News from the shop about Orville

So Computer Guru Jamie just called and they WILL have to replace the motherboard, as I had thought. Either that or upgrade the entire system, as the computer is now five years old.

I told Jamie to order the new motherboard. He says it should come in by the end of the week. It’ll be expensive but far less so than a new system, and definitely worth it to me.

I miss Orville. Since I was eight years old, one PC or other has been my lifeline. Of course my iPhone is a marvel of technology and can do many of the same things, and indeed some things Orville can’t do, but it’s not the same.

I appreciate everyone’s patience and support.

Annnnd Facebook hates me again (and other news)

I guess Facebook tweaked their algorithms once more, because despite 16,708 likes and 16,911 follows (as of this writing) on Charley’s Facebook page, the post reach is minimal.

I know Facebook wants me to pay them money to “boost” my page, but I refuse. They already have all my data, after all, and have probably sold it to Russia many times over.

Anyone who follows the Charley Project on Facebook, you should probably select “see first” or you might not see anything at all. Mind you, “see first” only guarantees the first five posts each day showing up on your feed, and I often post more than five articles a day, so…

In other news, in light of Michael’s recent CHF diagnosis, he had a procedure done where they looked at his heart with a tiny camera to see if he needed a stent. He did not! His arteries are clear! It’s excellent news.

The computer is, of course, still in the shop. Because it was last in the shop less than 30 days ago, this considered a “warranty repair” so the $50-just-to-look-at-it fee is waived. I just have to cover whatever it is they do to fix it.

I miss updating but I’m doing well.

Orville is in the shop once again

I took him in yesterday afternoon. Fortunately I’d already got some updates done for the day. I don’t know if it’s the same problem as last time, or what. May have to get that replacement part they mentioned. Such is life.

In the meantime of course nothing can get done on Charley. I hate having to put everything on hold like this. But there’s always books to read.

So this happened

The cousin of a certain MP contacted me today to say the photo I have of her on Charley, isn’t really her. I was not surprised; I’d previously heard from another source that there were grave doubts about the authenticity of the photo.

I asked the cousin if she had an actual photo of the MP, and she said she did, but didn’t feel comfortable giving it to me, I think because she wasn’t a close relative of the MP. She said MP’s brother would be the person to ask.

So, I asked, could she provide me the MP’s brother’s name?

And instantly she was like “Oh, never mind, I shouldn’t have brought it up, bye.”

I am going to have to remove the MP from Charley, as that photo was the only one I had and it’s actually of someone else. But meanwhile, the fake photo is on NamUs (that’s where I got it from), and god knows where else, and unless someone in the MP’s family steps up, it’s going to stay like that.

Jonelle Matthews’s remains have been found

Earlier this week, skeletal remains turned up at an oil and gas site in rural Weld County, Colorado. Today it was announced that they were identified as twelve-year-old Jonelle Renee Matthews, who disappeared from Greeley, Colorado on December 20, 1984.

The Greeley Tribune was anonymously sent photos of the remains, which they said they would not be showing to anyone, but which they did describe in their article. Per the description, “tattered red- and blue-colored clothing” was found with the body, and Jonelle was wearing a blue jacket and a red blouse when she was abducted, so it sounds like she’s been dead since very shortly after her disappearance. Perhaps that very same night.

Yes, I know Larry Murillo has been located

Just about everyone has been texting, messaging and emailing me about the sad recovery of Larry Ely Murillo. His body turned up behind the coolers in the supermarket he used to work in. The business has been closed for years and a contractor was engaged in removing the coolers and shelving units when they found Murillo’s partially mummified remains in the eighteen-inch gap between the cooler and the wall.

Murillo was apparently having a psychotic break at the time of his disappearance. The day before, he had been prescribed an antidepressant, but his mental condition just deteriorated and he was paranoid and hearing voices. He ran out into the snow, coatless and barefoot, and vanished. Until now.

Per MANY the news articles about the finding, apparently workers at the supermarket would sometimes hide on top of the coolers when they wanted to take a break without the boss knowing. My guess is that Murillo, in his paranoia, went dashing for the familiar hiding space, only to slip into the space behind the units. The noise from the compressors would have drowned out his cries for help. And so he died a slow, horrible death.

The case reminds me of the tragic death of Joshua Maddux, whose corpse was found inside a chimney in a remote cabin in Colorado in 2015, seven years after he vanished. There was (and is still) talk of murder, but the most plausible theory is that he was trying to break into the cabin via the chimney and got stuck.

I am, not, of course, a psychiatrist or psychopharmacologist, but I don’t think the antidepressant was responsible for the mental breakdown leading up to Murillo’s death. He had been showing mental illness symptoms before taking the drug, and that’s why it was prescribed for him. And he had only been prescribed the drug the day before his disappearance.

Deaths like Larry Murillo’s remind me of just how lucky I am. As most of you readers know, I’ve got bipolar disorder. I’ve had psychotic breaks before. And one time, a common prescription painkiller I’d innocently taken interacted with one of my psychiatric meds and threw a party in my brain, resulting in very bad psychotic symptoms. This was not technically psychosis but delirium; however at the time everyone thought it was psychosis.

Anyway, that time I was hallucinating, delusional, and kept trying to leave the house at night in early March wearing only a shirt and underpants. The hospital refused to admit me, and the police wouldn’t help either, so Michael called his parents and they came over and stayed up with me all night to make sure I didn’t leave the house or do anything to harm myself.

If it weren’t for Michael and his parents, I might have died that night. I was lucky. Sadly, Larry Murillo wasn’t.

MP of the week: Charles Dart

This week’s featured missing person is Charles Christopher Dart, a fifty-year-old disabled veteran who disappeared from Fayetteville, Arkansas on March 25, 2012. The car he was driving turned up inoperable and abandoned in Florida. Dart apparently rented another vehicle afterwards, and never returned it.

There’s been no indication of his or the rented car’s whereabouts since then, and Dart hasn’t used his VA benefits either.

The Facebook gods smile upon me again

So a week or so ago the Charley Project’s Facebook page inexplicably tanked and all the sudden no one was seeing the posts, no one was liking or sharing or commenting on any of my posts. Now, equally inexplicably, the page’s reach has returned to normal. Shrug. I am glad of it, anyway.

I have no idea how online algorithms and analytics and whatnot work. Sometimes I wish I did. I was reading about the guy behind the hugely popular Twitter account that rates dogs, and he makes a six-figure annual income just from that account, like from selling ad space and merch. Which isn’t to say he isn’t doing anything. He pays very close attention to the analytics and, out of hundreds of dog pictures submitted for consideration every day, he selects the one he thinks will get the most likes and shares, and then after posting a tweet he keeps an eye on it for like fifteen minutes and if it’s not getting an acceptable number of likes and shares, he deletes it and tries again with another dog, another tweet.

So anyway. The most popular story on Charley’s Facebook at present is this one about Shawn Hornbeck’s family. Sadly, Shawn’s stepfather has passed away from cancer at only 57. He had help raise Shawn from infancy and Shawn and his siblings thought of him as their father. Another really popular story is this one, about a Chinese man who was found alive and well, eighteen years after his abduction at the age of three.

The story I would recommend, which hasn’t gotten much attention since I posted it during the time Facebook was ignoring me: this one. The headline basically says it all: “A Girl, 15, Reported a Sexual Assault, Then the Detective Abused Her, Too.”

I’m sure he had other victims as well.

A samaritan utility

The other day I updated a case that had a detail I’d never seen before: the woman, Mary Joetta Roderick, was reported missing by her phone company.

It’s not all that uncommon for adults to not get reported missing for months, particularly if their children are taking the opportunity to cash their checks, which Mary’s son was. But usually in such cases, the police are alerted by friends, neighbors or extended family members. I’ve never heard of a utility company doing it.

She was last seen in December 1994. A few months later her phone company contacted the cops to say she’d always paid her bill promptly, but she had not paid it in months and the balance had grown to $3,500 (was her son calling 900-number sex lines?). I suppose the company probably tried to contact her themselves and couldn’t. Anyway, they thought something might have happened to her.

So the cops went to her house on a welfare check and found her son, and it started to unravel. Partially, anyway. They’ve never found her or charged anyone in her disappearance.

The cops haven’t given up, though. They conducted a search for her just this month.

Dunno what’s going on with the Charley Project’s Facebook page

Several days ago, literally overnight, my post reach on the Charley Project’s Facebook page went from hundreds or thousands of people per post to, like, five people per post. This on a page with over 16,000 likes, and after my FreeThink video.

No comments on the posts anymore either. I miss interacting with my Facebook viewers.

I’m not happy but I have no idea what to do about this. I mean, besides buy Facebook ads to encourage new people to come. I don’t want to do that. I already paid actual money for a graphics person to make new graphics for the Facebook page so it could finally catch up with last spring’s site redesign.

I’m hoping the Facebook algorithms are just messed up and my viewers haven’t all made a mass exodus. I barely even know what an algorithm is, never mind how they work.

In the process of poking around on Facebook, however, I did discover someone set up a Charley Project Facebook group that I was unaware of. The group is actually five years old by now and doesn’t seem to be very active (0 posts in the last month) but I thought I’d just say here that I did not give permission for it, never mind endorse it, and don’t even know the person who started it.