FLINT -- A Flint family finds closure after three decades of wondering why their mother disappeared from her Florida home.
A picture of Waterford native Amy Hurst was taken at a family reunion in Oxford, Michigan in 1981.
It was the last time her family captured her image before she later isappeared from her home in Florida.
Her daughter Lisa Beebe was only 11 at the time.
“I knew in my heart that she probably wasn't alive, just because my mom wouldn't abandon my brother and I,” said Beebe.
Three months later Hurst’s family reported her missing.
“She called us every now and then and got letters a couple times a week, and when she didn't call grandma for her birthday we knew something was wrong,” said Beebe.
Shortly after Hurst’s disappearance a group of fisherman found a body of a woman wrapped in blankets floating 27 miles off the coast of Florida.
Nearly 30 years later it was Hurst’s son, Jeff Earley, who helped solve the mystery of her identity.
Earley says he stumbled across a case file from the Doe Network.
It talks about the body being wrapped in a green blanket, and that triggered a memory from his childhood.
“My whole family has afghans these colors. We all got them. We all still have them,” said Earley.
“I have a picture of me jumping on a bed with that bed spread,” said Beebe.
Earley sent authorities in Florida his DNA and waited for an answer for nearly two years.
This month he finally got that phone call, the body was that of his mother.
“Everything hit me all at once, just broke down,” said Earley.
Amy Hurst's cold case is now a murder investigation.
“We've served our sentence for 29 years, all we want is for someone to serve their time,” said Earley.
Earley believes the identification will eventually lead to an arrest and conviction.
The Pasco County Sheriff's Office says Hurst was found with a rope tied around her waist which was connected to a cement block, and she had severe blunt force trauma to her head.
William Hurst who was her second husband at the time told authorities he didn't know where she was.
Hurst's family says she will be laid to rest in September.
