Positive ID in Boulder Jane Doe case!

Not too long ago I read an reviewed Someone’s Daughter: in Search of Justice for Jane Doe. Well, she’s not called Jane Doe anymore. She was just identified. She’s called Dorothy Gay Howard, and she was 18 years old when she was murdered in 1954. I had heard they had another possible match and was hoping the third time would be the charm.

Dorothy looks like she was a beautiful young woman. That photo is so fifties, with the Marilyn Monroe hairdo and everything. The bust of Jane Doe’s face looks a lot like her, except the hair.

Hats off and stand up for Silvia Pettem, for without her dedication to this case it’s highly likely that Boulder Jane Doe would never have been identified and Dorothy Gay Howard’s family would have been left wondering for the rest of their lives.

A slight clerical error

I just got an email from a woman who claims she is listed on my website. She has been listed as missing under suspicious circumstances since 1982. She was only fifteen at the time. Assuming this is not a joke, it look like the MP report was closed long ago but somehow it accidentally found its way onto a missing persons database, where I grabbed it. I suggested the woman get in touch with the listed law enforcement contact.

She must feel kind of embarrassed. She’s married now, so hopefully acquaintances and future employers etc. will not be able to find out about this by Googling her name.

Elizabeth Smart goes public

Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted by Brian Mitchell and held for nine months back in 2002, has testified at a hearing to determine Mitchell’s competency and has detailed the horrors of her captivity for the first time. Elizabeth is now 21 and a music major at Brigham Young University. She’s grown into a beautiful young woman. The details she gives don’t surprise me a bit: rape several times a day, forced to take drugs and alcohol, constantly threatened with death, etc. Elizabeth seems shockingly well-adjusted for having gone through all that — evidence for my theory that human beings are amazingly resilient and have the potential to bounce back from anything.

Elizabeth also says that Mitchell seemed perfectly rational all the time while he held her and only started going on about religion and being a prophet when he wanted something. She thinks his insanity thing is an act. I have no opinion on that, it’s not for me to decide, but frankly I don’t think this guy is ever going to be tried. It’s been six years since his arrest and they haven’t even decided whether he’s competent or not, never mind set a trial date. It doesn’t really matter, I think, as long as he’s locked up forever.

You can read some of the testimony here.

As for Wanda Barzee, Mitchell’s wife and accomplice, the press has got hold of some letters she wrote to her mom where she speaks of wanting to repent of her sins. But she doesn’t really talk about Elizabeth, only says that both she and Elizabeth were “victims” of Mitchell. She hasn’t been declared competent yet either, but she seems to be on the way there now that they’ve forced her to take antipsychotic drugs.

Additional articles:
The New York Daily News
The Associated Press
The London Daily Telegraph
The Salt Lake Tribune

Jaycee Dugard to appear on Oprah

I found this article saying Jaycee is scheduled to be interviewed on the Oprah Winfrey Show in December. Maybe I could somehow find a way to watch it. I would have to borrow someone else’s TV. Anyway, it says she’s getting paid a million dollars for this.

I don’t think I would do it, if I were her — it seems like such a big famous TV appearance would mess up her life even more. But I’m not her.

Brooke Wilberger found

As noted by one blog commenter, one person who emailed me, and Google News search, Brooke Wilberger’s body has been found. She was nineteen years old and between her freshman and sophomore year at Brigham Young University when she was abducted from an apartment complex parking lot in Corvallis, Oregon May 2004. The case got a lot of attention at the time, because of the sensational nature of the crime and because Brooke was the kind of victim the media loves: young, innocent, Christian, middle-class, blonde and very beautiful. Just like a slightly older Elizabeth Smart. They were both Mormons, even.

Joel Patrick Courtney was charged with Brooke’s murder in 2005. Well, this month he pleaded guilty and lead the police to her body. He will be in prison for the rest of his days. I’ve heard that Courtney is considered a possible serial killer and a suspect in the disappearance of Katheryn “Katie” Eggleston, but I don’t know if anything came of that lead.

Anyway…may Brooke rest in peace.

You know you’re famous when…

… you make the news in Ethiopia. Jaycee Dugard has.

Jaycee Dugard’s abduction is horrible but really rare

I found this very sensible editorial pointing out just how uncommon cases like Jaycee’s are, and saying we need to focus more attention on the victims of parental abduction, who tend to suffer a great deal of psychological trauma even if they’re not physically harmed. (Case in point: poor Richard Chekevdia was held in a tiny room for two years and never let outside after his mom abducted him.) Of course instances like the Dugard case are much more shocking and titillating to the public. But if the public knew the truth about parental abduction and the harm it causes, they would probably be shocked.

Jaycee’s hometown threw a parade to celebrate her rescue. 2,000 people showed up. She wasn’t around to see it, though. She’s hiding out with her mom and kids, presumably getting reconnected. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if she went on to lead a more or less normal life. Most of the survivors of concentration camps did okay afterwards, marrying again, getting jobs, having more kids, etc.

So it’s true

Jaycee Dugard really HAS been found — albeit living in horrific circumstances. Her abductor, a convicted rapist named Phillip Garrido, along with his wife, Nancy, kept Jaycee locked up in a shed in the backyard. She gave birth to two daughters during her time in captivity. They are now 11 and 15 years old and were also raised in the shed. It’s like something out of a bad movie — or the Elizabeth Scott novel Living Dead Girl, which is about a teenage girl who was kidnapped by a man when she was a child and has been forced to be his live-in rape victim ever since. Jaycee and the children are in good physical health apparently, but mentally it’s got to be another story altogether. That poor woman. Those poor kids.

I hope there will be an outpouring from the community like there was with Shasta Groene, and Jaycee and her kids will get the therapy they need and be able to set up a new life for themselves. The kids have never been to school. It wouldn’t surprise me if they too were sexually violated by Garrido.

On the bright side…Jaycee is ALIVE! Who would have thought? I certainly never believed this was a possibility. I believe the longest known time a child was held captive in a stranger abduction case is nine years. Well, Jaycee has DOUBLED that record, and it gives new hope for all the other children out there who have been missing for decades.

She and the kids are young yet. I only hope they can salvage their lives.

I’m sure everyone and their podiatrist knows this, but…

…just in case, it looks like Jaycee Dugard may have been found alive and well. A woman walked into a police station claiming to be her, anyway, and the police say they have two suspects in custody and will disclose more at a press conference today. If this is true, then Jaycee, who was abducted in 1991, sets a new record for the longest time a stranger abducted child lived in captivity.

I refer you to the Google news search for more.

Soldiers from mass grave in Turkey identified

Back in 2006, officials from the United Nations Committee on Missing Persons located a mass grave of nineteen people in northern Turkey. According to this article, five of the bodies have been identified as Greek Cypriot soldiers. 35 years ago Turkey invaded Cyprus (which, for the uninitiated, is an island nation in the Mediterranean sea, which is bilaterally divided into the “Greek side” and the “Turkish side”) and about 1600 people disappeared without a trace, not just soldiers either: there were over a hundred kids under seventeen and over three hundred old people sixty and over. (These numbers come from the Missing Cypriots website.) Very few of them have ever been found. The last sign of those particular five disappeared people was when they were photographed upon surrendering to the Turks and becoming prisoners of war. The oldest man was thirty years old, the youngest only nineteen. I’m not 100% sure but it looks like the other fourteen people in the grave are still unidentified.

That Turkey has committed war crimes (the Armenian genocide of the nineteen-teens also comes to mind) is not shocking to me. Many countries have done so — not that that doesn’t make a terrible thing, but what I’m saying is that Turkey is hardly alone in having committed atrocities. But they should at least admit it. Turkey has maintained a stony silence as to the 1974 invasion and what happened to the missing Cypriots. And they won’t even acknowledge the existence of the Armenian genocide. I am not holding present-day Turks responsible for what their fathers and grandfathers did, but the government should do the right thing and fess up and try to make amends, rather like Germany has. Revealing the ultimate fate of all the missing Cypriots, uncovering more mass graves if necessary, would be a good start.

Having a relative who is missing for political reasons or war-related reasons has got to be at least as stressful as having a missing relative of the kind listed on the Charley Project. You don’t know where they are, if they’re hurt, if they have enough to eat, where they lay their heads at night, even if they’re alive at all. The people of Cyprus deserve this closure.