Hitchhiking into the unknown: the disappearance of Corrine Groenenberg
In 1973 hitchhiking was still considered one way to get from one place to another, and plenty of teenagers did it. That’s probably why a friend that witnessed Corrine Groenenberg doing so didn’t stop her. But after getting into a truck, she vanished.
Corrine Groenenberg (sometimes called “Connie Groenenberg”) had just moved to Modesto, California a few weeks before she was last seen on November 1. Her mother had scleroderma and they moved as a result of that. November 1 was a Thursday, and thus a school day. At one point Corrine’s Namus profile stated she was last seen at 12:29 p.m., which would mean she wasn’t in school that day, or left school on a lunch break. A friend who was with her at the time said Corrine began to hitchhike as they reached the highway, and she got into a blue or green truck being driven by an adult male. Corrine hasn’t been seen since. The friend has never been identified.
Like Angela Westberry, there’s a dearth of information about Corrine Groenenberg online. She has never been on the NCMEC website at all and the only official law enforcement records of her disappearance online are on Namus and the California Missing Persons Registry. Details of her disappearance are even thinner than for Westberry.
Her parents continued to own her childhood home in case she might have returned to it, indicating they think she might have left of her own accord. This is certainly a possibility - it was easier to vanish in 1973 than it would be today, and changing your name or identity could be done much more easily. The most popular way to do this was to find the name of someone born around the same time you were and died as a young child, get their birth certificate somehow, and apply for a social security number under that name, claiming that you simply hadn’t worked before and didn’t need one. (In 1990, the rules changed and anyone who you wanted to claim as a dependent on your taxes needed to have an SSN, curtailing the use of this ruse.) I don’t know how common this actually was; many books I’ve read about missing people in the 70s or 80s mentioned it as a way to vanish, but that doesn’t mean more than a handful of people tried it. So the idea Corrine just left on her own is certainly possible, much more possible than in many other cases. I wondered how many highways lead out of Modesto, and there are several: Interstate 5, which extends from Canada to Mexico, is the largest, and if Corrine took that route she could have gone literally anywhere in the country, or even out of it. Like the Bahamas, Canada and Mexico didn’t require passports to enter until post-2001.
Of course, the chance she did not leave of her own accord is also possible. The dangers of hitchhiking then can be debated, but there are many cases of murder that started with the victim hitchhiking. Even if the man in the truck did not mean her harm and simply dropped her off when requested, she could have still met foul play at the hands of someone else. If that’s what happened she could be a Jane Doe anywhere in the country. Or the friend that witnessed her getting in the truck is telling that story to cover up something else. There seems to be no reason not to trust the friend’s story, so this is exceedingly unlikely, but it’s possible.
The missing persons’ blog Whereabouts Still Unknown mentioned that two years after Corrine vanished, a 17 year old girl, Donna Joann Peeples, was found murdered in a grape vineyard. Peeples’ murder has never been solved. The two do resemble each other somewhat, but there is no indication the two are connected at all. Still, it’s something to take note of.
Is Corrine living a normal seeming life under a different identity? Or is she buried in an unmarked grave somewhere? Both are possible. So which is it?
Corrine Groenenberg on the Charley Project
Corrine Groenenberg on the Doe Network
Corrine Groenenberg on the California Missing Persons Registry