How Would You Feel If Your Loved One Just Disappeared off the Face of The Earth One Day?

The Last Rites

We never think about the fact that when our loved ones walk out the door for a destination that it might be the last time we ever see them. We just assume they will walk back into that door with a greeting of “Hello”. But sometimes they don’t especially if they are a free spirit and never know from one minute to the next what they are going to do.

Pauline Metler walked out of her trailer in Melbourne in 1975 hitchhiking to Key West. She told those she left behind that she would be back in a few days. She started here Journey on US1 in Melbourne headed south. She was never seen or heard from again. No one ever reported her missing.

Several days later the decomposed remains of a body was found on Ulrich Rd in Fort Pierce. This body was found by two strangers who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The body had no identification.

When law enforcement started working the case they had nothing to go on until her false teeth were identified. Her name was Pauline Metler. She was 33 years old. She had lived in Key West and was married to Donald Metler That was all anyone knew.

It took several more weeks before law enforcement could find out where her family was or if she even had any. When they did find out and went to talk to them – law enforcement was lied to about her. The family refused to cooperate. The so called friends she had refused to cooperate. No one would talk to the investigators.

When the body or what was left of the body was released for burial Donald Metler refused to claim it. No one else in her family claimed it either. Sadly she was finally buried in an unmarked grave by the County in a pauper’s section of a city cemetery in Fort Pierce. To this day she still has no headstone to show that she ever existed. Her legacy is that unmarked grave.

“The Last Rites” is her story. It is her legacy in book form. It is a tribute to a young woman who was brutally raped and executed simply because three men had an urge and could. Pauline Metler was a human being who didn’t deserve to die in this fashion and then to be tossed in an unmarked grave for whatever reason. She deserves to be remembered because she lived. She loved was loved and because she was a person.

Who is to say what she might have done with her life had it not been cut so short. Who’s to say what she might have accomplished had she not been picked up that day on US1.

The question will always remain in my mind Why didn’t someone care enough?

This is my way of caring. This is my way of remembering and letting the world know she existed. Read her story, keep her memory alive. Understand that none of us are exempt from the same type of fate.