WOMAN WHO WAS FEARED ABDUCTED LOCATED AT HOTEL

A Cape Girardeau woman reported missing Tuesday was located at a south St. Louis County hotel, police said Thursday.

Cape Girardeau Police Lt. Detective John Brown said authorities located the woman, Clarisse Louise Chism, after a female employee at the hotel learned of the missing woman through St. Louis television news coverage.

The employee, knowing the hotel had a woman registered under the same name, contacted the St. Louis County Police Department, which sent a detective who located the woman at about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Authorities took her for an examination to nearby St. Anthony's Medical Center, where police arranged for family members to pick her up, he said. A family member said Wednesday that the woman was age 74; police put her age, based on a date of birth they had recorded, at 72.

St. Louis County Police Sgt. Charles Quaethem, the police supervisor at the time Chism was found, said she was "disoriented, confused."

"She thought her daughter was checked into the hotel with her. She thought that her husband was missing, but she wasn't," he said.

Police reported the woman missing after her husband, former Cape Girardeau dentist Harold Chism, who is also in his 70s, was witnessed as being disoriented in Waterloo, Ill., southeast of St. Louis. Monroe County, Ill., authorities stopped him driving his car in a rural area Tuesday morning.

Harold Chism suffers from dementia, his son-in-law, Don Palmer of Naperville, Ill., said Wednesday from the Chism's home at 2545 Maria Louise Lane. But police had said the woman suffered from no mental complications, such as dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

Palmer said Clarisse Chism was clear-headed, despite suffering minor strokes. On Wednesday, Palmer said he believed the woman was abducted.

Brown declined to name the hotel the woman stayed at.

Foul play in the case is ruled out, Brown said.

Phone calls to the Chism home Thursday went unanswered.

Both Brown and Quaethem said they didn't know how the woman had gotten to the hotel.

"I think it's logical to believe they went there together. I don't know if they checked into the hotel together, however," he said.

St. Louis County Police didn't question Chism as to how she got to the hotel, Quaethem said. "We were just satisfied with locating her."

At least one St. Louis TV station carried a news item on the woman's disappearance, police said. Brown said he didn't know why the case had attracted the attention.

"I was surprised," he said.