The missing persons articles I would’ve shared on Facebook if I could have

Yeah, for the uninitiated, Facebook is mainly where I share missing persons related news. But as I addressed in my previous entry, that’s not an option right now. So I’m sharing them here:

From Joliet, Illinois: 17 Missing In Will County: One Joliet Case Dates To 1957. Includes a photo of Sarah Elizabeth Avon which I hadn’t previously seen; I have added it.

From Rice County, Kansas: Five years after she disappeared, the search for Megan continues. The Megan here is Megan Renee Foglesong.

From Tarboro, North Carolina: Cold case investigators offer $15K reward in case of missing Edgecombe County man. The missing man, Stephen Frederick MacGray, has been missing for nearly a year — not quite long enough to be eligible for listing on the Charley Project.

From San Luis Obispo, California: This coach last saw his mother in Woodland in 1979; his DNA helped find her body. About the Dolores Wulff case; she disappeared in 1979 and was identified recently.

From Texas: Congressmen introduce bipartisan missing persons bill.

From Valdosta, Georgia: Valdosta police still seek missing mother, son. This is the disappearance of three-year-old Brandon Lee Wade and his mom, Paula, eighteen years ago.

From Mobile, Alabama: Cold Case Mystery: Mobile mother missing for 20 years. That’s Lisa Ann Pierce, who went missing in 2000.

From Battle Creek, Michigan: Amber Griffin remains missing after months of failed searches around Battle Creek. She’s been missing since June.

From Montana: Officials discuss missing persons cases in Montana national parks.

From San Luis Obispo, California: Can new info help solve the case of missing college student Kristin Smart? Also: Was the beeping in a backyard coming from Kristin Smart’s watch? Kristin disappeared in 1996; it’s one of those cases where it’s pretty obvious what must have happened but the cops are having a hard time proving it.

From the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana: BIA, FBI Seeking Missing Child Mildred Old Crow. I added her the other day.

From Sonora, Mexico: Sonora mayor’s gift to mothers of missing persons: shovels and buckets.

Facebook is such a broken system and I hate it

Yeah, so I seem to be on Facebook’s naughty list lately and it’s interfering with a lot of things. I’m seriously concerned about my account, which I’ve had since around 2005. I’ve never actually violated Facebook’s TOS but they keep axing me and handing out suspensions.

It’s not just me, they’re doing this to everybody. Probably in response to all the (justified) alarm about social media being weaponized to spread misinformation and interfere with the democratic process and make it more difficult to fight the pandemic. I’m just collateral damage.

I ran a history memes group on there for two years. The responsibility for it got dumped on me, without me being asked or wanting it, but it was either run the group myself or let it die, so I decided to run it. I found some people to help moderate, worked my butt off on that group and eventually it got up to over 40,000 members. Then in September, Facebook axed it for no apparent reason. All that hard work, all those memes, vanished overnight. I was quite distressed about this. I appealed, of course. Five minutes later my appeal was denied. Again, no reason specified.

It’s not human beings that are deciding who violates the TOS; it’s bots. There’s a severe shortage of human moderators at Facebook and has been for some time. And unfortunately bots are sometimes just not very good at moderating.

Facebook has violated me for posting a photo of a Venus of Willendorf figure on the grounds that the artistic sculpture, which the ancients probably used in fertility rituals, was against their terms of service about “nudity.” They’ve violated me for historical memes about Croatia that had a scene from Spongebob. Etc.

So I got violated again yesterday and got a 24-hour ban on any kind of Facebook activity, and a 30-day ban on posting things in groups and posting anything on pages I run. That includes the Charley Project page. So I’m afraid the Charley Project page is going to be inactive for a month and there’s nothing I can do about that.

I hate Facebook as a corporate entity. But unfortunately I can’t afford to leave it. For one, it’s a major source of information on missing persons and a great way to connect with people who view the Charley Project. For another, it’s my primary means of socializing with people, particularly during the pandemic. I have loads of friends that I could not communicate with any other way.

It’s sucks but that’s the way it is.

I just hope that people who view the Charley Project page on Facebook are also aware of this blog, and don’t assume I’ve abandoned the Facebook page.

I’ll see them in a month.

Tis the season for baseless lawsuit threats

So I used to get people threatening to sue me on a fairly regular basis, two or three times a year, over stuff I’d said on the Charley Project. Basically if people (often the abductors or suspected abductors in family abduction cases) didn’t like what I had to say they would write to me with some empty, often poorly spelled threat about taking me to court for “libel” or “slander” or “defamation”.

Eventually the threats pretty much petered out. Not sure why. But then I got two in the past month. Zounds. Both were pretty laughable even by my standards.

One person who wrote to me said their relative who was listed as a runaway was, in fact, missing as a result of foul play, and they demanded I stop libeling their relative immediately and change my information or they’d sue. I think they were using a speech-to-text thing and perhaps were very emotional at the time because it didn’t make a lot of sense what they were saying. And what they forgot to do is tell me their relative’s full name. I wrote back telling them that threatening me was no way to start this out, and if they cared to start over and tell me what was going on, starting with the girl’s name, I would be willing to work with them.

Never heard back.

And then yesterday I got an email from someone who didn’t identify themselves, though I can make a guess or two at who might have written it. The person referenced a case where a man had been charged with murdering a missing girl, but he had been acquitted. They claimed what I had written was “wrong and not even accurate” and that they would sue me for “deformation” if “these type of false allegations continue to be typed” because what I had written could cause someone to physically attack the suspect.

Okay, whatever. I wonder if they’re also going to contact all the newspapers that have covered the case and the trial.

I’ve never libeled anyone. I’ve DEFINITELY never “deformed” anyone.

MP of the week: Christina Burnett-Pitts

This week’s featured missing person is Christina Carol Burnett-Pitts. She was in her mid-twenties when she disappeared from the Poplar Bluff, Missouri area sometime between Christmastime in 1998 (which is when her family last saw her) and 2000.

She had a transient lifestyle and no fixed address, was involved with drugs including meth, and was reportedly a victim of domestic violence by her husband, who is now deceased. So the circumstances of her disappearance, while unclear, don’t look good.

She has two children who were living with her parents when she disappeared. If still alive, she’d be 46 today. I’m sure her children would like to learn what happened to her.

Thanks for all the lovely comments about my wedding pictures, they made me very happy!

Stay safe, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving.

Wedding pics just dropped!

I know you guys had asked to see some of the pics from my wedding, and they have finally arrived! Now, there are exactly 299 of them and I’m not going to post them all, but here’s some of the highlights.

Me and Dad going up the aisle:

Us all at the altar:

Michael sliding the ring on my finger:

Michael walking me down the aisle at the end:

Us leaving the church after I got rid of that scarf the priest made me wear:

Masks were required at the wedding for everyone (except the priest I guess, and also one lady in the back at the groom’s side) but once the ceremony was over and almost everyone had left the church we took some mask-less photos. So here you go:

Me and my bridesmaids:

Me alone, smiling at my bouquet:

Michael and I at the altar:

Us at the church door:

Us in silhouette so it looks romantic:

The photographer was Taylor Ford; look her up if you’re getting married in Ohio or Indiana and want her to take pictures. I think they turned out really well.

MP of the week: Byron Page

This week’s featured missing person is Byron Eric Page, a seventeen-year-old boy who disappeared from Los Angeles, California on January 29, 1992. He was last seen at the bus stop, on the way to visit a music warehouse in West Hollywood. He apparently never arrived there and never came home.

There’s little evidence in his case, but there’s no reason to believe he left of his own accord. He was an excellent student, had already been accepted at a few colleges and was looking forward to getting his driver’s license, and had no apparent problems in his life. Foul play is suspected in his case, I think from lack of anything else that makes sense.

The most recent article I could find on his disappearance was from 2010. He sounds like a fine young man.

It’s been 28 years. What happened to Byron?

Excellent article on the Jahi Turner case

I thought I’d pop in and refer readers to this awesome Los Angeles Times article on the Jahi Turner case, told from the point of view of Jahi’s mother, Tameka.

Tameka was only eighteen years old when her son went missing, and that was eighteen years ago–a lifetime. It took a long time for her to get out of denial and come to terms with the fact that her husband Tieray, her son’s caregiver, was almost certainly responsible for whatever happened to Jahi.

Now that the court case is over with and Tieray has nothing to fear due to double jeopardy rules, I wish he would just fess up to what happened to Jahi. It would at least give Tameka some peace.

I am proud that Tameka has been able to move on with her life and accomplish things after this awful event. She finished out her service in the Navy, is raising another son who’s now seventeen, and works for the University of Maryland.

I find myself wondering about the other teenage mothers of kids who have disappeared. Tanisha Watkins‘s mother was only sixteen when she disappeared. Donel Minor‘s mother was also a teenager. I don’t know what happened to the mothers. I hope they’re doing all right today.

At the beginning of this dark winter, I beg my readers to stay safe

The coronavirus is raging in my part of the world. Local hospitals have warned they’re close to becoming overwhelmed. Four of my father’s 22 students have been sick. Two of my husband’s (it still seems strange to call him that) students as well. He was not told he’d been exposed till six days after the fact. Fortunately he got tested and was negative, but if he had caught it, he could have been spreading the disease around everywhere he went for nearly a week. The lady at the management office who collects our rent has been sick. (I haven’t laid eyes on her for months; I’ve been exercising social distancing by putting the rent in the box on the office door instead.)

I am appalled that so many people are not even bothering to exercise the most basic precautions. And that, when well over a million people are dead and nearly a quarter-million of them are Americans, when the president himself has had it and his chief of staff has it now, when multiple members of Congress have had it, so many people are still convinced it’s a hoax. I can only think these people must be very misinformed.

Please, wear a mask in public. Wear it so it covers both your mouth AND your nose. Your nose is directly connected to your lungs, and if it the mask isn’t covering it you might as well not be wearing it at all. I know masks are a pain in the butt, I know they’re inconvenient and annoying and make people get acne and their glasses fog up. Wear a mask anyway.

I really don’t want more people to die. Especially you. I don’t want to add your obituary to the online coronavirus memorial I’ve been adding to since April.

I hope everyone is well and their families and friends are well. Michael and I are enjoying these first weeks of married life. We used some of the wedding gift money to buy our first marital furniture, a lovely mid-century modern dresser we snagged for a song on Facebook Marketplace after our el-cheapo pasteboard dresser literally fell apart. We’re trying to decide what we can do to celebrate the dog’s upcoming sixteenth birthday. Probably something involving chicken nuggets.

Please stay safe.

A few questions that popped into my head about the Whatley case

The presumed abductions of Faye and John Whatley in 1976 is pretty bizarre and I thought I’d blog about it cause I’ve never had a case before where the only thing that seemed to be missing from the house besides the people was a part of the house itself. The cops seem to have given up on solving the case, which is going on 45 years old.

Some questions that occurred to me as I was researching the case, and for which I found no answers in the news articles at the time.

1. Did the Whatleys lock their doors? They seem to have lived out in the country, so perhaps they didn’t bother.
2. Did the couple own any guns, or know how to use them? If so, was one of those guns a .22?
3. Where was the barn in which the door was located? If it had been searched multiple times before, it was probably pretty close to their home. Was it on the Whatleys’ property? Is it possible the door could have been missed in previous searches?
4. When the door was found, was there any blood or fingerprints or other physical evidence on it? Had it been wiped off? While 1976 forensics were quite primitive compared to today, they should have been able to detect blood and type it.
5. Are they 100% sure it was the Whatleys’ door that turned up in that barn? I don’t know much about doors but they all pretty much look alike, and unless it was a custom-made one or something, wouldn’t it be hard to tell the Whatley’s door from a similar-looking mahogany door?
6. This was a second marriage for John and I think for Faye also. Were there any issues within the two sides of the family? Any personal grudges, any ne’er-do-well children or grandchildren or in-laws or anything like that?
7. Who was expected to inherit the couple’s estate once they passed? Did they have life insurance? Have they ever been declared dead, and if so, when?
8. Henry Lee Lucas confessed to killing them, but Lucas seems to have confessed to virtually every crime that was put in front him and most of his confessions turned out to be false. Is there any actual evidence to back up his statement? Is he still considered a possible suspect?

The whole thing makes no sense. How does it happen that people (and there had to be more than one person involved in this) somehow get into the house without leaving signs of a break-in, subdue or kill the Whatleys without leaving any evidence of a struggle (save the single gunshot fired from inside the house; what happened there?), remove a door from its hinges and take that too, take the Whatleys and the door away without bothering to steal anything else, and then go and put the door up in a barn loft and do god-knows-what with the Whatleys, then never make a ransom demand or anything, and keep their mouths shut about it during the ensuing years? What does anyone gain by that?

I’m not discounting Lucas entirely. He was a legit serial killer and seemed to like going around the country with his buddy Ottis Toole murdering people for no reason whatsoever. But as I said, he confessed to a lot of things he didn’t do, and this operation seems to be a bit too organized for him.

MP of the week: Stephanie Chavez

This week’s featured missing person is Stephanie Chavez, a sixteen-year-old Hispanic girl who disappeared from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida on February 8, 2013. She’s listed as a runaway and may have left with a man named Alex Arroyo. I have a photo of him but no other information. They may be in Mexico.

Stephanie would be 24 years old today. It’s worth noting that she is very short, under five feet tall. Somewhere between four feet one and four feet eight. She may use the last name Arroyo, same as Alex.