The picture that’s used on the Texas Missing Persons Clearinghouse website for a woman named Ana Bell (Luvaul) Juarez, and most everywhere else, Odessa Crime Stoppers, The Charlie Project…Is taken from a portrait of her and her two young children.  I haven’t been able to find a better photograph but this is the photo that was featured in an article in the Odessa American on April 15th 1997. It’s one of the last pictures the children would be in with their mother.

One of the last photographs the children were able to take with their mother.
One of the last photographs the children were able to take with their mother.
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Ana Bell was twenty nine years old when she went missing.  She had two beautiful young children, 6-year-old Dimond and 2-year-old Treasure. According to her family she was getting ready to leave her abusive husband, Oscar Juarez.  She spoke to her sister in Florida on the phone a week before she went missing who was urging her to come with her children to live with her in Florida.  Ana Bells sister said that she spoke to her on January 26th, the day before her husband says she was last seen.  She was distraught.  Her sister had offered to fly her and her two children to Florida to live with her but needed to wait until the first part of February to make arrangements.  According to her sister, Ana Bell told her she thought she could be pregnant but couldn’t afford a test.

She never made it to Florida.  After not hearing from her daughter, who normally called and spoke to her mother twice a week, just as she did her sister in Florida, Margarita Gardner of Monahan’s got worried.  Oscar, Ana Bells husband said that she had left early, at 7:30am, on January 27th, in a white truck with a woman he didn’t know to Ojinaga to see a doctor for an abortion.  According to Oscar she had gotten pregnant by another man.  Ana Bell wasn’t reported missing until April 10th by her mother who knew something wasn’t right.  From the information available it would seem that Oscar told Ana Bells family that she went to Mexico and possibly planned on being gone for a few weeks, which would explain why it took so long for them to report her missing.  However, you would think a husband would report his wife missing after not seeing her or hearing from her for just a few days, especially considering she left her babies, which according to her family she would never do.  The family hired a private investigator named John Parker who with Margarita, Ana Bells mother, took several trips to Ojinaga to look for Ana Bell and speak to the doctor who said he had in fact not seen Ana Bell.  He’s pictured in the April 15th, 1997 newspaper article with the portrait of her and her two children.

John Parker
John Parker
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The children went to live with Margarita soon after Ana Bell was reported missing and her husband moved out of the home they lived in on Chestnut soon after as well.  Sounds like an episode of an Investigation Discovery show doesn’t it? There is no proof that there was ever a woman in a white truck or that Ana Bell intended to travel to Mexico.  There also is no proof that Oscar was abusive….at least that’s what the private investigator and the Odessa detective looking into her disappearance were reported as saying in several news articles.  I wonder how difficult it was to find records back in the 90’s.  It had to have been incredibly frustrating for law enforcement.  In this day and age, however, it’s really no more than a few strokes of the keyboard to find all kinds of illuminating information.

Information obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal History Search site
Information obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal History Search site
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Oscar Torres Juarez had a record at the time of Ana Bells disappearance.  As far as there not being proof that, according to the family, Oscar was abusive, there seems to be pretty clear proof.  The Juarez family hadn’t lived in Odessa long.  In fact they had moved from Presidio and had lived in San Angelo and Colorado in the past.  According to the TXDPS CRS on May 13th 1992 Oscar has an arrest on his record for family violence.  There is an arrest for Marijuana in the 70’s, the conviction for family violence in 1992 and then some charges after the disappearance of his wife for theft, not having a valid drivers license and not having insurance, counterfeiting an inspection sticker, possession, driving without a license again and then eventually spending some time in Huntsville in 2013.

Oscar Torres Juarez
Oscar Torres Juarez
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Ana Bell has been missing for 23 years.  Her two children still want to know what happened to the mother they were robbed of so many years ago.  If you have any information as to the whereabouts of Ana Bell (Luvaul) Juarez or as to what happened to her please contact the Odessa Police Department at 432-335-3333

She was reportedly last seen wearing a western-style shirt, jeans and gray boots.  She’s a Caucasian female with brown hair and brown eyes.  Ana Bell has pierced ears and an appendectomy scar on her abdomen.  When she went missing in 1997 she was 29 years old, 5’1, 105 lbs.  She would be 52 years old today.

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