Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller reports that today his detectives have identified the woman found wandering east of Albany on May 15, 2012 as Marcia Lee Rackley, age 67, from Norfolk Virginia. Last week Linn County detectives were able to track her back to a bus terminal in Spokane, Washington where she boarded a bus to Portland. She was seen in a surveillance video purchasing a ticket in Portland to Albany. Yesterday it was discovered that she had arrived in Portland from Chicago, Illinois. When purchasing the bus tickets in Chicago on May 11, she had given the fictitious name of Kelly Somerson.
Yesterday the Chicago Police Department was notified regarding this information and their Public Information Officer distributed the information to local media outlets.
This morning the Linn County Sheriff's Office received a call from a nurse manager at a Chicago area hospital who saw the media release and recognized this female as being a patient in the emergency department on April 23, 2012.
According to the nurse manager the female was found at Chicago's O'Hare Airport after being seen in a bathroom for three days. During the course of treatment in the Chicago hospital, the hospital staff located photo identification as well as insurance cards on the female in the name of Marcia Lee Rackley. Once she was treated at the hospital she was committed to a Chicago area psychiatric ward. After treatment she was released and purchased a Greyhound Bus ticket at a Chicago Greyhound bus station with a destination of Portland.
The nursing manager also provided the Linn County detectives with contact information for the family of Ms. Rackley. Detectives contacted her sister who positively identified Marcia this morning through photographs. Marcia was last known to be living in Norfolk, VA with her sister. She has no children and never been married. According to her sister, when Marcia left Norfolk she was on her medication and was in good health.
Detectives received information that Marcia suffers from severe mental illness and when she is not taking medication she wanders, boards buses or trains, and often travels without any form of identification. Marcia has been institutionalized or hospitalized for treatment of her mental illness in states including New York, Maine, Florida, and at one point Canada.
The Linn County Sheriff's Office is now working to provide the health professionals currently working with Marcia all the information received so that proper medical treatment can be given and so she can aid in her own care or be treated within an in-patient care facility.
Marcia's identity may never have been brought to the Linn County Sheriff's Office attention if it weren't for law enforcement, media, social networking, and the public's assistance. Investigators working this case received over 60 tips from across the United States and Canada which came in the form of emails, direct telephone calls, and Facebook messages.
