PA KAITLYN LANTZ LEDDY: Missing from Philadelphia, PA - 8 Jan 2014 - Age 22

Kaitlyn Lantz Leddy

Leddy, circa 2014
Missing Since: 01/08/2014
Missing From: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Classification: Lost/Injured Missing
Sex: Female
Race: White
Date of Birth: 04/16/1991 (28)
Age: 22 years old
Height and Weight: 5'8, 115 pounds
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A red North Face jacket, black pants, and black over-the-knee UGG boots.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Leddy has a tattoo of the letter K on her right hip. Her nickname is Kait.

Details of Disappearance
Leddy took a taxi to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 8, 2014. Surveillance camera footage showed her walking onto the bridge towards its high point, but she was never seen walking off the bridge. She has never been heard from again. Few details are available in her case.

Investigating Agency
Lower Merion Township Police Department 610-645-6236

Source Information
NamUs
Kaitlyn Leddy's Facebook Page
The New York Times

Kaitlyn Lantz Leddy – The Charley Project

KAITLYN LANTZ LEDDY: Missing from Philadelphia, PA since 8 Jan 2014 - Age 22

Leddy took a taxi to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 8, 2014. Surveillance camera footage showed her walking onto the bridge towards its high point, but she was never seen walking off the bridge. She has...

www.crimewatchers.net

 

[Kimster]

Did she harm herself? Have her loved ones posted anything about her state of mind at the time?

 

[SheWhoMustNotBeNamed]

Apparently Kaitlyn has schizophrenia.

NY woman reveals life with a sister's schizophrenia, writes 'love letter' to her

Kyleigh Leddy of New York City spoke to Fox News Digital about her beloved older sister — gone too soon after a diagnosis of schizophrenia — and why Leddy wrote a new book about her family's experiences with mental illness.

www.foxnews.com

NY woman reveals life with a sister's schizophrenia, writes 'love letter' to her​

It was not easy for Kyleigh Leddy, based in New York City today, to live with an older sister who was diagnosed with schizophrenia during her college years — a sister much loved by everyone who knew her, especially her family.

It was also not easy to write about life with an older sister diagnosed with schizophrenia — a sister who has been gone now for some time.

But Kyleigh Leddy has done so poignantly in a new book, "The Perfect Other." The book sheds considerable light on mental illness and how, bit by bit, it took a beloved sister away from her family emotionally, psychologically and ultimately physically.

"She is nowhere tangible," writes Leddy in her personal account, "which is to say that she is everywhere."

Fox News Digital: What do you wish other people could know about your sister, Kaitlyn?

Leddy: I hope that people come away with an understanding of her beyond the illness. My sister had lovely qualities. She was fun, charismatic and smart. She was my idol. You know, we were just six years apart. She was my big sister. The illness just took so much away from her.

Fox News Digital: What other lasting messages about your sister and her story do you want to share?

Leddy: That would be the very strong connections that I looked at retroactively between head traumas, and autoimmune issues, and PCOS [polycystic ovary syndrome, which her sister was also diagnosed with] — and how interconnected the mind and body are. Mental illness is real. It's a neurological condition.

Something like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder — they're not that different from Alzheimer's. These are brain-based disorders that people are going through.

And I hope that if someone is walking down the street, and maybe they see a homeless person ranting about something — I hope that they're not just dismissive of the person, or that they blame that person for something somehow. I hope they consider that perhaps the person has a serious mental illness, which so many homeless people have.

Excerpt from ‘The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister' ​

Kyleigh Leddy: The label was too strong. [Kait] didn't want to be known for schizophrenia; she didn't want to have schizophrenia. She wanted to go back … to high school. She wasn't up for the challenge — it was too much of a burden. The climate wasn't right, the conversation about less severe mental health concerns just barely starting to emerge, peeking its head out hesitantly.

Kait used to say that people on the streets were staring at her. Like white blood cells detecting pathogens, everyone around her could sense that she wasn't like them, an outsider not cooperating with the system. I remember learning in biology class about the Y-shaped antibodies that activated an immune response. They attack the enemy, the teacher explained, they'll try to destroy whatever they don't recognize, whatever is other. Was that how Kait felt? Like the enemy? Like the other?

I imagine Kait walking down a Philadelphia street, her long legs, her delicate face that required no makeup. Passersby stop to glance at her, eye her up and down, and in my sister's twisted reality, she feels threatened, discovered. They know she's sick. They know she's not like them.

"They're looking at you because you're beautiful," Mom reassured her countless times. "Not because anything is wrong with you."

The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister: Leddy, Kyleigh: 9780358469346: Amazon.com: Books

The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister [Leddy, Kyleigh] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister

www.amazon.com

All Kait Leddy had ever wanted was a little sister. When Kyleigh was born, they were inseparable; Kait would protect her, include her, cuddle and comfort her, and, to Kyleigh, her big sister was her whole world.

As they grew, however, and as Kait entered adolescence, her personality began to change. She was lashing out emotionally and physically, and losing touch with reality in certain ways. The family struggled to keep this side of Kait private—at school and in her social life, she was still the gorgeous, effervescent life of the party with a modeling career ahead of her and big dreams. But slowly, things began to shatter, and Kyleigh could only watch in horror as her perfect sibling’s world collapsed around her. Kait was institutionalized with what would eventually be diagnosed as schizophrenia, leaving Kyleigh and their mother to handle the burden, shame, and guilt alone.

Then, in January 2014, Kait disappeared. Though they never found her body, security footage showed her making her way onto a big bridge over a river, where it is presumed that she jumped. Kyleigh is left wondering: What could she have done differently? How could this shining light be gone? And how will she find peace without her sister to guide her way there?

 

[Looking4you]

It certainly seems that she jumped. I’m sure the family would like to have her remains to bury. Sad.

 

[SheWhoMustNotBeNamed]

BUMP for Kaitlin, now missing 10 years.

 

[GrandmaBear]

I hope she is found for the family's sake one day. This appears to be a a pretty clear suicide.

Did they search at the time? Not a lot here on it. After ten years, I'd have to wonder about the likelihood of her ever being found. Maybe a trace or part would be all it is sad to say. Water, weather, elements, years. More. I hate talking like that or of such but the odds are slim imo.