Ruth Egnoski is one of those cases where I have VERY little info, and now it seems what little I had is being thrown into doubt. NamUs’s profile for her, recently added, says she disappeared sometime in the fall of 1964. I’ve got the date as sometime in 1966.
I had a look at Newspapers.com and what I find there hasn’t helped at all. The archived issues of the Janesville Daily Gazette have ten mentions of a Ruth Egnoski between 1955 and 1964. Janesville, Wisconsin is just twenty miles from Delavan, Wisconsin, the town Ruth disappeared from; it’s quite likely this is the same Ruth. (Unless it’s her mother.)
The newspaper’s August 21, 1964 issue has her name on the list of hospital admittances and calls her “Mrs. Ruth Egnoski.” Ruth would have been sixteen at the time, but in the 1960s it was common for girls that age to be married. Per the newspaper, on August 28, Ruth was released from the hospital. This is the last time she was mentioned in that newspaper. At least, it’s the last time she was mentioned in Newspapers.com’s archived issues of that newspaper, which isn’t exactly the same thing, yeah?
I know the people who write NamUs profiles utilize the same resources I do, and I have to wonder if the Newspapers.com mentions are the reason they list Ruth’s date of disappearance as sometime in the autumn of 1964. Yet this 2002 article gives the date of disappearance as 1966, and that’s what I had until now.
It’s possible nobody really remembers when she disappeared. It didn’t really attract any notice at the time — it was reported but the police didn’t investigate. Records get lost. People die. Memories fade.
I’ll update her casefile to reflect the uncertainty regarding the year. And I’ll add her middle name — Muriel. That’s all I was able to get from NamUs.
The Charley Project Blog 
I know you do have little info, but what you do have is really interesting. She disappears and without much interest, including being categorized as “missing” rather than “endangered”. And the clues that show up much later are just her ID being found in her father’s work place.
There are a ton of cases where much more evidence than what we have here still won’t get a court order for a search, but in this case the bit of ID info was enough for an expensive (by law enforcement agencies’ math) search of very old concrete on private property.
So they (cops) must have uncovered enough evidence to warrant the search. Without us knowing, we can only speculate, but I think based on the LE investigations of property that they must have some type of corroborating evidence to justify the searches.
Edit to add: I reread her Charley entry, they dug on her previous property in 2002…many decades after she disappeared. We don’t know the specifics, but a first guess would be that LE suspected since the late 60s that she might be on that property. Because they weren’t able to act on the hunch for decades, but forty years later they are, is weird to me.
So now, in the 21st century, they do dig there. That is frankly amazing to me. The original investigators are probably long gone, whatever press the case did receive was gone as well…yet LE conducted a dig which is not inexpensive in any way.
Not trying to sound cynical here (though I might be in many ways), but there has to be a damn good and compelling reason for them to conduct an expensive dig so many years after the disappearance. I think there is much more to this case than what we know currently. There are many MPs who have gone missing in the last 20-30 years with blood evidence found in/on/around a suspect and still the suspect is not tried. So this old case has something else going on under the surface to explain the unusual circumstances.
I am shocked the administrator of this site would put up a sex offender before missing children. Does she care more about sex offenders than missing children? It certainly seems that way. Sad.
It’s important that the sex offender is located so they can be charted into the Megan’s Law database and monitored so that they do not reoffend.
Don’t feed the troll
That case kind of fell into my lap because it’s possibly connected to another case I was updating. There are quite a few MPs on my site who have serious criminal records, including at least two other sex offenders I can think of, and I don’t really care; MPs are more or less all equal in my eyes.
Hey “Anonymous”- its not like we don’t know who this is. Go play in someone else’s sandbox. Do you realize how many missing people have things they may be running from? If you have a pet case that isn’t YET represented here and you’ve submitted information, submit it elsewhere as well.
Ha ha Amy – I think most of us are quite aware of who “Anonymous” is in this case.
With all the time they have to research the case they are passionate about, harass Meaghan about how she runs her website and blog (Among other things) and post on here….
I still can’t figure out why they don’t just start a website of their own.
Ruth is my aunt I’ve never met. The story I was always told was that “she ran away with a married man to Chicago” and never came back. When they reopened the case back in 02’, dug up the old back yard and found her ID in the ceiling of my grandpas old office…trophy anyone…they just didn’t have enough to convict…and he maintains he didn’t kill her, not sure I believe it. Anyway, SSDGM.
Disappeared in 1964
We know this is a fact. We know he did it and he was a sick man.
I can’t stop thinking about this case since it’s my family and I’m desperate to know all the details and obviously know the truth. I would love to correspond with you and hear what information you have. Please reach out.
Jesgetsemail@gmail.com