Charlotte Irene Lysdale

• Missing Since 06/14/1985
• Missing From Pine River, Minnesota
• Classification Missing
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Age 68 years old
• Height and Weight 5'1, 135 pounds
• Distinguishing Characteristics White female. Gray hair, hazel eyes. Lysdale walked with a limp at the time of her disappearance, due to a prior ankle injury. Her ears are pierced.

Details of Disappearance

Lysdale was last seen in Crow Wing, Minnesota on June 14, 1985. She lived alone at the Woodglen Apartments in Pine River, Minnesota; she had moved there about a year earlier after putting her rural home on Lower Hay Lake up for sale. She was a widow, her husband having died in 1965.

On the evening of her disappearance, Lysdale went to visit her former home on Lower Hay Lake to meet Jerome Edwin Bye, a real estate agent and tavern owner who was buying the property from her. She arrived between 6:10 and 6:20 p.m. The property was priced at $78,500. Bye later said he paid Lysdale a down payment of $10,500 and agreed to pay her at least $10,000 a year until 1987, when the full balance would be due.

Bye stated that during the meeting, he gave Lysdale another $10,000 and she gave him the deed to the property "because she liked him." She left about two hours after her arrival, he said, and this is the last time anyone saw her. Bye registered the property deed three days later. The $10,000 he says he gave her on the night of her disappearance has never been recovered.

When Lysdale's niece went to visit her at her apartment on June 16, the door was locked and the Sunday newspaper was lying there unread, which is uncharacteristic of Lysdale's behavior. Her vehicle was left in the garage, and there were no indications of foul play. Inside the apartment, there were fresh coffee grounds in the kitchen, everything seemed to be in order and only Lysdale's purse was missing. She has never been heard from again.

In 1987, Bye was indicted for first-degree murder in Lysdale's case, and for another charge of theft pertaining to the deed. More charges were made against him: second-degree murder, first-degree assault, receiving stolen property, theft by swindling, false pretense and aggravated robbery. The assault charge was dismissed before the case went to trial. This case the first case in Minnesota to go to trial without a body.

In 1988, Bye was acquitted of first- and second-degree murder, aggravated robbery, theft by swindle, and theft from a person, but convicted of theft and receiving stolen property. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

Lysdale's body has never been found, but foul play is suspected in her case due to the circumstances involved.