A problem I’ve never encountered before

Many, many women listed on Charley are noted to be victims of domestic violence at the hands of their husbands or boyfriends, even if the aforementioned haven’t faced any charges in connection with the disappearance. In one particular case, I have little info, just that the woman (a girl, really, 21 years old) was going through a divorce and her family said her husband was abusive and had threatened her life.

Well, hubby has just emailed me, furious and demanding I remove that detail. He accuses me of “dragging his name through mud” and says it is my “last and final warning.” (I actually don’t refer to him by name in the casefile, and didn’t even know his name till he wrote me.) I did a bit more probing after I got the email and found the missing woman’s MySpace page, last accessed just before her disappearance. She writes a little bit on there about how she’s so glad she got away from her abusive husband and that their two small children are away from him and safe.

It seems my options are thus:

1. Comply with his demand — no way in hell. Even if he had nothing to do with her disappearance, I’m satisfied that he did abuse her and, it appears, the kids as well. Men who beat their wives and kids deserve to have their names dragged through mud.
2. Ignore him and block his email address.
3. Reply to him telling him to go to hell, then block his email address.

I think I’m leaning towards Option 2. I don’t want to provoke this guy any more than I already have. I mean, I guess it’s unlikely that he would drive all the way up from the Deep South to Ohio to track me down and beat me up or something, but stranger things have happened.

This is disgusting

I just found this article about Lucero Sarabia’s relatives doing a vigil for her. The 21-year-old woman with two children was eight months pregnant when she disappeared from San Antonio, Texas five years ago.

The comments on this article are sickening:

2 kids, 8 months pregnant? WTF GET IN THE PROGRAM stop partying stop doing drugs get a job

and:

Why should she have? Each litter she squirted out gave her a bigger check each month. So while grandmama and aunts took care of her puppies, she could still go out and go to parties, and die her hair, and still have fun. I mean, having tons of kids doesn’t mean you need to change your behavior, does it?

God forbid a woman have three children. Shame on her. (My mother had seven.) God forbid she go to a party to celebrate Thanksgiving. God forbid she dye her hair. (I do.) As far as I know, Lucero wasn’t a drug abuser or on public assistance. She was married, too. Separated from her husband, it’s true, but married. And no matter who she was, she was also in all probability the victim of a terrible crime, and she doesn’t deserve to have complete strangers who know nothing say such awful things about her.

What the heck is wrong with people? Whatever happened to sympathy and compassion and all of that?

Is woman’s disappearance the police’s fault?

I just read this article about a 24-year-old woman, Mitrice Richardson, who’s been missing from Los Angeles County, California for over two months. She was arrested on minor charges, booked and released. It was the middle of the night by then, and she had no transportation, no money and no way to contact anyone. The police offered to let her spend the night at the jail, but she said she wanted to leave. She didn’t appear to be a danger to herself or others, or mentally incompetent, so they let her go. And she vanished.

The author of this editorial blames the police for Mitrice’s disappearance, claiming they lacked “compassion” and shouldn’t have released the woman when they knew she had no way to go home. (Other sources claim she was “acting crazy” on the night of her disappearance and claimed she was from Mars, suggesting she was having some kind of episode. There have also been accusations of racism; Mitrice is black.) From what I have read about this thus far, I don’t see it that way. The police offered to help her by letting her spend the night in an empty cell. She turned them down. What were they supposed to do then, force her to stay? If they had kept her against her will, they could have faced a lawsuit for false imprisonment. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Of course, Mitrice’s disappearance is tragic. All disappearances are. But I don’t think the cops could have reasonably done more than they did. Thoughts, anyone?

More info on Mitrice:
Her family’s website for her
Los Angeles Sentinel article (which also blames the cops and claims Mitrice was drunk when she released)
KTLA

Boatload of people added to Missouri Highway Patrol site

The Missouri Highway Patrol, which lists missing people from that state, has added quite a lot of missing adults to their listings. Unfortunately most of them don’t have posters and some don’t even have pictures. I will have to post a lot of bare-bones casefiles for these people, but it’s better than nothing. Maybe posters for them will be added soon.

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.

Okay, now this is less than helpful

This is the only article I can find about the 1993 disappearance of Janice Wright and it’s extremely frustrating.

The article says Janice was last seen in Suffolk, Virginia in 1993. Um…what date in 1993? How old was she? What did she look like — she was a black female, okay, they have pics, but how tall, any distinguishing marks? It’s not like they don’t have this information: they interviewed her three kids on the tape, and also showed a partial shot of her missing persons flier (just the top, not the bottom part with all the details I want). So I’m going to have to post this case with next to nothing useful in it.

Blarg. *headdesk*

Why is Dana Rishby on the FBI kidnappings page?

According to the FBI, Dana Rishby is a dual German/Israeli citizen who disappeared while vacationing in Mexico. My question is: so what gives the US jurisdiction over this? Not complaining, just confuzzled.

Some people just cannot catch a break.

I was just looking at the website of Spencer Nastrom. He is the oldest son of Sandra Jacobson and half-brother to John Jacobson. Sandra and John disappeared without a trace in 1996, when Spencer was sixteen. Spencer was then raised by Sandra’s mother. In 2005, his father (Sandra’s ex-husband) was brutally murdered. The crime has yet to be solved. Spencer had three daughters and finally married their mother, his longtime girlfriend, in 2007. His 24-year-old wife died of strep throat (of all things) this past May.

Definitely a lottery family. Or at least, one lottery person. I just hope this poor man’s kids don’t start dropping dead. I’m not superstitious, but if I was I would say he was cursed.

Sex offender creates poster for missing woman

I just encountered an article about a sex offender who created a missing person poster for a woman who had disappeared. The poster, which offered a $100,000 reward, wasn’t authorized by the family, and they freaked and called the cops when they found out who had made it. The police suspected this man was trying to profit financially from the woman’s disappearance so they sent someone over to offer a “donation.” The man didn’t take the money. He said he had to call the woman’s family. So the police have determined there was no crime committed.

Frankly I’m not sure why this is considered news. It sounds like the guy was just trying to help. What is frustrating about this article is that it doesn’t say what “sex offense” he was convicted of. You’ve seen me spout off on this blog before about sex offender registration. It’s way too inclusive and you can end up on the list for very minor things (such as having sex with a 15-year-old when you’re 17, or even urinating in public). And all the media and people are going to hear is “registered sex offender.”

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.