Sean Munger profiles Donna Michalenko

Sean Munger has written about Donna Michalenko on his blog. The case is 45 years old and Donna would be an old woman if she is still alive. Which she could be, I suppose. Although “foul play is suspected in her case” I don’t know why that is, whether there’s concrete evidence like blood or something, or just four and a half decades of silence.

Donna disappeared from Kief, ND, which might well be the smallest town listed on the Charley Project. The population was 97 the year she disappeared, which seems like New York friggin’ City to what it is now: 13. THIRTEEN.

Why does this always happen to me?

Remember how I had to send the computer to the shop back in January? The power port had gotten loose or something, meaning that as time went on it got harder and harder to charge the computer. You’d plug it in and nothing would happen, and all the jiggling and ramming the plug and stuff getting it to charge would just make the port get looser until finally it just came off, and even scotch-taping the plug in place would do no good.

Well, a whopping six months later, it’s broken again. It’s not too bad yet, but I know it will be.

Way to go, ASUS. Of course, your repair just lasted until JUST after the warranty expired. I’ll take it to a local place this time. I’ll probably get it back faster, but I will have to pay for it myself.

Or maybe I’ll just ask Michael or one of his geek friends to crack the case open and have at it with a soldering gun.

Flashback Friday: William Christopher Delk

This week’s Flashback Friday is William Christopher Delk, a young man who disappeared from the Bronx in New York City. He had recently turned eighteen and went by the nickname Chris. He had plans for the future and had enrolled in a Job Corps program.

The last time Chris’s mom heard from him was on July 23, 1982, when he called her and asked her to come pick him up from the South Bronx Job Corps Center. Chris’s mother lived in the town of Huntington on Long Island. By the time she arrived at the Job Corps office, he was gone and he’d left his street clothes behind. No one saw him leave.

July 23 is given as the date of Chris’s disappearance, but he may have actually vanished some time after that. Chris’s mom was apparently unconcerned by his absence at first. He was eighteen, after all. She went on vacation out of state and called home several times while she was gone, hoping to reach her son. No one ever picked up the phone, but once the line was busy and she assumed Chris had returned home. When Chris’s mother returned from her vacation she found evidence that he’d done just that: the couch looked like it had been slept on, and Chris’s wallet and favorite hat, which he’d had when he vanished, had reappeared in the house. But there was no sign of him. His mother never saw him again.

There were no confirmed sightings of Chris Delk after July 23, and his Social Security number hasn’t been used in the three decades from that day to this. His NamUs profile says the police have dental records but no DNA sample, which makes me wonder if he has any family still alive and looking for him. The police believe he’s deceased.

What happened to William Christopher Delk in the summer of 1982?