MP of the week: Clayton McCarter

This week’s featured missing person is Clayton Lynn McCarter, a 15-year-old boy who disappeared from the Potter Children’s Home in Bowling Green, Kentucky on January 15, 2014. He and another resident of the facility, 13-year-old Rodney Michael “Mikey” Scott, reportedly ran away together and haven’t been seen since.

Although the boys did apparently leave on their own and are still listed as runaways, there is significant reason to be concerned here: both boys left without any shoes, and Clayton has ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder, and is also mentally disabled with the capacity of a five-year-old. These were quite vulnerable boys. Less is known about Rodney, but Clayton’s disabilities make it unlikely that he could have survived on his own for even a week or two, never mind eight years and counting.

Clayton is white, 5’11 and 160 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes and a pierced left ear, though he wasn’t wearing an earring at the time of his disappearance. Rodney, also white, is 5’4 and 110 to 120 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes. He has a small birthmark on his forehead. Clayton was last seen wearing a t-shirt over a collared shirt, pajama pants and socks. Rodney was wearing a black jacket and socks; I’ve got no info on his pants.

Got interviewed by some people for their channel

We had a nice conversation about some kids who disappeared in the 1980s in Tennessee:

Wisconsin missing persons awareness 2022, and social media troubles

I had serious troubles with Facebook last year and the year before that, as documented on this blog. Unfortunately the problem hasn’t gone away, and will persist for as long as Facebook has almost 100% robot moderation.

A lot of my problems before because Facebook’s modbots basically decided I was a Nazi, since I was sharing a lot of memes and articles and such about the Holocaust and World War II. Because there’s definitely no other reason someone might be sharing this material, nope, I must be a Nazi. When any actual human reading my posts would have recognized them as educational content, the modbots just saw red flags all over the place.

Now I’m in Facebook Jail again, which means no posting about the Wisconsin missing persons event on the Charley Project’s Facebook page until I’m out.

What happened this time was that I saw this article on Facebook’s news feed. And I thought it was an interesting story so clicked the button to share the article on my personal Facebook page. Just the link to the article, no accompanying commentary at all. And boom, instant Facebook Jail for “violating community standards on drugs.” For a link to a mainstream media news article that was on Facebook’s own newsfeed.

This particular incident pretty much fits the legal definition of entrapment, but what can you do? I mean, I’ve appealed their decision but robots handle most of the appeals so…

The Wisconsin event was absolutely lovely as usual. I took some pictures and video footage which I will post when they let me out of Facebook Jail.

There were like seven or eight dogs there, all search and rescue dogs I think, including a Clumber Spaniel which is quite a rare breed. Riken, a Dutch Shepherd and S&R dog owned by my friend Rachel, was so enthusiastic about greeting me that she actually jumped up on my table.

I talked to loads of people. Attendees had an “event bingo” sheet of stuff to do at the event and one of the things was “visit the Charley Project table and find out who Charley is.” One woman who was there with her children, listened to me tell Charley’s story and then pointed out to her kids that his story is a great example of why they should stay away from strangers. (You know the axiom “don’t take candy from strangers”? That was cause of Charley. He got lured away from home by two strange men who offered him candy.)

Rose Marie Bly’s family was there this year. I don’t remember seeing them at previous events. Rose has been missing since 2009. And Rose’s niece, Summer Wells, disappeared last June. Lightning struck twice in that family.

Anyway we had a nice discussion about the garbage way missing people’s families are often treated by the general public, especially online. It seems like people say all kinds of awful things about crime victims in general and their families, but it gets even worse when it’s a child who disappears and their parents are being discussed.

I told Rose/Summer’s family that seems like missing kids’ parents can’t do anything right. If they don’t go on TV about it, they didn’t care about the child and probably were the perpetrator of the child’s disappearance. If they go on TV to beg for their child’s safe return and are reasonably calm about it during their segment, they were TOO calm and probably were the perpetrator of the child’s disappearance. If they go on TV and beg and they are sobbing hysterically, they’re faking it and relishing in the attention and were probably the perpetrator. You get the picture.

I remember reading about one high profile child abduction where, like three days after the child’s disappearance, her mom (who had been too worried to eat until that point) finally had a sandwich so she wouldn’t collapse from hunger. She was photographed eating and criticized for having the gall to sit there and EAT A SANDWICH while her poor baby is MISSING, what a cold and uncaring mother, how could she?!

Sigh.

So I think I hit it off with Rose/Summer’s family. I hope I don’t have to add Summer to the Charley Project but I expect I probably will.

I also spoke to Amber Wilde’s family, briefly (they said as far as they know there’s been no recent progress in her case), and to a group of Native American motorcycle riders who had helped search for Gene Cloud (whose family attended the event several years ago, dressed in the ceremonial regalia of the Ho-Chunk Tribe to which they belonged, but haven’t been back since).

I asked the Native bikers if they thought Pacific Islanders should count as indigenous under the MMIW (missing and murdered indigenous women) movement, which focuses on Native Americans. This came up recently when I tweeted about a missing woman from Hawaii who was of Native Hawaiian ancestry and I wasn’t sure if I should use the #MMIW hashtag or if it would upset people. The Native bikers, however, believed missing and murdered Pacific Islanders ought to be included in the movement, since they are indigenous too.

The speeches at the event were very moving. The police who investigated Victoria Prokopovitz’s case talked about the case and how finally her killer was prosecuted in a murder-without-a-body case, and there was no going into great detail about what went down. What I mean is, this isn’t the kind of event true crime fans necessarily flock to, it was more just about providing support for missing people’s families and trying to get answers.

I had a great time. I always do. My husband, who was accompanying me for the first time, says he too had a good time.

MP of the week: Sasha Bishop

This week’s featured missing person is Sasha Marrie Bishop, a 37-year-old Hispanic woman who disappeared from Bakersfield, California on May 9, 2015, leaving three children.

Sasha is described as 5’2 and 120 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She has a couple tattoors, including stars on the side of her face and a full sleeve on her right arm.

The house where Sasha was last seen was “frequented by transients”, whatever that means. One neighbor believed the residents were squatting. Joe Ray McBath was shot to death in that house less than a month after Sasha was last seen. His murder remains unsolved. The police have said they don’t think Sasha’s disappearance and the murder are connected, but did say they were seeking Sasha to interview as a possible witness.

If still alive, Sasha would be 44 today.

Another day, another child abuse death

Wrote up the James Hutchinson case today and boy am I angry on his behalf. And on behalf of his siblings. James’s suffering is over. But his older siblings (I do not know their names or sex, only ages, seven and nine when this occurred) will have to deal with the consequences of their childhoods for the rest of their lives.

I was just sitting there imagining what it must have been like. To sit there in that nature preserve, in the dark and in the cold, with their dead brother’s body wondering if their mom was ever going to come back.

Which she did, after thirty or forty minutes. But that time must have taken an eternity for those children. They were old enough to know they had been abandoned. Old enough to know there was something very wrong with their brother, maybe even old enough to know he was dead.

And poor James. Clinging to that car door handle. He just wanted to be with his mom and couldn’t understand why she was doing this to him.

Frankly, I don’t understand why she did this to him. She even admitted that it had occurred to her to just drop the kids off at a fire station. As elementary schoolers they wouldn’t have been protected under Ohio’s safe haven law (which only applies to newborns under 72 hours old) but the firefighters definitely wouldn’t have hog-tied the kids, or abandoned them in a nature preserve in the middle of the night, or run over and killed any of them.

And all this, just to keep the love of a man who was married to someone else and pretty much an all-around turd. Really?

I really hope the surviving children are being looked after by someone who actually cares about them. And that they’re getting a lot of therapy. They’re going to need it. I just worry that the kids might grow up bouncing around in foster care and become adults of the same caliber as their mother.

MP of the week: Bernadino Olivares-Cruz

This week’s featured missing person is Bernadino Olivares-Cruz, an 81-year-old man who disappeared from Robstown, Texas on August 13, 2015. He wasn’t from Robstown but was there visiting relatives. He was last seen when his son dropped him off at the cemetery. Bernadino planned to visit his other son’s grave.

Bernadino is Hispanic, 5’5 and 130 pounds, with brown eyes and gray hair. He was last seen wearing a plaid shirt, blue jeans, a black belt, black shoes and an orange baseball cap.

Little information is available in this case, but my guess is he’s deceased, if for no other reason than his advanced age. If still alive he’d be 88 next month.

News outlets, please do better than this

So this article came out yesterday and I wanted to bring it to attention because it’s useless.

The article says Bula Mae Robertson disappeared “back in 1993” from Warner Robins, Georgia. And that’s pretty much all it says. No exact date of disappearance, no information about the missing woman, how old she was, her physical appearance information, etc. The accompanying video isn’t much better, it only adds that Robertson disappeared during the month of October. Which is still a 31-day window.

I mean, they were able to go to her old house and show that on the screen, and interviewed a neighbor who remembered the disappearance, but they didn’t put out the most basic, crucial information. What’s the point?

Fortunately, the press release the police put out (I think it was flashed on the screen in the news video, but you weren’t able to actually read it) has the necessary information. But it would have been nice if the article had had it too.

Yesterday was not Tuesday

Yeah, so I put up the missing person of the week yesterday cause I spent the entire day under the mistaken impression that it was Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. It was Monday. My apologies.

And my brain is still broken apparently cause I just took the trash to the curb under the impression that today is Wednesday and trash pickup is tomorrow. It is not Wednesday. Oh well.

I haven’t felt very well lately. I know what’s going on — I’ve just hit the depression cyclce in my bipolar-ness, that’s all — and I know that nothing is really wrong, that all the problems I am worrying about were the same problems I had last week and the week before that, that this terrible feeling will eventually cycle back up. But it doesn’t make me feel any less terrible. My feelings don’t care about the facts.

Later this month is the missing persons event in Wisconsin that I go to. Obviously the event in 2020 was canceled, and last year’s was a virtual event, so I haven’t been since 2019. I am really looking forward to this one, not only cause it’s been a few years but also because this is the first time my husband will be accompanying me to one of these events.

It’s on April 23, at the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, between 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. Maybe I’ll see some of you there.

I hope all of you are doing well.

MP of the week: Racheal Hayson

This week’s featured missing person is Racheal Dawn Hayson, a 14-year-old girl who disappeared from Richmond, Missouri on June 20, 1997. She’s described as white, 5’2 and 128 pounds (though she may have grown taller since then), with triple-pierced ears, a gap between her two front teeth, and small scars on her legs.

She had an argument with her mom on the day of her disappearance and left home angrily, and never returned. Her case was classified as a runaway for many years, and Racheal’s mom seems to have been hopeful, since when the mom died in 2008 her daughter was listed in the obituary as a survivor.

But it’s very unusual for there to be NO TRACE of a runaway in all this time — nearly a quarter-century now — and inevitably one wonders if something bad happened to Racheal. It’s hard to tell, due to a lack of available information in the case.

If still alive, and I hope she is, she’d be 39 today.