So I got this email today

[For the past several days I’ve been house- and dog-sitting for my mom. She’s coming back tomorrow sometime and I can go home. I will resume website work including this week’s featured MP upon my return. To be honest I’ve been glad of the break.]

Hi Meaghan,

I am casting a new investigative TV docuseries on missing African American mothers.

I am the Manager of Development at Machete Productions, a female-owned and operated production house based in Los Angeles. We are working on a new series that will tell the stories of missing women who are unjustly left in the shadows of the Missing White Woman Syndrome that plagues American media. We specifically want to look at cases of mothers, as told from the POV of their children whom they are survived by.

The stories and messages here are potent; we simultaneously aim to bring awareness to the disparity in media coverage and investigative thoroughness of black missing persons cases (versus white cases), we want to address the impact of losing a mother on an individual level and social level (entire communities are plagued by these cases that go unresolved), and, most importantly, we want to bring in a new investigative team to try to find justice and closure.

I found The Charley Project while searching for details on Doretha Williams who went missing in Nov 2007. Due to the lack of public information available on these cases, it is very difficult to get in touch with surviving children. Teaming up with The Charley Project would be a vital resource during this casting process if you have access to surviving family members. I am curious if there is a way to blast out my casting call to surviving offspring of missing moms cases in your database?

Happy to hop on a call to discuss further.

Thank you!

Pride Month: Niija Council

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 Niija Navea Council, a 20-year-old mother who disappeared from Philadelphia in September 2013. According to her social media, she is bisexual.

I only added Niija to the Charley Project this spring and the circumstances of her disappearance are very unclear to me. Her file on my site gives the date of disappearance as September 1; this was the date provided by all official sources I could see.

However, as I blogged in April, there is something more to the story than “last seen on September 1” and I really don’t know what the heck is going on with this one.

I feel her Charley Project casefile is incomplete at best and probably misleading but I never know how to treat social media as a source, particularly when its info contradicts that given by law enforcement.

As ever, I invite and appreciate input and further digging from you, my fine readers, without whom this blog would serve no purpose.