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in: Oklahoma, 1947, Disappearances,
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Joan Gay Croft

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Real Name: Joan Gay Croft
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Location: Woodward, Oklahoma
Date: April 9, 1947

Bio[]

Occupation: None
Date of Birth: October 28, 1942
Height: 3'5"
Weight: 42 lbs.
Marital Status: Single
Characteristics: White female with shoulder-length, strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes. She has a fair complexion. She has chicken pox scars on her forearm. She has three faint scars on her forehead. Her navel is deformed, and a dime-sized spot protrudes adjacent to the left side of it. She was wearing pink and blue pajamas at the time of her disappearance. She spoke with a mild lisp and pronounced her name "Jogay". She would probably still have scars on her left calf from the tornado injury.

Case[]

Details: Four-year-old Joan Gay Croft disappeared from Woodward, Oklahoma, on Wednesday, April 9, 1947. On that day, a telephone operator strike had left Woodward's 5,500 residents virtually cut off from the outside world. Had the phones been working, Woodward might have gotten news of an impending disaster: a monstrous tornado that had churned its way across Texas and was headed directly toward them at a speed of forty-six miles per hour.
As darkness fell, the giant two-mile-wide tornado with 200-mile-per-hour winds slammed into Woodward, reducing it to rubble. More than 100 city blocks were destroyed, mostly on the north and west sides of the town. More than 1,000 people were injured, and 107 were killed, all in a matter of minutes.
Years have passed since the tornado, but incredibly, one survivor, Joan Gay, remains unaccounted for today. She mysteriously disappeared during the chaotic aftermath of the tornado. Although she was last seen decades ago, some members of her family are convinced she is still alive.
Joan Gay grew up in one of Woodward's most prominent families. Her forty-one-year-old father, Hutchinson "Olin" Croft, was a successful sheep rancher. He was able to provide a comfortable life for the family: his twenty-six-year-old wife, Cleta, a telephone operator; her eight-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, Geraldine "Jerry"; and, of course, Joan Gay.
Joan Gay's great-aunt, Ruth Bohn, describes her as "perfect" and says she was the prettiest little girl she had ever seen. Her teeth were "white as pearls". Ruth said Joan Gay was very bashful. When someone would ask her for her name, she would point to a relative and have them say it. When someone would come into their house, she would get ahold of Cleta's dress tail and hide behind her. Ruth said Joan Gay was a "mama's girl".
April 9, 1947, dawned ominously, with the sky tinted a reddish cast. The air was muggy. That afternoon, Ruth was visiting her sister when the day suddenly grew dark and threatening. When she looked around, she noticed that everything was still, which was odd. It had been windy all day, but suddenly, it was calm. Her sister noticed that the sky was an odd color. Ruth remembers that there was no noise and that the birds were not singing. It was just quiet.
By the time Ruth got home at around 8:40pm, the tornado had hit Woodward. She heard boards, tin, and other items hit the house. She said she had never experienced anything like that before. When Joan Gay's uncle, Raymond Goble Jr., stepped out on the front porch that evening, he saw a car coming down the street with all four wheels locked up. The tornado's wind was pushing it. He knew they were in trouble then.
Funeral director Franklin Stetcher says the wind began to blow and became quite fierce. He and his family huddled in the corner of the room and watched the windows blow out and the electric lines bounce down the street. Joan Gay's cousin and Ruth's daughter, Marvella Parks, then fourteen, said it was a horrible experience. She was so scared that she started crying and screaming. She said it lasted four or five minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. However, they were very lucky. They had broken windows, but the damage was mostly minor.
After the tornado hit, Marvella and Ruth went out to search for their relatives. They joined the survivors streaming to the town's only hospital, Woodward General. Ruth had been unable to find her mother or brother, nor had she heard from Olin and his family. An eerie calm had settled over an unforgettable scene. Ruth remembers stepping over bodies on the hospital's front lawn. Some had their skulls cut off, and some had their throats cut. She said it was like a bomb had been dropped on the town.
After speaking to Bess Irwin, a hospital nurse, Ruth learned that her nieces, Joan Gay and Jerry, had made it through the tornado. Their neighbor had found them and taken them to the hospital at around 9:30pm. Because they were not seriously injured, they were placed on cots in the hospital's basement while more critical injuries were treated.
The Croft home had been destroyed. Olin was seriously injured and had been transferred to an Oklahoma City hospital. Tragically, Cleta was dead. One of the house's walls fell on her, killing her instantly. Ruth could not believe that she was gone. She said Cleta was a perfect mother to Joan Gay and Jerry, and they loved her. It was hard for Ruth to accept that she was dead.
The electricity was out, so the hospital was lit by candlelight. Ruth picked her way through the dead and wounded in the basement until she finally found Joan Gay and Jerry. Joan Gay's left knee had been pierced clear through with a ten-inch-long, pencil-sized splinter of wood. She also had facial abrasions and a possible head injury. Jerry had been cut and bruised from the flying debris.
Ruth felt that God had saved them both since neither one of them was badly hurt. Joan Gay asked to see her parents. Ruth told her that she knew where Olin was and that she was going to find Cleta. She decided not to tell them at that time that Cleta was dead because she knew it would not have helped them and they would have been hysterical.
Relieved that Joan Gay and Jerry were safe, Ruth hurried back outside. There, she finally found her mother and brother. Her mother was seriously injured, so she and her brother took her to Moreland Hospital, ten miles to the east. When they arrived there, Ruth was pressed into service, helping the overburdened doctors and nurses.
The next morning, Ruth finally returned to Joan Gay and Jerry. However, when she went into the hospital basement, only Jerry was there. When she asked about Joan Gay, Jerry said that at around midnight, two men whom she did not recognize had picked her up and taken her away. She screamed, saying she did not want to leave Jerry. One of the men told her not to worry; they would come back for Jerry later. In the confusion of that night, most of the people in the basement did not notice or question what was happening.
Ruth asked Nurse Irwin about Joan Gay. She said she stopped the two men, who told her they were taking Joan Gay to a hospital in Oklahoma City, 120 miles away, where other relatives were waiting. Many injured survivors, including children, had been taken by train or plane to different hospitals around the state. But calls to all the hospitals in the Oklahoma City area turned up no trace of her.
After the tornado, Olin's sister, Nellie Burwell, who lived in Kansas, was incorrectly told that he and Cleta had both died. Nellie and her husband decided to go to Woodward, planning to adopt Joan Gay. When they arrived, they were shocked to find out that she had disappeared. Her family contacted various hospitals throughout Oklahoma and Kansas. They also visited local hospitals and morgues, but their search was hampered in the aftermath of the tornado. One nurse at a hospital told them Joan Gay had died, but another nurse at a different hospital said she was alive and had been moved somewhere else.
Less than a week after the tornado, Ruth received the phone call she had been dreading – one from the local mortician. The funeral director at the time, Franklin Stecher, said that when the bodies were laid out in the chapel area, their relatives came in and identified them. After a week had passed, there were three left that nobody had identified. They were girls aged about twelve years, three to four years, and eight months. One of the unclaimed ones was a young, blonde girl who bore a striking resemblance to Joan Gay.
Stecher asked Ruth to bring some of Joan Gay's clothes to the mortuary. When he looked at them, he told her that they were too big and that the body was not Joan Gay's. She insisted on viewing it just to be sure. After looking at it, she was certain it was not Joan Gay's. She was very relieved. She said, "That was one burden off of my heart." Unfortunately, despite an extensive search, the girls have never been identified.
With Joan Gay still unaccounted for, her family launched an all-out search. Marvella said they reported her missing to all of the law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. She said the police went to all extremes to look for her. They followed up on hundreds of leads, visiting orphanages, farms, and homes throughout the country. But they found no trace of her.
In June 1947, a young girl was found beaten and abandoned in a field in Weed, California. She was referred to as "Baby X". Initially, the police suspected that she was Joan Gay, as she matched her physical description. However, ten days later, she was identified as two-year-old Mary Jane Medlin, who had been beaten and abandoned by her mother's boyfriend.
Olin recovered from his injuries and continued to search for Joan Gay. He and Cleta's father, Raymond Sr., spent months going from town to town, posting missing person flyers and placing ads on local radio shows. In 1948, he remarried and moved to San Antonio, Texas. He and his wife, Rena, had two daughters named Karen and Kendall. He never gave up the search for Joan Gay. Sadly, he passed away in 1986 at the age of eighty-one.
Decades later, the identities of the two men who carried Joan Gay off are a source of lingering speculation. According to Ruth, they asked the nurse very specifically for the "Croft children". Had the men known the family? Were they even rescue workers? And where did they take Joan Gay? Whatever the answers, many of her relatives believe she is still alive.
Raymond Jr. thinks there is a possibility that she is alive since she was not badly hurt that night. Marvella said that until someone can prove to her otherwise, she will always believe that Joan Gay is out there somewhere. Her family wants to find her and bring her back home. Ruth said that if they find her, they will celebrate and have a "great, big reunion".
Suspects: Joan Gay's abductors were described as two white males dressed in khaki work clothes, possibly with a company logo on them. They have never been identified. Jerry did not recognize them. However, they seemed to at least know of the family, since they asked specifically for the "Croft children".
Several theories have been brought forth to try and explain why Joan Gay was taken. One theory is that the men kidnapped her and planned to demand ransom from Olin because he was relatively wealthy. However, no ransom demands were ever sent. Marvella believes that Joan Gay was kidnapped by someone who had lost their child and wanted a "replacement" to raise. Another theory is that the men were "Good Samaritans" who believed that both of Joan Gay’s parents had died (as newspaper reports initially stated Olin had died as well) and decided to raise her.
There was some speculation that Clea's family may have taken Joan Gay. But there was no evidence to support it. Furthermore, her family seemed to be just as involved in the search as Olin and his family.
Yet another theory is that Joan Gay was kidnapped by a "child-stealing ring", such as the ones run by Georgia Tann and Ethel Nation. These rings would steal children and sell them to wealthy families. Tann was active at the time and was known to take children from hospitals. She sometimes bribed hospital workers to help get her children. There is also the possibility that Joan Gay was the victim of sexual predators who came upon her that night and decided to abduct and possibly kill her. None of these theories have been confirmed.
Extra Notes:

  • This case first aired on the September 22, 1993 episode.
  • It was also profiled on The Trail Went Cold podcast.
  • Mary Jane Medlin played herself featured on a different segment, searching for her brother, James Gilreath.
  • The unknown victims of the tornado are buried in Woodward Cemetery. For years, Marvella has visited their graves and planted flowers there.
  • Following the tornado, hundreds of teachers from the surrounding areas were brought in to view the oldest unidentified girl, but no one recognized her. All girls around her age who were enrolled in nearby schools were tracked down and ruled out. A funeral director suggested that the unidentified girls were the children of destitute, transient parents who could not afford the cost of a funeral.
  • The unidentified four-year-old girl is believed to have been a child that was raised by her grandmother in Woodward. Her parents were divorced, and her mother had remarried. Neighbors identified the body as hers. However, her grandmother refused to identify her. As a result, she was buried in an unmarked grave.
  • The tornado was the sixth deadliest in U.S. history and the deadliest in Oklahoma's history.
  • Some sources spell Olin's name as "Olen" and Jerry's name as "Geri" or "Jeanne" and state: Jerry was twelve years old; neighbors found her and Joan Gay around midnight; Olin was taken to the Woodward Hospital and then Baker Hospital; the splinter was through Joan Gay's right leg; doctors removed it and treated the wound; hospital workers thought they had loaded her on a stretcher and carried her to a waiting automobile; and the abductor claimed to be relatives or friends of the family.

Results: Unsolved. As a result of the broadcast, Ruth received more than 200 potential leads about Joan Gay's possible whereabouts. After the story reaired- in December 1993, a viewer named Jean Smith came forward, believing she was Joan Gay. Growing up, she did not believe she belonged to her family because she did not resemble them. She had "flashbacks" of people and places she did not recognize. While under hypnosis as an adult, she described scenes of people dying and blood. She found evidence that her birth certificate was fraudulent and that her baby photographs were not actually of her.
There were several similarities between Jean and Joan Gay: Jean had a scar on her leg in the same place where Joan Gay had the splinter; they both had lisps; and their blood types matched. Some of Joan Gay's relatives met with Jean and believed she resembled relatives, including Cleta. In June 1994, Unsolved Mysteries paid to have DNA testing done, comparing Jean's DNA to that of Olin's surviving children. However, the tests determined that she was not Joan Gay.
Since the broadcast, hundreds of other women have come forward, believing they were Joan Gay. However, they were all ruled out as well. One woman from Canada matched Joan Gay's description and was raised "JoAnn Gay". She claimed to have seen photographs and belongings inscribed with the names of Joan Gay's parents. She also had relatives with the last name Goble, which was Cleta's maiden name. However, she was later ruled out as well.
In April 1999, Robert Lee, a newspaper writer who had written several stories about Joan Gay, received an email from someone who claimed to know what "really" happened to her. The tipster claimed that Joan Gay had been living in Oklahoma City since 1956 under a different name. Surprisingly, the tipster claimed that Olin knew of her whereabouts the entire time.
Robert responded to the email and received a reply two days later. The person said she was Joan Gay and that her immediate family always knew where she was. She said that until recently, she did not know she was Joan Gay. She said she remembered Cleta dying on top of her but had suppressed that memory for years. She then asked to set up a meeting with Robert. He agreed, but she never replied to his email. Soon after, the email address stopped accepting messages.
In May 2016, Oklahoma state police took a sample of Marvella's DNA and placed it in their state database, hoping to find a match with Joan Gay.
Due to the passage of time, it is possible that Joan Gay is now deceased. It is also possible that she may have died from her injuries shortly after she disappeared. It was noted that no examination was done for internal injuries when she arrived at the hospital. It has also been theorized that she may have been buried under the wrong name.
Sadly, most of Joan Gay's relatives have since passed away: Raymond Jr. in 1994, Ruth in 2005, Jerry in 2021, and Marvella in 2022. Franklin Strecher has also passed away.
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