Select It Sunday: John and Shelly Markley

This Select It Sunday post was chosen by Sara back in December: John J. Markley Jr. and his wife Shelly Renee Markley. According to Sara, the couple disappeared on their youngest child’s eighth birthday. Whatever the case, they left five children essentially orphaned and it doesn’t appear they left on their own: they left all their stuff behind, and John missed his twin sister’s funeral.

It looks like whoever caused the Markleys to disappear meant to rob them. The day they vanished, John and Shelly were seen in John’s truck with another man at the bank and Shelly withdrew $1,000 from her account.

This December it will have been 20 years since John and Shelly vanished. This case seems solvable to me and I wouldn’t be surprised if the police have a suspect or suspects in mind.

Farmington Township, the place the couple disappeared from, is across the state from where I grew up.

Another funeral tomorrow …and YouTube enlightenment

I attended Michael’s grandfather’s funeral in May. Now tomorrow it will be Ellen’s. I’ve picked out a dress to wear that I think is appropriate for the occasion and the season. (I’m sure that one person would say it was tacky though.) I had to borrow some shoes from my mother. 29 years old and I don’t own a single pair of dress shoes. But on the other hand, why should I, when I hardly ever need any and when I do, I can always borrow some from Mom? For the most part I wear three pairs of shoes: the Brown Pair (loafers), the Black Pair (oxfords) and once in awhile the Pink Sneakers. Anyway, I’m mainly there to be supportive of Michael, since she was his friend. I suppose I’ll do what I did before, hug people and hand out tissues to the crying ones and say “I’m sorry for your loss” a lot.

I’ve made some more videos for this coming Saturday. I can’t leave it till the last minute. Believe it or not, those short little videos take a long time to make, often longer than writing a casefile would. First I have to find a person to do a video on (and I do have some criteria; sometimes finding someone suitable takes a bit of time) and then I have to put the images and pics together and all, and write the script, and then — this is what takes longest — I have to do the narration over and over and over and over again. There’s always something wrong: I stumble over a word, I’m talking too quickly or too slowly or too quietly, I accidentally blow into the microphone, etc. With Shanaz Zakia‘s video I wanted to say her car was found in an industrial area of town but I tried like fifteen times and couldn’t get “an industrial area” to sound right. I kept stumbling over the “an in” part. Finally I just removed that from the script altogether. Most of the time in my vids you’re actually listening to, like, Take 29.