This is pretty odd…

On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like the cases of Nicole Shante Moore and Bobby Lee Johns would be related. She was a black woman in her twenties; he was a white man in his sixties. They disappeared a year and a half apart. And while they both are listed as missing from Amarillo, Texas, that city has a population of almost 200,000 people. So, not much in common on the surface.

However, I wonder.

Nicole is believed to have gone to the Adrian, Texas area, fifty miles down Interstate 40, on the day of her disappearance. Her cellular phone last pinged near there. Bobby was also possibly en route to Adrian. When police were searching the vicinity of the cell phone ping for evidence in Nicole’s case, they found Bobby’s abandoned car on the interstate.

So, both disappeared from Amarillo. Nicole was thought to have been headed for Adrian, and so was Bobby. His car was found near where her phone had last pinged.

It’s entirely possible, within the law of averages, that the cases had nothing to do with each other. After all, a lot of missing people’s cars are found abandoned on interstates, and a lot of missing people’s phones ping along interstates, simply because of the fact that those are major travel routes.

But it is a bit odd.

We have a pretty good idea what happened to Nicole. But what happened to Bobby? And where are they?

MP of the week: Carold Hodges

This week’s featured missing person Carold Lloyd Hodges, a 71-year-old man who disappeared from Houston on July 20, 2013, leaving all his belongings behind at home. He had left home before, sometimes for extended time periods, but would always tell someone he was going to do so. This time he was just gone.

I don’t know what happened here and there isn’t much in the way of information. If still alive, Carold Hodges would be 79 today.

A 75-year anniversary coming up, and other stories

In Arizona: “Valentine Sally”, a Jane Doe whose body was found alongside a highway west of Williams in early 1982, has been identified as seventeen-year-old Carolyn Eaton, who disappeared from her from Ohio home in late 1981, between Christmas and New Years’.

In Delaware: They’re still looking for 15-year-old Janteyl Danielle Johnson, who was five months pregnant when she disappeared from Newark in 2010. It was eleven years ago this month.

In Florida: There was a vigil to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of John Patrick Rowan Jr., a 34-year-old man last seen in Jacksonville. His family believes he is dead and wants to be able to put his body to rest.

Also in Florida: The police have launched a podcast about the disappearances of two women, 28-year-old Cieha Annette Taylor and 23-year-old Veronica Marllen Reyes Diaz. Though the cases are not known to be related, Cieha and Veronica disappeared from the same general area just weeks apart in early 2020, and looked enough alike to have been sisters.

In Georgia: It’s been a year since the disappearance of 22-year-old Jessica Dieztel from Albany. I’ll have to add her to Charley soon. Maybe today.

In Indiana: They’re still looking for Diamond Bynum, a 21-year-old woman with disabilities, and King Rajan Walker, her two-year-old nephew, who disappeared together from Gary in 2015.

In New Hampshire: It’s been eleven months since the disappearance of 23-year-old Amanda Grazewski from Derry. Though the police are treating at as a simple missing persons case, her mom thinks foul play was involved.

In Ohio: Tomorrow it’ll have been 75 years since the disappearance of 24-year-old high school teacher Lola Ada Celli from Grandview Heights. It remains an enduring mystery.

In South Carolina: They’re still looking for Marjorie “Gayle” McCaffrey, a 36-year-old woman who disappeared from Charleston in 2012. Her husband Robert was convicted of obstruction of justice in her case and sentenced to ten years in prison. He came up for parole this year but was denied. Robert was also charged with Gayle’s murder, but he was not indicted.

In Canada: They’re still looking for Ryan Shtuka, a 20-year-old man who disappeared from Sun Peaks, British Columbia in February 2018. His family plans to go back to the area to look for him this year, COVID-19 travel restrictions permitting.

In Ireland: They’re still looking for Esra Uyrun, a 38-year-old woman who disappeared from Dublin in 2011. Esra’s mom is quite elderly and would like to learn her daughter’s fate before she dies.

In Scotland: They’re still looking for 36 missing people classified as “long term” cases.

Tragic news in one child’s case, and justice for another two

Yesterday a child’s body was found in a camper near Garryowen on the Crow Reservation in Montana; it has been identified as Mildred Alexis “Millie” Old Crow, who disappeared sometime in 2019 or 2020. She was living with her guardians, her aunt Roseen Lincoln Old Crow and Roseen’s wife Veronica Dust, and was last seen with them in April 2019. No one’s exactly sure when she disappeared and nothing much has been released yet about her death. It seems likely she was murdered; little girls don’t just die for no reason.

Meanwhile in Florida, former cult leader Anna Young was sentenced to 30 years in prison for second-degree murder in the beating/starvation death of Emon David Harper, a toddler who disappeared sometime in 1988 and whose body was never found, and manslaughter in the death by neglect of Katonya Jackson, a two-year-old girl with epilepsy who died because Young withheld her medication. Both children and their families were members of Young’s cult.

This article talks about the plea deal and sentence Young accepted, but fails to mention that Young is tied to two other missing children: the 1973 (pre-cult) disappearance of Catherine Barbara Davidson, Young’s six-year-old stepdaughter, and the 1984 disappearance of two-year-old Marcos Antonio Cruz, another child whose family was involved in the cult. Marcos may have been abandoned in Puerto Rico by a cult member at Young’s orders. Catherine, however, was almost certainly murdered; one of Young’s other children reportedly saw her body in a closet before her disappearance was reported. It seems unlikely that Young will confess to her involvement in her stepdaughter’s case or help authorities recover the body; she’s got nothing to gain by it.

MP of the week: Selina Barfield

This week’s featured missing person is Selina Ruth Barfield, a 32-year-old woman who disappeared from North Charleston, South Carolina on July 29, 2003. She was living with her boyfriend at the time, and had significant problems in her life: the boyfriend was abusive, and Selina was involved with drugs. Her sister was trying to get her into a rehab program, but she disappeared before that could happen.

Her family thinks foul play was involved in her case, and I think that’s probably true. I wonder how hard the police have looked at the boyfriend.

Jury selection finished in murder-without-a-body trial, and other stories

Rolling Stone has done an article that may interest y’all: Why Were There So Many Serial Killers Between 1970 and 2000 — and Where Did They Go?

Alabama: They’re still looking for John Henry Dansby, an 82-year-old man who disappeared from Mobile in October 2019. I can’t find him listed on any online databases and, given his advanced age, it’s odd that he wasn’t reported missing for over a month. Perhaps he had no family, or wasn’t in contact with them.

California: Paul Flores, who is basically the prime suspect in the 1996 disappearance of 19-year-old Kristin Denise Smart, has been arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm. (His previous felony was DUI.) I doubt this arrest is going to lead to anything in Kristin’s case, but it’s nice that the media is keeping an eye on this man.

Colorado: They’re still trying to identify a man whose body was found in Saguache County in October 2002. He was a big guy, 6’5 and somewhere between 225 and 300 pounds, and was between 40 and 60 years old. He had been murdered and his body wrapped in a blanket, a plastic bag and duct tape and then buried in a shallow grave in a ravine.

Florida: They’re still looking for five-year-old Haleigh Ann-Marie Cummings, who disappeared from Satsuma in February 2009. It’s a very sad case, one where you can get a pretty good idea as to what happened but proving it is another matter.

Louisiana: They’re still looking for Frederick Vallot Jr., a 46-year-old man who disappeared from Lafayette Parish last August. The article doesn’t provide much information besides a photo and physical description.

Maryland: They’re still looking for Anthony Grazal, a 30-year-old Rockville man. He was last seen on December 1 and his family hasn’t heard from him since November.

Michigan: Nicholas Johnson, a person of interest in the recent disappearance of his parents, is also a person of interest in the 2018 disappearance of Bonifacio “Facio” Pena. He was the last person known to have been with Facio. They think they’ve found Nicholas’s parents’ bodies in the woods, but they haven’t been identified yet.

Oregon: They’re still looking for 33-year-old Martha Lavonne Evans, who disappeared after leaving a wedding reception in Knappa in February 1990. She was last seen getting gas outside Astoria after she left the reception.

Pennsylvania: They’re still looking for Phylicia Albina Thomas, a 22-year-old woman who went missing from Lake Township in February 2004. She is presumed dead and the police have a pretty good idea who did it, but her body has never been found and no one has ever been charged in her case.

South Carolina: They’re still looking for Brittany Michelle Davis, a 32-year-old woman who disappeared from Greenville on February 12, 2020.

Also South Carolina: This article has info on twelve unsolved missing persons cases from Sumter County, including a few I hadn’t previously had listed on the Charley Project. I have since added all of them.

Also South Carolina: They’re trying to figure out whether three disappearances and one murder in Oconee County are related. 45-year-old Laura Ann Anders disappeared in January 2019, 26-year-old Pamela Faith Roach in February 2019, and 51-year-old Tammy Elizabeth Stubblefield in December 2019. They have never been found. 42-year-old Renee Rowland King disappeared in November 2020, and her body was found earlier this month.

Virginia: Skeletal remains found in Danville in December have been identified as 37-year-old Robert Isaac Hurt, who disappeared in 2018. There was no obvious signs of injury to the bones, and they’re still investigating the circumstances of his death.

Wisconsin: The murder trial in the Victoria Lynn Prokopovitz case is set to begin next week, since they’ve finished selecting the jury. She disappeared from Plainsville in 2013 and her husband James has been charged in her case; authorities think he disposed of her body in an industrial sludge pond that had chemicals that would have dissolved it. I wonder how the death of Kathryn Friday, James’s mistress, is going to affect the case; she was supposed to testify against him, but suicided this past November.

Wyoming: The governor’s Missing & Murdered Indigenous Persons Task Force will meet on the 17th of this month (Wednesday), and the meeting will be recorded and put up on the Wyoming Division of Victim Services website. A report the task force released in January found that there is a disproportionately high rate of both homicide and missing persons among the Native American community in Wyoming.

Seeing them living once more

With recent cases, it’s pretty common to find the missing person’s social media accounts from prior to their disappearance and get to learn about them, their personality, their likes and dislikes. For older cases, pre social media, this is less common, but it still happens sometimes.

Today, out of nowhere, I decided to look up Monterrio Holder on the newspaper archives, simply because his name is unique enough that I thought I might find something. As it turns out, Monterrio was an athlete when he attended Washington High School in Indianapolis and college in Tennessee. He did play football, but his real talent was in track, specifically jumping.

He was one of Indiana’s top high jumpers in his time. He did a 6’8 high jump as a seventeen-year-old in 1988. In 1989, as a high school junior, he made an attempt at a city record in the high jump and, though he missed it, he did account for all 28 of his track team’s points in that competition. In March 1994, just months before his disappearance, he competed at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championship and finished third in the high jump, 7’3. The Indianapolis Star had several photos of him at competitions, some of them mid-jump. I added three to his casefile.

Nothing about his disappearance, however. What happened to this young man?

MP of the week: Jonathan Hamby

This week’s featured missing person is Jonathan Alan Hamby, a 37-year-old man who disappeared from Mishawaka, Indiana on February 26, 2017. After some problems with substance abuse and run-ins with the law, he’d turned his life around, found religion and gotten a job. But then he stopped taking his depression/anxiety meds and his loved ones noticed he seemed to be struggling. And then he was gone, and his cherished car with him.

Usually when a person disappears with their car, and neither of them turn up, I tend to believe both the person and the car is in a body of water somewhere. I almost kind of hope that for Hamby, because the alternative — something that his parents believe — is that he was murdered.

If still alive, he’d be 41 years old now.

Finally out of Facebook Jail! And other stories

Two months and ten days after my one-month Facebook Jail sentence began, Facebook has finally deigned to let me out. Yay. Now let’s see how long I can stay out before the modbots once again take offense at some perfectly acceptable meme I posted years ago.

Arizona: A Portland, Maine man who disappeared from the Grand Canyon on December 20 has been, amazingly enough, found alive and in good health.

Connecticut: Found this article featuring various missing persons from that state.

Georgia: In Atlanta they’re going to set up a memorial for the missing and murdered children lumped under the Atlanta Child Killer case. The city council has allocated funds and approved a design. Just a few days ago I watched the series on the Atlanta child murders on HBO Max. It was very disturbing. I don’t know if Wayne Williams killed anybody, but he DEFINITELY did not get a fair trial.

Michigan: They’re still looking for Dean Marie “Deanie” Peters, a 14-year-old girl who disappeared from Grand Rapids in 1981. The article focuses on the theory that a local teen boy drove at Deanie to scare her and make her think he was trying to hit her, but he accidentally DID hit her and killed her. This person allegedly told different versions of this story to a couple of dozen people before his death, but it has never been confirmed.

Oregon: They’re still looking for Kacey Ann Perry, a 10-year-old girl who disappeared from Portland in 1990. The article has several photos I’d not previously seen.

Pennsylvania: They’re still looking for John Francis Lango and the local paper has done a two-part series on his disappearance: here’s part one and part two. Although his family and most of his friends recall John as a happy-go-lucky, popular sort of guy, one acquaintance said he’d grown shy, introverted and “sullen” prior to his 1988 disappearance from Pottsville, a month before his eighteenth birthday. None of his loved ones think he ran away.

Texas: They found the car of Carey Mae Parker in Lake Tawakoni. Carey was 23 when she disappeared from Quinlan in 1991. So far they’ve only been able to recover one half of the vehicle, and so far no human remains have been found.

Utah: Here is an article about the disappearances and murders of various Native American people in Utah.

Australia: They’re still looking for Colleen Walker-Craig, a 16-year-old girl who disappeared from Bowraville, New South Wales in 1990. Her clothes were found in the river, weighted by rocks, but no sign of her.

Also Australia: A jawbone that washed up on a beach in New South Wales in 2011 has been identified as Bill Moran, a 24-year-old man who was lost at sea when his boat sank off Evans Head in 1979. Bill’s wife Philippa also died in the accident, but I think her body was found earlier.

Canada: There’s been a podcast episode about the 1997 disappearance of 27-year-old Danny Gaulton, who was last seen in Grande Prairie, Alberta. He told his roommates he was going to work, but in fact he called in sick that night. Neither he nor his car was ever found.

England: They’re still looking for Anne Simpson, a 60-year-old woman who disappeared from Skegness in 2004. She was last seen drinking with two biker types and her partner.

Japan: I found this interesting article about how North Korea kidnapped some people, including a thirteen-year-old girl, from Japan and took them back to North Korea so they could help train future spies.

AP dump

I updated a lot of people’s age-progression photos today. The list:

1. Ilias Badys
2. Cesar Jimenez Bibiano
3. Anthony Freddy Calzada
4. Hassani Jamil Campbell
5. Joliet Elizabeth Cedano
6. Gabrielle Nicole Dahm
7. Bryan Dos Santos-Gomes
8. Deklon Ford
9. Nasim Skander Howard
10. Myra Rena Lewis
11. Faloma Luhk
12. Maleina Quitugua Luhk
13. Mackenzie Rae Marken
14. Lluvia Sharanique McCraw
15. Jesus Merino-Mendoza
16. Sindy Jazmin Perez-Aguilar
17. Briza Maria Pina
18. Carlos Manuel Pina
19. Angel Rodriguez
20. Keily Rodriguez
21. Kevin Rodriguez
22. Kristy Rita Rosario
23. Lissy Yaris Rosario
24. Luis Enrique Rosario Jr.
25. Adalberto J. Zamora
26. Cithlali Zamora