Pauline Anne Szwedo was 46 years old when she was last known to be in East St. Louis, Illinois, on January 14, 1975. Public missing-person records identify her as a white woman with brown hair and brown eyes, about 5 feet 6 inches tall; one source lists her weight as 140 pounds, while another public case listing gives 125 pounds, showing that some details in the surviving records differ. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office missing-person profile lists aliases connected to Pauline as “Brley” and “Pauline Gabriel,” and describes her hair as neck length. She was also known to wear glasses, an important identifying detail repeated in the public records. On the day she disappeared, she was reportedly wearing a pink dress, glasses, and a wedding ring.
The documented account of Pauline’s disappearance is brief but deeply unsettling. She was employed at Southwestern Bell, and on January 14, 1975, she left her place of work to go to lunch.
She did not return from that lunch break. For someone to step away in the middle of an ordinary workday and then never come back left behind an abrupt silence: unfinished routines, unanswered questions, and loved ones forced to wonder what happened during what should have been a short, familiar part of her day. Public records do not describe any confirmed sighting of Pauline after she left work, and the known timeline appears to narrow to that lunch break and the hours immediately afterward.
Later that same day, Pauline’s car was found on Eads Bridge. The bridge is a major crossing over the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, a place that would have carried heavy symbolic and practical weight in the region: a route between two cities, a span over a powerful river, and, in Pauline’s case, the location where her vehicle was discovered after she failed to return to work. The National Park Service describes Eads Bridge as the first bridge across the Mississippi at St. Louis and the oldest bridge standing on the Mississippi River, underscoring how public and prominent the location was. Yet the discovery of Pauline’s car did not answer the central question. It only deepened it. Her vehicle was found, but Pauline herself was not.
After that day, Pauline Szwedo was not heard from again, according to the public case summaries. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office profile notes that her case record was updated on April 3, 2019, and Uncovered’s case page also reflects that same update date while citing NamUs as the source of its information. NamUs lists the matter under missing person case number MP43418, and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office page also identifies the case with that number. The official NamUs page currently available through public search shows the case was created in NamUs on April 12, 2021, though much of the case detail is not visible in the public text capture.
The passage of time has made Pauline’s case painfully sparse in public detail, but not less important. What remains publicly known is that Pauline Anne Szwedo, a 46-year-old woman from the East St. Louis area, left Southwestern Bell for lunch on January 14, 1975, did not return to work, and her car was found later that day on Eads Bridge. She was described as having brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, and was reportedly wearing a pink dress and wedding ring. No public source reviewed here states that she was found alive or deceased, and the available public records continue to present her as a missing person. In overview, Pauline’s case is the story of an ordinary workday that turned into a decades-long absence: a woman walked out for lunch, her car was later located on a bridge over the Mississippi River, and the questions surrounding what happened to her have remained unanswered.Last Seen: Jan 14, 1975
