Flashback Friday: Fred Miller

This week’s Flashback Friday case is Fred Donald Miller, who disappeared from Hagerman, Idaho on August 17, 1968. He was driving at the time, having picked up two male hitchhikers who have been identified. Both Fred and the car were never seen again.

The police don’t believe Fred disappeared voluntarily. Whatever happened to him in 1968, though, he’s definitely dead now: he was born in 1902 and if he was still alive, he’d be 114 years old. I think at least some of his six children are still alive, however.

If Fred was the victim of foul play, whoever did it may also be deceased by now. It’s been almost 50 years, after all. This can, however, actually be a good thing for the investigation. If the killer or killers are dead, anyone else who has knowledge of what happened to Fred and has said nothing (out of fear, out of love, whatever) can come forward with it now, knowing there’s nothing to lose by doing so.

Erica Parsons’s body found

A Charley Project Irregular who is also a Facebook friend messaged me within fifteen minutes of the news breaking: they’ve found the body of Erica Parsons. As of this writing, very little information has been made public, but we know that Sandy Parsons, Erica’s sorry excuse for an adoptive father, lead the police to her remains. Erica’s parents never reported her missing; her older brother did, twenty months after the last time he saw her.

I’ve blogged about Erica’s case several times, the last time in 2014. You can read the details of her dreadful home life and “morally bankrupt” parents on her Charley Project casefile. She was tiny: at thirteen years old she was less than four and a half feet tall. There’s reason to believe her growth was stunted due to malnutrition.

Both Sandy Parsons and Casey Parsons, Erica’s mother, are in prison right now for fraud, because they collected benefits from the government for Erica after she was no longer in their care.

When the cops identify whoever is responsible for Erica’s disappearance and death — and I think we all have a pretty good idea who did this — I can only hope they get the book thrown at them.