The daughter of a missing North Carolina woman is breaking her silence after her mother was found 24 years after initially vanishing.
“I want to thank everyone for their support and their love. It means so very much to me. These last couple of days, well not even a full 48 hours have been a whirlwind of emotions,” Amanda Smith wrote on Sunday, February 22, via a Facebook page dedicated to finding her mother Michele Hundley Smith after she went missing in 2001. “I am still not in the right state of mind to make a clear post but I will say that anyone who reads this please please please leave your accusations and assumptions in your head.”
Amanda continued in the post, “You are free to think whatever of course, just please don’t put them out there for my family to see. Please respect my family bc we are hurting and going through a lot. My dad has been through so many accusations since all the way back then… Even before social media was big, where we live in a small town, there were many ppl acting as if they just knew he was involved… Well he wasn’t! Of course I never thought he was… Even when I would ponder it for a second, bc I pondered so many different scenarios, I always knew that there was no way that he could do something like that for many reasons and the biggest being bc my father could never continue to lie to us for decades.”
Michele, now 62, was found “alive and well” somewhere in North Carolina on Friday, February 20, according to a statement from the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office.
“At her request, her current whereabouts will remain undisclosed,” authorities added per the same statement. “Her family has been notified that she has been located and informed of this request as well.”
The mother was last seen by her family on December 9, 2001. Prior to her disappearance, she reportedly told her husband she was going to a Kmart in Martinsville, Virginia, to shop for Christmas. She never returned.
On Sunday, Amanda wrote that her father has “been through so much,” adding that she wants “it made clear that while their marriage had issues” her mother “did not leave simply bc of a bad marriage.”
“Everyone is entitled [to] their opinions but please remember that my father has been proven innocent,” she continued in the same Facebook post. “My dad is a great man and honestly, the fact that he is human just as I am human and you are human… He’s close to being a superhero in my eyes and he ALWAYS will be.”
She continued, “As far as my opinions and feelings on my mom… I am ecstatic, I am pissed, I am heartbroken, I am all over the map! Will I have a relationship once more with my mom? Honestly I can’t answer that bc I don’t even know… My initial reaction would be yes absolutely but then I think of all the hurt… But even then… My mom is only human just as we all are.”
In another post shared one day earlier, on Saturday, February 22, Amanda again thanked everyone for their support before announcing that she will “be changing this page for other missing ppl.”
“But as of right now there is too much going on to deal with everything,” she added. “I appreciate everyone’s love and support. The personal details are not going to be dived into right now but I will say that my mother chose her new life and we know she is alive, and for now that is enough.”
