Last update: July 10, 2025, 7:55 a.m., added more information about forensics

The summer of 1969 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was a time when kids still roamed free, neighborhoods felt safe, and a 14-year-old girl like Joan Dymond could go to the park after supper without a second thought.

But for George and Anne Rose Dymond, that summer was the start of lifelong heartbreak. It’s when their youngest daughter, Joan, disappeared without a trace.

It took 53 long years for some of the truth of what happened to Joan to come to light.

Today, we remember Joan Dymond from Wilkes-Barre. And we look over the circumstances of her disappearance, as state police actively search for the person who killed her, whether dead or alive.

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The Joan Dymond Case

Wednesday, June 25, 1969.

Come Together was the No. 1 Billboard hit, passing overAquarius/Let the Sunshine In. And Joan Marie Dymond had just finished eighth grade at Meyers Junior/Senior High School. Her fourteenth birthday was a month behind her, and the warm weeks of summer break stretched out before her. At least, they should have.

Joan was excited about becoming an aunt later that summer — her older sister, Suzanne, was expecting her first baby in August. Joan had already been talking about coming to stay to help out with the newborn.¹

That evening after supper was relatively cool, in the upper 60s, Joanie, as everyone called her, told her parents she was heading to Andover Street Park, just a short walk from home. Officially named Eyerman Park, kids knew Andover Park simply as the playground, the place where you went to see friends or pass time. Joan headed to the park around 5 p.m.

That Wednesday night, Joan’s parents might have turned on channel 22 for the lineup of Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies and Hawaii 5-O.

But by the time The Tonight Show theme started to play at 11:30 p.m., they must have started to worry.

Where was Joanie?

“She would have been aunt to my two children and great aunt to my six grandchildren. None of them know her now, none of them,” – Suzanne, Joan’s sister ²

Summer in Wilkes-Barre: Joan Dymond’s Disappearance in 1969

In 1969, Wilkes-Barre was a battered coal town, living with the legacy of its anthracite mines as those jobs faded away. But back then, downtown Wilkes-Barre still thrived with department stores and movie houses. And close-knit neighborhoods thrummed with corner stores, social clubs, churches, and taverns.

On summer evenings, teens might pile in a car and head for San Souci Park, a 10-minute drive from Joan’s neighborhood. It had a roller coaster, a roller skating rink, a dance hall, a penny arcade and more. That park shut down just one year later. Today, it’s the site of the Hanover Area Junior/Senior High School.

When Joan didn’t come home that night, her family filed a missing persons report with the Wilkes-Barre Police Department. Her sister later said at a press conference that Joan hadn’t called any of her friends, none of her family. “She just fell off the face of the earth.”

Her parents described what she’d been wearing when she left that night: a dark-brown, long-sleeved blouse, and a pair of flower-print bellbottom pants in shades of brown, yellow, and white — the very latest style.

Joan stood about 5’5″, weighed around 125 pounds, and wore her long brown hair parted down the middle. She had warm brown eyes and a gentle smile.

The Dymond Family

Joan’s family had deep roots in the Rolling Mill Hill section of Wilkes-Barre, a neighborhood “molded and shaped by a history of hard work.”

Her father, George, was a machine miner at the Glen Alden Coal Company’s Huber Colliery, just a 5-minute drive up the hill from home. He was also a World War II veteran, rising to sergeant in the European theater before returning to Wilkes-Barre to marry and raise a family. A photo of the young G.I. appeared in the local newspaper in 1945.

Both George and Anne’s parents had come to Pennsylvania in the early 1900s from Lithuania. The Dymonds were active members of Holy Trinity Lithuanian Catholic Church on East South Street. 

Joan was the youngest of their three children. By June 1969, the family nest had started to empty. Joan’s older brother had graduated high school in 1968, leaving his newspaper route behind to study education in college. Her sister Suzanne had married in the fall of ’68, right as Joan was starting eighth grade. But the family had no reason to believe they didn’t have four more years before their youngest left home.

Thirteen-year-old Joan served as junior bridesmaid in her sister’s wedding in October 1968, smiling brightly in photographs that captured a girl who should have had her whole future ahead of her.

Maybe, standing there in her bridesmaid dress, Joan dreamed of her own wedding — a lace gown, a kind groom, music filling the church.

But Joan would never get that day. Instead, on an early summer evening in June 1969, she stepped out toward the playground. And her future, and all the joyful moments it held, vanished with her.

“She just fell off the face of the earth.” – Joan’s sister, Suzanne

The Search for Joan Dymond in 1969

Joan’s disappearance was reported in local newspapers on July 2, 1969. There was another report on July 3rd.

Police did what they could with what they had. A juvenile officer reportedly reached out to departments in New York City and Atlantic City, with the presumption that Joan might be a runaway.

No luck.

Regional police in Pennsylvania also searched for her, but couldn’t find a trace of the girl.

At every event, the Fourth of July, the birth of her first nephew, the start of the new school year, I imagine her family must have felt certain that Joanie would walk through their door.

But days turned into weeks, then years. No sign of Joan was ever found, for more than four decades.

A commenter on a Times Leader article wrote: “I recall [Joan] going missing after my family had moved from Andover Street. This was the heyday of the “love generation,” and her parents and family were plagued with gossip that she had joined a cult, run away with “hippies,” taken off for the West Coast, for Texas, for you name it.”

When Joan went missing, she was wearing flowered bellbottoms, a style associated with the flower child look, which may have fed suspicions she was drawn to a commune or radical group.

With cults like the Manson Family dominating the headlines and fears of teenagers leaving home to hitchhike or join communes, it was likely easier for people to believe she had chosen to leave than to confront the possibility she’d been harmed.

Later forensic testing would pinpoint a time of death. Joan hadn’t run away.

“It was just very stressful. My parents were crazy. We all went out looking for her. We drove, I think, for months we drove all over the Valley, looking for her, trying to see her,”- Suzanne, Joan’s sister.

Joan’s mother refused to believe Joan wasn’t out there somewhere, alive. She held on to that hope until her own passing in 2000. 

Remains Discovered in Newport Township

On November 17, 2012, a group of people scavenging for relics in a wooded area, the grounds of a former coal-mining operation, discovered human remains near Alden Mountain Road in Newport Township, about 9 miles from the Dymond home. All they found was a skull with  the first cervical vertebrae and a few teeth. State police excavated the area and searched with cadaver dogs, but no other remains were found.

Alden Mountain Road, where Joan’s remains were found

For 10 years, the remains sat unidentified, known only as Jane “Newport” Doe. That was despite examination by forensic anthropologists and a forensic dentist and DNA testing at the University of Texas.

They were able to determine that the remains belonged to a young woman or teenage girl. However, familial DNA and genetic genealogy were not being used to solve cold cases back then.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children assisted with leads into missing females.They also created a facial reconstruction. Still, nothing.

In August 2021, the remains were sent for carbon dating to determine when death occurred. Results of that test showed the young woman or teenage girl died in the late 1960s.

In 2022, more than a decade after the discovery, the Pennsylvania State Police, working with Othram, a Texas-based forensic genealogy lab, finally made a breakthrough. By analyzing advanced DNA profiles and comparing them to public family tree databases, they identified the remains as Joan Marie Dymond.

It had taken fifty-three years for Joanie to come home.

“It didn’t reduce the sadness,” Suzanne Estock, Joan’s older sister, said at a 2022 state police press conference. “I’m glad she was found so maybe we can have a service for her.”³

In 2023, Joan’s death was officially ruled a homicide.

Investigators have determined her cause of death, but are withholding it from the public to protect the ongoing investigation.

“[…] it’s always there. Sometimes you don’t sleep a night because you wonder what happened to her. What did she go through?” – Suzanne Estock, Joan’s sister ⁴

Who killed Joan Dymond? Why?

Investigators hope the public will help answer those questions.

Theories & Questions

After all these years, the puzzle of Joan Dymond’s disappearance remains painfully incomplete. The evidence is sparse, and the killer,  if alive, is still out there.

In 1969, hitchhiking was considered safe. I’ve heard from older local friends that even children used to hitch rides to get around Luzerne County.

Joan had left home around 5 p.m. on a Wednesday. No one reported seeing her at Andover Street park. Maybe that’s because no one else was there at the time. Hoping to find her friends, maybe Joan walked the few blocks from Andover Street Park to South Main Street, a major thoroughfare, and thumbed a ride to San Souci Park from a passing after-work commuter?

There are no public reports from the time she went missing of anyone seeing Joan at the San Souci Park. Maybe someone offered her a ride there but kept driving, taking her to that isolated place where she was found 43 years later. Of course, that’s only speculation.

We just don’t know exactly how Joan got to Alden Mountain Road.

In the time around when Joan Dymond vanished in June 1969, other crimes against teenage girls were reported in Luzerne County.

Law enforcement has confirmed they are reviewing incidents from that era for any possible connection to Joan’s case.

At this time, no official suspect has been named, and the investigation remains open.

Anyone who knew Joan or has knowledge of similar crimes or suspicious activity in Luzerne County during that period is urged to contact Pennsylvania State Police.

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Joan’s remains were laid to rest in July 2023 at Holy Trinity Cemetery in Bear Creek, next to her parents.