MIAMI SPRINGS, Fla. – A former South Florida police officer is armed with determination and hope and is on a personal mission to solve a mystery nearly five decades in the making.
Despite retiring after 30 years in law enforcement, Roni Mangan’s biggest case is still active: her quest to find her missing brother.
“Forty-nine years this year that he has been missing and it is frustrating as can be,” she told Local 10 News reporter Jeff Weinsier.
It was Aug. 28, 1975, in Miami Springs. Paul Charapko vanished on his way to a doctor’s appointment. He was 23 years old.
For Mangan, it’s a void that has never healed.
“I see a homeless man and I wonder if it’s my brother,” Mangan said. “I keep that hope alive that he is alive. I wonder now, after 49 years, at 72, almost 73 years old, what would he look like? When he went missing, I was only 15.”
Mangan was once the face of the Hollywood Police Department: the public information officer from 1998 to 2001. She made headlines in 2001 when she was run over by a fleeing suspect and wound up in a coma.
She retired as a major after three decades in law enforcement.
But there is one case she’s still actively working.
“Just because nothing has come up doesn’t mean nothing is there,” she said. “He left, he had no wallet, no ID, and no money. But I still have hope.”
Mangan said she was able to access her brother’s fingerprints from the Army and put them into a law enforcement database.
“More than anything, I’m hoping that sharing his photograph with our South Florida community might help in my effort,” she said.
Advancements in technology have given Mangan new paths in her quest for answers.
“I became aware of a couple of different DNA opportunities and was able to submit my DNA and, before my mother passed away, submit her DNA,” she said.
One of them, Mangan said, is GEDMatch, “an ancestry-type resource.”
When remains are found, “I try to see if it’s a match, let them know that my brother Paul’s info is out there to query to see if it’s a match,” she said. “We need to make sure that each different agency is sharing with each other and not everyone is aware that it’s out there.”
Police said the case remains open and active, 49 years later.
The police report from 1975 is still in a file cabinet at the Miami Springs Police Department, the file full of information and bulletins regarding missing persons.
“The family does have DNA on file,” Officer Janice Simon, an MSPD spokesperson, said. “Any time there is something that matches, we were able to add the DNA, dental records, even photos.”
Mangan is realistic, but hopes that maybe, just maybe, she’ll finally find an answer.
“I hope, my wish is that he’s in a happy place, and someday I might learn where that is,” she said.
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call Miami Springs police or Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.