It’s not Cherrie

As I suspected, the woman they were looking at in Michigan is not, after all, Cherrie Mahan. Cherrie is still missing and it’s been 26 years now.

Gossip on the internet

I got an email today from a woman affiliated with another site, which is not about missing people but does talk about some of them. Members of the public can add material. Anyway, she very defensive, claiming I had accused her site of “stealing” my work and they were just trying to spread awareness, etc. And she said she would remove some Charley writings from a certain page and put up a notice saying I’d asked her to.

I’m a bit flabbergasted. I was aware that some Charley Project material was on that site, but I didn’t care much because it usually included a note as to the source. I don’t mind if you copy my work, as long as you credit me with it. To my knowledge I never complained to anyone about that site or accused them of “stealing” and I certainly never asked the site to remove information. The only thing I can think of is that some offhand comment I made, possibly even years ago, got misinterpreted and reported back to this woman.

Something similar happened several weeks ago and I found myself having to defend (perfectly accurate) statements about another site, from an entry which I had posted on my blog in 2009. The problem I’d complained about (which was not related to plagiarism) had long since been fixed, but someone “heard” that I “trashed” the site “every chance I got.”

Sigh. It’s very annoying.