Susan M. Glaser was a 36-year-old female from West Allis, Wisconsin, when she was last heard from on July 1, 1995. At the time she vanished, she was described in missing-person listings as a White woman with black hair and brown eyes, about 5 feet 7 inches tall and approximately 115 pounds. Her disappearance began quietly, with no public trail showing where she went or what happened after that last contact, but the concern around her absence deepened as the weeks passed. By October 19, 1995, a family member reported her missing to the West Allis Police Department, saying Susan had not been seen since July.
The early circumstances surrounding Susan’s disappearance were troubling. Missing-person summaries connected to NamUs and other case references state that she was last heard from in July 1995 and that her estranged boyfriend later died by suicide in October 1995 after reportedly making suspicious statements about Susan. Public sources do not provide a full account of what those statements were, and the available information does not establish in detail what investigators believed happened in the days after Susan was last heard from. What is clear is that Susan’s family was left without answers, and the West Allis Police Department became the primary agency connected to the missing-person investigation.
For nearly three years, Susan’s case remained unresolved. Then, on May 11, 1998, human remains were discovered in the Tomorrow River in rural Amherst, in Portage County, Wisconsin, more than 100 miles from West Allis. Reports say an extensive search of the area led officers to recover a pelvis, two lumbar vertebrae, and numerous pieces of clothing. At first, DNA testing confirmed that the remains were human, but investigators were not yet able to identify whose remains they were. The discovery became a separate unidentified-remains case while Susan’s family continued to live with the pain of not knowing where she was.
Years later, advances in DNA testing helped bring Susan’s name back to the evidence found in Amherst. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension submitted DNA analysis to a national missing-person database, and in July 2014 the remains were identified as those of Susan M. Glaser. Authorities did not immediately release that identification to the public because the West Allis Police Department asked Portage County officials to keep the information confidential while the investigation continued. The public announcement came in April 2016, when the Portage County Sheriff’s Department identified the woman whose remains had been found in 1998 as Susan Glaser of West Allis.
Susan was located deceased, and the search for her as a living missing person ended with the identification of her remains. However, the available public sources indicate that questions remained after that identification. The Charley Project states that her death remains under investigation, while NamUs-related summaries note that the case remained open in NamUs for comparison to other remains because only partial remains had been recovered. In overview, Susan Glaser’s case began with the disappearance of a 36-year-old woman from West Allis on July 1, 1995, grew more suspicious after reports involving her estranged boyfriend that October, remained unanswered after partial remains were found in Portage County in 1998, and finally reached a painful identification through DNA in 2014 before being publicly announced in 2016; even with that identification, the public record still reflects a case marked by unanswered questions, a family’s long wait for truth, and the enduring need to understand what happened to Susan.
Last Seen: Jul 01, 1995
