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.
The Charley Project Blog 