The El Paso Enigma: The Disappearance of William and Margaret Patterson

David Kirkland couldn’t be exactly sure when the phone rang, but he knew it was early—perhaps 3 a.m.—the morning of March 6, 1957. On the line was William Patterson, his boss at a photo supply store in El Paso, Texas, and someone he considered a friend.

“We are going away,” Patterson told him. “I’ll have to take Margaret away for a while.”

A groggy Kirkland mumbled some affirmation. The lateness of the call was a bit unusual, but the message was not: Patterson was known to take extended vacations with his wife, Margaret. Moreover, Kirkland had just seen Patterson two days prior to help him work on his boat. He was, Kirkland would later recall, in good spirits.

But eventually, their abrupt departure grew more and more concerning. Not long after that call, another associate received a telegram with instructions on how to liquidate the family’s assets and lease their home—hardly steps one takes for a brief trip. No luggage had been taken from the property and unwashed dishes remained in the sink. Most curious of all, Margaret’s beloved cat, Tommy, had been left to wander the neighborhood and appeared half-starved by the time he was found. Close friends insisted that Margaret was so enamored with the cat that she would never leave him unattended.

For those who knew Margaret, Tommy was the surest sign something had gone terribly wrong in the lives of the Pattersons. All signs pointed to them leaving abruptly, possibly in fear of something or someone. Whatever happened was no vacation.

Portrait of an Imperfect Couple

On appearances alone, William “Pat” Patterson, 52, and his wife Margaret, 42, seemed like the last couple that would ever need to leave town in a hurry. The two co-owned Patterson Photo Supply, a thriving photography shop in downtown El Paso that reportedly grossed $20,000 a month. The family had cars, the boat, a well-kept home in El Paso, and a good reputation in the community.

Pat had met Margaret in the early 1930s while he was a traveling salesman coming through Evansville, Indiana, where Margaret worked in customer service. The two took off together and got married, eventually settling in El Paso just as World War II was underway. They didn’t have children. Their lone dependent was Tommy, a yellow and white house cat Margaret babied. It wasn’t uncommon, friends said, for her to feed Tommy caviar.

The 1950s brought prosperity for the Pattersons, though it wasn’t a guarantee of happiness. Margaret was thought to drink to excess and once overdosed on pills. Friends and relatives later speculated that her substance issues were brought on by Pat’s infidelity: He was known to have extramarital relationships and even purchased a Thunderbird for one of his lovers.

Aside from his questionable commitment to their marriage, there was little else suspicious about the Pattersons—no sketchy criminal types in their midst, no gambling problems, no business scandals.

A neighbor who stopped by the Patterson home shortly before their disappearance to drop off some Girl Scout cookies observed that Pat seemed unhappy and Margaret was distracted. But that was apparently an anomaly. On March 4, 1957, when friends David Kirkland and Cecil Ward came over to help Pat with his boat, they observed he was behaving normally. They even made plans to come over the following day to continue working, but both Ward and Kirkland had something come up.

The following night, March 6, Kirkland received the cryptic late night call from Pat—at least, someone who he believed to be Pat. The caller said he was leaving his Cadillac at Ward’s garage for repairs and that the keys would be inside the vehicle. An employee of the garage later said that someone had indeed dropped the Cadillac off that night, but it didn’t look anything like Pat.

Initially, no one in the Patterson circle was particularly worried. Pat was known to head to Mexico or Florida on fishing trips, turning them into extended vacations with Margaret and leaving employees to tend to the photo shop. But the telegram that came nine days later was more puzzling. It was sent to Herb Roth, their business auditor, and read:

“Sorry had to leave so sudden. Sell house trailer and use money for business. License both cars for business. Tell Art to cancel DC reservation and take care of business like it was his as part will be some day. Put [Kirkland] in complete charge at same salary Duffy pays him. Tell [Kirkland] to rent house for nine months at least. Handle all this as quietly as possible. Important. Sure you will understand. Pat.”

Pat—or whomever sent the telegram—was instructing Roth to have photo store employee Arturo Moreno cancel a reservation for a photo convention in Washington. Roth obliged Pat’s wishes and tried not to spread word of the couple’s absence, possibly because it might concern customers of his photo business.

That was how things remained from March to August, at which point Ward went to police. He explained that while the Pattersons initially appeared to have left of their own volition, their continued absence was bizarre. So was the fact that their home was being rented out, and that some of their possessions were being sold off.

The El Paso Sheriff’s Office found no obvious clues of foul play. The Pattersons’ luggage was still there, and so was their clothing. Both were ominous, as it would be unusual for a couple to leave for an extended holiday without packing. The cat, Tommy, was also left behind—something friends considered highly unusual, as he was normally left at a boarding facility. So was the fact that no cash had been withdrawn from any of their banking accounts.

The only compelling lead police could muster at the time was the word of Estefana Arroyo Marfin, who came forward to tell police that she was romantically involved with Pat and had heard from him shortly before his disappearance. At that time, Mafin said, Pat told her that “when they come for me, I’ll have to go in a hurry.”

Who “they” were was a mystery. Strangely, according to The El Paso Times, Marfin recanted her statement not long after. The El Paso Herald-Post reported that she told a police officer she’d received a letter from Pat in April 1957, a month after his disappearance—and then later denied it. She submitted to a lie detector test, which convinced police she was telling the truth about not having received a letter.

With no evidence of a crime, investigators were stymied. It would be nearly a year before Pat resurfaced to cause even more confusion.

A Signed Testament

In June 1958, El Paso district attorney William Clayton was able to organize a formal inquiry into the Pattersons’ vanishing act. That meant subpoenaing witnesses, though Clayton was disappointed to discover they had little to add.

Just as the inquiry was set to begin, family attorney David Smith received a letter from Pat. In contrast to his previous communication, this message seemed both urgent and inexplicable.

“Dear Dave: I want you to handle this matter for us. We will not be back to El Paso and by the time you get this we will be out of the country and nobody can find us.”

Pat wished to divvy up his business and possessions amongs his employees. The typewritten letter was postmarked from Laredo, Texas—and it was signed, which provided an avenue to see if it was legitimate.

Unfortunately, handwriting experts couldn’t say for certain. There were both anomalies as well as similarities when compared to Pat’s handwriting. That left officials with scarcely more information than when they began investigating. The Pattersons had abruptly left town, leaving word to lease their home for at least nine months—the implication was that they’d be back. Now Pat was saying they would never return, but he didn’t say why.

The letter directing distribution of assets was useless. In addition to Pat’s signature being questionable, it wasn’t endorsed by Margaret, who co-owned the photo shop. That left open the possibility that someone was trying to sew up loose ends in El Paso in the hopes it might cool the heels of authorities. After all, David Kirkland couldn’t swear it was Pat he spoke to on the phone. Both the telegram and the letter could have been sent by anyone, though it would have to be someone with knowledge of Pat’s business and associates. And then there was the mystery man who drove his Cadillac into Cecil Ward’s shop, only to jump into another car and drive off. If the Pattersons had not fled El Paso of their own free will, someone had been trying very hard to make it look like they had.

Across the Border

The next year, 1959, brought a fresh perspective on the case: newly-installed Sheriff Bob Bailey, who turned his attention to the possibility that Pat’s most recent letter had been truthful in saying the couple had left the country. Perhaps, Bailey thought, they were in Mexico for reasons unknown.

Bailey requested the cooperation of police in Mexico and circulated a photo of the Pattersons. Encouraging news came out of Valle de Bravo, a resort community just outside of Mexico City, where numerous people insisted they had seen or encountered the Pattersons in September 1958—more than a year following their disappearance.

Bailey traveled to Mexico to speak to the witnesses himself. There was a taxi driver, auto shop owner, and hotel clerk. In each instance, they were able to identify the Pattersons from a group photo.

Bailey was particularly encouraged by the hotel clerk, who should have had one of their signatures on a registration card. Unfortunately, he didn’t: It had been misplaced or discarded during a change in hotel ownership. The previous owner recalled it had been signed “Margaret M. Patterson.” Margaret had been there, he was was sure, but the man with her could have been someone other than Pat.

Bailey was unable to follow the trail any further. If the Pattersons had been there, they’d had a year to disappear somewhere else. Nor did the proceeding years yield any new information. By 1964, the couple was declared legally dead. By 1967, their estate was being divvied up among heirs—mostly siblings and nieces and nephews. (Their wills had stipulated leaving money to each other, an impossible edict to fulfill.)

By that time, the Pattersons had slipped into the realm of El Paso urban legend. Their disappearance was, depending on the rumor, attributable to UFOs or possibly a kidnapping. Pat’s father, Luther Patterson, surfaced to say his son had been transient in his youth and that vanishing from sight was not so far-fetched. But no theory held much weight, and there was still no strong evidence the couple was the victim of a crime.

That changed in 1984.

A Surprising Theory

In 1957, Reynaldo Nangaray, an undocumented immigrant, was an employee of the Pattersons’ who went to their property to clean it following their departure. He told police in 1984 that he saw blood in the garage, and that someone had carried bloody sheets out to a car. On the propeller of the Pattersons’ boat was a piece of bloody scalp.

Nangaray hadn’t come forward until nearly 30 years had passed—the result, he said, of fear over his immigration status. Police took his statement, but it was all but impossible to investigate properly.

In 1986, Nangaray died in a car accident. With him went the last compelling lead in the case—at least, the only one publicly disclosed. Whether the bloody scalp belonged to Pat, Margaret, or a third party is unknown.

The Patterson mystery has been closed and re-opened several times over the years, and it’s currently considered an open cold case investigation. As recently as 2022, an intriguing theory emerged courtesy of El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego—one that certainly fits with the abrupt nature of their relocation.

“I think they were spies,” Samaniego told The El Paso Times. “The way they got up and just walked away and left everything behind. The Russians, or whoever sent them, probably told them to drop everything and go back. Some people said they had seen Patterson take photographs of Fort Bliss and of military shipments on the trains that came here.”

Soviet spies were not unheard of at the height of the Cold War. By the 1940s and ’50s, American intelligence had also gotten adept at deciphering encrypted messages that ruined the cover of some agents; the operation, known as Venona, was classified until 1995. Most notably, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried, convicted, and executed for passing along information on American military capabilities. Certainly, a photography shop would provide some clever cover for foreign assets looking to document military operations. But the FBI told The El Paso Times that they had no paperwork concerning the Pattersons being enemies of the state.

Nearly 70 years following their disappearance, no one is certain who or what drove the Pattersons out of El Paso. It was so sudden that the couple seemed unwilling or unable to pack, withdraw money, or even to arrange care for Tommy. But that all presumes the Pattersons made it out of town at all. Perhaps the same people who might have posed as Pat in letters arranged for “sightings” in Mexico to obfuscate the truth: That someone who knew them wanted or needed them dead.

Read More Mysteries of the Missing: