The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages and is intended for a mature
audience.
Listener discretion is advised.
Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
And unfortunately my co-host, my husband Eli Sulkowski is a little busy this week so he
won't be able to join us.
But I still wanted to bring you either a cold case or an unresolved missing person case,
just like I do every week on Cold and Missing.
This week I wanted to bring you the case of Joan Gay Croft.
And this takes place in April of 1947 in Woodward, Oklahoma.
But first a little bit about Joan Gay.
Joan Gay in 1947 is four years old.
She was born October 28th, 1942.
So today she would be 80 years old.
Her family described her as very bashful.
She had blonde hair and blue eyes, and she had some faint small pock scars on her arms
as well as a few on her forehead.
She most likely has a scar on her right calf from the injuries sustained the night she
went missing.
At four years old, she could talk, but according to her father, Olin Croft, quote,
She talked plainly for a child her age, but she was bashful around strangers, and I doubt
a stranger could understand her when she pronounced her name.
It sounded more like Joe Gay when she said it.
End quote.
So now we'll get into the timeline of events.
On Wednesday, April 9th, 1947, that evening, Joan Gay was getting ready for bed with her
sister and mother when the deadliest tornado in Oklahoma history ripped through Woodward,
Oklahoma.
The tornado started in Texas and ripped through Oklahoma and Kansas, but it was at its strongest
in Oklahoma.
It was rated an F5.
In 1947, there were no tornado sirens, and to further complicate matters, the local telephone
operators were on strike, so no one could be warned that the storm was coming.
This storm is so bad that it's reported that birds do not return to the area for over
a month.
As the storm hits, chaos erupts.
According to Joan Gay's grandfather, quote,
The family ran out into the yard so the house wouldn't fall on them.
They never thought of the flying pieces of house and such things.
End quote.
And that's Hutchinson Croft.
Again, Joan Gay's grandfather.
The entire Croft home is destroyed, and Joan Gay's parents are hurt.
Her mother, Cleeta, is killed in the storm, and her father, Olin, originally is listed
in the newspapers as dead, but he was found clinging to life.
He'll actually be one of the first rushed out of Woodward when ambulances begin to arrive.
Shortly after the storm, a neighbor, and I do apologize here, it was not reported her
name, she's just reported as a Mrs. Clyde Taylor, finds Joan Gay and her sister, Jerry,
in the wreckage.
Both are in their pajamas.
Both girls have cuts to their head, but are conscious.
Joan Gay also has a wood splinter that had pierced her right calf.
And there is some debate, or I don't want to say debate, but later it's reported that
it's her left leg.
Here I'm going to go with her right leg, because that's what is originally reported
in the newspapers in 1947, so that's the information I'm going to go with.
The neighbor pulls the girls from the wreckage and takes them to the Woodward Memorial Hospital.
Joan Gay and Jerry are both admitted, but were quickly tagged to go to another hospital
in Oklahoma City.
Joan Gay and Jerry are placed on the same cot and put in the basement with other people
waiting to be transported.
There are some conflicting reports if family were able to find Jerry and Joan Gay that
evening.
An aunt in interviews years later will say that she did see the girls in the basement
before leaving that evening to continue volunteering in search and rescue efforts.
But their father will say family missed them because they didn't know people had been
taken to the basement.
That evening at the hospital, two white men dressed in khakis entered Woodward Memorial
Hospital.
It's reported that the men specifically asked where the Croft children were.
Jerry said, quote, two men came into the basement and got Joan Gay.
It was still dark.
Joan Gay cried.
She said she wanted to stay with her sister, end quote.
The men put Joan Gay on a stretcher.
It's likely her leg was still injured as no hospital staff remember treating it or taking
care of it.
The men then carried her out to a waiting car.
According to her grandfather, Roy Gable, quote, a nurse on duty at the hospital said two men
came in and carried Joan Gay out.
They told the nurse they were taking her out of this mess and going to care for her in
Washington.
That was about two hours after the storm, end quote.
This will also be repeated that these men told staff at the hospital that they were
taking her to a hospital in Oklahoma City where her family was.
So those are two stories, but this quote is pulled from newspapers at the time.
The next day, Thursday, April 10th, Olin, Joan Gay's father, is still in the hospital
in Oklahoma City.
And Joan Gay's uncle goes to the hospital to wash the girls and only finds that Jerry
is there.
Jerry will ultimately be transferred to another hospital at around 11 a.m. that morning.
So I think that does support that maybe the aunt did make contact with the girls the night
before because an uncle was able to come the next day.
So I think there is some support that it was confirmed that family saw Joan Gay in the
hospital besides Jerry, her sister.
On Friday, April 11th, Olin is released from the hospital and immediately begins to look
for his family.
In the following days after the storm, lots of funerals are held around town, including
Joan Gay's mother, Cleta.
Newspapers will continue to report Joan Gay as missing, but most will fail to mention
she went missing after the storm.
Lots of people were still missing at this time from the storm itself.
On Sunday, April 20th, so this is a few weeks after the storm, the State Safety Department
began to worry that Joan Gay was buried under the wrong identity.
The acting Highway Patrol chief H.B. Lowry said, quote, The last we knew of Joan Gay,
she was lying among the injured on the floor of the hospital.
Of course, it was dark in there and the confusion was terrible.
She may have died and being carried to the morgue along with dozens of other bodies,
end quote.
The family and State Safety Department had checked all hospitals in Oklahoma and neighboring
states as well, and there was no trace of Joan Gay.
The family believe that Joan Gay's platinum blonde hair could have been darkened from
the storm since the same thing happened to her mother.
It'll take weeks for police to fully focus all their efforts on Joan Gay because of the
storm.
In June, this is about two months since Joan Gay has been missing.
Olin Croft says, quote, I don't know what to do now.
The Red Cross and Highway Patrol are still working on it.
I asked the FBI for help, but they said they would not have jurisdiction unless there was
positive proof of a kidnapping, end quote, which there does seem like there's proof
of it if two men came and the sisters testifying to this and hospital staff are.
I'm not sure why the FBI didn't get involved right away.
In July, so around three months, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol asked for help from Kansas,
Colorado, Texas and New Mexico to join in the search for Joan Gay.
I noticed here that in these states that Oklahoma requested looking for Joan Gay, Washington's
state is missing.
And there is that quote from the grandfather that these men possibly took her to Washington.
So I thought that was pretty notable that Washington was left out of the state search.
August of 1947, so four months now, police reveal that they have tracked down several
leads, but they have all fizzled out.
Olin will also take Jerry around this time and move out of Oklahoma, but he'll never
stop searching for Joan Gay.
On the one year anniversary of the tornado and Joan Gay going missing, April 9th, 1948,
Major Lowry of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol says that there has been no trace of the girl,
but is encouraging his staff to work the case until she's home.
Police are also ruling out that she was buried under the wrong identity, and all of the unidentified
children had been loosely ID'd except for a 12 year old girl.
Joan Gay's family continued to search for her at playgrounds, summer resorts, everywhere,
the family said.
Bess Irwin was a nurse on duty the night that the storm hit.
And she says, quote, You will of course realize the terrible confusion we were in.
The electricity was off and we worked by candlelight most of the night.
The hospital was completely filled within the hour and emergency units had been set
up in various buildings in the city.
The incident is vague to me now.
It is true that two men stopped me in the hall and remarked they were taking a small
child with them.
I cannot state what they said, but I do recall I wondered why they should even bother at
the time, end quote.
And then that's truly it for a while.
The newspapers every year on the anniversary of the tornado hit will usually run Joan Gay's
story.
And it truly is the same story year over year.
They just kind of update the age that Joan Gay would be that year.
In April of 1979, so this is 30 years that Joan Gay has been missing.
Joan Gay's sister, Jerry says, quote, Granted, it would be more than a joy if Joan Gay was
found through one of these stories.
But chance is less than one in a million, end quote.
And then in the 90s, the story enters the media again.
On September 22, 1993, the season six premiere of Unsolved Mysteries, the original Unsolved
Mysteries features Joan Gay's story.
A woman from Phoenix, Arizona believes she's Joan Gay and not without good reason.
She says her earliest memory is of chaos and a lot of bloody people.
And she was also able to prove that her birth certificate is fake and that her parents were
not her biological parents.
And she also had a scar on her leg.
She gets in contact with the family and the family begins to believe that this is Joan
Gay and the producers of Unsolved Mysteries will actually pay for a DNA test.
But the DNA test will prove that this woman is not Joan Gay.
Over the years, hundreds of women will actually come forward after this Unsolved Mysteries
episode airs.
But a lot will quickly be ruled out by the family or they'll want money or they'll
just stop talking.
So a lot get ruled out over the years.
And in 1998, a woman from Canada emerged that did seem like she could be Joan Gay.
She says her family often told stories of a tornado wiping away their home when she
was a little girl.
But this woman will also have items with the Croft name on it, specifically Olin Croft's
name, which was Joan Gay's father.
Ultimately, though, through a DNA test, she will be ruled out too.
In May of 2016, police put family DNA into the NamUs database and into CODIS, hoping
to learn Joan Gay's fate.
But there has not been a hit and there hasn't really been any updates since then.
If you know anything about what happened to Joan Gay Croft in April of 1947, you are encouraged
to call the Woodward Police at 580-254-8535.
And the sources for today's podcast come from the Woodward Daily Press, the Ind Daily Eagle,
the Blackwell Journal Tribune, Fairview Republican, the Daily Oklahoman, Tulsa World, the Alva
Review Courier, the Tulsa Tribune, the Duncan Banner, the Brandenton Herald, Weather.gov,
and Unsolved Mysteries.
But that is the story of Joan Gay Croft.
And this is one that I actually came across last week as I was researching Jeremy Toll's,
the episode that we covered last week.
And this really stuck with me, just kind of the chaos of the tornado night and this child
going missing.
But also, it didn't seem random.
If what is reported is true, these men came in and specifically asked for Joan Gay, which
makes it seem like it was targeted.
And yeah, it's like, why this night?
Why this time?
How did they know?
There's a lot of questions.
But one thing that is persistent in all the reporting is that two men, two white men,
wearing khakis.
And that has been from the beginning until 2016.
Those have been elements of the story that have not changed.
But again, if you know anything, please call the Woodward Police at 580-254-8535.
If you are enjoying Cold and Missing and would like to keep up with us, Instagram is a great
place to do that.
You can follow us.
We're just at Cold and Missing.
You can search it and we'll pop up.
And we post stories.
I was able to find some photos of Joan Gay, so we'll be posting those throughout the week.
And we also, in our story, post lots of active cases and active missing person cases.
So always a really great resource.
While you're in your podcast app, if you could leave us a review, it would be so appreciative.
Or I would be so appreciative.
It means the world and it really helps other people find our podcast and helps these stories
get out to more people, which is ultimately the goal.
And if you're unable to leave a review or for whatever reason, technology is not working
for you, just tell your friends the good old fashion way.
Lots of people listen to podcasts and will often ask for podcast recommendations.
So please recommend us to your friends if you enjoy listening.
But that's all I have for you.
I hope you have a great week and stay safe, y'all.