Judith Threlkeld was last seen March 8, 1976, on Central Avenue in Silver Creek after departing the Anderson-Lee Library.

About 14 minutes.

That’s roughly how long it would have taken in 1976 to walk the half-mile between the Anderson-Lee Library on Main Street in Silver Creek to the Threlkeld home on Jaekle Avenue.

By car, the same trip took just two minutes.

Danny Threlkeld still can’t help but wonder today how life might have unfolded differently had his sister accepted a ride home that day 46 years ago instead of opting to walk what was still just a stone’s throw from the library to their home.

“She was within two to three blocks from the house,” Threlkeld said of his sister, Judith, who was last seen March 8, 1976, walking along Central Avenue after departing the library.

“There’s been a lot of sightings of her,” he said of those early days, weeks and months after his sister went missing. “Somebody would come up to my parents and go, ‘We saw her over here’ or, ‘We saw her in Erie’ or ‘Buffalo, oh yeah, we saw her there.'”

Largely forgotten the last four decades, Judith Threlkeld’s puzzling disappearance received a public jolt this summer when investigators with the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office Unsolved Crimes Unit came across her name in the file of an unrelated homicide. Hoping to learn more about the still-unsolved missing person case — made slightly more complicated because the police department that originally took the missing report no longer exists — the Unsolved Case Unit posted Threlkeld’s photo and a brief summary of her disappearance.

As planned, the case received new interest due to a flood of news stories. Danny Threlkeld hopes that means closure for the family.

“She was the only girl in the family. She never had any interest in what us boys were doing,” Danny Threlkeld told The Post-Journal and OBSERVER newspapers about his sister, a homebody who often walked to the library.

It wasn’t uncommon for Judith to travel by foot within the village, which had a population of about 3,000 residents in the 1970s. Danny Threlkeld said his sister didn’t have a driver’s license, though that didn’t mean she hit her siblings up for rides.

“She wouldn’t take a ride from my little brother,” he said. “She wouldn’t take a ride from me or nothing.”

Judith Threlkeld has three brothers, Danny, John and Henry “Bud” Jr. Her father, Henry Sr., was a semi truck driver while her mother was a stay-at-home parent.

Both her parents have since passed away.

On the day she went missing, the 22-year-old Judith was offered a ride home by her brother, Henry, who saw her walking along the road. She declined, telling her brother she wanted to walk.

It was apparent pretty quickly that something was amiss when Judith didn’t make it home right away. “They knew when she didn’t show up at home that something was going on,” Danny Threlkeld said. “My parents were really upset by the time I got home (from work) and they told me about it.”

Henry Threlkeld Sr. reported his daughter missing to the Silver Creek Police Department, the local force that would go on to investigate her disappearance for years without a resolution.

Now 46 years later, the family is no closer to learning what happened to Judith in that half-mile walk. The famiy, at least early on, believes she likely was taken by someone she knew or by a stranger.

Today, Danny Threlkeld has a simple wish.

“Just closure on what might have happened to her or if she’s dead,” he said. “That’s basically all we’re after right now.”

Adding to the frustration, at least for Danny, is that both his parents died without knowing what happened to their daughter.

On the day she was last seen, Threlkeld was wearing blue jeans, a khaki shirt, a blue sweater, a navy blue suede coat and snow boots. She also was carrying a brown purse.

Any information regarding Judith Threlkeld and her disappearance can be sent via email to unsolvedchautauqua@sheriff.us or by calling unit investigators Tom Tarpley at 716-753-4578 or Tom Di Zinno at 716-753-4579.