Published July 07, 2012, 06:48 AM
Missing woman: Mom of woman with amnesia says note left was fake
The mother of a missing 22-year-old here who has suffered episodes of amnesia believes a note found by police indicating she lost her memory was not written by her daughter.
VALLEY CITY, N.D. — The mother of a missing 22-year-old here who has suffered episodes of amnesia believes a note found by police indicating she lost her memory was not written by her daughter.
Amy Glatt, the mother, said Friday that she was the last person to have contact with Amber Marcia Glatt before her boyfriend, Andy Mushet, 20, reported her missing on Wednesday to the Valley City Police Department.
Mushet told police that when he returned to the home he shares with Amber at about midnight, he found a note saying she had amnesia with her name signed at the bottom, her mother told The Forum on Friday.
Amber Glatt has her driver’s license, and her mother said she probably knows what her name is, but Amy Glatt does not believe her daughter wrote the note. She told this to Valley City police as soon as it was faxed to her.
“The whole note was strange. I know my daughter’s handwriting, and it is messy and full of misspelled words,” she said. “You could read everything in the note, it had the proper punctuation and spellings. I think if my daughter had written it, it would have taken her two to three hours.”
A woman who answered the phone at the Valley City Police Department late Friday afternoon, relaying a message from a sergeant, confirmed that officers think Amber Glatt wrote the note.
Messages left for Mushet through Facebook and via Amy Glatt weren’t returned Friday. A phone number for Mushet couldn’t be found.
After texting her about camping equipment around 2 p.m., Amy Glatt said her daughter told her she was on her way to her job at a snow-cone shop, but authorities say she never made it.
Amber Glatt has suffered from focal retrograde amnesia for two years, her mother said. Her amnesia is a result of a traumatic brain injury she suffered July 8, 2010, an incident her daughter didn’t recall occurring. Amy Glatt said all they knew was something hit her in the right front part of her head hard enough to penetrate the skull and cause swelling.
Shortly after, her daughter had her first amnesia episode at a friend’s house. She walked into the house, passed out and when she came to, she did not know who she was, her mother said.
“I was the only one who could try to calm her down,” she said. “She was just sitting in the corner crying when I got there.”
After a week in the emergency room, Amy Glatt took her home, only to have to walk her daughter around the house to show her where everything was.
“She didn’t know who I was, she didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know anything about her life personally,” Amy Glatt said. “Amber said it was like being an alien dropped on another planet.”
After her daughter said she wanted to go to school away from some “bad influences” she was encountering in Virginia, Amy and Amber’s father, Roger, decided on Valley City State University for its smaller size and available counseling. Her parents remained in Virginia, where they retired to after years spent living in Maine.
It was at VCSU that she had her second amnesia episode last year, which lasted for four and a half weeks. Amy said Amber’s reaction was to hide in a corner like the first episode, not to run away.
Amy Glatt said she has been calling the Valley City police every two to three hours for updates, and that officers told her there have been several possible sightings of her car. She said the police are also checking local campsites and lakes.
Amber Glatt is white, stands 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighs 96 pounds. Amber has brown eyes and medium-length brown hair.
She may be driving a silver Mitsubishi Lancer with the rear, driver-side window broken out. The car has Virginia license plates XFK 1538.
Anyone with information regarding Amber Glatt’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Valley City Police Department at (701) 845-3110.
Megan Card is a reporter at The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, which is owned by Forum Communications Co.
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