Ylva Annika Hagner’s case is back in the news. The Stanford graduate student, a Swedish immigrant, has been missing since 1996. (Here’s an essay by a Stanford student who knew her), and I haven’t seen any news about her this century, until now.
They have searched the Palo Alto, California home of her then-boyfriend, to see if she’s buried there. I’m not sure what prompted the search, whether some new evidence came up or they just felt like dusting off Ylva’s cold case file. The search didn’t turn up anything, unfortunately.
Some people would update Ylva’s casefile to add a sentence or two about the search. But I don’t see the point. Police search in a lot of places for missing persons, sometimes on evidence or a tip, sometimes on a hunch. And many times they find nothing. If I were to update the casefiles every time the cops learned yet a new place where the missing person is not, well…
Perhaps this search will still lead to something, even if they didn’t find Ylva. I hope so. She sounds like a lovely, interesting person. I’d love to be able to write a big update to the case. Better still, resolve it.
If still alive she’d be 68 today.
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