institutions – The Charley Project Blog

Tiktok girl, searching through ponds and other stories

January 16, 2021January 16, 2021Meaghan14 Comments

Honestly… it’s been ten days and it’s still very hard for me to take my mind off of the situation or to get much of anything done. I really wish I would not live through any more major historical events; I think I’ve endured more than my share already. But I’m trying, guys. I really am.

Oh, and an update on my Facebook woes: my release date from Facebook Jail has been moved from early February to late January. 6:26 a.m. on January 23 to be precise. I have no idea why and I’m not sure Facebook will honor this release date, since they didn’t last time.

Arizona: They’re still looking for Elizabeth Emma Breck, a 46-year-old teacher who disappeared from the Sierra Tucson behavioral health center in Saddlebrooke in January 2019. She had just arrived a few days earlier for a thirty-day treatment program for PTSD. Nothing significant to report regarding her disappearance, just that the anniversary was this week.

Arkansas: There has been much talk over the last couple of days that a dark-haired girl with bruised eyes in a viral Tiktok video was Cassie Kay Compton, who disappeared from Stuttgart in 2014, at age 15. The FBI says they’ve identified and spoken to the Tiktok girl and it’s not Cassie. They haven’t released her name, but she has been identified elsewhere as Haley Grace Phillips, a Los Angeles woman.

California: They’re looking to see if David Emery Misch, the man recently charged in the 1988 murder of nine-year-old Michaela Joy Garecht, who was kidnapped from a Hayward supermarket and never found, was also responsible for the disappearance of thirteen-year-old Ilene Beth Misheloff from Dublin in 1989.

Connecticut: They’re released an age-progressed image of Vanessa Morales, a two-year-old girl who was last seen in from Ansonia on November 29, 2019. The cops found Vanessa’s mother murdered at home on December 2, with no sign of Vanessa. I’ll add her to Charley soon.

Florida: They’re still looking for Mary Opitz, a seventeen-year-old girl who disappeared from Fort Myers back in 1981. They’re also still trying to solve the murder of Mary Hare, whose abduction and killing may have had the same perpetrator as in Opitz’s case.

Illinois: They’re still looking for Steven Robert Asplund, a 32-year-old tool and die worker who disappeared from Moline on January 9, 1994. The 27th anniversary of his disappearance was a week ago but there’s nothing new to report.

Iowa: They’ve finally canceled the Amber Alert for Breasia Terrell, a ten-year-old girl who disappeared from Davenport in July. She is still missing.

Michigan: Brad Cournaya, the longtime suspect in 34-year-old Krista Robin Lueth‘s 2008 disappearance from Lansing, has been charged with her murder. Her body has never been found.

Mississippi: They’re still trying to identify a little boy whose skull was found in a drainage canal in Sharkey County in 2014. No other remains were located. He was estimated to be between 5 and 7 at the time of his death, which may have occurred up to several years before he found. Preliminary DNA results indicate the boy was black, and probably has relatives from Sharkey County and the surrounding area.

Kansas: Some divers from an Oregon-based organization searched two ponds in Leavenworth County for Randy Wayne Leach and his mom’s car, which have both been missing since 1988. They didn’t find them.

Maryland: They’re still looking for Andre Thompson, a sixteen-year-old who disappeared from Baltimore on June 23. He may be in the Glen Burnie area.

Michigan: They have located fifteen-year-old Gloria Alvarado, who was missing from Taylor for 75 days. She is alive and well, and had run away with a seventeen-year-old boy because her parents would not allow her to date. She has returned home.

New York: They’re still looking for Joseph David Helt, a seventeen-year-old boy who disappeared from Ellenville on January 17, 1987, thirty-four years ago tomorrow.

Nevada: They’re still looking for Cassandra Ayon, a 27-year-old woman who disappeared from Loyal back in October. In particular, the police are asking for public help for info on a red or maroon SUV that may have been on one of the residential side streets near Unity Trailer Court, which is where Cassandra was last seen.

North Carolina: They’re still looking for Ebonee Shanetta Spears, a 30-year-old woman who disappeared five years and one day ago. Nothing new has been reported though.

Also North Carolina: In Winston-Salem, they’re still looking for two missing adults: Lucinda Farris, who disappeared from in June, and Eliseo Ernesto Gomez-Martinez, who disappeared in November. There’s no indication the two cases are related.

Oregon: They’re still trying to identify a child whose body was found near a rest area in Lincoln County on December 10. The little girl had dark brown or black hair and was between six and a half and ten years of age at the time of her death, which occurred at least a month before she was found. Cops have ruled out several possibilities for the girl, including five-year-old Dulce Maria Alvarez, who was abducted from a New Jersey playground in September 2019.

Virginia: The police have reclassified the 2010 disappearance of 19-year-old Samantha Ann Clarke from a missing person to a kidnap/homicide. They have not said whether they have any current suspects in the case, but Randy Allen Taylor, who was found guilty of murder-without-a-body in the 2013 disappearance of seventeen-year-old Alexis Tiara Murphy, has been mentioned before.

Wisconsin: They’re still looking for Daajane Morgan, a sixteen-year-old girl who disappeared from Milwaukee on March 6.

Canada: They’re still looking for Alyssa Turnbull, a young woman who disappeared from Nipigon, Ontario in late March 2020.

Also Canada: Six patients went missing from the now-defunct North Bay Psychiatric Hospital in Toronto, Ontario between 1966 and 2010. They have never been found.

England: They’re still looking for Andrew Gosden, a fourteen-year-old schoolboy who disappeared from London in 2007. Andrew Gosden and another English missing person, Charles Horvath Allen, have both been featured recently on the podcast The Missing.

Trinidad: They’re still looking for Kelly Ann Seerattan, a 25-year-old kindergarten music teacher who disappeared from Princes Town in 2011. The article has some quotes from Kelly’s mom.

Black History Month: James Bess

February 23, 2018February 10, 2018Meaghan2 Comments

In honor of Black History Month I’m profiling one African-American MP every day on this blog for the month of February. Today’s case is James Eric Bess, a fourteen-year-old boy who disappeared from Ashland, Kentucky on October 4, 1984.

James lived in a children’s home. He ran away with another resident of the home, Chipley Charles Saunders, who is white and was thirteen years old at the time.

Neither of the boys have been heard from again and, given the length of time — over 30 years — you have to wonder if they’re still alive.

I would like to note that although James is African-American, he has blue or gray eyes. This is very uncommon and might serve as an identifying feature.

Let’s talk about it: Bryan Hayes and Mark Degner

June 8, 2017June 7, 2017Meaghan20 Comments

I find the disappearance of best friends Mark Anthony Degner and Bryan Andrew Hayes puzzling and troubling. They’ve been missing from Jacksonville, Florida since February 1, 2005 — twelve years, nearly twelve and a half.

At first the circumstances of the boys’ cases look pedestrian enough: they were living in a group home, told friends they were going to run away, and apparently did just that. They were even sighted in Holly Hill, a small town south of Jacksonville on the Florida coast, two months later.

And yet.

The boys, at just twelve (Mark) and thirteen (Bryan), were extremely young to have been gone this long. Bryan had run away before, but never for longer than a day, and Mark had no history of running away. Furthermore, they were developmentally delayed, functioning on the level of seven- to ten-year-old children, and both suffered from bipolar disorder.

How could they have remained off the map this long? Did the boys meet with foul play? If they’re still alive, why haven’t they resurfaced and who’s helping them stay hidden? Were relatives investigated? Were some member or members of the boys’ families unhappy that they were living in a group home? Or is it possible they fell victim to sex trafficking? Due to their disabilities. I should think they would have been extremely vulnerable to any kind of exploitation — even more so than most runaways.

The case reminds me of Clayton Lynn McCarter and Rodney Michael Scott, who ran away from a Bowling Green, Kentucky children’s home three and a half years ago and still haven’t been found. They were almost the same age: fifteen and thirteen. Clayton was developmentally delayed and had psychiatric issues, just like Mark and Bryan, and there’s a good chance Rodney had similar problems though I don’t know that for sure. I’m not suggesting McCarter/Scott disappearances are related to Mark and Bryan’s, though, given the distance in both time and space.

So what do you think happened to Mark Degner and Bryan Hayes? Let’s talk about it.

Make-a-List Monday: Mentally disabled adults

January 9, 2017December 26, 2016Meaghan9 Comments

This list is for adults with varying degrees of intellectual disability of any cause. (Except Alzheimer’s and other dementias; not counting that.) Obviously this makes a person very vulnerable. Mentally disabled people, even the higher-functioning ones, tend to be very trusting and easy to take advantage of, and they may not know how to get home or when and from whom to ask for help.

Sometimes a mentally disabled person is able to lead a more or less normal life. They might be able to graduate high school, hold down a job, live on their own and even raise a family — though they would probably need support to succeed at all those things. On the other end of the spectrum you get people who cannot manage even the most basic of self-care, need constant supervision and are usually institutionalized for life. Fortunately the former kind of mentally disabled people are more common than the latter kind.

*maybe

MP anniversaries today

October 5, 2016October 5, 2016Meaghan4 Comments

Courtesy of the Unfound Podcast‘s Twitter feed and my own checking:

Colleen Vanita Simpson, 14, missing since 1975 from Clearfield, Iowa. Disappeared from her home at night, classified as a non-family abduction, but I’ve got nothing on her. Wish I did.
Karen Lee Kohls, 31, missing since 1982 from Maumee, Ohio. Her car turned up parked at a nearby lake with chairs and fishing tackle locked inside it. Foul play is suspected.
Daniel A. Naylor, 14, missing since 1982 from Fremont, California. Although his case was classified as a runaway for decades, foul play is now suspected.
Babette Nadine Alberti, 23, missing since 1983 from Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. I don’t have much on her, but she might have gone to Mississippi after her disappearance.
Michelle Doherty Thomas, 17, missing since 1985 from Santa Fe, Texas. She was a young wife and mother (she was last seen the day before her son’s first birthday), and had been a police informant prior to her disappearance. Two men were later indicted for her kidnapping but never brought to trial.
James Jamison, 75, missing since 1987 from Burlington, Iowa. He was last seen getting into a cab with suitcases; he’d planned to go to Chicago. His disappearance was seen as completely out of character, though.
Amanda Marie Rivera, 14, missing since 1990 from La Mesa, California. She was a recent MP of the week. I don’t have much on her.
Zeta D. Gordon, 43, missing since 1992 from Atchison County, Kansas. There’s speculation that her husband was involved in her case; he took his own life in 1998. She was MP of the week in 2004. Two months ago someone posted a comment on the blog entry: I was in Atchison for a friends wedding, I met the daughter of Wayne and Zeta. It was shortly after she went missing. There is a lot not being told in this story. The daughter pulled out a scrapbook of all the articles written about this story. They did I fact have 3 kids together, the daughter and oldest son believed there dad had everything to do with the mothers disappearance, the oldest son would no longer have anything to do with Wayne and the daughter who was barely out of high school who was still living at home was visibly scared of her dad when he walked in while she was showing us the scrapbook. She absolutely believed her dad was guilty the younger brother was to young to understand. The daughter said she thought that her mom and dad were meeting somewhere later to talk and that’s where her car was found. Her dad accused mom of having an affair with someone and was trying to shift the blame onto someone else. From everything the daughter said I believe he was to blame
Barry Paul Duncan, 38, missing since 1994 from Phoenix, Arizona. Eleven days later his truck turned up abandoned at the Gila River Indian Reservation. Foul play is suspected.
Kenneth William Harker, 34, missing since 1996 from Sioux City, Iowa. He was disabled due a head injury, although capable of living independently. Investigators believe he was murdered.
Ronald Leonard Farrell, 62, missing since 1999 from Hemet, California. He left on foot to go to the pharmacy several miles away and and fill a prescription, and never returned. Farrell was a retired Air Force veteran.
Andrea Michelle Reyes, 1, missing since 1999 from New Haven, Connecticut. A family abduction; her mother took her. Mom is from Mexico and well-experienced at crossing back and forth across the border.
George Boardman, 70, missing since 2000 from Bingham, Maine. Because he often left for weeks-long trips without telling anyone, his family didn’t notify the police he was gone until they failed to hear from him at Christmas. Foul play is suspected.
Tristen Alan Myers, 4, missing since 2000 from Roseboro, North Carolina. His story is exceptionally sad. Even before he disappeared, this poor little boy never had a chance.
Bedriye Sayrun, 33, missing since 2001 from Chicago, Illinois. Last seen at a restaurant in the early morning hours. She suffered from mental illness.
Eric M. Apatiki, 21, missing since 2004 from Nome, Alaska. He didn’t live there; he lived in a tiny village on St. Lawrence Island. He’d traveled to Nome to see his girlfriend, who was pregnant with his child.
Janita Gay Sites, 60, missing since 2005 from Las Vegas, Nevada. A murder-without-a-body case; her husband was convicted. He claimed self-defense but given that Janita was mostly wheelchair-bound, that didn’t exactly go well.
Christie L. Wilson, 27, missing since 2005 from Rocklin, California. This was also a murder-without-a-body case; Mario Flavio Garcia, a man she met at a casino the night she disappeared, was convicted in her death and sentenced to 59 years to life.
Uvaldo Moises Anaya, 64, missing since 2007 from Denver, Colorado. He was living with relatives at the time of his disappearance and was drinking and using hard drugs. For some reason at the time of his disappearance his left eye was painted over with white shoe polish.
Barbara D. G. Sears Frears, 56, missing since 2008 from Reno, Nevada. She had schizophrenia and lived in a group home for mentally ill people. Apparently she hopped a bus to San Francisco after she left the home.
Eric Lawrence Brown, 23, missing since 2009 from Tucson, Arizona. I don’t have much on him, but he did associate with a local street gang.
William Cameron Brown, 66, missing since 2010 from Monroe County, Florida. He lived in a houseboat and was traveling to shore in a dinghy but apparently never made it; the dinghy never turned up either.
David Christopher Allor, 56, missing since 2011 from Enterprise, Alabama. He may have tried to hitchhike to his previous hometown of Detroit, Michigan.
Catherine Marie Tornquist, 56, missing since 2011 from Hot Springs, South Dakota. Another murder without a body. Her own son, Matthew, is serving LWOP in this case.
Citlalli Perez-Coronel, 13, missing since 2012 from Louisville, Kentucky. A runaway; she had previously run to Nashville, Tennessee and may have done so again.
Jason Lee Lovelady, 38, missing since 2013 from Whatcom County, Washington. He disappeared while gathering pinecones in the Mt. Baker Wilderness in the northern part of the state.
Melissa Dawn Eagleshield. 42, missing since 2014 from Becker County, Minnesota. She apparently left a friend’s rural home, shoeless, in the early morning hours and it’s possible she accepted a ride from a passing motorist.

Make-a-List Monday: John in its various forms

October 3, 2016September 9, 2016Meaghan14 Comments

Since last week I did a list of MPs named Mary or some nickname or international form of Mary, I thought I’d do John this week. Again, using Nameberry’s lists: John’s international forms and John’s nicknames.

Fun fact: the name “Jonathan” actually comes from Nathan, not John, but I’m adding it to the list anyway.

If there’s an asterisk, the MP is female. I didn’t count all the females named Jean or Jan, because almost all of them on Charley are female, or the females named Jackie, cause for women that’s short for Jacqueline.) The obligatory warning: I might have missed some people.

JOHN/JON

JOHNNY/JOHNNIE/JONNIE

JACK/JACKIE

JONATHAN/JONATHON/JOHNATHON

SEAN/SHAWN/SHAUN

SHANE

IAN

JUAN

GIOVANNI/JIOVANI

IVAN

HANS

Hans Harry Okelsrud

EVAN

Evan Allan Snider

JAN

Jan Ostrom

JEAN

Jean Marie Monfort

JOHAN

JENS

Jens Paeschke

A semi-tangent: Boys Town

September 16, 2016Meaghan1 Comment

As I’ve mentioned before, I am on an NCMEC mailing list where they email me every time they issue a new poster or take an existing poster down. (Though that list isn’t perfect; a lot of notices don’t seem to reach me.) I was going through the 25 or so NCMEC emails today when I noticed Boys Town, Nebraska yet again.

Given that Boys Town has a population of 745, people seem to go missing from there an awful lot. In fact, if you search for “Boys Town” on the “missing from” line on the NCMEC’s search page, as of this writing, FOUR kids are missing from there. One Hispanic boy, one Native American boy and two black girls. One has been missing since last October, almost a year.

I can only conclude that they were residents of Boys Town, the residential treatment center for troubled youth whom the actual village of Boys Town was named after. It’s kind of a famous place and I think they made a movie about it or something. According to its history, It was founded in the nineteen-teens by a priest named Father Flanaghan who got the idea that if he removed people from the blighted inner cities to a remote country location, they might do better in life. Those were super-racist, xenophobic times, but Father Flanaghan welcomed all boys regardless of race or religion.

Boys Town now accepts girls as well, obviously. In fact, I thought they had changed their name to “Boys and Girls Town” but maybe I was wrong or maybe they changed it back or something. I know Daisy Coleman, of “Maryville Rape Case” fame, spent 90 days at the facility while trying to recover from the gang rape and ensuing fallout. (By the way, for those who are interested, I found an article from a few months ago about Daisy and she’s doing much better now. She’s in college studying art and plans to become a tattoo artist; she’s already landed herself an apprenticeship.)

And unlike the other children’s homes I’ve written about, I haven’t heard anything horrible about Boys Town.

I just hope those four missing kids turn up soon. I bet they will; of all the Boys Town disappearances I’ve seen per the NCMEC, none of them have ever stayed missing long enough to get posted on the Charley Project.

A third set of disappearances from an institution

September 4, 2016September 16, 2016Meaghan2 Comments

In 2009 I wrote about the now-defunct CEDU school, which has three of its students disappear and end up Charley: 17-year-old John Christopher Inman in 1993, 14-year-old Blake Wade Pursley in 1994 and then Daniel Ted Yuen in 2004.

There’s also the New Lisbon State School, now called the New Lisbon Developmental Center, which I also blogged about in 2009. It also has three residents missing: 17-year-old Steven Eugene Anderson and 12-year-old David Edward Williams vanished from there in 1975, and in 1982 Kenneth Arthur Schweighart wandered off campus and was never seen again.

Now, as I’m wrapping up the Virginia State Police page’s cases, I find a third such institution with multiple disappearances: the Hairston Home for Adults, a retirement/nursing home in Martinsville, Virginia. VSP now has Howard Kenneth Woolwine, a 73-year-old missing since 1998, on their page. Whilst researching Mr. Woolwine I found a 2014 article (which, unfortunately, I can’t link to) that says Earnest Thomas Mitchell, 61, disappeared from the same facility in 2004 and was never found. Mitchell is not listed on VSP or NamUs or anywhere else for that matter, but he’s probably still missing — if he was still missing in 2014 but had turned up since then, I think I would have found something that said so.

I should emphasize that (with the exception of Blake Pursley) there’s no indication that ANY of the people I’ve named in this entry met with foul play. They just all fall into a particular rare category, that’s all.

I did all the updates for September 3 and 4 on September 3, and posted 4’s updates right after midnight tonight, and almost immediately got to work on September 5. Howard Woolwine, and the last of the Virginia cases, will go up September 5.

(I’m going to have see about that photo though. Does this look like a 73-year-old white man to you? It’s tiny and poor quality, but that looks like a young man to me — possibly white, but equally possibly Hispanic or a light-skinned African-American. VSP has matched the wrong photos to their MPs before, as you may well remember.)

And if you wonder what’s going on with that… I’m manic. I’m flying at the moment, dazzled, on fire. I’m higher than a kite right now. Which is great for you. Not so much for me.

Make-a-List Monday: Seizures

August 8, 2016August 8, 2016MeaghanLeave a comment

A list of MPs with who suffer from or may suffer from seizures. I include cases where people are taking medication and might get seizures as a withdrawal symptom if they stop abruptly.

Fun fact: many people on the autism spectrum, perhaps as many as one-third, also suffer from epilepsy. Which kind of makes sense, since both autism and epilepsy are neurological disorders. I don’t have epilepsy, but when I was sixteen I did have a grand mal seizure for no reason whatsoever. I was standing there talking to my dad, holding a pop, and then I remember seeing black and white spirals, and suddenly I was sitting on the couch and had somehow managed to spill pop all over my butt. (You know, the butt I was sitting on. I’m still not sure how that happened.) Dad said I started twitching and stuff and jerked my arms out in front of me like a zombie. I remember I had a splitting headache for the rest of the day.

YouTube Saturday: Justin Harris and Kimberly Palmer

June 20, 2015November 9, 2015Meaghan8 Comments

For this week I did Justin Phillip Harris and Kimberly Anne Palmer. Both very mysterious cases.