This week’s featured missing person is Hattie Yvonne Jackson, a six-year-old girl who disappeared from Washington D.C. on July 21, 1961. She was black, with black hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing a white long-sleeved blouse, brown and white checked shorts, pink sandals and a blue ribbon in her hair.
Hattie was apparently abducted; witnesses saw two men pulling her into a car. For some reason there’s only a description and sketch for one of the men, the driver. He had approached Hattie and some other children earlier that day and offered to give them a ride, but they’d turned him down.
Unfortunately there hasn’t been anything about Hattie in the news for a very long time. I don’t know if any of her relatives are even still alive. I don’t know how seriously the police looked for her in 1961, or if any suspects in her case have ever been identified.
If she is still alive, Hattie would be about 67 years old today.
The Charley Project Blog 
One of her nieces (born after Hattie vanished) contacted me through my blog, trying to find out how to submit DNA. I put her in touch with the NCMEC rep for Hattie’s case and I know he spoke to her.
I was really surprised but even more surprising was when one of Joseph Rodriguez’ relatives contacted me for the same reason. She, too, was born long after Joseph went missing, but she did remember Joseph’s mother.
It would be really cool if either of them could be found after all this time. I mean, we found Melissa Highsmith and identified the Boy in the Box…
I agree! I’m just not too clear on how direct a relative has to be for DNA to be useful. IIRC Joseph’s relative was the granddaughter of Joseph’s aunt. I put her in touch with the NamUs rep but never heard any updates on whether she submitted it.
I know matrilineal DNA (through the maternal line) can be traced through many generations, hundreds of years. They used matrilineal DNA to prove Thomas Jefferson’s relationship to his enslaved mistress Sally Hemings’s descendants.
Larry Dean Watts located/identified
https://dnasolves.com/articles/mesa-county-2019-larry-dean-watts/
I recently read about the Girl in the Box- a 4-6 year old African America girl who was found in a milk crate in the river in Philly in 1962. Shortly after, I read Hattie’s profile as the missing person of the week and wondered if Hattie is the Girl in the Box. There are some similarities in description and timing (although the Girl in the Box was found beheaded, so tough to tell if there is an exact match in description). Sadly, when authorities tried to exhume the Girl in the Box’s body to extract DNA, they found her grave to be empty, so we’ll probably never know who she is. Sad that she didn’t get the same attention as the Boy in the Box.