On January 16, 1973, Michaele Benedict was chatting inside with some friends while her four-year-old daughter, Anna Waters, was playing in the backyard of their home in San Mateo County. At about 2:20 PM, after not hearing Anna for quite some time, Michaele realized that her little girl wasn’t in the backyard anymore. After searching her property for about 30 minutes, Michaele called the police. Initially, investigators feared that Anna had fallen into a nearby creek and drowned, but no trace of her was found in or near the water.
Although the accusation has never been proven, some investigators and family members believe that Anna’s biological father, George Henry Waters, may have abducted her. Waters was a prestigious doctor who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. His friendship with a shady psychic named George Brody destroyed his marriage with Anna’s mother. He went off to live with Brody in San Francisco after their divorce.
Brody, a mysterious and manipulative con man, insisted that Anna was the reincarnation of a woman he had once known. Strangely, Waters never showed any concern over Brody’s obsession with his daughter. When Brody died in 1981, Waters committed suicide two weeks later.
Years after Anna went missing, her half brother, Nonda, remembered an incident that he and Anna had never told their parents about. A month before her disappearance, Anna and Nonda had been playing in front of their home when an unfamiliar man and woman pulled up to them in a Chevrolet Impala. The couple tried persuading Anna to get into their car but left after she refused. Whether this couple had anything to do with Anna’s later disappearance was never established.