So I was going through Charley’s runaway cases today, making another Make-a-List Monday for them (coming next week!) and purging cases at the same time, and I came across a certain missing girl. She was still on the NCMEC database but she’d been missing an awfully long time, so I decided to run her name through Google and see what came up. A lot of times when a runaway’s been missing for years and years like she was, they write an article about it.
I didn’t find anything about her disappearance, but lo! Someone with the right age, the right first, middle and last name (except for a spelling difference of one letter) and a striking resemblance to the runaway girl got arrested for credit card fraud just a few months ago! This was in a small town a five-hour drive from the major city where she disappeared.
I immediately called up the NCMEC. And they were like, “Um…thank you, but she’s, erm, not missing. She got recovered.”
And I was like, “So why is she still listed as missing on your website?”
So I told them about how you can find her listed on missingkids.com, and they had me read her case number off the poster, and promised to “pass it on” to the appropriate people.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, either.
[EDIT: Wow, that was quick. I just got a recovery notice for her.]
I’m not sure if this is realistic to actually do and I know it might be too time-consuming, but I wanted to make a suggestion for a future Make-a-List Monday.
I thought if you did a list of MP’s that are mentioned on other MP pages but don’t have their own page (usually due to lack of photos), perhaps some of us could locate a photo. Or someone who knew the MP might Google their name and provide one. Just a thought.
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/w/westberry_angela.html
Angela’s NCMEC poster was deleted a few months ago. I wonder if she’s been recovered? She disappeared under really strange circumstances.
She hasn’t been: https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/6796 Just because a case has been removed from the NCMEC is no indication they’ve been found. They take cases off for all sorts of reasons.
Meghan, I have a question: When you do these Make-A-List Mondays and stuff, are you going by memory or do you run a search function or something?
Sometimes it’s from memory but usually I need the search function. Often it’s a bit of both.