Newlyweds Turn Up Safe; Vanishing Appears Hoax

A newlywed couple who vanished in April, their luxury auto left running in a downtown alley, are alive and well and have contacted their parents from a West Coast location, police said today.

Wheaton College students Scott Swanson, 23, and Carolyn MacLean, 22, had been the subject of an exhaustive investigation.

Authorities had noted that some of the circumstances surrounding their disappearance--the couple had been secretly married a week earlier and talked about trips to exotic locales--indicated that they had planned to vanish.

“We have information that the parents have heard from Carolyn and Scott both by letter and by telephone,” Police Commander Ettore DiVito said at a news conference.

“We are disheartened that we’d expended so many man-hours” on the case, DiVito said. He added that police may try to recover costs of the investigation.

Police said they believe the couple is in the San Diego area. They said the couple’s parents were en route to the West Coast.

Police had said they did not suspect foul play in the couple’s disappearance. They refused to comment today on why the couple dropped out of sight or on their activities in the four months since.

The couple were returning from a visit to MacLean’s grandmother in Flint, Mich., on April 2 and had planned to stop for dinner in Chicago before heading for Swanson’s home in Elgin, about 40 miles outside of Chicago.

Acquaintances told police that the two were saving money for a trip before their car was found in the early evening of April 2, keys still in the ignition and most of their belongings undisturbed.

MacLean also had bought $600 worth of clothes and made some entries in her diary about trips to exotic locales, friends told police.