A young mother mysteriously vanishes from her home in Saint Croix Falls, Wisconsin, leaving behind two children. What happened to Rose Marie Bly?

Rose Marie Bly was the youngest daughter of Candus Harer and Kenneth "Jim" Bly. In August of 2009, she was married with two daughters under the age of two. Rose loved children and dreamt of being a children's book author. She was also an avid horse rider. Rose's older sister, Candus Wells, is the mother of Summer Wells, who went missing in Tennessee in 2021.

The day Rose disappeared

Rose and her husband, Christopher Larson, went to the mall to buy new cell phones. They stopped by a fast food restaurant and picked up dinner, which they ate at home. Around 7:30, Rose told her husband that she was going to the nearby town of Cushing to go do Karaoke with her cousin. She drove off in her white 1981 Pontiac Grand Am. Around 9 pm she called her husband to say that she would be home around midnight. She never returned.

When Christopher woke up the next morning, he realized that his wife apparently hadn't come home. He started calling around to friends and family, including the cousin she had said she was meeting up with, but no one had seen her. Christopher searched for Rose all day, and was under the impression that he needed to wait 24 hours before reporting her to police. He reported her missing that evening.

Where the case stands today

Rose's case has received an uptick in interest and media attention since the disappearance of her niece, 5-year-old Summer Wells in 2021. There is little physical evidence in this case, and the Polk County Sheriff's Department is asking for members of the public to come forward with any information they may possess. Rose Marie's car was found five days after her disappearance, and fingerprints and DNA were taken from the vehicle. All of the fingerprints came back as being from Rose or immediate family members. There is some unidentified DNA that has been run through CODIS several times with no match as of 2022.

“I don’t really like the name ‘cold case’ as I think it implies we have pushed it off to the side and as law enforcement, we never give up, we never quit searching for the answers.” - Polk County Sheriff Brent Waak, 2019