Man Solves His Own 30-Year-Old Missing Person Case

The last time Sylvia Wilson saw her son was in September 1986. He was 21 at the time, and had recently been in the hospital following a failed suicide attempt.

Edgar Latulip was a developmentally delayed young man with the "cognitive abilities of a child," authorities said, according to the Washington Post. He disappeared from a group home in Kitchener, Ontario, getting on a bus headed south towards the American side of Lake Ontario. ​

When cops found that Latulip had traveled to Niagara Falls​, a common suicide site, Wilson feared the worst. She thought that he may have been abused because of his mental illness, or accidentally killed, she told the Guelph Mercury.

But Wilson was relieved last week to learn that her son, now 50, is alive and living in St. Catharines, Ontario, 80 miles from his original home.  

Police said Latulip suffered a head injury and lost his memory shortly after leaving Kitchener nearly three decades ago. In January, he began have flashbacks of his true identity, and notified a social worker. Authorities confirmed Latulip's identity with a DNA last week. 

Police have disclosed any details about the accident that caused Latulip's amnesia, the new name he assumed after disappearing, or the kind of life he led. 

Wilson and Latulip are working on a plan to reunite. 

"She was excited, happy, overjoyed," a Niagara Regional Police spokesman, told the Washington Post. "After 30 years of not knowing where her son is — knowing that he's alive, she's pretty excited about that."​