SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Although the photo of Frances Hatadis with the City of South Lake Tahoe Police Department is black and white, the description as having blue eyes and gray hair begins to cast color in the mind’s eye. Yet, certain details surrounding her case remain gray. The 68-year-old mysteriously vanished from South Lake Tahoe at the beginning of August 1997.

“Chapter one in the cold case handbook is evidence will be lost,” SLTPD lieutenant Jeff Roberson said. “And also technology changes over time. Relationships change over time.”

It’s these three elements, the former detective explained, that can either make a case or undermine one. “Sometimes all three.”

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But just how are these elements at play in Frances’ case? At the time of her disappearance, the forensic DNA technology prevalent today was still in its infancy, Roberson explained, and advancements since her disappearance could one day solve it.

Although investigators have noted signs of foul play and are investigating the incident as a possible homicide, that didn’t appear to be the case at first.

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Missing Person

Events began to unfold when her son contacted the police department and reported her missing from the room she had been staying at in South Lake Tahoe, just blocks away from the state line.

Was she at the casinos?

It was one speculation after the officers had done an initial assessment and only found her car gone, dirty dishes, and uneaten food to note her absence. At the time, they had found no signs of foul play.

‘There’s more to this’

Following the initial investigation, Frances’ husband continued to examine her room, eventually flipping her mattress over. What he found changed the direction of the investigation.

“There [was] blood on the bottom side of the mattress,” Roberson recalled, noting this finding changed the urgency of the investigation.

“So they go back out,” he described the police department’s actions, “and they go: ‘Okay, well, there’s more to this than that.'”

Investigators further processed the room, but despite the blood, the scene was not generous with leads.

There was still no sign of Frances. An incident transpiring a few weeks later and hundreds of miles away would change that.

A Colorado lead

A man had been driving in Colorado when officers stopped and arrested him. He was at the wheel of a car belonging to Frances with a trunk offering up some of her belongings.

The car and belongings weren’t the only thing leading back to South Lake Tahoe. This man had a criminal history in the South Lake region for a strong-arm robbery.

Detectives interviewed the man, but the alibi he offered couldn’t be disproven.

“It was a dead end,” Roberson said.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation processed the vehicle and allowed South Lake Tahoe detectives to take portions of the car back for analysis.

These detectives recovered parts of the car that they thought would provide evidence, given the technology at the time.

However, the analysis did not produce evidence that advanced the case. It’s possible evidence remained on the car that could have advanced the case, but at the time, was out of touch of today’s technology.

“Our detectives didn’t put the car in a flatbed,” Roberson said, “unaware technology might change in a few years when they could grab some of that stuff.”

It was evidence that could have pointed Roberson towards where the man had gone in the vehicle, potentially with Frances.

This was before license plate readers or the prevalent use of ATM cards. “All the things,” Roberson explained, “that are pretty commonplace in investigations today.”

As technology evolved, SLTDP reached out to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, but the agency had gotten rid of the car long before that.

“So lost evidence,” Roberson said.

All these dead ends, as well as unknowns, and potential scenarios in a case like this are enough to keep detectives up at night.

“I had to keep a notepad by the bed because I’d wake up in the middle of the night subconsciously solving the problems and I couldn’t go back to sleep until I purged it by writing it down,” Roberson recalled.

Goodluck

That would not be the last time the department would cross paths with the suspect. Around a decade after Frances’ disappearance, the man resurfaced in a Nevada prison on an unrelated Las Vegas robbery charge.

Roberson took the opportunity to interview him again. After turning over his car keys, cell phone, identification and close to everything he had on him, Roberson entered the room with the inmate.

“It was an interesting interview,” he said, remembering being locked in a concrete bunker with the man, who seemed nonchalant about the exchange.

“He wasn’t sitting there twiddling his thumbs, biting his nails, sweating it up,” Roberson said.

But this wasn’t much of a surprise, “I mean this guy had been in and out of prison, so the fact that the cops were there did not disturb him at all.”

The detective learned more about the man, but again, nothing that gave the case momentum.

Roberson does remember one thing the man left him with, “He wish[ed] me luck in solving this case.”

The mattress

The bloodied mattress still remains in the police department’s evidence vault.

Initially the California Department of Justice declined processing the mattress since it was initially believed to be a hotel mattress. “Everybody’s left all their DNA on it,” Roberson explained.

That didn’t stop Roberson from digging further. He eventually discovered the hotel she was staying at had been converted into short-term single bedroom apartments prior to her stay.

“So it was her mattress.”

The the California Department of Justice finally agreed to process the mattress and retrieved some DNA from it, comparing what was found with the suspect’s DNA.

Still, nothing pushed the case forward.

The case had previously taken the detectives to Colorado, but it was about to take the department even farther across the country.

Florida

A complication existed surrounding Frances’ exact DNA profile with only her hairbrush to draw from. Without a definitive sample of her blood, her DNA profile would have to be extrapolated.

Roberson explains, the only way to further narrow the extrapolation is by including additional profiles.

One son had already contributed a DNA sample. Frances’ husband had since died and a sample was unavailable from him that could have ruled out his contribution to the son’s DNA, further pointing towards Frances’.

However, another son in Florida had potential to be a source for an additional sample. Roberson and another investigator flew to Florida around 2014 and collected a swab of his DNA.

Her son was glad to hear the department continued to pursue avenues to solve the matter, though Roberson said the relative appeared to have moved on. “He was clear that it was a cold case and it might never be solved because we don’t have a body.”

At this point Frances had been presumed dead.

Frances’ information currently sits in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a national centralized repository for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed persons. The system helps investigators match long-term missing persons with unidentified remains to resolve cases. 

In the event remains are found that line up with her information, it will trigger a process to determine whether it is her or not.

As for the man found with her car, he remains the only suspect in the matter until forensic evidence points otherwise. He was eventually released from the Nevada prison, all while Frances’ case remains cold.

“I don’t know if at any point in the future that something’s going to change,” Roberson said. “Does a relationship change?”

Or, he posed, “Does this guy give it up on his deathbed?”

If alive, Frances is approaching her 96th birthday, born March 2, 1929.

If you have any information concerning this case, you can contact the South Lake Tahoe Police Department at 530-542-6110.