7,928 cases and counting

I just counted all my cases to see if I’d topped 8,000 yet. Close, but no cigar: 7,928 cases profiled. In a week or two I should make it. Charley has nearly doubled in size since its inception, when it only had a little over 4,000 cases.

It sounds like a huge number. It’s close to the population of the nearest town to me. (Okay, there is a settlement of less than a hundred people a few miles from here, but it seems to me that a place ought to possess at least one traffic light to be labeled a “town.”) But 8,000 is only a tiny sliver — less than one percent, I think — of the total number of people listed as missing in America right this minute.

Genealogical databases

I signed up for a seven-day free trial at World Vital Records, an international genealogical database with all kinds of records. I only want the US database though — I’m looking for info on missing people. My free trial lasts seven days, and if I find it useful enough I suppose I’ll buy a year’s access. It’s only forty bucks. (And seven days from now I’ll know whether I have to actually pay that $150 speeding ticket or not. I plan to challenge it in court; wish me luck!)

I did a search for Toni Stancil, Aleacia Stancil’s mom. I found a death record for T. L. Stancil which is probably her. Same state, same month and year of death. It says T. Stancil was born on May 17, 1959.

I’m not sure how useful this database will be for me, but I figure I have nothing to lose.

Races Part II

I asked the lady who complained about my race classifications to give examples of ones she thought were in error. As I expected, we will have to agree to disagree. One man, for instance, whom I and law enforcement had listed as white, who is blond and blue-eyed (though the pic is not of good quality so it’s hard to tell what he looked like), she said should be listed as Hispanic. Presumably because his name sounds kind of Spanish. I wrote back explaining that I was not going to change the races from the official record (law enforcement databases, etc) just because she thought I ought to.

45 Missouri cases added…

…as well as ten miscellaneous updated cases and six resolved cases. This is my biggest update ever. Since there was minimal info on most of the new Missouri cases, it didn’t take long to write them up. And since I didn’t want my backlog of new cases to double, I decided to do them all in one fell swoop.

Races

I just got a rather snotty email from someone claiming I mistakenly list a bunch of people as Caucasian when in fact they’re from a lot of races. She quotes from Wikipedia’s definition of “Caucasian” and finishes by saying, “Also, as a caucasian myself, I find it insulting to have other races referred to as Caucasian, just as an Arab may find it insulting to be listed as an African or an Asian as a Russian.” But she doesn’t provide any examples of mistakes I’ve made.

I’m seriously tempted to just ignore this.

However it does raise some important issues. Race is basically a societal construct and quite fluid and open to interpretation. (I read once about a black couple who wanted to adopt a black baby, but they were mistakenly given a white baby instead. No one noticed. She was just dark enough to pass, and it wasn’t until she grew up and researched her parentage that she found out.) My boyfriend, for example, identifies himself as Hispanic. He’s only half Hispanic, though. His father’s side of the family is light-skinned Mexicans; his mother’s side is Welsh. As you can see in the picture I posted earlier, he looks quite white. Though in the summer he tans beautifully and looks Hispanic. One of my nicknames for him is Miguel. Incidentally, his last name, Lianez, is not Spanish or Mexican and doesn’t exist in any language as far as I know. What happened was when Michael’s ancestors crossed the border, the immigration people couldn’t understand them or something and wrote down what they thought they heard. Michael doesn’t even know what his original family name was. Possibly Yanez.

A lot of times when it comes to missing people, from the photos race isn’t obviously apparent. When I went through all the casefiles and started adding each person’s race, I often had to look it up to see what it was, and sometimes the answers surprised me — a person who appeared to be white turned out to be listed as black, or whatever. Arabs are, I think, technically Caucasian, but for identification they’re kind of in a class of their own. Same thing with Hispanics. East Indians I try to list separately from Asians, because someone from Sri Lanka tends to look much different than someone from China. Native Americans are another problem. I believe that to be legally Native American, you only have to have 1/64th Native American blood. But, say, if a person was only 1/64th black and 63/64th white, anybody would say they were white. Yet people of Native American ancestry are generally proud of it and identify themselves as Native American.

If you don’t know how to use the internet, either learn or stay off it

About six weeks ago, a woman contacted me about a missing boy on my website. It was classified as a family abduction and she was listed as the abductor. She politely explained that she did, in fact, have custody of the boy, and he was getting a lot of flack at school and stuff about being listed as an abducted child online, and could I please remove his casefile? After verifying her statements, I complied.

Well, over the next month (last time last week) she sent me increasingly irate emails (bold print, capital letters, etc) demanding I remove her son from my website. I tried to explain I already had, but she seemed deaf to my explanations.

Finally, yesterday she clarified herself and I found out what all the fuss was about: she thinks for some reason that I run the 411 Gina site. Her son is still listed as missing on there. WTF? I have nothing to do with that site. I don’t even know the person who runs it. You’d think the @charleyproject.org in my email address might be some indication of which site I am actually in charge of.

So I have informed her that she is yelling at the wrong person, and I hope that takes care of the problem.

One of Elizabeth Smart’s kidnappers pleads guilty

Wanda Barzee, Brian David Mitchell’s accomplice in the abduction of Elizabeth Smart, pleaded guilty today. She got fifteen years in prison. She’s already spent the last five years in a mental hospital. It’s only recently that they decide to forcibly medicate her and she became competent enough to stand trial. As to whether Mitchell will is up for grabs — the courts say he can’t be forcibly medicated.

Barzee apologized to Elizabeth and her family for the suffering she caused them, which is only proper. I feel a little sorry for her. She seems like a pathetic, weak woman. But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be punished for her actions.

I’m back!

My boyfriend was supposed to give the power cord to his parents for me to pick up, but he forgot. He offered to make a special trip so I could get the cord, but I decided it wasn’t worth that. So I went computer-less for five days. Now I’m back at his house, with the cord.

I think it’s just as well I didn’t have my computer this week. Work has been absolute hell — the worst work week I’ve ever had, and I’ve worked at that place for three and a half years. When I went home all I wanted to do was read and sleep without the stress of updating.

Anyway, I hope to resume normal updates soon.

Programming disrupted, please stand by

I forgot my power cord at my boyfriend’s. I’ve only got an hour and a half of battery power left on the laptop, so updates will have to wait until the cord is returned to me, which will hopefully be tomorrow.

A good idea

The author of the following letter sent this to me and I decided to post this on my blog because I think it’s an excellent idea:

To Whom it May Concern:

This is an idea I have for finding women and children who are believed to have been kidnapped and sold into the human trafficking / sex slave market of third world and other countries, including this one.

My name is Anna Maria. I am a 29-year-old woman. I am a born United States Citizen, and I currently live in Altamonte Springs, Florida. As a concerned US citizen, my heart goes out to the many families who have loved ones that have been kidnapped and are believed to have been sold into the human trafficking / sex slave markets, and I am writing out of a sincere desire to help.

I believe it may be possible to locate these victims by using the internet (particularly, search engine optimization) to specifically target potential, current, or past customers of the people holding these victims captive with information about each individual victim and each family’s individual search. This may be done by building separate websites providing full information on each victim individually, but optimizing the websites as if they were the same type of sex/adult friend finder/escort service/brothel/etc website that these customers would be searching for.

The websites would need to be optimized for any, and all, search terms that these customers would type into Google, or any search engine, in order to find the websites that provide these services in the locations they are looking for. The websites should be optimized and built in each of the likely languages that would be used when searching. For example: if it is possible that a victim may be held in a place where people may speak Spanish, English, as well as Portuguese, and if the potential customers would be persons who speak one or all of these languages, then that victim’s websites should be completely optimized in all three languages, for all of the differing search terms that someone would type in their own language.

In order to entice the potential customers to ‘click,’ the websites need to have URLs appropriate for what these customers would be looking for—example: www.best-brothels-in-south-america.com, or www.gorgeous-escorts-for-your-vacation.com, or www.exotic-girls-of-ecuador.net, etc.

The websites should also contain pictures of what the victim may look like now, with as many variations as possible in hair style and color, in facial expression, and in clothing, accessories, and makeup. Pictures or drawings of every single distinctive feature, such as tattoos, body piercings, and birth marks should appear as well. I believe that pictures speak louder, and faster, than words, and while full descriptions are important and should be provided, pictures and quick, easy-to-read bold statements must be prominent. This is especially important when considering that these customers would likely stumble onto these websites, and only remain for a matter of seconds or minutes.

I am a small business owner who has found search engine optimization to be key in targeting my own potential customers. I learned much of what I know about search engine optimization from another small business friend of mine, and from, believe it or not, Search Engine Optimization for Dummies by Peter Kent. It took me a year to finally digest the information and use it effectively, but once I learned to do this correctly, it has been very successful.

I know a lot about building websites, and search engine optimization, however, I am not a specialist. There are definitely people who are experts at web development and search engine optimization, however, not all web developers know how to optimize a website for search engines. If each individual family of these victims is able to employ a specialist in search engine optimization, I strongly encourage them to do so in order to best build, and optimize the sort of website I have mentioned in this letter. If they are not able to employ a specialist, and if they want to try to tackle this on their own, I encourage them to read Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, and any other search engine optimization book out on the market today for help and ideas.

This is a complicated process—especially for persons who are not used to thinking in terms of web development and optimizing pages for key words, but if the right people are targeted with the right keywords and phrases, the persons who actually have contact with the victims of kidnapping and human trafficking would very likely stumble onto these pages.

Usually, families of missing persons only build webpages that are targeted at the regular, law abiding, concerned US citizen—example: www.amybradley.net. This is a great site for providing information to people who know Amy Bradley, or for anyone who may have seen the Dr. Phil special which aired a few years ago and might be interested in reading up on her situation, but this website will in no way reach the people who could actually do anything about it! This site is not in any way optimized for reaching the would-be customers of various brothels in third world countries. Those customers are not going to type “Amy Bradley” or “Find Amy Bradley” into www.Google.com. They are going to type search phrases in their own languages that will help them to find the type of brothel or escort service they are looking for in their location, and whatever it is they type into Google, it will definitely NOT be “Find Amy Bradley.”

If possible, please forward this information to any families who have loved ones that have been kidnapped and lost to this industry.

Thank you very much, and best wishes to the grieving families of these victims.

Sincerely,
Anna Maria

© Anna Maria 2009 | This letter is posted here with permission by the author. For permission to write about this idea, or to reproduce this letter in part, or in full, please write for permission to Anna Maria here.