This week’s Flashback Friday is Roland Jack Spencer III, a severely disabled three-year-old who vanished without a trace from the town of Wapato in central Washington on May 25, 1984. He is presumed to have been abducted, but I can find VERY little about his disappearance, even though it must have rocked that small town to the core.
Poking around online, I discovered his death certificate, some obituaries of possible relatives, and nothing more.
Roland’s mother, Celestine Spencer or Yallup, has gotten a bit more press. She was found dead in November 1982, when she was twenty-one and her little son was barely two years old. Celestine’s death was in all probability accidental, but many other women disappeared from the Yakama Indian Reservation in the late eighties and early nineties and were subsequently found murdered.
As for Roland, I have to say the poor little tyke didn’t have a snowball’s chance if a stranger abducted him. He had severe medical and developmental problems, including a seizure disorder that, untreated, would have caused him to slip into a coma. The only question is who made him disappear, and why.
The Charley Project Blog 