| The Palo Alto History Project |
| Ylva Hagner 31,000 Page Mill Road |
| Ylva Hagner: Among the Missing We get used to the idea that when someone goes missing that they will eventually be found---dead or alive. But that’s not always the case. Sadly, sometimes they just go missing and stay that way. Ylva Hagner was a software marketing manager who lived in Palo Alto and worked in Belmont at Ixos, a small software company. On October 14th 1996, Hagner was last seen by a co-worker in her cubicle at around 9:30 pm. For some reason, she left the office---apparently planning to come back. Her computer was left on and her papers were strewn on her desk---something that a co-worker called “un-Ylva-like.” The next day, Hagner did not show up for work and by Wednesday her co-workers became suspicious and reported her missing. Two days later her car was discovered in San Carlos, about a mile-and-a-half away. It was left unlocked with the keys in the ignition. Ylva’s father and brother were called to Palo Alto from Sweden---her home country--- to wait for news. It never came. Police went on an extensive search that covered neighborhoods near her work and home, parks and rural areas of the peninsula. At one point, Palo Alto police searched three private properties on upper Page Mill Road in the 31000 block of Page Mill Road. Officers did not say what they were looking for or what information led them to the properties. They also interviewed two ex-boyfriends and a companion she had recently been out stargazing with. Police received more than 15 leads and calls from people who thought they had seen Hagner. None of them turned up anything. Belmont police even followed up on some tips called in by psychics. Ten years later, Belmont police detective Mike Speak has still not found her. Speak told Palo Alto Weekly, "I think about it every day, sometimes my wife will get on me 'cause I'll be kinda staring out in the distance and ask what I'm thinking about. 'Oh, I'm thinking about Ylva, thinking about those things...’ ” Throughout the investigation, the Belmont police have stated that they have no evidence that any crime has been committed, although Ylav’s family believes that some harm came to her. The family website offers a lot more clues than the police have released. According to the website, shortly before her disappearance Ylva had received e-mails from a “university professor,” who was “frantic in boiling rage at Ylva. He claims she is not friendly with him, refuses to have sex with him, is abusive etc. He writes: 'I WON´T forgive you. I have done way too much of that.' " The site also says that Ylva confided to close friends that he had pestered her for sex and to move in wih him. Three weeks before she disappeared, she told a close friend that he was putting great pressure on her to marry him. Ylva's family also claims that this unnamed professor has a dubious past and that his second wife and daughter have accused him of “psychological and physical abuse.” It also states that the professor failed a police lie-detector test on the questions, "Did you cause her disappearance?" and: "Do you know for sure where she is now? The family website is the only place in which these details are mentioned. Ylva Hagner was 42, single, and had no children when she disappeared. She was the daughter of a retired Swedish forestry professor and grew up in a small town near the Arctic Circle. She moved to the United States when she was 30 and became a legal resident. Friends say she was a well-traveled and highly educated woman who speaks fluent German, English, and Swedish, and liked to tell stories in all three languages at parties. She was known as a warm, loving person who had many friends, a great social life and a good job. She loved outdoor life in the Californian nature. She had just started evening studies towards a Master of Liberal Arts degree at Stanford University. On the one-year anniversary of her disappearance more than 30 of Ylva´s friends paid homage to her during a Memorial Service in the Arastradero Preserve in Palo Alto. For the ceremony an oak tree was planted to honor her memory. -Matt Bowling |
| Sources: Palo Alto Weekly, Palo Alto Daily News, Palo Alto Historical Association |
| Ylva shortly before her disappearance |
| Ylva shortly before her disappearance |