Sorry for the recent silence

Yeah, I haven’t updated in a bit and I’m sorry. The last week has been super busy, mainly with wedding stuff. Michael and I are getting married Saturday.

I picked up my dress at the alterations place yesterday and it fits me perfectly. In my completely unbiased opinion I’m going to be the most beautiful bride in the world. There’s not going to be any honeymoon because of Covid. Michael will go back to work on Monday and so will I.

So, in lieu of Charley Project updates, here’s a sample of the more interesting recent missing and unidentified persons news:

1. A woman whose body was found off Interstate 5 in Sacramento, California in 1981 has been identified as 26-year-old Lily Prendergast, who was last seen when she left her family’s Texas home in late 1980.
2. John Michael Carroll disappeared from Victor, Idaho in 2005. His skeletal remains were found “in the general area” where he lived in 2013, and were identified this month.
3. Hollis Willingham has been arrested in the murder of Jim Craig Martin, who disappeared from Normangee, Texas on August 6, 2007. It doesn’t look like Martin’s body has been found, however.
4. Thomas Drew disappeared from Salisbury, Connecticut in 2007. He used to be on Charley but then his daughter asked me to remove the case. She didn’t like what I’d written, I guess. Anyway, he is still missing, and his daughter has recently published a memoir, Searching for My Missing Father: An American Noir. It sounds very interesting and I added it to my wishlist.
5. Blackfeet Community College, in corroboration with Montana’s Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force, has launched a website to help streamline missing persons reports of Native American people: “The website [linked here] allows families and friends to complete a Contact Information Form about the missing person online. In the past, missing persons’ loved ones have expressed reluctance to report missing individuals directly to law enforcement. The BCC reporting system will serve as the go-between for those reporting and all levels of law enforcement. Once the form is submitted on the website, an automatic notice will be sent to local tribal law enforcement.”
6. A woman’s torso found washed ashore in the seaside community of Benicia, California in 1979 has been identified as Dolores Wulff, who disappeared from Woodland, California that year. Dolores’s husband Carl Wulff Sr. had actually been charged with her murder in 1985, but the charge was dismissed later that year and he died in 2005.
7. A skull found on Mount Hood in Oregon in 1986 has been identified as that of Wanda Ann Herr, who had left a Gresham, Oregon group home a decade earlier at the age of nineteen. No missing persons report was filed at the time and the most recent photo available showed her at age twelve. The police are asking anyone who knew Wanda or has any info on her 1976 disappearance to contact them.
8. The police have identified a new suspect in the 1973 disappearance of Barbara Jean Aleksivich from Bath, New York. The suspect, Richard W. Davis, is now dead, but he was recently identified through DNA as the killer of Siobhan McGuinness, a Missoula, Montana six-year-old who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1974. Barbara, who was 24, was way out of Richard Davis’s preferred age range for victims, but he did live in Bath at the time Barbara disappeared. A previous suspect in her case, who still lived in the Bath area last I knew, has been cleared.
9. The body of Ethan Bert Kazmerzak, who disappeared from Hampton, Iowa in 2013, has probably been found. At least they found his car submerged in a local pond, with human remains inside. The remains have been sent to the state medical examiner to be identified, but it’s highly unlikely it’s anyone but Ethan.

MP of the week: Dalia Castro

This week’s featured missing person (it’s a day late, sorry) is Dalia Bayardo Castro, a 43-year-old Hispanic woman who was last seen in Bellmead, Texas on April 1, 2007. Bellmead is a small town in central Texas, a suburb of Waco.

Very little information is available on Dalia’s case, just that she might be in Austin (a major city about two hours to the southwest) and that she might require medical attention for unknown reasons.

If still alive, Dalia would be 56 today. She may use the surname Gavini.

MP of the week: Adrian Poleahla

This week’s featured missing person is Adrian Curtis Poleahla, a Native American man who disappeared from Keams Canyon, Arizona on January 25, 2011. He was supposedly en route to Phoenix. His family, who hadn’t heard from him since August 2010, reported him missing in April 2012.

Poleahla is a talented wood carver and his kachina carvings fetched pretty good prices at galleries. The circumstances of his disappearance are unclear, but I hope he’s still out there. He’d be about 53 today.

Watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode on Shane Walker and Chris Dansby

The other day, Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries episode on the possibly linked abductions of Shane Anthony Walker and Christopher Milton Dansby dropped, and I watched it on my browser this morning. Unfortunately Netflix won’t let me screenshot them so I wasn’t able to get the previously unavailable pics of Shane and Christopher that were on the show. Sigh. I did find a few on other sources.

There wasn’t a whole lot I didn’t already know, but a few things stood out to me.

Christopher’s mom mentioned he had a figure-eight birthmark on his right leg. All the other sources I’ve seen say it was on his back, and those sources also mention a scar on his thigh. I wonder if the info on those got switched around somehow over the years, that the birthmark is on his thigh and the scar is on his back. But that’s just supposition. On Chris’s casefile I did change the birthmark info to say it was on his leg.

Also, Shane’s mom, Rosa Glover, said he wasn’t yet talking at the time of his disappearance. I don’t know whether Ms. Glover meant he wasn’t talking AT ALL, or just that he wasn’t talking MUCH. He nineteen months old at the time. I looked it up and most children can say at least ten words by eighteen months and start acquiring language rapidly after that. If Shane truly couldn’t talk at all, that suggests he might have been developmentally delayed. But I don’t have enough info to say one way or another.

I wonder if it would be possible for the police to track down the kids the boys had been playing with, and ask them again what happened. Maybe there’s something they remember, which didn’t seem significant at the time but stands out in hindsight.

Really good longread about Taalibah Islam and Typhenie Johnson

I regularly check the ididitforjodie website for links to articles about missing persons and other cold cases. I wanted to mention it here cause it’s awesome. Today I found a link to this article about the 2006 disappearance of Taalibah Fatin Bint Islam and the 2016 disappearance of Typhenie Kae Johnson. Both women had been dating the same man, he was the last person known to have seen them, and he told the same story as to what happened to each of them. The suspect, Christopher Revill, was convicted of kidnapping in Typhenie’s case but has never been charged in Taalibah’s.

It’s a really sad story, and so typical of domestic violence cases. The article is very detailed and well worth a read.

MP of the week: Dena McHan

This week’s featured missing person is Dena Viola McHan, a 19-year-old college student who disappeared from Stockton, California on December 6, 1981. She was on her way home when she stopped to get gas.

While she was there an attendant noticed some men “harassing” her, but Dena said she didn’t need any help. She has never been seen again and her car was never found either.

Foul play is suspected in her case, and obviously the first suspects that come to mind are the two men who were bothering her. I wonder if these men have ever been identified and if they were known to Dena. I wonder if maybe they followed her and ran her off the road, or perhaps abducted her at the station itself, though this is less likely.

I also wonder whether Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog were ever investigated in this case. They are known or suspected in several murders and disappearances in that same area in the 1980s and 1990s. It seems reasonable to at least ask Shermantine about this; he’s still alive, though Herzog suicided in 2012.

Stephanie Crane missing 27 years

Yesterday was the 27th anniversary of the disappearance and presumed abduction of Stephanie Lyn Crane, a nine-year-old girl from the tiny, rural town of Challis in central Idaho. I found multiple articles that commemorated the anniversary: this one from KVIV TV, this one from Idaho News 2, and this one from East Idaho News. None of them really have anything new, though I did add a new photo to Stephanie’s casefile, courtesy of The Abyss Podcast.

Stephanie’s family has had more than its fair share of tragedy. Her parents divorced after she disappeared and just a few years later her mother died of a blood clot. I think she was only in her thirties.

Per this article, her father took Stephanie’s younger sisters out of state to raise them “as normal kids” in a place where people didn’t automatically associate them with their sister’s abduction. He passed away in 2012 of a heart attack, nineteen years to the very day after Stephanie went missing. You can’t tell me that stress and grief wasn’t a factor.

Stephanie still has her sisters, though, and members of her extended family, who hope for answers in her case someday. It sounds like somebody just grabbed her. Imagine living in that tiny town wondering every day if it was one of your neighbors who did this. No wonder her dad moved.

We are almost the same age, her and I. If still alive, Stephanie would be 36 today.

Interesting article with a lot more info on Jody Ledkins case

Hi all. This article came out a few days ago that has a lot more info on the 1985 disappearance of Jody Lee Ledkins. It’s very interesting and it’s hard to decide whether or not she ran away, though I don’t think she’s alive now.

The article puzzles me though. It’s mentioned that Jody’s probation officer got a letter, supposedly from her, after her disappearance, and that Jody’s mom compared the writing to a previous letter Jody wrote to her PO before she went missing. The article includes photos of both letters.

But, um, the post-disappearance letter is addressed to “Mom” and includes the phrase “I am writing to tell you I love you” which doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you’d write to your PO. I wonder if the reporter mis-wrote and she meant to say Jody’s mom got the letter. I do think it’s odd that the letter references Jody’s sister just as “sister” rather than by her name.

I can’t really say whether the handwriting looks the same to me; the pre-disappearance letter is printed (sort of) and the post-disappearance one is in cursive, which doesn’t really help comparison.

There’s also part of a transcript from a threatening call Jody’s mom got. The caller said if her mom didn’t pay them money, “your daughter will be sent to you in pieces.” The caller also asks about someone named “Lori”; maybe that’s Jody’s sister? I dunno.

AP dump

Last night and today I did a bunch of updated age-progressions and some added pictures. If the only update I make on a page is more photos of the missing person or an updated (as opposed to new) age-progression, I don’t list it on the site updates page. But I put up a list here. So here goes. Unless otherwise noted, these just have an updated age-progression; if they have new pictures instead, I say so.

1. Teresa Armanda Alfonso
2. Yareli Marlem Barajas
3. Tonita Michelle Brooks (two pictures added)
4. Lee Sterling Cutler
5. Evelyn Louise Davis
6. Eva Gerline DeBruhl
7. Jason Wayne Dennis
8. Melissa Lynn Eck
9. Ryan Jacob Esparza
10. Christian Glen Hall
11. Justin Phillip Harris
12. Joseph David Helt
13. Charles Arlin Leon Henderson
14. Timothy Johnson III
15. Christina Lynn Lewis
16. Benjamin Lund (four pictures added)
17. Suzanne Gloria Lyall
18. Angela Christine Mack (one picture added)
19. Gabriela Medina
20. Caleb Joseph Powell (four pictures added)
21. Sandy Pathresa Rea (three pictures added)
22. Marcia Estelle Remick
23. Alejandra Rivera-Romero
24. Monserrat Rivera-Romero
25. Wesley Rivera-Romero
26. Adele Marie Wells

MP of the week: Isaac Robin

Hi, all. This week’s featured missing person is from the U.S. Virgin Islands; I think he might be the first Virgin Islands case I’ve ever made missing person of the week. Isaac Robin Jr., a twenty-year-old black man, disappeared on January 29, 2010.

A short geography lesson: the Virgin Islands are an archipelago in the Caribbean Sea; some British overseas territorial possessions, some are considered a part of the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and the rest comprise another U.S. territory, formally called the Virgin Islands of the United States. There are three main U.S. Virgin Islands and fifty or so tiny ones. Not many people live on the island of St. John; the main population is split roughly equally between St. Thomas (where the capital city, Charlotte Amalie, is located) and St. Croix (from where Isaac Robin disappeared).

Unfortunately I don’t really have any details about Isaac’s disappearance. He was last seen near his home and was reported missing by his family four days later. For what it’s worth, he didn’t disappear during hurricane season, which runs between June and November.

A year or two ago I spoke with a journalist from the Virgin Islands; I think it was the same woman who wrote this article about Virgin Islands missing persons. I asked her, given how tiny the land area is and how many tourists go tromping through islands, if it would be possible for a body to go undiscovered on land. She said the islands have a lot of thick tangles of tropical jungle where a person could be walking just a few feet from a corpse and have no idea. I am not going to speculate what happened to Isaac Robin, but I thought it was worth including that information.

If still alive, he would be 31 today. He’s been missing for ten, going on eleven years.

Thank you all for my birthday and wedding good wishes. I appreciate it.