Her Mom Strangely Vanished In 2005, And She’s Trying To Figure Out What Happened To Her
In 1968, Diane Francis was born in New Jersey and went on to lead a tough life. She was raised alongside her two brothers, and after her parents split when she was only 12-years-old, she moved to Florida to live with her father.
Up until that point, Diane was reportedly a well-behaved child. Then, according to her father, she fell in with “the wrong crowd” during high school.
She went on to meet Charles Edward Snider in 1990 after moving back to New Jersey, and he became the father of her two daughters, Jessica Marie Snider and Sherri Lynn Snider. It was around this time that Diane’s life began to unravel.
“Somewhere in between the birth of my sister and my mother’s pregnancy with me, she would take a turn for the worse. My father claims while my mother was pregnant with me, she started doing drugs and partying, as well as cheating and not coming home some nights,” Sherri detailed.
By 1994, Diane, Charles, and their daughters moved back to Florida to be closer to their relatives. Yet, one year later, Diane met a new man named John Schmitt and claimed she was going to marry him.
Charles relocated to New Jersey, and Sherri stated that they never saw him again. As for Diane’s new relationship, it was reportedly happy at times but didn’t last. Rather, her drug use worsened, and eventually, her relationship with John ended.
Diane met another man, John Boggs, in 1997. He’d previously served a four-year prison sentence and was abusive, Sherri says.
“John was an abusive man and also a man who fell madly in love with my mother. I recall him throwing her across the house on one occasion, which also included him punching his fists through the door to get to her, and my sister and I jumping on him, kicking and screaming, to try to help my mother,” she explained.
“Drugs were always present with the two of them together.”
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But Diane supposedly always denied that John was abusive to the police. It took her meeting a different man, Roger Foreman, to move on from John. Diane also seemed to be back to her normal self, appearing “happy again” and “always joking.”
Still, for Sherri, life was a rollercoaster. She was just 4-years-old when she and her older sister wound up in foster care because the state determined Diane couldn’t properly care for them, citing Diane’s drug use and transient lifestyle.
“My mother would work to get us back, then we would get back with her, then we would be back in foster care,” Sherri said.
And in 2003, Diane’s children heard her voice for the last time. Sherri, who was 10-years-old, was standing before a judge in a courtroom when she listened to Diane give up her parental rights.
“My sister and I lost it that day. We just broke down crying. That was the last time we ever saw her… and we didn’t even see her that day in 2003 because she was there over the phone,” Sherri remembered.
It wasn’t until Sherri turned 17-years-old that she reconnected with her grandparents and soon decided that she wanted to find her mother. However, her inquiries about Diane’s whereabouts only led to more questions.
Sherri sat down with her entire family and asked who had last seen Diane, as well as who had been the last person to speak to her. She learned that her mother might’ve called on Thanksgiving 2006, but the contact isn’t able to be confirmed.
Instead, the last confirmed sighting of Diane is November 28, 2005. She’d been released from jail following a trespassing arrest in Jacksonville, Florida.
Sherri has attempted to retrace her mother’s footsteps and find her. She’s hired a private investigator and tracked down old boyfriends. She also figured out that Diane sometimes used an alias, Kimberly Theresa Foreman.
Nonetheless, when Sherri tried to report her mother missing, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office reportedly wouldn’t take a missing person report.
Yet, Sherri did come upon one strange piece of information: in 2015, an individual named John T. Boggs contacted the police and attempted to locate Diane after not seeing her for years.
“Her ex-boyfriend from 1999 called the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, trying to report her missing. That was a little odd to me,” Sherri stated.
John Boggs and Roger Foreman maintained that they knew nothing about Diane’s whereabouts. Diane also wasn’t officially reported missing until 2019, when the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office finally accepted a missing person report from Sherri.
“My mom has two front teeth that turn into each other, and some of these Jane [Does] have that. Then this one popped up in West Palm Beach, and they were like, ‘Why don’t you contact the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office?” Sherri explained.
An investigator with the sheriff’s office took Diane’s missing person report, which allowed her DNA to be entered into a system to be cross-matched with any Jane Doe across the country.
For Sherri, this development was “a long time coming” and made her feel like someone was finally listening to her.
But despite this breakthrough, Diane remains missing to this day, and Sherri is still looking for answers. A Facebook page entitled “Finding Diane Francis” has been created to raise awareness about her case.
“Every single day that passes is such a heartbreak to me, my sister, and those who know what a beautiful person my mother truly is because I know this life is so, so short. I can only hope that my life will just be long enough to discover what truly happened to my beautiful mother, Diane Theresa Francis,” Sherri said.
Diane was five foot four, weighed between 90 and 100 pounds, and had blonde hair and hazel eyes. She would be 56-years-old today.
Anyone with information regarding her case is urged to contact the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office at (561) 688-3000.
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