Today in previous years

I can’t sleep tonight so I wound up checking my blog entries for June 29 on previous years. I began the blog in late 2008. There’s nothing from this day in 2009, 2010 or 2011, but on June 29, 2012 I (tongue in cheek) threatened to commit suicide after I counted my backlog and realized it was 987 cases. (The total is a lot higher now.)

On this date in 2013 I directed readers to Sean Munger’s coverage of Scott Hilbert‘s disappearance, and also noted that I was in the process of purging casefiles.

A year ago today was a Make-a-List Monday and a short commentary on a presumed-dead MP who basically died of stupidity. In the latter entry, questions were raised in the comments section about whether one of the photos I posted for Zulma Pabon was really her. (It turned out it wasn’t. Not my fault; the Virginia State Police posted the wrong pic. I think they might have pulled the picture from a driver’s license database and it was a different person with the same name.) I also griped about a case where the Alabama MP database made it look like James Aaron Toole disappeared 19 YEARS after he actually went missing.

Carry on.

Going to Minneapolis tomorrow

Yeah, so I’m going to Minneapolis tomorrow with my mom and her boyfriend. Google Maps says it’s a nine-and-a-half hour drive, but I think it will probably take longer than that because Mom wants to avoid Chicago. We might stay the night somewhere along the way. I have volunteered to share the driving but I’m not sure Mom will allow that. It’s her car and I’m a terrible driver, frankly.

I will get to see my friend John and meet his new wife as well. I’m really looking forward to that and I’m glad John and his wife could carve a hole in their very busy schedules. I’m honestly not sure of the date I’ll be returning. I think it’s like the 8th or so.

I’ve been to Minneapolis before, ten years ago, but I was only there to meet a friend. I stayed one day and visited the Mall of America and met my friend and then flew home immediately afterwards. I have checked Atlas Obscura for some cool and unusual places to visit while I’m there. (They actually have a “vegan butcher’s shop.” Oh-kay… I think I’ll skip that.) The Bell Museum of Natural History looks good, as does the Ax-man Surplus Store and the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory. I’m open to suggestions.

For that matter, if anyone from the area reads this blog and wants to meet me while I’m there, I’m open to that too. Email me at administrator@charleyproject.org if you’re up for that.

I won’t be able to update Charley while I’m there, though I should be able to be on Facebook and this blog. So updates will resume when I return.

MP of the week: Jason Wilson

This week’s featured missing person is Jason Baker Wilson, a young man who’s been missing nine and a half years now. He disappeared mysteriously from Nashville, Tennessee, the city he’d lived in his whole life, at the age of 29. He was scheduled to appear in court the following month — as a witness or a defendant or what, I don’t know — but missed it. I don’t know if they issued a warrant for him at this time, but in any case the cops don’t believe Jason is running from the law. Rather, they think he was the victim of a homicide.

Jason has some pretty distinctive scars and tattoos. I haven’t been able to find any news on his case, which isn’t surprising, since missing black men never get much press attention. If he is still alive, he would be 38 today.

Cellphones on the roadside

I see a lot of cases where the MP’s cellular phone turns up on the roadside. Which makes sense: cell phones can be tracked, so a kidnapper or someone who’s walking away from their life would want to get rid of it. Throwing it out a car window not only takes it off your hands, but possibly breaks it as well, thereby destroying evidence. Anyway, a list of cases with that detail:

1. Michael Ralph Brougham
2. Danielle Tamara Brown
3. Jamie Michelle Fraley
4. Starr Maurie Hill
5. Sierra Mae Lamar
6. Trung Quang Ngo
7. Renee M. Pernice
8. Irene Alvarez Porras
9. Marsilene Smith

Select It Sunday: Jackie Boyer

Chosen by Heather, this week’s Select It Sunday case is Jackie Kay Boyer, who vanished from her bedroom in the night, two weeks after her twelfth birthday, in 1980. She disappeared from Windsor, a town in Sonoma County, California. It looks like an abduction to me; there were pry marks on her window, it says. But I have very little information on this case, even after digging through newspaper archives, which is really sad.

Jackie isn’t on the NCMEC site OR on NamUs OR on the California DOJ database, which makes me wonder if her case is even still open anymore — and, if it isn’t, why it was closed. The only photo is black and white and not of the greatest quality — although you do get a pretty good look at her teeth. She had a nice smile.

If she’s still alive, Jackie would be 48 today. But it seems like she would have called home if she could have.

Flashback Friday: Daniel Naylor

This week’s FF case is Daniel A. Naylor, a fourteen-year-old who’s been missing from Fremont, California since October 5, 1982. (October 5 is my birthday, incidentally, though I wasn’t born till 1985.) He had an argument with his parents and stormed out, and was never seen again, so they say, although apparently he came back to the house a month later to take some money and his stuff.

Sounds like a runaway, right? Well, that’s what the cops thought at first, but 30+ years is a VERY long time for a kid to stay under the radar.

The case got some renewed attention early this year when the police announced they now considered Daniel’s disappearance “suspicious” and think he could have met with foul play. Then it promptly dropped back out of the news again and I don’t know what new info the investigation has turned up, if anything.

Bertha Sieg found deceased

I got a notice from the NCMEC saying Bertha Sieg has been found dead. She’s been removed from NamUs as well, or at least, I can’t access her profile there. Bertha was a fifteen-year-old girl who disappeared from a city in northern Texas 22 years ago. One of those “few details are available” cases.

I checked and I can’t find anything about this online. I am hoping to get some information before I put a notice up in the resolved page.

R.I.P. Bertha.

Once again, I hate it when this happens

I got an email from Justin saying NamUs had some additional info on a case I had already posted. The MP had been arrested on a minor charge five years before he went missing, and NamUs had posted a document with his fingerprints and some info I didn’t have, such as his place of birth and middle name.

I also noted that the fingerprint sheet said the MP was 5’7 and 177 pounds. NamUs has him listed as somewhere between 6’0 and 6’3, and 200 to 210 pounds. And he was middle-aged, making it highly unlikely that he managed to grow at least five inches in the years between his arrest and his disappearance. (He might easily have gained thirty pounds, though.)

I have no idea how tall this guy is now. I’m inclined to think the info on his fingerprint sheet is more likely to be correct, because when they arrest you, don’t they stand you in front of a height chart to take your mug shot? But I don’t know, and as it stands, unless you find that fingerprint sheet, you’re going to be trying to match this guy to a bunch of much taller John Does.

I’m not blaming NamUs here — he was in the CDOJ database too and it seems the height was off there as well — I’m just expressing my frustration about having to work with heights and weights that might have been wild guesses.

MP of the week: Jennie Fisher

This week’s featured missing person is Jennie Lee Fisher, who disappeared from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida on January 14, 1991. She was 37 at the time and would be 63 today.

I don’t have much on her. The only details I have come from Jennie’s husband, who said she simply left him and their two kids one day, getting into a beat-up van with two men who looked like biker types. Jennie does have a somewhat troubled past, though, with a history of drug abuse and violent tendencies. She also has epilepsy and may have been suicidal at the time of her disappearance.

Looking at all that put together, it seems unlikely that Jennie is still alive after 25 years. I’d love to hear from someone who knew her, a friend or a family member. Shoot me an email at administrator@charleyproject.org or post something in the comments section below. Even if you don’t know anything about her actual disappearance, I’d like to learn about Jennie herself and what sort of person she was.

Make-a-List Monday: Motorcycle gangs

I recently did two Flashback Friday cases in a row where the MP associated with a motorcycle gang. So I thought I’d do a list of motorcycle gang related cases: either the person associated with a gang, or they had close relatives or good friends or a spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend who did, or gang members are thought to have caused the disappearance. Or some combination thereof.

This is not, of course, meant to imply that the MPs on this list deserved whatever their fate was.

All of these cases are pretty old. I don’t know if motorcycle gangs have gone out of style or mostly been stomped out of existence by the police and prosecutors or what. And curiously, save one, all those MPs are white.

1. Maria Florence Anjiras, 14, 1976
2. Sharon Rose Apgar, 33, 1999
3. Mary Edna Badaracco, 38, 1984
4. Paget Renee Barr, 29, 1986
5. Amy Billig, 17, 1974
6. Susan Marie DeQuina, 22, 1979
7. Gus Henry Hoffman Jr., 20, 1978
8. Cheryl Ann Moser Iacovone, 17, 1977
9. Ron Walter Knutson, 27, 1982
10. Diana Lynn Miller, 23, 1986
11. Tammy Dawn Risenhoover, 19, 1984
12. Joseph Thomas Rodziewicz Jr., 32, 1999
13. Sharon Rayanne Turner, 33, 1997
14. Virginia Alice Welch, 22, 1982
15. Rhonda Lynn Yocom, 19, 1985