Adele Marie Wells

• Missing Since 11/21/1958
• Missing From Flint, Michigan
• Classification Non-Family Abduction
• Sex Female
• Race Black
• Date of Birth 01/01/1951 (74)
• Age 7 years old
• Height and Weight 3'6, 50 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A gray cotton coat, a blue dress with a design of small animal figures along the lower hemline, red knee socks and black shoes.
• Distinguishing Characteristics African-American female. Black hair, brown eyes. At the time of her disappearance, Adele had her hair styled with waves at the sides, and bangs.

Details of Disappearance

Adele was last seen in Flint, Michigan on November 21, 1958. She was a second-grader at Jefferson Elementary School and had stayed home from school that morning because she had a cold.

At 11:30 a.m. she decided to go to school for the afternoon classes. She stopped at her grandmother's house in the 1000 block of East Marengo Avenue, just four blocks from the school, on the way there. Adele was last seen leaving her grandmother's. She never arrived at school and has never been heard from again. The police were notified of her disappearance at 5:00 p.m., after she didn't come home from school with her siblings.

Police stated they had reliable reports of a young man carrying a small girl to a dirty two-door black 1949-1951 Chevrolet with a damaged front fender, which was near the Gilkey Creek on Lewis Street (which has since been renamed Chavez). The person is described as a light-skinned African-American man wearing a gray coat and red socks. He has never been identified and it's unclear whether he was Adele's abductor, but other children who attended her school said the driver of a car fitting that description tried to lure them into the vehicle in the days preceding Adele's disappearance.

Another witness claimed to have seen Adele get into a car with two men near Jefferson Elementary School, and one of Adele's classmates said she saw a man beating a little girl in the woods near the school. Neither of these witness accounts could be verified.

Adele is part of a family of nine; her father, Karl W. Wells, was a Chevrolet Engine Plant worker in Flint at the time of her disappearance. She lived with her parents, three sisters and three brothers in the 900 block of East Marengo. After her presumed abduction, Adele's parents had another child, but then they divorced. Adele's mother, Martha Wells, had custody of the children, but she was in poor health and the children were placed in foster care.

Martha died in 1987. In 1992, Karl, who was nearly seventy years old by then, shot one of her brothers and was charged with assault with intent to commit murder and several counts of felonious assault. Adele's brother didn't want their father to be imprisoned, so Karl pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of misdemeanor aggravated assault and was placed on probation.

Adele's case remains unsolved and is classified as a non-family abduction.