The strange death of Cerilla Doyle

I discovered that skeletal remains found in Mason City, Iowa in May of this year have been identified as Cerilla Ann Doyle, an ex-cop from Bentonville, Arkansas who disappeared from there in the autumn of 2008.

Investigators note there is “no indication of foul play.” Mason City is over 500 miles due north from Bentonville.

I’ve gotta wonder what happened and I don’t have much. Cerilla’s husband had died several months before her disappearance, after a long illness, and there were reports that Cerilla was suicidal, but her family denied this. Why did she leave Bentonville and leave all her things behind? What brought her to Mason City? Did she know anyone there? Did she deliberately go there to die?

Unless her family decides to disclose further information, I suppose we’ll never know. RIP Cerilla.

I’ve never done this before

So the other day I added the case of Jaret Jerome Senegal, a 30-year-old man who disappeared from Crowley, Louisiana on November 7, 2000.

He’s not listed anywhere else except the Louisiana Repository for Unidentified & Missing People. That database did not have a photo of him. This recent article on Louisiana missing persons mentions Senegal, but it didn’t have a photo either.

I did all my usual digging and the only remotely usable photo I could find was one of Jaret at the age of about six years old, part of a group photo published in a 1976 newspaper. There was one other photo, also published in a newspaper, of Jaret with his boxing club as a teenager, but it was of such poor quality that all you could see was a Jaret-shaped black silhouette. Clearly, not usable.

I felt pretty unhappy about having to use the 1976 photo, but then again the only available photos of Ivon and Inisha Fowler are of them as infants, so there you go.

I’m hoping that now that Jaret is on Charley, that might kick-start something and someone can find a more recent photo of him.

MP of the week: Leah McKinney

This week’s featured missing person (was too busy to work on it yesterday, sorry) is Leah Dale McKinney, a 21-year-old woman who disappeared from Somerset, Kentucky on January 28 or 29, 2002. That least, she was last heard from then, but she was last seen on January 9.

I don’t know much about the circumstances of her disappearance, unfortunately, but God knows those cases with minimal details need as much attention as those cases that have more.

National Hispanic Heritage Month: Mauricio Ortiz

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month I’m featuring a Hispanic missing person every day from September 15 to October 15. Today’s case is Mauricio Alfonso Ortiz, a 47-year-old who was last seen at his workplace, a bar in Corpus Christi, Texas on October 7, 2006.

I’m a bit confused by what happened there: although Ortiz is said to be a reliable worker, when he dropped out of sight it appears no one raised the alarm for a solid MONTH. His family apparently had no idea he was missing until November 8, when Ortiz’s landlord got in touch and asked them to clean out his apartment.

Perhaps Ortiz had a vacation coming, or perhaps he hadn’t worked at the bar for very long, and that’s why his boss and co-workers were unconcerned when he suddenly stopped showing up.

His car was found across the street from the courthouse on November 18, with “unspecified indications of foul play” inside it. Strangely, the car had been only parked there for about two weeks, leaving a time gap of about three weeks when it was unaccounted for; where was the car during that time period?

Lots of pieces missing here. Does anyone know whether Ortiz made it back to his apartment on October 15 after his shift? What did his apartment look like, were those “indications of foul play” present there as well?