My boyfriend went out and got an eight-week-old kitten today. Her name is Carmen. She’s a brown tabby with hazel eyes, long hair, white paws and a white bib. She looks like every other kitten in the world — that is, adorable. Pick her up and right away she starts purring like she’s got a little motor inside her.
That makes a current total of four pets: Carmen the cat, our two rats Gypsy and Belle, and Alley the chihuahua, who actually belongs to my boyfriend’s roommate.
Two days ago was the ten-year anniversary of the disappearance of seven-year-old Karla Rodriguez from Las Vegas, Nevada. She disappeared without a trace from her neighborhood on the evening of October 20, 1999 and is presumed to have been abducted, but no one saw anything. Police have investigated a number of suspects, including the now-deceased child serial killer Curtis Dean Anderson (posthumously declared responsible for the abduction and murder of Amber Swartz-Garcia who has also never been found). But there have never been really any strong leads in Karla’s case and there hasn’t been much news about it for many years.
Sadly, I could only find one article about the anniversary of Karla’s disappearance. Her case didn’t get as much publicity as it could have. Most of them never do.
Today is the twentieth anniversary of the abduction of eleven-year-old Jacob Wetterling. He was kidnapped at gunpoint by a strange man in front of his brother and a friend, and never seen again. The police don’t seem to have any idea what became of him or who took him, though he is one of the most famous missing children in the country.
Of course there’s a slew of anniversary articles:
Minneapolis Star-Tribune (this is a nice one, focusing on how the abduction affected Jacob’s best friend who saw the whole thing)
Minnesota Public Radio
St. Cloud Times
St. Cloud Times again
USA Today
ABC News
Fox 9 News
Jacob’s abduction reminds me of a lot of cases, namely Jaycee Dugard, Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin, and the Groene family murders and the abductions of Dylan and Shasta Groene. (I wonder if anyone looked at Joseph Duncan as a suspect in Jacob’s kidnapping? Just a thought.) Whoever kidnapped Jacob was incredibly brazen and brutal. My guess is that the abductor had committed other crimes before — not kidnapping but perhaps assaults, burglaries, maybe some sex crimes. You just don’t wake up one morning and decide to stalk and abduct a child at gunpoint in full view of two witnesses.
Is Jacob still alive? Who knows?
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.
…current pictures of Jaycee Dugard have appeared in People magazine. She has grown into a beautiful young woman. I think it looks pretty close to her age-progression picture, except for the hair obviously. A lot of kids with light blonde hair have their hair turn brown when they grow up. I did, I think. I’ve been coloring my hair since I was ten but I believe it’s naturally light brown now.
I hope people don’t bother Jaycee if they recognize her on the street or whatever from the magazine photos. I know she is living very quietly in an undisclosed location, but presumably she’s not hiding in her hotel all the time.
I thought it was cool when I found out I know someone who knows someone who went to Oxford with the Crown Prince (now King) of Bhutan. My friend said her friend said the Prince was a jerk, which I guess is to be expected.
But now I’ve found out I know someone who knows someone who went to primary school with Daniel Radcliffe! That’s even cooler. Everyone knows who Daniel Radcliffe is. No one knows who the King of Bhutan is, and most of them don’t even know Bhutan is a country in Asia. My friend said her friend said Daniel Radcliffe was an “emotionally stunted weirdo.”
It’s a pity I don’t personally know anyone really famous. Robert Cormier was only semi-famous (about as famous as a young adult author can be, but that’s not saying much) and he is now deceased.
Charley turns five today. *sniffle* My little baby is growing up!
A guy named Bill wrote a lovely tribute to me ad the site on the Friends of Debbie Key blog. Thanks, Bill!
One of my contributors sent me some articles for some of the kids on my “cases I know hardly anything about” list, so I can update their cases soon. The articles for Jackie Hay and Toya Hill didn’t say a lot, but Francillon Pierre’s was most interesting. His mom and stepdad had been charged with felony child abuse for beating him before he disappeared, but for some reason they still had custody when they told the police he’d wandered off at a flea market. They said they didn’t want his disappearance publicized. (Are they even TRYING to look innocent?) Bio-dad’s in the clear. As I suspected, Francillon is of Haitian descent; his dad lives in Haiti.
39-year-old Damion Davis has been charged with abandoning his baby son, Qua’mere Rogers, two or three years ago. The police didn’t even know Qua’mere existed until a couple of months ago when someone tipped them off. The police can’t find a picture of him and even his age seems to be in dispute — the aforementioned link says he was between eight months and one year old, but another article gives his age as two. The press can’t seem to get any of the details straight; they also give two different years for Qua’mere’s disappearance. Perhaps Davis himself can’t remember exactly when it happened.
Qua’mere’s mother was fifteen or sixteen years old when he was born. (Another detail the articles differ on.) Due to her being underage, Davis has also been charged with rape. The mother says she thought Davis was eighteen when she met him, and that he’d given her a false name and she didn’t know his real name until the police contacted her about Qua’mere’s disappearance. She said he was physically abusive to her and she left him and Qua’mere in 2006 and never saw them again, but she lied to the state Department of Social Services and said Qua’mere was living with her, which I guess is part of the reason why he was never missed.
Anyway, Davis says he gave the child to some guy whom he met at a friend’s apartment and that person gave him to a member of the United Nation of Moors. I’m not sure if Davis is referring to this black power group or not. They gave him a phone number to call, but it turned out to be no good. Clearly, however, Davis wasn’t too concerned about it, since he never got in touch with the police or anything.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this child wasn’t abandoned at all, but actually sold, or outright killed. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, lacking even the most basic description and detail for Qua’mere, the police never find him.
All I can do is hope for a happier resolution than seems possible.
I just went through the NCMEC’s entire “non-family abduction” category and entered into Newslibrary the names of cases where I have frustratingly little information. I struck paydirt in several cases, finding lengthy articles for David Borer, Christopher Harvey and Raymond Green, and bits of info for other cases. I don’t have that many NCMEC non-family abduction cases left where I have hardly anything. But I’ve made a list of them, in case anyone wants to do some research of their own. I’m not going to link to the cases cause I’m lazy.
Walter Thomas Ackerson
Kevin Jay Ayotte
Jeanine Camille Barnwell
Allen Briscoe Jr.
Andrew Lee Brown
Jose Esauro Dominguez
Curtis MacKeever Fair
Debra Lee Frost
Megan Elizabeth Garner
William Dale Gunn
Charles Hall III (now called Charlie Hall on the NCMEC for some reason)
Jackie Dene Hay
Toya Hill
Cheryl Ann Moser Iacovone
Tyler Jennings Inman
Maria De Los Angeles Martinez
Michael McCool
Francillon Pierre
Kirk Quintons
Ilene Rebecca Scott
Billy Sena
Colleen Vanita Simpson
Kelly Juanita Staples
Edna Christine Thorne
Angela Loraine Westberry
Anthony Tyrone Woodson
