If you’ve seen the first episode of Netflix’s true-crime docuseries Missing: Dead or Alive?, you may be wondering what happened to Lorraine Garcia, the 61-year-old woman who was reported missing in 2021.
The series follows missing person cases that are investigated by officers at a sheriff’s department in South Carolina involving individuals who disappeared under troubling circumstances.
Lorraine Garcia was reported missing by her former daughter-in-law, Lamanda Kandice Moore, a few months after she last spoke to her in mid-September 2021.
The odds of finding Lorraine Garcia alive seemed low based on the evidence that Investigator Vicki Rains and her team had found when they began looking into Lorraine’s disappearance. Lorraine’s son, Anthony Garcia, had not reported her missing in the months since she had last been seen and had left her belongings outside in the front yard. He said he didn’t know where she was but hoped she was okay.
The officers got a search warrant for the house and found that bleach had been used. They also found blood on the air mattress that Lorraine had been sleeping on, which was in a trash bag in the back of Anthony’s truck.
Is Lorraine Garcia Okay?
Despite the troubling evidence, Investigator Rains and her team had newfound hope that Lorraine could be alive when they heard a recording of a call that a woman with the same name made to her bank. They were able to find her address and went to go see if they could locate her.
To Investigator Rains’ surprise, she found Lorraine Garcia alive and well walking down the street.
“Are you Lorraine?” Investigator Rains says in Episode 2 of Missing: Dead or Alive?.
Also Read: 8 Super Charming Rom-Coms on Netflix Right Now
Officers approach Lorraine Garcia’s house in Missing: Dead or Alive? courtesy of NetflixGarcia replied, “Yes,” and Rains breathed a sigh of relief.
So why had Lorraine Garcia left without telling her former daughter-in-law or her son where she was going?
“I’ve been trying to start over just so I can have peace of mind in my mind and my heart. And I don’t want to go back,” Garcia said.
When asked if she was happy, she said, “I am right now. But I have to start taking care of me.”
Lorraine then explained her reason for leaving without an explanation.
“My son, he did things to me he’d never done. I don’t deserve that,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Before he went off to the war, he was laid-back and fun and he just enjoyed life. But when her came back from the military, he was trying to take pills and drink and smoke some weed and do everything he could to forget about all of what he’d seen in the Infantry,” she added.
Though she had once had a breakthrough with him, she ultimately decided she couldn’t be around him anymore, she explained.
“He talked to me one time, and I held him,” she said. “That was the first time and the last time that he talked about it.”
“Right before I left, I was getting scared,” she added. “People I didn’t know coming in through the garage door, coming through the living room. Somebody had been eating food in the closet. All kinds of paraphernalia here and there, and I didn’t feel safe. It was like my dwelling was being shared with strangers and it was quite frightening.”
Loraine Garcia did not make any concrete allegations against her son and has not pressed any charges on him. In the docuseries, Anthony Garcia denied hurting his mother.
“Would I ever hurt my mom? Not on purpose,” he said in Episode 2 of Missing: Dead or Alive.
For Lorraine’s safety, the Netflix docuseries did not reveal her location. But as of the time the series was filmed, she was alive and well.
“I decided maybe I should just go away from him. Maybe that’s what he’s trying to tell me — go away,” Lorraine Garcia said in the docuseries. So I got on a bus and went as far as I could go. And that was the beginning of the rest of my life.”
Missing: Dead or Alive? is now streaming on Netflix.
Main Image: Lorraine Garcia pictured in Missing: Dead or Alive? Photo Credit: Netflix