The case of the missing flight attendant from Newtown
Regina Brown worked as a flight attendant for American Airlines. At 35 years old, she was the mother of three children, separated from her husband and in the process of getting a divorce.
But on March 26, 1987, after dropping off her youngest child and the live-in babysitter at LaGuardia Airport in New York, Brown disappeared without a trace. Most of her clothes, her makeup bag, her ID badge, uniform scarf and her credit cards were still at her home in Newtown, Connecticut, along with an uncashed check for $1,000.
Brown had been separated from American Airlines pilot Willis Brown for about four months, court records show, and their divorce was eventually finalized in Regina’s absence, a year after she disappeared.
Their relationship had been rocky and fraught with domestic violence. Brown even told her coworkers at one point that if anything ever happened to her, it would be because of her husband, according to a former Newtown Bee reporter who has extensively investigated the case.
Court records indicate Willis Brown had threatened to kill both Regina and the children.
Because she feared for their safety, Regina Brown sent her children to Texas to live with relatives.
The day she disappeared, neighbors saw and heard her dog barking for hours, tied up in the breezeway between the house and the garage. They called the police, who referred them to animal control.
A few days later, Regina Brown’s family in Texas called a Newtown neighbor asking her to go check on Regina because they hadn’t heard from her and American Airlines had called the parents saying she missed two shifts at work. The neighbor and a friend then found the dog in a different location than before – untied in the garage with food, water and feces all around – but Regina Brown was nowhere to be found. That’s when they reported her missing.
Later the same day, Willis Brown also reported his wife missing.
More than a month later, on May 7, 1987, Regina Brown’s Honda Accord was found on 104th Street in Manhattan, with the car seats in the back and a windshield covered in parking tickets. The keys were in the ignition, police said.
A friend later told police Regina had called her after leaving the airport on March 26 to drive home to Newtown, saying she was in danger, and if she didn’t arrive at her parents’ house in a few days, everyone should “be alarmed.”
After they separated, Willis Brown moved to Block Island but also kept an apartment in New York City. He was still allowed visitation with the children in the Newtown home, and he told police he had been in Newtown on March 26 for an appointment. He later admitted to going over to the house and giving the dog food and water.
Police searched both the Whippoorwill Hill Road home in Newtown, nearby wooded areas and Willis Brown’s property on Block Island over the years, but never found anything suspicious.
Willis Brown, although questioned several times by police and considered a “person of interest,” was never arrested or charged with anything in connection to his wife’s disappearance. He maintained that he didn’t know where his wife was.
He even filed an unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against a news outlet that reported on his wife’s disappearance and compared it to the well-known woodchipper murder just a few miles away. That case involved an airline pilot killing his flight attendant wife and putting her frozen body through a woodchipper, just a few months before Regina disappeared.
Regina Brown was legally declared dead in 1995. But nobody knows if she is actually dead or alive.
Brown is described as a light-skinned African-American woman of Creole descent, often mistaken for Caucasian. At the time of her disappearance, she had brown eyes and shoulder-length brown hair that she usually wore in a pony tail.
The Connecticut Cold Case playing cards deck from 2014 describe her as being 5-foot-3 and weighing about 115 pounds. She was last seen wearing white pants with a tan stripe, a white sweater, a white fleece jacket and tan shoes. She would also wear a gold chain with a diamond pendant around her neck.
Officials said her dental records and fingerprints are on file and available for comparison, should they ever find a body they think might be hers.
Anyone who may have information about Regina Brown or her disappearance is asked to call the Newtown Police Department at 203-270-4237 or the department’s anonymous tip line at 203-270-8888.