Connie lived primarily with her mother, but also spent a great deal of time with her father, who had remarried in 1950.

Helen Smith's wealthy parents, Carl Christian and Ester Jensen, immigrated to the United States from Denmark and Sweden.

[2] Connie grew up on her family's Wyoming ranch and loved animals, especially horses, horseback riding and spending time in the outdoors.

She had traveled extensively with her wealthy family, which enabled her to converse with adults on subjects with which her peers had no experience.

Her mother refused permission to extend Connie's stay at the camp because she had already made travel arrangements for their return to Wyoming.

She slipped and fell down the steps that led to her tent platform the previous evening and bruised her hip.

A nurse at the camp dispensary gave Connie an ice pack to apply to her injured hip during the night.

However, according to one report, one of her tent mates accidentally kicked Connie in the face and bloodied her nose that morning when the other girl climbed down from her upper bunk bed.

She told her tent mates at 7:50 a.m. on Wednesday, July 16, that she planned to return the ice pack to the camp dispensary.

Instead, Connie left the ice pack in the tent she shared with seven other girls and walked half a mile (804.7 meters) down the dirt road that led to the camp entrance.

Although Connie had been taught to walk downhill or follow a fence or road if she found herself in an unfamiliar location, she was extremely near-sighted and could not see well without her glasses, which had been broken at the camp.

He told police he saw Connie walk out of the gate at 8:15 a.m. and stop along the roadside to pick wildflowers.

She was wearing a red windbreaker, a brown bandana halter top, navy blue shorts with plaid cuffs, and tan leather shoes.

According to a police report, Connie stopped at two nearby homes to ask for directions to Lakeville.

She was seen hitchhiking at the intersection of U.S. Route 44 and Belgo Road, located about 1.4 miles (2253.08 meters) from the entrance to the camp.

The camp director might have delayed making an official report because he hoped to avoid negative publicity.

Eleven thousand missing person flyers with multiple photographs and a physical description of Connie were printed and distributed throughout the United States.

A Connecticut State Police investigator on the case said it was most likely that Connie, who was seen hitchhiking, was picked up by an opportunistic killer along Route 44, murdered, and buried or dumped into one of the water-filled iron quarries in the area.

Hull's remains were found by a hunting party more than seven years later, on December 8, 1943, near the New York state border on the western slope of West Mountain in Hancock, Massachusetts, halfway between the top of West Mountain and Lebanon Springs Road.

Paula Jean Welden, a 5 feet 3 inch (1.6002 meters), 125 pound (56.699 kilograms) blue-eyed blonde 18-year-old college sophomore at Bennington College in North Bennington, Vermont, vanished on December 1, 1946 while hitchhiking to the Long Trail a few miles from the campus and has never been found.

Since Connie Smith appeared to be older than she actually was, one author speculated that she might have been a victim of a serial killer with a preference for young women in their late teens or early twenties.

[3] A 27-year-old traveling jewelry salesman named Frederick Walker Pope told police in 1953 that he, a companion named Jack Walker, and a Rhode Island woman, Wilma Sames, picked Connie up along U.S. Route 44 and offered to give her a ride to Wyoming.

Pope later recanted the story, which he said he invented after seeing an episode of a television program, Art Linkletter's House Party, on September 1, 1952.

Pope told authorities he wanted to be taken into state custody so he could receive treatment for his alcohol addiction.

The unclothed body of a Caucasian or Hispanic teenage girl between the ages of 11 and 17 years old was found on October 31, 1958 on a hillside off a dirt road on Skinner Ridge south of Grand Canyon National Park.