MP news of the past week

William Frank Simmons, the accused killer of Kaelin Rose Glazier, is set to go to trial next week. Kaelin, who was 15, disappeared from Ruch, Oregon in 1996. Simmons, who was in his late teens at the time, was the last person known to have seen her. In 2008, her body was found across the street from his parents’ home. He was charged in 2010.

Sofia Juarez will have been missing nine years next Saturday, as noted in this article. She vanished without a trace, presumably kidnapped, the day before her fifth birthday — making her just old enough to have some memories of her former life, assuming she’s still alive. After Jaycee Dugard, etc., you can never say never. Sadly, though, Sofia’s mother will never be reunited with her daughter on this earth. Maria Juarez died three years ago. She was only twenty-six years old. Natural causes.

(Another article about the case which says “Sofia is the only open missing child case on record for the [Kennewick] police department, but the oldest missing person case is from 1978 when June Howard disappeared.” Who’s June Howard? Inquiring minds want to know. They ought to do an article on her.)

The police are re-examining the case of Virginia Rambus, who disappeared from Washington state in 1985. She was nineteen and last seen leaving home to go to a party. They had previously mentioned a person of interest, a neighbor known only as the “Candy Man.” Well, he’s been identified as Jesse Pratt, who’s currently doing life in an Oregon prison for killing another Seattle woman. Prior to the murder he had kidnapped yet a third woman. Click here for a picture of a car Pratt drove, which might have some connection to Virginia’s case.

The family of Tracy Melton, a 32-year-old Stockton, California woman who disappeared in 1998 and is profiled on Charley, are very angry that the police identified a bone fragment as hers all the way back in last April but didn’t bother to inform them for nine months. The police are sorry and promised to mend their ways. With so little remains to go off of, they may never know how or when Tracy died.

There’s going to be a TV show focusing on black missing persons, hosted by S. Epatha Merkerson, who used to be on Law and Order.