Mystery woman who turned up at Toronto shelter with amnesia now identified
TORONTO - Toronto police have solved the case of a mystery woman who showed up at a shelter in the city not knowing who she was or where she came from — only that her first name was Linda.
Police now say they have identified her as Linda Hegg, 56, a woman from Newark, Del., who has schizophrenia and had been living in an assisted living facility in that city.
Det. Roger Caracciolo says investigators still don't know why Hegg got on a bus to Canada, how she crossed the border at Fort Erie with an expired U.S. passport, or what she did in the days before she arrived at the shelter.
But, he says, they have confirmed her identity through DNA and with her mother, and that Hegg is now back at home in Delaware, where she is being checked out at a hospital.
Caracciolo says before Hegg was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1996 she received a degree in linguistics and languages from the University of Rochester and was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, with the U.S. navy.
Police say an amateur web sleuth helped them make the connection to Hegg, who was reported missing in the United States after she had already arrived in Canada.
