I just wanna tell you that I had enough

I’m giving myself two months (and eight days) off from Charley. See if that relieves my weariness some. The only significant break I ever had in eight years was I think four months off in the summer of 2008(?).

I plan to continue doing MPs of the week — this week’s is Ben Roseland — and may sneak in a few updates by and by, but they’ll be minor ones and I won’t announce them.

I also am planning on making some changes as far my case criteria, so I don’t keep getting so overloaded. Push the time limit back some probably, from six months to, say, a year. I’ll have plenty of time to figure this out.

I’m checkin’ out
I’m signin’ off
Don’t wanna be the loser and I’ve had enough

*flushes at the admission that she listens to N’Sync* Just that one song, I swear.

Sweeeet

Remember “John D108 Doe” that I mentioned yesterday? Well, he now has a real name! His cousin saw the article I’d linked to and recognized him. His real name is Maurice Williams (he’d told the foster care people that was his name, but they weren’t really sure if that was accurate). He’s 46 years old and disappeared in 2008 a few months after his mother, who’d cared for him all her life, died. He’s got two sisters and like 30 cousins.

I don’t understand why he wasn’t identified sooner, since it says his family filed a missing persons report for him. They’re going to reunite with him but he may not recognize them. Maurice was diagnosed with schizophrenia after he was found, but his family says he’s autistic. He’s almost mute now, but apparently he talked more when he was a child.

I’m very glad for a happy ending to this story.

A bit of general MP news

I finally finished writing up the resolved cases — well, almost all of them. They can go with the next update.

Two non-profits in Europe have started this thing where 404 Not Found pages become missing children posters. They’ll say “Page not found, neither is ____ _____” with a photo and vitals. I think that is an impressively clever idea and hope it catches on.

Bianca Jones‘s dad has been found guilty of killing her, in spite of the fact that her body hasn’t been found. Barely two years old at the time of her disappearance, she’s been missing less than a year. The authorities believe her father, D’Andre Lane, killed Bianca in anger after she had a potty accident. He says she was kidnapped during a carjacking.

Also in Detroit, they’ve put out an appeal to identify John D108 Doe, who was found wandering around the streets and has been living in a group home since 2008. He may actually have been homeless in Detroit as far back as 2004. John Doe isn’t violent, but he can’t take care of himself and needs constant supervision. He has schizophrenia and is nearly mute. From his picture I’d guess he was in his late thirties or his forties. His state guardian says if his family is identified but can’t or won’t take care of him, she’ll continue to do it.

Okay, not sure how to handle this one

A woman just wrote to me complaining because among other things, I said the police did not charge the suspect in her daughter’s disappearance because of lack of evidence. She says there was enough evidence “in my eyes” which means what I wrote is inaccurate.

It seems to me that in this area it doesn’t matter what she thinks, that when a report says “no charges for lack of evidence” it means the authorities thought they didn’t have enough evidence. I don’t know how to say that delicately though. I have a feeling that no matter what I say I’m going to make her mad at me. Right now I’m trying to work with her and come up with a mutually acceptable wording for the casefile.

Multiple *headdesk*

I keep getting emails from people asking me extremely elementary questions about Charley that would be answered for them if they just read the #%*^ing FAQ. I got another one today: “Exactly what is this Charley Project all about?”

Sometimes I just don’t reply to these emails at all. I can’t keep up with my real correspondence, let alone stuff like this. Sometimes (as in this instance) I politely direct the person to the FAQ. Most of the time I just answer the question.

I’ve thought about putting a little note next to my email address saying “please read the FAQ before you write me” but that probably wouldn’t work. Hiding my email address IN the FAQ wouldn’t work either. I suppose there’s no way to force viewers to read the thing, but I sure wish they would. It’s a waste of my time and theirs when they write me with questions that have already been answered on the site itself.

EDIT: Okay, I feel like a jackass now. The guy’s a reporter who had read my FAQ and just wanted a direct quote from me to put in an article. All the stuff I said above stands, though, when speaking generally.

Legions of the disappeared

My friend Sean Munger, who runs Charley’s Twitter feed, has published another blog entry — one in a series of four so far — profiling some of the Charley Project’s more puzzling and frustrating cases.

This time he wrote about:

Wojciech Fudali (22, missing from Rhode Island since 2008, I’ve blogged about him before);
Myoung “Mike” Noah (60, missing from California since 2007);
Asha Degree (9, missing from North Carolina since 2000);
Benjamin Cannon (20, missing from Nebraska since 1995);
Anna Christian Waters (5, missing from California since 1973); and
Ruth Baumgardner (22, missing from Ohio since 1937).

He’s got some intriguing info on Mike Noah that I don’t have on Charley. I wonder where he found it.

Idling again and feeling down

As all of you have noticed I’m sure, I haven’t done much either Charley-wise or blog-wise. I’ve got like 25 cases to resolve and I don’t want to do them. Ugh. I’m not feeling good, either physically or mentally. Every year, for a day or so, hay fever kicks me flat on my butt — and that’s today. The mental thing is, I think, partly on account of how I’ve been playing fast and loose with my crazymeds lately. That tends to put me in an Emil Dorian kind of mood. But this too shall pass.

And, in the latest in very old MP news. (And yes I will update today, though it may not be much.)

Missing: Montana woman hopes to close one of Rawlins’ darkest cases: this is about Carlene Brown and has a much better version of Charley’s photo of her. Carlene and a friend disappeared from Rawlins, Wyoming way back in 1974. (Michael would have been about six weeks old at the time.) The following month, Deborah Meyer and another girl vanished — separately — from the same town, which Wikipedia says has a current population of about 10,000. Two of the missing girls were found, but not Carlene or Deborah. They are presumed to be victims of a serial killer.

This is about a Jane Doe rather than an MP, but anyway, forensic testing has determined that the long-unidentified Princess Doe, who was murdered in New Jersey in 1982, was probably from Arizona originally but spent time in the Northeast for several months prior to her death.

There’s also this detailed article about Norine Boyd, who disappeared from Idaho in 1988. I hadn’t seen much press on her before. There’s a little bit there that I didn’t already have.

And there’s an article plus a video about Donella “Jeannie” Coultas, missing 33 years in December. Her family thinks her husband did it. He says they had an argument and she just left. As per usual.

Me on my birthday

More rampant narcissism from me: a photograph of me yesterday, on my very first day of being 27 years old. I got some pretty impressive birthday loot, and Dad took me out to dinner and to see Hotel Transylvania, which was hilarious. Also, while I was in town I took the opportunity to vote early, so that’s out of the way.

Coleman Gillespie

Another more ET: Coleman Gillespie, hanged in 1900 for the robbery and murder of 77-year-old Christina Edson. Christina’s farm had been burned down and her husband and three small sons (along with 20 other pioneers) murdered by Rogue River Indians in Oregon in 1856. Decades later, the government’s Indian Depredation Fund awarded her compensation in the form of a monthly pension. She got her very first check on September 18, 1899, and the next day Coleman Gillespie tortured and killed her for it and burned down her house. So she was, sort of, the last victim of that long-ago massacre.

I suppose you could say Coleman Gillespie was actually the last victim, since he wouldn’t have committed the robbery/homicide were it not for the massacre. But his execution was his own fault. Christina was a truly innocent victim.

Henry William Hagert

And another ET entry: Henry Hagert, executed in 1945 for the cold-blooded killings of two thirteen-year-old boys. He was only seventeen himself at the time. A panel of psychiatrists hired by the state declared Hagert was insane, but the state was so afraid of him that they impaneled a different, more compliant set of shrinks who said he was accountable for his actions.

Speaking of Executed Today, the Headsman (the guy who runs the site) sent me a cool $200 for my birthday! He also sent a funny card which had a picture of the Grim Reaper on it. It was actually a Halloween card but he crossed out “Halloween” and wrote “birthday.” I have spent some of his gift already on a lovely long blue tie-dyed skirt. His present only works out to be a little more than $2 for every entry I’ve written for his blog thus far, but I’m in it for the fun.