What Happened to Paula Jean Weldon?
On Sunday, December 1st, 1946, a year after Middie Rivers disappeared, 18-year-old Paula Jean Weldon finished her job at the Commons at Bennington College. She had worked two shifts at the dining hall and then went back to her dorm room and changed her clothes. She told her roommate that she was going out for a hike.
A row of mill houses in Bennington, May 1909. Photo by Granger / Shutterstock
Her roommate later reported that she remembered Paula saying how she was feeling a tad depressed in the previous days. Paula had told her roommate that she was homesick as she hadn’t been home over Thanksgiving (for unknown reasons). Paula was the eldest of four daughters, was 5’ 5” and weighed 123 lbs. She had a grayish scar on her left knee, a vaccination mark on her right thigh, and a small scar under her left eyebrow.