Older family abductions

Most family abduction cases profiled on the Charley Project tend to be of children who are aren’t yet of school age. The case I’ll be adding today, a sister and brother aged one and two respectively, is pretty typical. If the children are of school age they tend to be in the lower elementary grades. I suppose it’s easier to hide a younger child than an older one. Anyway, I thought I’d make a list of older family abduction cases, where the children were ten or over when they were taken.

Wendy Agapito, 14, and Berania Teresa Agapito, 11
Gisselle Sabel Anderson, 10
Maria Avalos Angeles, 11, and Lizbet Avalos Angeles, 10
Anilu Jimenez Bibiano, 16, and Ana Karen Jimenez Bibiano, 15
Angie Campos, 10
Natasha Alexandra Augusta Carter, 10
Samantha De La Torre, 11
Lachlan Yukihiro Kishida Duffley, 12
Tariq Ahmed Elsafi, 12
Joseph Zachary Ernst, 10
Samuel Flores-Ayala, 11
Stephanie Guerrero, 13, Antonia Guerrero, 12, and Sandra Lopez, 11
Ivan Karapandzic, 10
Omar Qutaiba Mahmoud, 12
Christopher Thomas Alaric Mauriello, 14
Jonnathan Nassar, 12
Nicolas Marcel Santin, 12
Sofia Vizcaino Maldonado, 10
Sheimy A. Zuniga, 10

Notice that almost all of these older kids are part of sibling groups that include younger children. I had started putting their siblings on too but got tired of it and stopped. Only Natasha Carter, Lachlan Duffley, Ivan Karapandzic, Christopher Mauriello and Nicolas Santin didn’t get abducted along with siblings under ten.

I also know I have a few teen runaways where it says the runaway may be with their non-custodial parent. I don’t understand what’s the difference between a runaway who’s with their non-custodial parent and a teenage victim of a family abduction. Seems like six of one and half-dozen of the other.

Executed Today in 1883: Emeline Meaker

Another blog post by me: Emeline Meaker, the first woman (of two) hanged in Vermont. I like to point to cases like this when people try to say child abuse is a sign of the depravity of modern life. Alice Meaker’s murder was every bit as horrific as any child abuse homicide you’d find splashed across the headlines today. Also note the complicity of the neighbors, another factor in many such modern murders.

Another Tuesday…

I was able to get all my Charley updates for today done and ready to be posted before today even started. I did the last bit at 11:57 p.m., March 25. Woo.

This week’s spotlighted missing person is Ian Burnett, a curly-haired Virginia college student who disappeared during a vacation to New York City over the Christmas holidays in 2011.

Ian’s case kind of reminds me of the disappearance of Matthew Wilson, who vanished from Rice University in Texas in 2007. I think he also disappeared while his school was on Christmas break. Both Matthew and Ian are/were very intelligent, motivated young men attending college on scholarships.

Matthew turned up alive after eight months; it turned out he’d been very unhappy and decided to unplug and try a new life elsewhere. I hope Ian did the same thing. But he’s been gone a lot longer than Matthew ever was.

Another list: cases where there’s no picture in NamUs, but I have one

NamUs has a lot of “no photo” casefiles. Charley has none — one of the few things I’m absolutely inflexible about is that a casefile MUST have a photo or at least a sketch of the MP. In a few cases of NamUs no-photo casefiles, I’ve been able to find a picture. I encountered another one of those just now, which inspired me to make a list of them.

Bobby Eugene Adams
Sharie Renae Booth
Mildred Cowley
Brian Jack Deese
Susan Elaine Earls
Martin Ebona III
Darryl Bruce Fawcett
Austin Dominique Fuda
Angela Fullmer
Elizabeth Dorothy Funchess
David P. George
Trenton Ronnie Greene
Daniel Joseph Hilkey
Hevin Dakota James Lee Jenkins
Spencer Nicholas Karas
Fern S. Klein
Elizabeth Kovalik
Pamela Fay Kuich
Mary T. Kushto
Patricia M. Laemmerhirt
Keith A. LaLima
Steven Eugene Lapitow
David Eugene Lewis
Cawana Lashay Logan
Juan Carlos Mattos
Cora Christmas McGuirk
Heather Lorraine Mehlhoff
Andrew Memmelaar
Scott Michael Morris
Brian Keith Morrison
Danielle Nadine Mouton
Thomas Charles Murray Jr.
Debbie Lynn Prosser
Isabel Maria Quair (NamUs gives her name as “Isable Marie Quair”)
Heath Riley Reams
William Carl Reed
Hector Noel Rivera
James D. Robinson
Clarden Rowan Jr.
Lisa Karen Scheer
August Richard Schwabenland
Kai Aslak Smaaland
Kyeimah A. Spann
Delores Jean Stanton
Alice Jewell Stewart
Alicia Amanda Stokes
Ben Ta (listed on NamUs as “Binh Ta” which makes me wonder if that’s his legal name and “Ben” was just the Anglicization thereof)
Mark Allen Thompson
Neriah-Jean E. Tong-Casillas
Consuelo R. Vannausdle
Floyd Hansford Walker
Marjorie Flewellin Wilson
Susan Zaharias (doesn’t have her own Charley casefile, but her photo’s on the files of her children Lisa and Christopher, whom she abducted in 1987)

An honorable mention: Benjamin McLaurin-Johnson. On the NamUs search results it says there’s no image, and if you click on the casefile it says there’s no image, but if you go to the “images” section of the casefile there is an AP there. I had no idea until someone told me. It’s an NCMEC-made AP too, although Benjamin is not and to my knowledge has never been on the NCMEC website. Shrug.

Yet another person executed today, chronicled by moi

This time it’s a federal case: George Barrett, who was hanged in 1936 for shooting an FBI agent. He was the first to die for that particular offense. The agent was shot in Ohio, but Barrett fired his gun from 22 feet over the Indiana state line.

Barrett’s death was society’s gain. Before he murdered Agent Klein he was a car thief and, in all probability, a three-time killer, though the jury waffled at every homicide trial.

I don’t know how I managed to miss this

I’ve written about Susan Powell‘s husband and in-laws so many times that they have their own category on this blog. And here’s one more: over a month ago Josh Powell’s brother, Michael, committed suicide by jumping off the seven-story apartment building in Minnesota where he lived. This less than a week after the anniversary of Josh, Charlie and Braden Powell’s deaths.

So, a reckoning:

1. Susan Powell is missing and presumed dead.
2. Her husband Josh committed murder-suicide last year.
3. Josh killed their two young sons, Charlie and Braden.
4. Josh’s father Steve Powell is in prison for child porn.
5. And now Michael’s jumped off the roof.

And then there were three. The surviving siblings are Alina, John and Jennifer.

Josh had listed his brother Michael and his sisters Alina and John as the beneficiaries for his, Charlie’s and Braden’s life insurance policies, which totaled at least $1.5 million and possibly as much as $2 million. Michael was to get 93% of the money, Alina 4% and John 3%. (Jennifer is estranged from the rest of the family and got promised nothing.) Michael had been bickering with Susan’s parents, Chuck and Judy Cox, over the insurance money. Basically, they argued that since Josh murdered his two children and killed himself, he shouldn’t have the privilege of deciding who gets the resulting insurance payouts. They were also fighting over who should have control of Susan’s estate, which includes $1 million in life insurance. The insurance company refused to pay anybody until a judge decided who should get the money. This legal battle was still ongoing at the time of Michael’s death.

Michael was 30 years old when he died. How much he was a victim of events he could not control, and how much he contributed to all the problems, I don’t know. But in the Epic Rap Battles of History’s Sarah Palin vs. Lady Gaga vid, Lady Gaga says, “You are the sum of everything I despise / With the most dysfunctional family since the Jackson F*cking Five.” That kind of sums up my feelings about Josh Powell and the rest of that lot.

I finally caved and joined Twitter

As you all know, or should know, the Charley Project has its own Twitter account, run by a historian named Sean who lives in, I think, Oregon. It tweets about one or two random Charley cases every day or so.

Well, a few days ago I finally created my own personal Twitter account, with the username meggy_head. (That’s one of Michael’s myriad of nicknames for me. All the good ones were already taken.) I’m not tweeting much about missing persons on there; in fact, so far I haven’t mentioned the Charley Project at all. It’s just my own random thoughts and links I find interesting and stuff like that. So far I have a whopping 12 followers.

So check it out if you want, and follow me if you feel like reading my occasional reflections and opinions on topics such as language, history, and current events.

The latest in missing persons news

Back in 1972, a brand-new ship called the Katmai left the docks in Mobile, Alabama with four people aboard: Oskar Joos, his wife, his eight-year-old son, and a deckhand named Clint Hollevoet. They were bound for Alaska but never made it; the ship and its four occupants vanished without a trace. Well, the Katmai has turned up anyway, in 8,900 feet of water (that’s like a mile and a half down, people) in the Gulf of Mexico. The research vessel that discovered the wreck took pictures, but the photos didn’t reveal any clues as to what caused the sinking. The article notes that, oddly enough, another ship called the Katmai sank off the Aleutian Chain in Alaska in 2008, taking seven crew members with it.

Rex Nisbett, whose wife Vicki vanished from Cedar Park, Texas more than 20 years ago, has been charged with her murder. MyFox Austin has video clips; KVUE has additional photos of Vicki; the Austin-American Statesman has some background info on Rex and the Nisbett’s marriage. Rex apparently has a record for drug charges and assault, but no felony convictions. Given the blood evidence they had, I’m surprised the arrest took so long.

Layron Carey, a 67-year-old Houston, Texas man who disappeared in 2009, was not listed on Charley. His body was found in August 2012 and has just been identified. He disappeared right after he was released from jail and the remains were found only a short distance away. The cops have chalked Mr. Carey’s death up to natural causes.

The Washington Examiner has done an article on William Walter Brooks, a teenager who vanished in 1992. The article has some new info about his case. Foul play is suspected in William’s disappearance.

It’s not me, it’s you

Got an email from LE saying one of the photographs on Charley was not, in fact, of the missing boy in question and would I please take it off ASAP. I went and checked my sources and discovered that same photo on the California Department of Justice database. Why they screwed up is anyone’s guess. I wrote back saying I would of course remove the inaccurate image but the cops ought to notify CDOJ as well.

More ET

Another Executed Today entry by me: George Parrott, a bandit and cop killer who was lynched in Rawlins, Wyoming a few days before his scheduled execution date in 1881.

He wouldn’t have been of much interest to me were it not for what happened AFTER his death: one of the doctors who performed the autopsy removed a piece of Parrott’s skin and had a cobbler make it into shoes. That same doctor was later elected governor of Wyoming and wore the shoes to his inaugural ball. They are now on display in a museum, along with Parrott’s skull. (The skullcap, btw, was given to the doctor’s assistant and had a long career as a doorstop and ashtray.)