ET: Daren Bolton

I had another Executed Entry today: Daren Lee Bolton, who was put to death twenty years ago today. He had been convicted of the abduction and murder of a two-year-old girl and was awaiting trial for murdering a seven-year-old when he was executed.

Although Daren is a forgettable scumbag type, this case is a good example of how inter-agency cooperation can help solve cases. The state of Arizona lifted some fingerprints from the crime scene that they couldn’t identify, so they sent them to all the other states, and Illinois made a match. During a “how to use the fingerprint matching system” training session, no less. I’m sure the police were thrilled and never forgot that day — it reminded them just why they wanted to be cops in the first place.

Select It Sunday: Landon Lee DeRiggi

Chosen by Hennylee, this Select It Sunday case is Landon Lee DeRiggi, a 13-year-old who’s been missing for 43 years next month. A very sad case, simply because he was so young and he’s been missing for that long. He disappeared from Miami Shores, Florida.

Landon has an unusual physical characteristic: he’s got a deviated septum, which makes his nose look slanted, as if it had been broken some time in his life. The Mayo Clinic says a deviated septum can only be corrected by surgery. He’s also legally blind, something that was corrected by (presumably very thick) glasses, but he refused to wear them.

Authorities believed, at the time, that Landon had run away. They had reason to think this: he had a history of running away, he had behavioral problems including being hyperactive, and they found his stuff hidden behind a hedge as if he was going to pick it up later. Even his mom figured he’d run away.

But now the police believe he’s dead, and again, with good reason: it’s VERY unlikely that a runaway, especially one as young as Landon, could have vanished off the face of the earth like that for four and a half decades. And his home life doesn’t appear to have been troubled; it seems like he would have gotten in touch with his family if he could have.

The most recent press I could find on this case was a really good article from 2008. The original link is lost but you can read the entire text on Websleuths — it’s towards the middle of the page.