On June 22, 1990, five-year-old Therese Rose Vanderheiden-Walsh, a white female child with blond hair and hazel or green-hazel eyes, was last seen in the Kaneohe/Kailua area of Oahu, Hawaii, during a summer program at the Kokokahi YWCA. She was a small child with pierced ears and moles on her back and shoulders, and she was reportedly wearing pink shorts, a pink T-shirt, and pink-and-white Nike sneakers when she disappeared.
Official missing-child listings identify her as missing from Hawaii on that date, and the case remains publicly listed through NamUs, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and Hawaii’s missing children clearinghouse.
Therese lived in Hawaii with her father, Francis Walsh, who had sole legal custody of her in 1990. Her mother, Merle Marie Vanderheiden, had been restricted from unsupervised visits unless she completed a psychological evaluation. According to public case summaries, Francis and Merle had met years earlier while both were assigned to U.S. Army intelligence units, married in 1980, and later moved to Hawaii with Therese. Their relationship deteriorated, and after their separation, Merle accused Francis of abusing Therese; public summaries state that investigators found no evidence supporting those allegations. By the time Therese vanished, Merle had moved back to the U.S. mainland, while Therese remained in Hawaii with her father.
The day Therese disappeared began like an ordinary summer day for a child in a supervised program. She was enrolled in a day care or summer program, and during a recess period a staff member noticed a woman near the grounds wearing dark sunglasses and a hat. When the children returned inside, Therese was no longer with the group. Public summaries of the case state that authorities believed the woman seen near the program was Merle and that she abducted Therese from the grounds. A felony warrant for interference with custody was later issued for Merle on July 26, 1990, but public case sources report that she has not been arrested.
In the years since, investigators and missing-child organizations have continued to circulate Therese’s information in the hope that someone might recognize her, either as the child she was in 1990 or as the adult she would be today. NCMEC states that Therese may be in the company of an adult female relative and may use the last names Smith, Doherty, Hamm, Johnson, or Cochran. Hawaii’s missing children clearinghouse lists her full name as Therese Rose Vanderheiden-Walsh and notes that age-progressed images have been released, including images showing how she may have appeared as she grew older. Public listings also note the enduring identifiers that may still matter: pierced ears, moles on her back and shoulders, blond hair, and hazel eyes.
The case is a painful and long-running missing-child case shaped by a custody dispute, a sudden disappearance from a children’s program, and decades of unanswered questions. Therese was only five years old when she was taken from the life she knew in Hawaii, and the public record still centers on the same essential facts: she was last seen on June 22, 1990, in the Kaneohe/Kailua area of Hawaii; authorities believe she was abducted by her non-custodial mother, Merle Marie Vanderheiden; multiple agencies have continued to list and publicize her case; and, absent a public resolution status of alive or deceased in the available case data, her disappearance remains documented as unresolved in public missing-person sources.Last Seen: Jun 22, 1990
