Pride Month: Mark Shumaker

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is James Mark Shumaker, who usually went by Mark. He disappeared from Tampa, Florida on October 20, 1995, at the age of 32.

There’s some suggestion that his disappearance is connected to the murder-without-a-body case of Jason Galehouse and the disappearances of other gay men in the Tampa area, but I kind of doubt it. That said, after 23 years, it’s likely Shumaker did meet with foul play.

Pride Month: Luther Boyt

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is Luther O. Boyt, a 59-year-old gay man who disappeared from Kansas City, Missouri on November 26, 2000.

He was in the process of moving at the time; he had sold his house and, the day before his disappearance, had moved almost all his furniture to his new apartment.

He disappeared sometime after 2:30 a.m., after having a couple of drinks at a local bar. His car turned up locked and abandoned at a park.

All is well, doggo-wise

My adoption of Kinsey into our home has gone swimmingly. She always wants to be with me and here she is in my office settling down for the night:

She has a dog bed but doesn’t always want to use it. The cats are weirded out by her but very curious about her.

When they’re in the same room together, Carmen just sits and stares intensely at her, and will sometimes raise her back when Kinsey gets too close for comfort, but there has been any aggression or even hissing. So far, Kinsey has really noticed her exactly one time. She was like, “Oh, what’s that? *sniff sniff sniff* Not interesting. I’ll back to following the hooman.”

Aria on the other hand keeps creeping up to where Kinsey is, then retreating and hiding, then creeping up again, closer each time. Tonight as Michael and I watched TV in the living room and Kinsey lay curled up on the floor, Aria got within like four inches of her before losing her nerve and fleeing.

I don’t know if they’ll ever be friends but right now I’m delighted that they just tolerate each other. Kinsey has no prior experience with house cats at all, only ferals.

We gave her a bath tonight in the yard, Michael and I, using a hose, a kiddie paddling pool, a bucket, Dawn Dish Soap and a judicious application of dog treats. She’ll get a proper bath done by professionals at the vet’s office a week from tomorrow, but in the meantime she at least smells better.

She’s shedding like mad, she’s half Labrador Retriever and half Husky and has the Husky undercoat. She’s shedding 2.5 dogs a day and no matter how much I brush it’s never enough. She leaves a trail of black fur wherever she goes. Ima have to vacuum. Michael’s parents will be thrilled when they find out about her (not).

As for today’s updates, the Rosselys Felix Hernandez case is particularly sordid and upsetting. As her fifteen-year-old daughter was a missing child for two months and presumed to be in the company of a suspected sexual predator, her name and photos were publicized and are plastered all over the internet. But I decided not to name her in the casefile, since she is a rape victim and a minor. Poor kid.

Perhaps with all these charges against Mr. York he might be persuaded to talk about his wife’s case with more candor than he has in the past. He’s probably going to prison for a very long time in any case. Better to go as a wife-killer than as a child rapist, I would think. Or maybe York told Rosselys’s daughter some things while they were together this spring.

Pride Month: Andrew Compton

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is Andrew Blaine Compton, an 18-year-old gay man who disappeared from Louisville, Kentucky on October 28, 2010. He was a student at Sullivan University.

As with several other cases featured this month, Andrew’s is a murder-without-a-body case. He met one Gregory O’Bryan on a dating website and they met in person for the first time on the day Andrew disappeared.

The truth about what happened will only ever be known to O’Bryan, since Andrew’s body was never found and is presumed to be in a landfill. He said Andrew “died during sex” and, rather than call for help, O’Bryan kept his corpse around for a few days doing awful things to it before he disposed of it.

He’s currently serving twenty-five years and will be eligible for parole after half that time. It doesn’t seem to be enough.

Pride Month: Evon Young

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is Evon Young, a transgender man who disappeared from Milwaukee, Wisconsin on New Years’ Day, 2013, at the age of 22. Born female, Evon changed his birth name of Ebony to Evon when he transitioned.

Evon was the victim of a brutal homicide; they never found the body, hence his listing on Charley. Transgender people, particularly transgender people of color, are at high risk to become victims of violent crime, but it turns out none of Evon’s five killers were aware of his status. It was a gang-related killing.

His body is thought to be in a landfill, probably unrecoverable at this point.

So I am a dog mom now

These past several days I’ve had a guest, and we’ve been doing quite delightful but exhausting labor. He left this morning and I went to do what I had been postponing until his departure: adopt my mom’s dog.

I had made the decision to adopt her about two weeks ago, but had in the intervening time been getting materials etc. together, and it would have been inconvenient if she’d been here at the same time as my guest. But now she is here. Meet Kinsey:

Before I let her in the house I gave her a thorough brushing, and she will need more of that as she’s shedding. Michael and I are going to give her a bath outside tomorrow; she smells pretty bad. I just got back from taking her for her first walk in her new home. She sniffed many things, went #1 and drank from a puddle.

The cats are very suspicious about the huge furry creature currently occupying their mom’s office, but Kinsey has paid almost no attention to them in the limited opportunities she’s had. I’ve got the office door shut right now, as Kinsey is out of her crate and chilling on the ground behind me.

After she gets her bath and doesn’t smell so much we’ll see about letting her explore the rest of the house. The plan is, until she and the cats are used to each other, to leave the office door open but crate her whenever the humans are out of the house.

I’m hoping one of these times I might return home to find the cats and Kinsey in my office sniffing each other through the bars. I think they will grow to tolerate each other pretty soon and who knows, maybe they will be friends.

Kinsey’s flea treatment has worked and the hair is already growing back on her bald spot. I think she’s got some mats on her haunches as she doesn’t like me brushing there, but that’s what really needs brushing the most. Michael will help me. He isn’t terribly enthusiastic about getting a dog, being more of a cat person, but he is committed to letting her live out her senior years here. I wouldn’t have taken her otherwise.

MP of the week: Jessie Barnes

This week’s featured missing person is Jessie Barnes, a 28-year-old mentally disabled woman who disappeared from West Point, Mississippi, a small town in the northeast part of the state, on July 7, 2000.

Although she had mental challenges, Jessie was relatively high-functioning and would sometimes “drop out of sight for a few days.” Her family got concerned and reported her missing after ten days because her grandma had died and she didn’t show up for the funeral.

I think if she is alive (and this seems unlikely) she may be on the streets somewhere. She has a daughter, and if still alive she would be 46 years old today.

Pride Month: Hartanto Santoso

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is Hartanto Teguh Santoso, a bisexual man who disappeared from Kirkland, Washington on February 19, 2001, at the age of 31.

Santoso was an immigrant from Indonesia who worked as a nursing assistant to help support a large family back in his native country. What’s happened to him isn’t a mystery: he was abducted from his apartment and murdered by his former friend, Kim Heichel Mason. Mason is serving life without parole for the murder.

Pride Month: Charles Toliver

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is Charles Lee Toliver, a gay man who disappeared from Oak Ridge, Tennessee on February 4, 2000. He was 30 years old.

Toliver’s disappearance is suspicious and his former roommate seems pretty sketchy, but it’s really not clear what happened.

Pride Month: Doris Carter

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is Doris Wade Carter, who disappeared from Plant City, Florida on December 16, 2011. She went missing with her lesbian partner, Kelly Moriarty, although the two women were reported missing separately.

Two days after Christmas, Moriarty’s leg washed ashore in St. Petersburg, Florida. It wasn’t identified until March, the rest of her wasn’t found, and obviously the authorities couldn’t determine a cause or manner of death based on just a single leg. Interestingly, however, they think the leg had only been in the water for a couple of days, and by then Kelly and Doris had been missing for a week and a half.

Her death, and Doris’s disappearance, remain a mystery — murder, accident, suicide? Some combination thereof? Unfortunately for the two women’s families, we may never get answers.