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We are going to be re-refreshrating. They treated her as if she had just abandoned her kids, whereas in reality, we now know she wasn't missing.

Missing persons' cases are never easy. Some, however, seem to be almost impossible to figure out. There are so many missing pieces to the story, and more often than not, we are left with just questions and very few answers.

This appears to be the way the story was going for Viola Finley. Viola, a 28-year-old mother of three, was visiting family in Florida in September of 1983.

After her visit, it's believed and assumed that she was making her way back home to her children in Waterloo, Iowa. However, Viola never made it there.

The point in which Viola went missing is a mystery, and theories run abound. Proper steps were not taken when Viola went missing, and the family has been hard pressed to get answers.

There has never been a proper search. Documentation of certain events in Viola's life has been lost due to natural disasters, and those who would have memories that could lead authorities in the right direction, have either left this world or simply can't clearly recall the event.

So what happened to Viola Finley in 1983? Did she ever make it out of Florida? Did something happen along her trip to Iowa? Or is there a piece to all of this that has yet to be uncovered?

Amarissa and from Wondery, this is Episode 250 of The Vanished, Viola Finley's story.

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For this story, we wanted to gain a better understanding of who Viola was as a person. Thankfully, we were able to speak with her sister Betty. Betty told us about Viola's younger years.

Early on in our conversation, we gathered that Viola had a bit of a wild streak. She liked to have fun, but was also known to be responsible. She was a caretaker in her family, a trait that would carry on when she had her own children when she was older.

She was kind of a wild child. She got into drugs and all that stuff at an early age. She pretty much took care of us. The other three of us, my mom had started to work.

She was like our second mom, but it wasn't until she was about 13 before she started getting into the crazy stuff with the drugs and drinking and stuff like that.

Then she just, when she dropped out of school and when she came back, we were both together and can't parade for a while. She ran away a lot. But growing up, I was like 17 months younger than her. And she was very mature for her age as far as physically. But she just had an addictive personality and just got into all the drugs and stuff.

Betty continued on and told us about Viola when she was an adult, things like she never wound up graduating high school and that she became pregnant with her first child, a baby girl she named after her mother Phyllis, and that she ended up giving her the nickname of Buffy.

During this time, Betty got married and was in the military so she wasn't around Viola as much as before. This didn't stop her from communicating with her sister. Betty told us more about the type of mother Viola was.

She was a good mother to her, but she never really settled down. So her, you know, her and Buffy had kind of a transient life. And after that, she, what I know is she got pregnant with her middle child, Vicki. And she had met this guy Kelly down here in Dland and they moved to Minnesota together.

Kelly Hodge, Viola's boyfriend, played an important role in her life and not necessarily in a positive way. In the beginning, things seemed to be going well with Viola and Kelly.

He took Viola's kids as his own and they ended up having a son together, but things eventually turned sour and Kelly was allegedly abusive to Viola.

The pair ended up going their separate ways. We asked Betty if she could tell us about the last time she saw Viola.

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