Friday, February 27, 2026 - A woman who vanished more than two decades ago has been found alive and well and was seen publicly for the first time in 24 years after being arrested in connection with an outstanding 2001 DUI charge.
Michele Hundley Smith was 38 when she left her home in Eden,
North Carolina, to go Christmas shopping across the border in Martinsville,
Virginia, on December 9, 2001.
She never came back, but last week she was found in North
Carolina, at an address she asked police not to disclose to anyone – even her
anguished family.
Authorities confirmed this week that she had been located
living under a different identity in another state.
Her discovery reportedly came after law enforcement officers
flagged her information during a routine records check, which revealed an
unresolved driving under the influence (DUI) case dating back to the year she
disappeared. Investigators said the outstanding warrant ultimately led to her
arrest.
Photos taken following her arrest mark the first public
sighting of the woman since her sudden disappearance nearly a quarter-century
ago.
But in a heartbreaking admission, Smith tells the Daily
Mail: 'I know that I made the news, but I honestly 100% never knew that I was
loved or wanted.
'When I left, the mental state I was in, I thought it was my
only choice.
'I was just not in the mental state to stay. My children
were not abandoned; they were left with their father to care for them.
'My main thing is I want everybody to know, I'm in contact
with my daughter Amanda. I'm starting with Amanda because she is the one
reaching out to me, and she wants to start with her.
'She's the only one right now I'm in contact with.'
Smith said it 'broke my heart' when she learned how long her
daughter and other loved ones had been searching for her.
'I honestly believed I didn't matter,' she told the Daily
Mail. 'When I found out, it broke me. That's why I'm trying to rebuild
something with her, because what she did, shows how much I really was loved.'
She confessed it was 'hard' knowing how much of her children's lives she had missed out on while she was away.
Asked about initial reports, she didn't want her family to
contact her. She replied: 'It wasn't that I didn't want to be contacted, I just
didn't want anyone to know where I was until I had been able to talk with
everyone.
Visibly drained, she added: 'I'm wore down. I can't talk
about it right now. I've been talking about it for days.'
Smith failed to appear for her December 27, 2001, court
date, having gone missing, leaving her children then aged 19, 14, and seven
without their mom.
An arrest warrant was then issued when she failed to appear,
which has remained outstanding until officers finally caught up with her.
Robeson County officers arrested Smith, now 62, on behalf of Rockingham County at an address in Saint Pauls, North Carolina, almost three hours from the Stoneville home she vanished from.
She appeared before Robeson County Magistrate Macan Singh
and was granted bond on the condition she appear at a March 26 court hearing in
Rockingham County, police said.
The mother-of-three was released from Robeson County jail
Thursday morning on a $2,000 bond, court records obtained by the Daily Mail
show.
Law enforcement sources say she did not appear to have been
the victim of foul play and that her disappearance now appears to have been
voluntary. Authorities are continuing to investigate the circumstances
surrounding her decision to abandon her family in 2001.
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