January 2015 – The Charley Project Blog

Flashback Friday: Michelle Doherty Thomas

January 30, 2015January 30, 2015Meaghan9 Comments

Michelle Thomas‘s case barely qualifies as a Flashback Friday: FF cases are meant to be older than me, and it appears Michelle disappeared just a few hours before I was born: October 5, 1985, from Santa Fe, Texas. Her case is one of the distinct minority of Charley Project cases that have NEVER been updated in the over ten years I’ve run this site.

I don’t have much on Michelle, other than the interesting facts that she was a police informant, and that she could have been the victim of a serial killer. In her picture she looks very eighties, with the feathered hair and everything. Frozen in time.

Siiiigh…

January 27, 2015November 9, 2015Meaghan4 Comments

One of the Charley Project Irregulars (people who frequently send me information and links to articles about MPs; I took the term from Sherlock Holmes) sent me this article about one Shonna Wesley, who’s been missing since 1981.

I wish the article had more information. Yes, it has a photograph — the only existing photograph, it says — of Shonna. They interviewed her daughter, who provided a few details about her disappearance. But:

Exactly when did Shonna disappear? Do they even know? I’m thinking it was sometime in late May, but I’m not 100% sure on that.
Can we have a physical description of Shonna?
What about her age at least? Surely they know that?
Where is a contact number to reach law enforcement in case you know anything?

That kind of stuff — or lack of stuff, really — drives me nuts.

MP of the week: Elvia Morales

January 27, 2015March 28, 2016Meaghan5 Comments

This week’s featured missing person, Elvia Morales, was abducted more or less forcibly from her home by a family acquaintance when she was only fourteen years old. Apparently they had been having an “inappropriate” relationship, this in spite of the fact that he was twenty-plus years older than her, married and a father. A day later, Elvia called home to say she was okay and to not look for her. She hasn’t been heard from since.

It seems likely that Elvia is alive if not well, and that she and her abductor, Juan Martinez Martinez, may be in California or more likely in Mexico. It’s very sad to have her ripped from her family and her childhood cut short like that. My guess is she’s tied down with a couple of kids now.

Elvia will turn 20 years old in just a few days. She’s been missing five and a half years.

I get to do public speaking now

January 26, 2015March 25, 2015Meaghan7 Comments

My dad’s a member of the local Lions Club and just now he called me up and said he had volunteered my services as a speaker for sometime in March, assuming I was okay with the idea. I said I was. I’ve never spoken in public about Charley, but I did a presentation about gemstones before a college geology class (twice), and I’m certainly not shy. I’ll have plenty of time to prepare, six weeks or two months, and a lot of the audience will be people I know. It should go all right.

Lack of technology will be an issue. I used a PowerPoint presentation on a projector for the gemstones presentation; the Lions Club’s clubhouse doesn’t have one. I may just have to rely on dead trees. I will, of course, pass out business cards.

A pretty good NamUs article

January 26, 2015August 1, 2017Meaghan2 Comments

I posted it on Charley’s Facebook page but thought I’d also share it here: an article from the Denton Record-Chronicle, explaining how NamUs works and what it’s capable of doing.

I wonder how many Charley Project cases list NamUs as a source. I’m sure it’s thousands, perhaps the majority of cases now. Certainly I have enough NamUs cases lying around that I have yet to put up. They’re way ahead of me.

Hmmmm…

January 26, 2015January 26, 2015MeaghanLeave a comment

I wonder if this song is describing the impact of what is now known as parental abduction. It appears to be.

Make-a-List Monday: Presumed accidental drownings

January 26, 2015January 26, 2015Meaghan24 Comments

This is a list of people who are presumed to have been victims of an accidental (that is, non-homicidal, non-suicidal) drowning.

Jennifer Kesse missing nine years

January 25, 2015Meaghan7 Comments

Ilya pointed out that today is the 9th anniversary of Jennifer Kesse‘s apparent abduction from her apartment in Orlando. This case seems so solvable and I know the cops are still investigating leads, and she got more publicity than most — even her own Wikipedia entry — yet there’s been no trace of Jennifer since her disappearance and no suspects have been named in her case.

She was a bright young thing, with a shining future ahead of her, before something dark came into her life and now she’s gone.

Executed Today for arson

January 25, 2015March 30, 2015MeaghanLeave a comment

Per me, John Price Posey was executed on this day in 1788. He was a bit of a n’er-do-well, committing the crimes of theft, assault, jail escape and arson before it all caught up with him when he was 35 and he was hanged. None of this is terribly unusual, but Posey’s background is. Click on the link if you want to hear more about it.

Select It Sunday: Jennifer Wyant

January 25, 2015Meaghan7 Comments

This week’s Select It Sunday was selected by Cate: Jennifer Wyant, age 21, missing 34 1/2 years from her apartment in Nashville, Tennessee.

And that’s all, folks.

No, seriously, that’s all. I have absolutely no more information than that and it’s infuriating.