Redwood City

Belmont Police, FBI Investigate Missing Woman Cold Case in Redwood City

Feds searching yard of NASA computer programmer’s home in 27-year-old case of Ylva Hagner

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It has been more than 25 years since she went missing , but on Wednesday, the search for Palo Alto’s Ylva Hagner was back on. FBI agents and Belmont police spent the day searching a Redwood City home, a home once owned by the man Hagner knew very well. Terry McSweeney reports.

FBI agents joined local authorities Wednesday in searching the rear yard of a Redwood City home and a nearby park for evidence in the cold case disappearance of a software executive who vanished more than 25 years ago, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit has learned.

Authorities were using ground penetrating radar as they focused in the backyard of a home in the 3700 block of Farm Hill Road, looking for evidence in the missing person cold case of Ylva Hagner, 42, last seen on Oct. 14, 1996.

On that day, the Palo Alto woman had just left the Belmont office where she worked as product marketing manager at Ixos Co. Her unlocked car was found in San Carlos with the keys still in the ignition, but her purse was missing, authorities said.

FBI agents and Belmont police were searching a Redwood City home Wednesday as they investigate a cold case nearly 27 years old. Marianne Favro reports.

Among those questioned at the time was her then boyfriend, Thomas Pressburger, a computer programmer at the NASA Ames Research Center based in Mountain View.

It was not clear as to why, but a source close to the investigation told NBC Bay Area that authorities were focusing first on the rear yard of Pressburger’s home.

Reached by phone at his home on Thursday morning, Pressburger declined comment.

Local police would not specify the home they were targeting, other than to say it was in the 3700 block of Farm Hill.

NBC Bay Area’s Raj Mathai spoke to Investigative Reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken about his investigation into the cold case involving a Belmont woman who disappeared in 1996.

"The investigation was refocused, and we’re here today to try to bring closure to the case," Belmont police Lt. Pete Lotti said. "The public is safe at this point, we are just doing our due diligence in the case to follow-up."

Lotti said both the FBI and San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office investigators are involved in searching both the home and the nearby park as they seek to close a cold case that is now 27 years old.

"It’s a long time," Lotti said, adding that a resolution is "long overdue."

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