Today there was an excellent detailed article on the disappearance of Tavia Bailey. I had had practically nothing on her before.
Tavia was a bit of a problem child; her mom believes her emotional/behavioral troubles stemmed from sexual abuse by her stepfather. She experimented with drugs and she ran away from home, but she would always keep in touch with her mom. After her New Years’ Eve 1986 disappearance, when she was 15, she never called home again.
There’s a recent article with a video about Deisy Herrera, a three-year-old who vanished from her family’s front yard in Kern, California in 1987. (And for once, the comments on the article aren’t nasty. Yet.) Deisy’s case is very obscure. She’s not on the NCMEC, and in six years I have not updated her casefile even once.
I will update it now. The article doesn’t provide much in the way of new information, but it does say Deisy was playing with her siblings. I wonder what they saw, and if they were old enough to remember anything now. If she is still alive, Deisy would now be 26 years old.
This one might be incomplete, but I put it together as best I could.
Mikelle Diane Biggs (poster)
Brendan Tyler Gonzalez (poster)
Marina Tiffany Kaneda (poster)
Connie Lynn McCallister (poster)
Alexander Sol Olive (poster)
Katelyn Selena Rivera-Helton (poster)
Elyssa Marie Vasquez (poster)
(By “long-term” I mean at least three years missing. And I don’t count family abduction cases that don’t have an AP but do have recent photographs.)
Fawn M. Abell and Rozlin Rochelle Abell
Joel Acosta-Mohedano
Jarkeius Adside
Francisco Aguilar Jr.
Saif Seyed Mohammed Ahmed
Ganignunt Aiemsakul
Amina Ashraf Al-Jailani, Layla Ashraf Al-Jailani and Sami Ashraf Al-Jailani
Heidi Marie Allen
Machael Heidi Al-Omary
Reyna Gabriella Alvarado-Carrera
Garrett Alexander Bardsley
George Barksdale
Stephen Christopher Beard
Emad Ali Ben-Mrad
Kevin Caldeira Birotte
Halle Patricia Bobo and Jacob Allen Bobo
Samuel Savage Becker Boehlke
Alex Felipe Bolanos-Martinez
Joseph Hany Booth-Metwally
Israel Haim Bordaty, Yehezkel Hanan Bordaty and Yoshua Itai Bordaty
Lisa Jane Borden
Bob Louis Boyes
Melissa Hinako Braden
Erica Monique Bradley
Joyce Creola Brewer
Barry Michael Brown, Brandon Mitchell Brown and Sheketah Michelle Brown
Kamyle Stephanie Burgos Ortiz
A.J. Campbell Jr. and Myrisha Faye Campbell
Brian C. Carrick
Alejandra Carrion and Jorge Carrion
Jobane Castaneda-Ortiz
Edwin Castro and Christopher Martinez
Melvin Eduardo Turcios Cedillo
Nachida Keota Chandara
Austin Jay Childs
Danica Dianne Childs
Serina Victoria Clark
Willie Reginald Clark
Abraham Cocoli and Noah Cocoli
Cameron Colchado Torres
Brandi Natasha Cole
Ashley Nicole Conroy
Ingrid Siomara Contreras
Harold Clifton Cooper III
Kelia Brianne Critchfield
Martin Crumblish Jr.
Bonnie Lee Dages and Jeremy Lee Dages
Thwana Mithsell Darrough
Sheiry Giselle Diaz
Christian Diaz-Borjas and Leonardo Diaz-Borjas
Alondra Diaz-Garcia
Stephen Douglas
Acacia Nicole Duvall and Jon Pierre Duvall
Adam Elkhadiri
Ryan Jacob Esparza
Abigail Estrada
Lillian Irene Estrada
Lisa Ann Eubanks
Keoni Alexander Fernandez, Lance Sterling Fernandez and Mason Christopher Fernandez
Karina Lizbeth Alvarado Flores
Erin Leigh Foster
Joseph Osell Frazier
David Joseph Galvan
Jaime Alexis Garcia
Justin Justo Vidal Garcia and Samantha Michelle Garcia
Marifer Garcia
Alexis Maria Gardiner
Chioma Ezronesha Gray
Claudia Jareth Guillen and Claudia Berenice Guillen
Kenneth Warren Hager
Hiroki H. Hagisaka
Cleashindra Denise Hall
Jordan William Hall
Kristine Nicole Hamilton
Jackie Dene Hay
Joseph David Helt
Jose Rafael Henriquez-Diaz
Sausha Latine Henson
Maximillian Hernandez
Santa Manuela Hernandez
Victor Jesus Hernandez-Olmedo
Frederick Andrew Holmes
Dawn Michelle Holt
Daniel Henry Huizar-Jensen and Manuel Huizar-Jensen
Dontray Miquel Hunter
Damian Britano Ibarra
Emily Maria Izykowski
Donald Lee Izzett Jr.
Kendrick Terrell Jackson
Tiahease Jackson
Ara Denise Johnson
Donna Haghighat Jou
Yansis Massiel Juarez
Lavonne Antoinette Kelly
Robin Ann Kerry
Nancy Lynn Kirkpatrick
Marjorie Alice Knox
Kara Elise Kopetsky
Dawn Koranteng and Jewel Koranteng
Kelsi Jordan Krum
Kirsten Joy Kryszak
Hemangini Kulshreshtha and Yashaswi Kulshreshtha
Antonio Dominico LaGuardia
Paul Michael Landis
Richard Wayne Landers
Hang Lee
Angelica Cassandra Livingston
Carla Elizabeth Losey
Benjamin Lund
Luis Martinez Madina
Joshua Jerome Mahaffey
Nadia Yesmeen Mahmoud and Omar Qutaiba Mahmoud
Elian Amilcar Majano
Skyla Marburger
Maria De Los Angeles Martinez
Ivy Matory, Violet Bobbie Matory and Yolanda Marie Williams
Diana Mazariegos
Melody McKoy
Angela Mae Meeker
Roy N. Mejia
Charles Edward Melendez
Edward Lee Melanson
Steven Carlos Mendez
Alexandra Mendoza
Lorena Mendoza
Jesus Merino-Mendoza
David Joseph Miera
Kimberly Christine Mileo
Brian Christopher Miller, Christian Matthew Miller and Evan Matthew Miller
Kamiyah Mobley
Eliseo Montalvo
Yamaira Vivian Montes-Gonzalez
Tayna Morales
Jerome Eugene Morris
Tracie Lynn Mosley
Luis Alberto Munguia-Zendejas Jr.
Robin Frances Murphy
Anita Murrell
Alan Jose Naranjo and Nathan Jesus Naranjo
Erick Nassar Jr., Jonnathan Nassar and Joshua Nassar
Ariza Maria Olivares
Jasmine Ortiz
Genesis Itzely Perez and Xaris Anel Perez
Princess Perez
Diona Maria Peterson
Sneha Juri Pierce
Devinee Maria Priscilla Pingul
Lamarst Alexander Porter Jr.
Carlos Portes
Sharon Lynn Pretorius
Debra T. Pscholka
Kathryn Mae Quackenbush
Ramona Catherine Redd
Marcia Estelle Remick
Katiana Rose Resovich
Rodolfo Ricardez
Alejandra Rivera-Romero, Monserrat Rivera-Romero and Wesley Rivera-Romero
Samuel Clay Robinson
John Rodriguez Parrilla
Erinn Rogers
Miguel Alexandro Romero
Rene Alberto Romero
Solomon Gomile Rose III
Cristina Ester Ruiz-Rodriguez
Jason Jack Russo
Christian Miguel Sanchez and Veronica Nicole Sanchez
David Santana
Tyler Joseph Schladweiler
Hana Scordato
Alicia Marie Scott
Johnathan William Scott and Patrick James Scott
Billy Sena
Amber S. Shah, Lubna M. Shah and Tashfeen A. Shah
Joseph Osama Shannon
Beverly Sharpman
Heather Lindsay Silver
Alalibo Sonny Simon-Ogan and Inez Ibinabo Simon-Ogan
Maximillian Olegovich Soloviev
Stevey Howard Sommerville
Mayra Soto
Debra Lee Spickler
Suzanne E. Streeter
Fannie Fawn Stuart and Jessie Flo Stuart
Ashley Nicole Summers
Michelle Doherty Thomas
Sarah Rachel Tokier
Kimberly Faye Thrower
Pamela Dawn Tinsley
Tristan Japhet Torres
Yim Yeung Tsui
Yesenia Turcios
Elsy Minnely Ubieta
Viridiana Urias
Cristina Valasquez
Esther Valdez
Jessica Vargas Biatriz
Monish Narayan Venkatesan and Prathima Venkatesan
Tanisha Lorraine Watkins
Chester R. Wetmore
Christina Lee White
Angel Dawn Wilson
Yusuf Abdul Wilson
Selinda Jean Winegar
Sara Anne Wood
Tasha Shante Wright
William Jingde Xu
Nevaeh Rose Ybarra
April Rose Zane
(Wow, there were a lot more of these than I thought. It took hours, spread over two days, to compile this.)
For most of these, I don’t know the reason why there’s no AP. In some cases I do know or can guess. I read in an article that Kamiyah Mobley’s parents refused to give the NCMEC permission to have an MP done. Some of these people, although they’ve been missing a very long time, haven’t been on the NCMEC site for terribly long, and may get an AP done later. A few of these posters were actually made by state missing children centers, whose posters are never as good as the NCMEC ones. (Poor George Barksdale for instance, his photo is of such poor quality, he looks like a space alien.) With some of the international family abduction cases, I figure they basically know where the child is at and just can’t retrieve them, so they don’t need an AP made. For the others I have no idea. A paucity of information to go on cannot explain it, and neither can a strong presumption of death; there are several NCMEC cases where one or the other is a factor but they still have APs.
This out of Pakistan: a barber who has made it his mission to reunite lost children with their families. Anwar Khokar says that since 1988 he’s helped 8,500 missing children. Missing children are a big problem in Pakistan — as they are, I suspect, in all third world countries. Kids run away or are thrown out by families who can’t afford to keep them. Child trafficking goes on. And the police often can’t help. If they’re not simply corrupt, they have a lot of other problems on their plate.
I recently read a book called The Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal. This American guy went to volunteer at an orphanage in Nepal for a few months and discovered that all of the “orphans” had in fact been stolen from their families by child traffickers. So he decided to reunite them, and journeyed to an extremely remote region of Nepal (without even road access) to find their parents. And he founded a non-profit for this purpose. It was dangerous work — the child traffickers were often well-connected and powerful, and there was the business of having to trek through the Himalayas — but the looks on the parents’ and kids’ faces made it all worth it for him.
I found this very interesting article about the use of psychics to find missing people in Australia. The article references many cases, including the infamous disappearance of the Beaumont children in 1966.
I think so-called extrasensory perception is a load of garbage and don’t know why the police would actually pay a psychic to “feel” things for them, but desperation makes people do strange things.
I found this article about Rosemary Diaz, a Danevang, Texas 15-year-old who was abducted from her convenience store job in 1990. (Actually, the article was sent to me by someone who put together a “tapestry” of predictions about Rosemary based on her date of birth.)
Anyway, the CNN article provides a color version of the black-and-white NCMEC photo of Rosemary — with her veritable cloud of black hair, no doubt heavily hairsprayed as was the style at the time — and some additional info about her disappearance, including a possible suspect.
The comments on the article are typical reading: people blaming Rosemary’s parents and/or the store management for letting her work alone, people suggesting everyone should have a tracking device implanted in their arm, people saying the case shouldn’t be on CNN because it’s so old, etc.
I finally sat down, bit the bullet and wrote up Kyron Horman‘s case. It didn’t take as long as I thought — only four or five hours. Whew! Glad that’s done and over with. Cross that off on my mile-long list of Things I Really Should Get Around To Doing. (Another item on the list is “Donate clothes to the St. Vincent De Paul Society.” Got a basket of clothes that’s been in my car for about six months.)
The two other cases (yes, alas, only two) that I added today are also exceptional due to their age: Dennise Sullivan, a Connecticut girl missing for 49 years, abducted from rural Utah after a holdup and shooting that killed her mother and wounded the man that was with them, and Solomon Rose, missing from Maryland for 38 years and just added to the NCMEC.
Worldcat says there’s a book called Whatever Happened to Denise Sullivan? which is supposed to be about Dennise’s abduction. Gotta wonder how accurate it is if they didn’t spell her name right. There’s only one copy available and it’s at the Wisconsin Historical Society (?). I requested it through inter-library loan but they want $5 to ship it to me. I think I’ll bite.
Found this article about the disappearance of Jessica Kinsey, who vanished from Cloverdale, Indiana fifteen years ago today. If she is still alive, she would now be almost 30 years old.
It’s a rather odd case. It’s been established that Jessica left town with a 23-year-old guy she knew, Jimmy Hopkins. They spent the night in a hotel, rooming next door to a friend who’d given them a ride. The next day Jimmy and Jessica vanished and their friend’s car with them. The car turned up in California a few weeks later. Jimmy worked at an ice cream store near where the car was abandoned, and witnesses saw a girl with him matching Jessica’s description, but there’s been no firm evidence of her whereabouts since she disappeared from Indiana. Jimmy has long been a suspect in her disappearance. That he is violent there is no doubt: in 2008, he handcuffed his wife and shot her to death before shooting himself. He took a big secret to the grave with him.
I wonder if Jessica might have been sold into prostitution or some such thing. Jimmy had said she was pregnant and they were going to run off and get married. Both Jessica’s mom and her best friend say she wasn’t dating anyone when she disappeared and wasn’t pregnant. She’s been described in various sources as shy and naive — just the kind of teenager pimps like to take advantage of.
Of course, I’m hoping Jessica did not meet with that fate. But there’s a good chance too that she’s dead, and surely that’s worse.
It was three days in a row of Christmas celebrations for me: December 24 with my extended family at Grandpa’s nursing home, December 25 with Michael and his family, and December 26 with my own family at my parents’ house. It was okay, I guess. My abusive brother didn’t show up, and I was very glad. Presents were so-so. Michael gave me a gift card which I used to order Every Man Dies Alone (one of the best novels I’ve ever read) and Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling (which I haven’t read, but which looks good). My friend John gave me a copy of The Great War and Modern Memory, which we both read for school several years ago. My parents got me a t-shirt and seven pairs of socks. (I collect socks.)
My nephew was over and on impulse I gave him several books I thought he might find interesting — my own books, but they’d been languishing in storage up in the attic for years. Two of them were sex trivia books and my sister found out and blew a gasket and made him give them back and made Mom lecture me about it. And the boy is eighteen years old! I wouldn’t have given him the books otherwise.
The headache thing is kind of up in the air. On Thursday I was in screaming agony and the Vicodin Dr. Easley had prescribed didn’t work. I asked Michael’s roommate, M.F., to take me to the urgent care clinic again. There the physician’s assistant was deeply concerned by behavior and the symptoms I described. He got the hospital to send in the CT scan and showed it to me: the sinus infection is mild and, he says, cannot explain my symptoms. Perhaps Dr. Easley jumped on it simply because it’s the only abnormality the scan picked up.
The P.A. questioned me about my antidepressants and said, “Quite frankly, you’re acting very oddly.” He suggested I might have Serotonin Syndrome, something I categorically denied. I tried to explain that what he was seeing — which was me trembling and rocking back and forth and mumbling and refusing to make eye contact — was quite normal for me and something I pretty much always do when I’m under stress. He called in the regular doctor — something that doesn’t happen too often. They fussed over me and my CT scan some more. They decided to give me a shot of Demerol but the P.A. warned that this would not last. The words “Band-Aid” and “artery wound” were used.
He asked if I had driven there myself and I said no. Then after I got my shot he said, “Why don’t you wait in here, and I’ll get your friend to keep you company.” (They make you wait like 20 minutes after a shot, just in case you have an allergic reaction and die.) I said I’d rather wait in the lobby and he said, “Well, what’s wrong with here? Are you uncomfortable in here?” I said I didn’t want to take up a room that could be used for seeing patients and he said, “We’re not busy now. Just let me get your friend.”
I decided he must want me to prove I really did have a ride home (a person isn’t supposed to drive under the influence of Demerol, since it makes you all loopy and sleepy) and so I told him M.F.’s name. The P.A. brought him back and then said to him, “You know her better than I do. Has she been acting strangely over the last few months, since she started getting these headaches?” M.F. replied that, other than being irritable because of the pain, I was behaving pretty much as I always had. Finally they let me go. I was actually pretty impressed by the P.A.’s thoroughness.
I was very discouraged by what the P.A. said about my CT scan. I still am. He said that if I’m still getting headaches by Monday, it’s definitely not the infection because by Monday the antibiotics should have it largely under control. That makes sense to me. So I’m keeping watch. I got Dr. Easley’s office to prescribe Percocet for me and that’s working to control the pain now. Friday afternoon (Christmas Eve) I had a terrible headache. Since then it’s been better — the pain is either absent, or not so bad when it’s present.
It’s not that I am worried about having a life-threatening condition. I don’t think I do have one. I’m just worried that either they won’t figure out what’s wrong with me, or they won’t be able to fix it and I’ll have to deal with this for a very long time.
And I suppose I ought to just bite the bullet and start telling people I have Asperger’s Syndrome. I hate the stupid diagnosis and resisted it for a long time, but bringing it up might prevent medical professionals from interrogating my friends about my supposedly abnormal behavior. After a disastrous face-to-face visit with an online friend who was freaked out by my behaviors, I actually made a list to give people in the future when I stay with them, saying things like “My rocking back and forth is nothing to worry about” and “If you are curious about something I’m doing, kindly ask why I’m doing it, I won’t be offended.” I may make a similar list to give to unfamiliar doctors.
The Charley Project Blog 