Two weeks before the girls went missing, Rozlin, I had talked to her on the phone,” said Lorelie. “She said don’t be surprised if you find me on your front doorstep, or ya know, on your doorstep and I told her that would be great because my apartment will be ready in two weeks and ya know ‘you guys can come down.’”
Lorelie told of how she and her older sister Heather were kidnapped by their father in 1963 and brought to Oklahoma, providing some insight as to how Rozlin and Fawn (born later) were raised. Rozlin and Fawn were Lorelie’s half-sisters, all having the same father. “We lived in a life of abuse and he raped me, I mean just countless numbers of times,” Lorelie told Carson. “He never did that to my sister but he was very cruel to her. It’s really very hard to talk about.”
Lorelie went on to tell Carson of how her father wanted her to get one of her friends and go hitchhike so he could pick them up, but did not want Lorelie to tell her friend who he was. She believed he had intentions of raping her friend but never followed through with his plan.
The official record states that Rozlin and Fawn were out seeking jobs the day they disappeared. However, Lorelie believes that story was concocted to minimize the attention of the man she believes is responsible for their disappearance—her now-deceased father.
“Because of what happened to myself and Heather, I automatically suspected Otto, because he was very evil, very much a … I mean, he loved girls and women,” said Lorelie.
She explained how her father made her invite a 13-year-old school friend over, and he subsequently raped her. There was no investigation because she was too afraid to say anything, and the crime was never reported.
Lorelie tried to tell police that her father was capable of heinous acts and suspected him of abducting and mur*dering his own children, but she says they would not listen.
The girl’s father, Otto Abell Sr., was interviewed by News 9 in Oklahoma on February 22, 2013.
“To this day we still don’t know what happened to them,” Abell said. “It’s been this long, I’m pretty sure something bad happened to them.”
Despite Otto’s violent background, according to Lorelie, he was never considered a suspect in her sisters’ disappearance and never questioned by police.
Potential Suspect?
There has been much speculation online about the sister’s disappearance. Posts on Websleuths point to Royal Russell Long, who was known to k*ill girls who were in pairs.
Questions Persist
Did Rozlin and Fawn run away? Did they hitchhike and get picked up by a person with sinister intentions? Did their father Otto Abell Sr., k*ill his daughters?
As for Rozlin and Fawn’s sister Lorelie, she believes she knows what happened to her sisters, and she prays every day that her sisters will be found within her lifetime.
