Search for Yohanna Cyr still ongoing

The authorities are digging under a Montreal parking lot for the body of Yohanna Cyr, a Quebcois toddler who vanished in 1978.

Her case is a lot like Florida’s Katheryne Lugo: Mom left her boyfriend to babysit the kid, and when she came back the child was gone and the boyfriend gave various unconfirmed stories as to what happened. One account is that Yohanna died, accidentally, during the week that Mom was gone. Another report said she was in Washington State. Mom believes she was sold, possibly to someone in the United States, as the boyfriend is a U.S. citizen.

I had blogged once about Yohanna in 2011. Her mother, Lilianne, posted a comment, but it was in French so I had to rely on Google Translate to read it. From the rough translation I was given, the comment basically said she regretted having left Yohanna in her boyfriend’s care and she would never stop looking for her daughter. This video I found is also in French and I don’t know if it had anything new.

I don’t have a lot of hope that Yohanna is under that parking lot, but I’m glad the authorities are at least still looking. I think it’s disgusting that the boyfriend never faced justice for whatever he did to Johanna, and for torturing Lilianne with his various different stories. He isn’t even named in the article I linked to (or in another one I found from the same publication, which has another picture of Yohanna and a new AP); perhaps the laws in Canada won’t allow the press to name him because he wasn’t convicted of a crime.

Whatever happened to Yohanna, I hope she turns up. And if only I had the time and linguistic capabilities to help by putting her and other Canadian children on the Charley Project website. Oh well; a person can only do so much.

Significant activity in the Holly Bobo case lately

Over the past day or two there’s been loads of activity, including a second arrest, in Holly Bobo‘s 2011 abduction and presumed murder. The police are expecting to indict at least one additional person and possibly more. There’s been loads of news media about it but so far the best articles I’ve found are here and here. There’s also this article which sums up pretty nicely how things were a few days before they arrested Jason Autry.

Holly’s case reminds me very much of the Kiplyn Davis case, except that Holly’s abduction was witnessed and got a lot of media attention from the start, whereas Kiplyn’s case was ignored for like a decade before things got going.

The police haven’t said much Holly’s presumed murder in terms of things like a motive or a cause of death, but it would appear that at least two men were involved in her abduction and she may have been drugged to death, and at least one more person was involved in the body disposal. That’s all I can glean from the court documents quoted in the articles I’ve read.

I hope they find her. Her abduction was three years ago this month.

MP of the week: Rylan Untalasco

This week’s featured missing person is Rylan Alakai Untalasco, who disappeared from Las Vegas, Nevada on July 2, 2009. He was nine years old at the time and was abducted by his non-custodial mother, Rina Siojo Lee, and Carlos Fabian Lee, who was presumably Rina’s husband or boyfriend. Felony kidnapping warrants have been issued for both of the abductors. They are believed to be living in Bulacan, a province on the island of Luzon in the Philippines, not far from the national capital of Manila.

I didn’t find too much about Rylan on the internet, beyond this YouTube video that has some more pictures of him. I did find a Facebook page for someone of that name, but no telling whether it’s him or not. He will be fourteen years old in two weeks and, since he was of relatively mature age at the time of his abduction, may know that he’s listed as a missing child and that his father in America, Allen Untalasco, is looking for him. In fact, there’s a decent chance that Rylan will come across this blog entry.

Rylan, family abduction is a crime and child abuse. I hope someday you come home.

Annie still needs donations to her dental fund

(I promised I would post this last week Annie, and I didn’t. I’m sorry. I thought I had set it to run automatically when I went to visit my dad’s for the weekend. I was mistaken.)

I have written before about my friend of a decade, Annie Keller, founder of For the Lost. She’s an advocate for all missing people, especially the victims of family abduction, who are kind of her specialty. She’s a very kind, selfless person.

Unfortunately she doesn’t have much money and she needs some serious dental work done. $10,000 worth to be precise. And she’s got no dental insurance. She’s had a GoFundMe page up for a year or so now and has raised about 45% of the necessary funds, but time is running out fast: she needs to have her dental procedure done in a month or it will be too late.

Annie’s calculated that if all of her Facebook friends donate just $10 each she would have the money in no time.

I urge you to chip in a few bucks here. Annie is a deserving cause.

A public service announcement

Last week I added four Arizona MPs to the Charley Project who were listed on this site.

On Saturday I got an email from a friend who works with the Phoenix PD. Referring to the aforementioned cases, here is what he said:

Just FYI, I don’t think these are valid cases and the whole website appears to be a bogus one, that steals elements of NamUs and the Maricopa County ME’s website in an attempt to make it look authentic.

I did a little research and did not find these people listed in NCIC, and they do not appear to be real people.

Why this person felt the need to create a whole website about this…..I have no idea……but I figured I’d let you know.

And I thought I’d let the rest of you know. I have since removed the apparently fake cases.

I find the whole thing bizarre. Why would someone go to the trouble to create a fake missing persons site? They went to some effort to make it look authentic; I admit I was totally taken in by it and I’m pretty embarrassed. Did the person do it just as some kind of joke? If so it was Seriously Not Funny.

Make-A-List Monday: Popular 2012 Girls’ Names

Last week I did a list of Charley Project MPs who had a first name on the Social Security Administration’s top ten list of most popular names given to boys born in the U.S. in 2012. This week I’m doing the girls.

Sophia
Sophia Anabell Larranaga
Sophia Felecita Moreno
Sophia Zaman Tareq

Emma
Emma Lee Carroll
Emma Espinoza
Emma Lee Staten
Emma Frances Tresp
Emma Lorene Vaughn

Isabella
Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins
Isabella M. Pastrana
Isabella Saileanu

Olivia
Nobody

Ava
Nobody

Emily
Emily Bracamontes
Emily Maria Izykowski
Emily Juan
Emily Alina Koyama
Emily Melchor
Emily Perry
Emily Valentina Rojo-Cruz
Emily Michelle Sawyer
Emily Louise Sellers

Abigail
Abigail Estrada

Mia
Mia Elizabeth Flores
Mia Yokoyama McDonald

Madison
Nobody

Elizabeth
Elizabeth Mary Allen
Elizabeth A. Balzer
Elizabeth Barbara Bartholomew
Elizabeth Joy Birgen
Elizabeth Theresa Bishop
Elizabeth Turvey Brown
Elizabeth Alice Brussow
Elizabeth Bump
Elizabeth Mary Byron
Elizabeth W. Calvert
Elizabeth Ann Campbell
Elizabeth Noleeka J. Crawford
Elizabeth A. Eisel
Elizabeth Nicole Forshee-Syperda
Elizabeth Franks
Elizabeth Garcia
Elizabeth Ann Gill
Elizabeth Walston Godwin
Elizabeth Doris Johnson
Elizabeth Ann Kenyon
Elizabeth Kovalik
Elizabeth Ann Kutz
Elizabeth Ann Lande
Elizabeth Ann Maggard
Elizabeth Maryrose Mathews
Elizabeth Anne Millares
Elizabeth Ann Miller
Elizabeth Mondelli
Elizabeth Ann Pfeifer
Elizabeth Hall Pratt
Elizabeth Iris Prescott
Elizabeth Hicks Rogers
Elizabeth Sykora
Elizabeth Ann Thomas
Elizabeth Veloz

Select It Sunday: David Mekvold

Selected by B.: David M. Mekvold, age 42, missing from Portland, Oregon since two days after Christmas in 2010. I added him a little over a year ago.

Mr. Mekvold was back to work after the holidays and was last heard from when he called his wife at 1:30 p.m. She said nothing seemed to be amiss at the time. After that he vanished. Some of his belongings, including his lunch, were missing from his cubicle; the lunch turned up in the garbage bin nearby. At 8:45 that night, his pickup truck was found parked on a gravel road in a remote wooded area in Skamania County, Washington. Skamania County is on the Oregon/Washington border and not too far from Portland. There was a search of the area, hampered by foul weather, and it turned up precisely nothing in the way of clues.

Beyond that I have nothing. Mekvold seems to have been an ordinary middle-aged man working an ordinary middle-aged job in insurance, until he dropped out of sight. There’s no indication of suicide and no indication of foul play…except for nearly three and a half years of total silence.

For what reason did Mekvold suddenly abandon his workstation, ditch his lunch and walk out into the unknown? Why did he park his truck out in the middle of nowhere? DID he park his truck there, or did someone else? It’s one of those cases where just enough is known to frustrate internet detectives, but not enough is known to provide any really solid theories.

There hasn’t been any press about Mr. Mekvold that I can find since 2011, when an anniversary article ran about his disappearance. The article doesn’t say anything new. If any family, friends, coworkers or anyone else who knew him stumbles across his entry, I’d love to hear their input in the comments section.

Stuff Charley should do

A year ago this month I put up the very controversial post of Stuff NamUs Should Do. Now, dear readers, tell me in the comments section…if you could have anything, what would you like the Charley Project to do, or be able to do? I can’t promise I’ll fulfill any of your wishes, mind.

Flashback Friday: Wayne Hickman

This week’s Flashback Friday is Wayne W. Hickman, a 27-year-old who vanished from Missoula, Montana on October 1, 1985, only four days before this writer was born. I don’t have much on him: he was going to hitchhike from Missoula to Superior, a tiny town with a current population of 830 souls, to look at a pickup truck he was thinking of buying. The distance was around 55 miles. It’s unclear whether Hickman ever arrived in Superior, but he apparently never made it back home to Missoula.

Although actual details of his disappearance are lacking, there is a pretty thorough description of his clothing, down to brands and sizes. Hickman also had one unusual feature: he was apparently “pigeon-toed.” That is, his feet turned inward. There are several types of deformity that cause that; I don’t know which kind he had. But that kind of thing could be crucial in identifying Hickman’s remains, if he is in fact dead. NamUs says there are footprints available on record.

If he’s still alive, Wayne Hickman would be 55 years old today. From the meager details in the circumstances of his disappearance, I can’t venture a guess as to whether he met with foul play, had some kind of mishap on the road, or simply walked out of his life.

Did Wayne leave behind a wife? Parents? Children? If anybody who finds this entry knew him or any more details about his disappearance, I’d love if they post in the comments section below.

Out of curiosity

When they find unidentified remains, would it be possible to tell whether the said individual was HIV-positive or had active AIDS? Just wondering.

I’ve thought about doing a Make-a-List Monday of people with HIV or AIDS, but I’m afraid it would offend people.