Cynthia and Jackie Leslie

Title

The Vanishing of the Leslie Sisters: A 50-Year Mystery in the Arizona Desert

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

July 2, 2025

On a warm summer evening in 1974, two teenage sisters walked out of their mobile home in Mesa, Arizona, leaving behind a simple note for their parents. They claimed they were going to babysit at "the same place" they had worked before. Fifteen-year-old Cynthia "Cindy" Ardina Leslie and her thirteen-year-old sister Jackie Lynn Leslie would never be seen again, disappearing into the desert landscape that surrounded their new neighborhood and leaving behind a mystery that has haunted their family for fifty years.

The disappearance of the Leslie sisters represents more than just another unsolved missing persons case. It occurred during a pivotal time in American history when the infrastructure we now take for granted for finding missing children simply did not exist. There were no AMBER Alerts, no National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, no coordinated law enforcement databases, and no social media to spread awareness. The Leslie family found themselves entirely alone in their search for answers, relying only on their own determination and the limited resources of a small-town sheriff's department in 1970s Arizona.

A Family in Crisis

The Leslie family had arrived in Mesa just one month before the girls disappeared, moving from the small town of Page, Arizona, in June 1974. The relocation was not by choice but born of necessity. Jack Leslie, the girls' father, had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and needed to be closer to medical facilities in the Phoenix area for treatment. The family settled into the Desert Sands Mobile Home Park on Baseline Road near Sossaman Road, a community that represented their new beginning during an incredibly difficult time.

Jack and Erma Leslie were doing their best to maintain normalcy for their children during this health crisis. Besides Cynthia and Jackie, they had an older daughter, Linda Herring, who was already married and living in Tucson with her husband and two young daughters. The family dynamics were typical of many American households in the 1970s, with close-knit relationships and parents who trusted their teenage daughters to be responsible while still maintaining appropriate boundaries.

Cynthia, who went by the nickname Cindy, was fifteen years old, stood 5'6" tall, and weighed about 110 pounds. She had brown hair and hazel eyes, wore glasses that she needed to see clearly, and had pierced ears along with a distinctive dark brown mole on the outer side of her right armpit. Friends and family described her as a typical teenager navigating the complexities of adolescence, including romantic interests that sometimes conflicted with her parents' wishes.

Jackie, the younger sister at thirteen, was 5'4" and also weighed around 110 pounds. She had brown hair like her sister but with blue eyes, and she had a noticeable mole on her right cheekbone along with pierced ears. Both girls were described by their mother as normal teenagers who enjoyed typical activities like bowling and roller skating. They had not yet started school in Mesa, having moved during the summer, which meant their social circle was still quite small and primarily consisted of neighbors in the mobile home park.

The Night They Vanished

July 31, 1974, began as an ordinary evening for the Leslie family. Jack and Erma had gone to church, leaving the girls at home with their grandmother. It was around this time that Cynthia received a phone call, the contents of which would remain forever unknown. After hanging up, she wrote a note to her parents that would become one of the few clues in their disappearance: "Mom we've gone to babysit in the same place."

The girls left their home wearing casual summer clothing typical of the era. Cynthia was dressed in light blue jeans and a summer shirt, while Jackie wore jeans and a similar summer top. They walked out into the warm Arizona evening, heading west along Baseline Road toward what their parents believed was a babysitting job just a few blocks away. Multiple witnesses later confirmed seeing the two sisters walking together along this route, but those sightings would be the last confirmed evidence of their whereabouts.

When Jack and Erma returned from church that evening, they expected to find their daughters either already home or returning soon from their babysitting duties. As the hours passed and the girls failed to come home, concern grew into worry, and worry transformed into fear. Erma spent the entire night on the couch, waiting for the sound of the front door opening or the telephone ringing with news of her daughters' whereabouts.

By morning, when there was still no sign of Cynthia and Jackie, the family contacted the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. However, this was 1974, and the protocols for missing children were vastly different from today's standards. Deputies would not file an official missing persons report for 48 hours, operating under the assumption that teenage runaways would typically return home on their own within that timeframe. For two agonizing days, the Leslie family could only wait by the phone and hope.

The Search Begins

When the official investigation finally commenced, it quickly became apparent that the girls had not actually gone to a babysitting job. Instead, authorities learned that there had been a party that night approximately three blocks from the Leslie home, in an area that was then remote desert surrounded by cotton fields and orange groves. The party location was near Power Road, still within walking distance of their mobile home park but in a much more isolated area.

Investigators discovered that Cynthia's primary motivation for attending the party may have been to meet a teenage boy whom her father had specifically forbidden her to see. This detail added a layer of typical teenage rebellion to the story, suggesting that the girls had deliberately misled their parents about their true destination. However, it also raised questions about whether this deception had inadvertently led them into danger.

The party attendees presented conflicting accounts when questioned by investigators. Some insisted that the Leslie sisters had never arrived at the gathering, while others claimed to have seen them briefly before they left. These contradictory statements made it impossible for investigators to establish a clear timeline of the girls' movements or determine definitively whether they had reached their intended destination.

Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies conducted extensive searches of the area surrounding both the mobile home park and the party location. The landscape in 1974 was vastly different from today's developed suburbs. The entire region was characterized by vast stretches of desert punctuated by agricultural fields, particularly cotton farms and citrus groves. The sweet scent of orange blossoms that Erma Leslie remembered from that time has long since been replaced by strip malls, housing developments, and commercial buildings.

Despite their thorough efforts, investigators found no physical evidence related to the girls' disappearance. No clothing, no personal belongings, no signs of struggle, and no witnesses who could provide definitive information about what had happened after the sisters left their home. The case quickly grew cold, with deputies believing from the beginning that something criminal had occurred but lacking any concrete leads to pursue.

A Mother's Relentless Quest

As the official investigation stalled, Erma Leslie refused to accept that her daughters were gone forever. Her belief that Cynthia and Jackie would never have voluntarily left during their father's terminal illness drove her to continue searching long after law enforcement had exhausted their immediate leads. She knew her daughters were devoted to their father and would not have abandoned him during his final months.

Tragically, Jack Leslie died on February 21, 1975, just seven months after his daughters disappeared, never learning what had happened to them. His death added another layer of heartbreak to an already devastating situation, as Erma faced the loss of her husband while still desperately searching for her missing children.

Erma's search efforts took her across multiple states over the following decades. She created and distributed missing persons flyers, visiting sheriff's departments throughout Arizona and southern California. Her dedication led her to follow up on countless tips and reported sightings, no matter how far-fetched they might have seemed. Each potential lead represented hope that her daughters might still be alive somewhere.

One of the more intriguing leads came in the form of an anonymous phone call from Casa Grande, Arizona. The caller claimed that Cynthia and Jackie were on a train that would be passing through Douglas, Arizona, near the Mexican border. Erma and Linda immediately drove to Douglas and searched the train when it arrived, but found no trace of the girls. Years later, a trucker contacted Erma claiming he had seen the sisters working at a diner in El Dorado, Kansas. Once again, she made the long drive, filled with hope, only to return home disappointed.

In her desperation, Erma even consulted with a psychic in the Los Angeles area who told her that the girls were alive and living near water. This led to extended trips along the California coast, where she searched beaches and coastal towns, showing photographs of her daughters to anyone who would look. While these efforts never yielded results, they demonstrated the lengths to which a mother would go to find her children.

The Evolution of Missing Children Cases

The Leslie sisters' disappearance occurred during a time when the systems we now consider essential for finding missing children were either in their infancy or did not exist at all. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children would not be established until 1984, ten years after Cynthia and Jackie vanished. The AMBER Alert system was still decades away from implementation. Law enforcement agencies operated largely in isolation, with limited communication between jurisdictions and no centralized databases for sharing information about missing persons.

Linda Herring, the sisters' older sister, has spoken about how isolating this experience was for their family. There were no support groups for families of missing children, no national hotlines to call, and no coordinated media campaigns to raise awareness. The family felt entirely alone in their struggle, relying only on their own resources and determination to keep the case alive.

The contrast with today's capabilities is stark. Modern missing children cases immediately trigger coordinated responses involving multiple agencies, extensive media coverage, social media campaigns, and sophisticated forensic techniques. The Leslie family's experience highlights how much the landscape of missing persons investigations has evolved over the past fifty years.

Recent Developments and Modern Techniques

Despite the passage of five decades, the case has not been forgotten by law enforcement. In recent years, detectives from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office have attempted to apply modern investigative techniques to this cold case. This included traveling to Nevada, where Erma Leslie Prue now lives near her daughter Linda, to collect DNA samples from both women. The hope was that advances in forensic genetic genealogy might provide new leads if any unidentified remains or evidence could be connected to the sisters.

However, the family has not received any updates following the DNA collection, suggesting that no matches or new leads have emerged from this avenue of investigation. The lack of physical evidence from the original disappearance continues to hamper efforts to solve the case, even with modern technology at investigators' disposal.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office maintains a dedicated Cold Case Unit that investigates murders and long-term missing persons cases that have remained unsolved for one year or more. The Leslie sisters' case falls under their jurisdiction, and it remains classified as a non-family abduction with suspected foul play. The case number is 74-10415, and both girls remain listed in the National Crime Information Center database.

Theories and Speculation

Over the years, various theories have emerged about what might have happened to Cynthia and Jackie Leslie. The most obvious possibility is that they encountered someone with criminal intentions either while walking to the party or at the party itself. The isolated nature of the area in 1974, combined with the girls' small social circle and limited familiarity with their new neighborhood, could have made them vulnerable to predators.

Some have speculated about whether the boy Cynthia was forbidden to see might have been involved in their disappearance, either directly or indirectly. However, there is no public information suggesting this individual was ever seriously considered a suspect or that investigators found any evidence linking him to the girls' vanishing.

The possibility of abduction by a serial predator has also been considered. The 1970s saw numerous cases of missing children across the American Southwest, and some researchers have attempted to identify potential connections. However, the lack of physical evidence and the absence of similar cases in the immediate area make it difficult to establish any definitive patterns.

Another theory that has been discussed is human trafficking, though this would have been a much less recognized phenomenon in 1974. The idea that two attractive teenage girls might have been abducted for illicit purposes cannot be entirely dismissed, particularly given their complete disappearance without any subsequent contact with family or friends.

The Family's Ongoing Mission

Today, Erma Leslie Prue is in her eighties and lives in Henderson, Nevada, to be closer to her surviving daughter Linda. Despite her advanced age and the passage of fifty years, she has never stopped believing that someday she will learn what happened to Cynthia and Jackie. In her home, formal portraits of both missing daughters hang in the hallway, with age-progressed images beneath them showing what they might look like today.

Linda Herring has continued her mother's mission while also working to help other families dealing with missing loved ones. The sisters' case profoundly affected how Linda raised her own children, leading her and her husband to work opposite shifts so they could minimize the time their daughters spent with babysitters. The family has participated in various missing children advocacy events, including hosting a 5K run to raise awareness about missing persons and traveling to California and Washington, D.C., to speak at events organized by missing children organizations.

The impact of losing Cynthia and Jackie has shaped every aspect of the surviving family members' lives. Linda describes how theories and potential leads constantly cycle through her mind, wondering if each new development might finally provide the answers they have sought for decades. The not knowing, she explains, is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the entire ordeal.

A Case That Continues to Resonate

The disappearance of the Leslie sisters represents more than just an unsolved missing persons case; it serves as a window into how American society and law enforcement have evolved in their approach to missing children. The family's experience of isolation and self-reliance stands in stark contrast to the coordinated, multi-agency responses that characterize modern missing children investigations.

The case also highlights the enduring power of a mother's love and determination. Erma Leslie Prue's five-decade search for her daughters demonstrates the lengths to which families will go to find their missing loved ones, even when all conventional avenues have been exhausted. Her story has inspired other families facing similar tragedies and has contributed to the broader movement to improve systems for finding missing children.

As advances in forensic science continue to evolve, there remains hope that new techniques might eventually provide answers in cases like this one. Genetic genealogy has solved numerous cold cases from the 1970s, and improved database systems continue to identify previously unknown connections between cases and suspects. The Leslie family maintains hope that scientific advances might someday reveal what happened to Cynthia and Jackie.

The sisters would be 65 and 63 years old today if they are still alive. Age-progressed images created by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children show what they might look like as senior citizens, complete with gray hair and the facial changes that come with decades of aging. These images serve as a reminder that somewhere, someone might recognize these faces or have information that could finally solve this enduring mystery.

The Desert Keeps Its Secrets

Fifty years after Cynthia and Jackie Leslie walked out of their mobile home into the Arizona desert, their fate remains unknown. The landscape they disappeared into has been transformed beyond recognition, with shopping centers, housing developments, and busy roads replacing the cotton fields and orange groves of 1974. Yet somewhere in this vastly changed environment, the truth about what happened to two teenage sisters on a summer evening half a century ago remains hidden.

The case stands as a testament to the reality that some mysteries may never be solved, despite the best efforts of law enforcement, advancing technology, and the unwavering dedication of grieving families. It serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of young people and the devastating impact that their disappearance has on those left behind.

For Erma Leslie Prue and Linda Herring, the search continues. Every day brings the possibility that someone will come forward with information, that new evidence will be discovered, or that technological advances will finally provide the answers they have sought for five decades. Their story demonstrates that hope can endure even in the face of seemingly impossible odds and that the love between family members transcends even the most tragic circumstances.

The Desert Sands Mobile Home Park where the Leslie family lived still exists today, though the surrounding area has been completely developed. The orange groves and cotton fields where investigators once searched for clues have given way to suburban sprawl. Yet the memory of two teenage sisters who simply wanted to attend a party on a summer night continues to haunt this corner of Arizona, serving as a reminder that some secrets the desert may never give up.

Anyone with information about the disappearance of Cynthia and Jackie Leslie is encouraged to contact the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office at (602) 876-1011. Even the smallest detail could provide the breakthrough that finally brings this fifty-year mystery to a close and gives a family the answers they have sought for half a century.

Sources:

Benjamin Hayes

Benjamin Hayes is a blogger with a passion for true crime and unresolved mysteries. In his free time, Benjamin is an avid hiker and photographer. He finds solace and inspiration in nature, often trekking through the scenic trails of the Appalachian Mountains.