So many watery graves

Due in part to the activites of Adventures with a Purpose (and they are awesome, check them out and give them money or something), it seems like there have been quite a few missing persons are turning up inside their cars inside lakes and rivers lately. I have many cases to resolve.

Most recently we’ve got, in no particular order:

1. Miriam Ruth Hemphill, 84, missing from Oak Ridge, Tennessee since July 22, 2005. Her vehicle was found in Melton Hill Lake with human remains inside.
2. Samantha Jean Hopper, 19, and her unborn baby, and her 1-year-old daughter, Courtney Esther Danielle Holt., missing from Russellville, Arkansas since September 11, 1998. Their car was found in eight feet of water in Pope County, Arkansas, although the news articles I’ve found haven’t said which specific body of water.
3. Judith Ann Chartier, 17, missing from Chelmsford, Massachusetts since June 5, 1982. This was a surprise, as everyone had suspected foul play in her case. But it turned out she’d (probably accidentally) driven her car into the Concord River in Billerica, Massachusetts. The remains inside have already been identified as hers.
4. Van Thay “Stephanie” Nguyen, 26, and her two children, 4-year-old Kristina Thay Nguyen and 3-year-old John Thai Nguyen, missing from Cincinnati, Ohio since April 18, 2002. Their vehicle was found in the Ohio River in October, something which isn’t terribly shocking since Stephanie had threatened to drive into the river and they were last seen near a boat ramp.
5. Brian E. Goff, 64, and his 55-year-old girlfriend Joni E. Davis, missing from St. Clairsville, Ohio since June 10, 2018. Their car was found in the Ohio River with two bodies inside, still seat-belted in.

In these cases where multiple people were involved, I am not sure what to do at this point. Like, we can safely assume that the human remains inside Miriam Hemphill’s car are Miriam’s. But when people disappear like this and years or decades later it turns out they drove into water, sometimes not every person can be recovered. Like, it’s entirely possible that the remains found in the Nguyen’s car belong to just one or two of them, and the river took the other person.

Of course in such a case the individuals not found in or near the vehicle would be presumed dead as well, but the Charley Project usually keeps the case up until remains are found, regardless of what the circumstances indicate.

I’ll start sorting it out tomorrow I guess.

Latest MP stuff in the news

So I wrote a blog entry on the WordPress app on my phone last night about latest missing persons news. But then the entry refused to upload, no matter how many times I tried to get it to. It wasn’t online at all, only on my phone, so I couldn’t even use my computer to upload it. Grr. Lot of time wasted. Now I will try my best to recreate it.

Some cold case missing persons have been resolved:

• Edward “Ashton” Stubbs disappeared from Dickinson, North Dakota on June 17, 2013, a few days before his sixteenth birthday. He was from Texas and had gone up to North Dakota to stay with a cousin and work a summer job. He disappeared from his job site. Ashton’s skull was found on private property in Dickinson in December. It has just been identified. His death is under investigation.
• Sheila Sherrell Franks, age 37, disappeared from Eureka, California on February 2, 2014. A woman of similar appearance, Danielle Bertolini, had disappeared a few days earlier, and people thought their cases might be connected. In 2015, Danielle’s skull was found in the Eel River. Now Sheila’s remains have been identified; her femur, or part of it, turned up in June, near the mouth of the Eel River. Unlike Danielle’s death, Sheila’s death has not (yet) been labeled a homicide, but it is considered “suspicious.”
• Jo Anne Dolly Burmer has been identified, forty-six years after the 25-year-old disappeared in 1973. A fragment of her skull was found in 1993, but it wasn’t until 2017 that it was entered into the DNA database, and it wasn’t until now that there was a match. As nothing else has been found or is likely to be, probably we will never know what caused her death, but I wonder about exposure. This article is very detailed and talks about Jo Anne’s background and her son, who was put in foster care after her disappearance and later adopted by another family.

Some other news:

• The police have a new lead on the possible identity of “Beth Doe”, a young pregnant woman who was raped and brutally murdered in 1976. Her body was dismembered, stuffed in three suitcases and thrown off a bridge into the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania. They think it’s possible that Beth Doe may be Madelyn “Maggie” Cruz, a sixteen-year-old foster child who ran away. They’re trying to find relatives of this Maggie Cruz to get DNA from them to test. I think it’s a long shot.
• Georgia “Nadine” Kirk‘s son Ted has been sentenced to 15 months in federal prison for stealing his mom’s Social Security benefits after her disappearance and presumed death. Nadine was 98 years old and in poor health in 2010, the last time anyone saw her. She was reported missing in 2015, and Ted was unable to explain her absence. It seems likely that she simply died of age-related natural causes and Ted, who hadn’t worked since 1980, disposed of her body and kept cashing her checks. Fifteen months in prison, and $30k restitution, seems light, given the circumstances, and the fact that $80k in total was taken from taxpayers. Nadine’s body has never been found.
• Bernard Brown, the ex-boyfriend of Moreira “Mo” Monsalve, has been charged with her murder. Moreira disappeared from Hawaii in 2014. Her body hasn’t been found and they haven’t said much about the case against Brown, but it seems likely it’ll be circumstantial and possibly include cell phone ping evidence. Murder-without-a-body cases aren’t that common in Hawaii (or anywhere) but other examples include Bongak “Jackie” Koja in 1997, Masumi Watanabe in 2007, and of course Peter Kema in 2017.
• Nancy Beaumont has died at age 92, 53 years after her children Jane, Arnna and Grant disappeared at the respective ages of nine, seven and four. The Beaumont children have never been found and their disappearance is one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in Australia’s history. Their father, Grant “Jim” Beaumont, is alive, but is also in his nineties and I think it’s unlikely he will find answers on this side of the mortal plane.
• The police have released a new sketch of one of Christine Eastin‘s abductors, based off of a recent witness description. I think that’s a reeaaaallly long shot. It’s a rough drawing, this witness’s memory is by now almost fifty years old, and at the time they apparently didn’t realize the significance of what they saw and so they probably took little notice of it. Christine disappeared in 1971 at the age of 19.

Pride Month: Martha “Clyde” Dicks

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is Martha Ann Dicks, aka Clyde, who disappeared from Sumter, South Carolina on March 29, 1972.

Said to be a lesbian who sometimes dated men, I wonder if Martha wasn’t actually transgender. She had a man’s name for her nickname and she liked to wear men’s clothes.

Martha/Clyde is thought to have been a victim of the serial killer Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins. She was 19 and possibly pregnant at the time of her disappearance.

Thoughts on today’s updates

It’s 11:47 p.m. as I type this, so perhaps by the time it’s finished, “today” will be “yesterday.”

For all the updated cases today, except Jahi Turner and Donna Mezo, you can thank Mion, who kindly gathered together a bunch of old newspaper articles about cases I had and emailed them to me.

Regarding my Donna Mezo update, I hope it clarifies the situation with her boyfriend’s death. Earlier I had said there was a suicide note and his death was ruled a suicide in spite of the fact that the gun used was found in “a nearby lake.” Well, I have since learned that “nearby” was more like “a few feet away.” I think what probably happened is that Jeffrie either threw or dropped his weapon into the water during or after firing it.

I found quite a lot on Newspapers.com for Marcell Byers‘s case. His NamUs profile includes a clipping about how the people charged with kidnapping him disappeared and their lawyer had been threatened and maybe it was foul play.

Well, the two suspects did disappear, leaving a van shot full of holes, but I guess it was all just an attempt to evade prosecution because they were alive, back in custody and well enough to cop a plea less than a year later.

It’s disturbing that Marcell was never found. All this over a gold chain. The Zuppos pleaded no contest to kidnapping, meaning they didn’t even admit they were guilty. They’d be out of prison by now and I’m not sure what they’re up to these days. I think Gerald Sr. may be dead; someone with the same name and birth year died in North Carolina in 2003.

Tejin‘s case is just sad. (Also, NamUs has him listed as a girl? I admit you can’t really tell from the pictures. If I hadn’t found some articles on his disappearance I’d have been none the wiser.) I found his Facebook page and one picture was of him holding a little turtle, whom Tejin called “my son.” This was just a few months before his presumed death.

Julie Davis‘s case is sad too. Judging from the Facebook page created for her, she was lost for awhile before she disappeared. They only have the one not very good quality and out-of-date photo of her, and from the Facebook page her family apparently wasn’t really clear on when they’d last heard from her. They mentioned getting a letter from her “around 1985 or 1986.” (I’m not sure where NamUs’s date of disappearance comes from.)

She was just sixteen years old and already out on her own, almost four hours from her hometown.  I know things were a bit different back in the eighties, but that’s still pretty unusual. I wonder if she was in foster care. Obviously her family cares about her or they wouldn’t be trying to find her. I hope she’s alive out there and doesn’t even know anyone is looking, and isn’t a Jane Doe somewhere, or worse, dead and never found.

For this case, normally I’d have listed her as just regular “Missing” but then I saw the detail about the track marks and thought “drugs” and upgraded her case to “Endangered Missing.” Question: do track marks ALWAYS mean drugs? There are some medical conditions that require a person to get frequent injections; do those people get similar scars?

Ashley Lynn Thomas has such striking eyes, so big and dark against her pale skin and hair. I hope she’s okay. I hope she and the baby are both healthy and being looked after.

Stuart Owen Collins got a big update today. (Thanks again, Mion!) It does sound like something bad happened to him, and one inevitably wonders about the woman he was with, and even more so about her husband.

With Paul Egan (another big update there) the whole rendering theory is just awful to contemplate. The police seemed to suspect Paul’s friend. They said his friend was not a suspect, but they also made a point of saying they couldn’t confirm the friend’s story.

It could have happened something like this: Paul and his friend got into some kind of argument at the plant after hours — his friend was a foreman, Paul a technician — and things got out of hand something went horribly wrong, and his friend is panicking and thinks “well, there’s this rendering machine, if I just chuck him in and keep my mouth shut, no one will ever know.” I doubt such places had security cameras in 1975. The rendering machine was designed to grind up horses; a human corpse would be easy.

Of course that’s all supposition. I did look up the friend in the Florida DOC database and on Facebook and couldn’t find anyone by that name. I did find a Newspapers.com mention of a person by that name (and a photo of that person) from 1970, five years before Paul disappeared. Nothing since then. I wonder if I’ve got the spelling of his surname right.

As far as the note Elsie Elsinga left behind — and her daughter’s poo-pooing the significance of that note — I don’t know. Her daughter said something like “How could someone of that age have done anything to mess up their life?” But perhaps Elsie’s “possible mild depression” was more significant than her daughter thought.

For Helen Robinson, I wonder if she decided to take a plane to visit one of those CB radio friends she had, and maybe something happened that prevented her from coming back. It was two solid years before her van turned up; by then, the weeds might have grown over the flight records. Robinson is definitely dead now; I don’t think she would have lived long in any case, because of her emphysema.

I added 27 updates and I’m very pleased with my work output today. I hope y’all have noticed how much more productive I’ve been ever since the site got redesigned. It takes less time to add/update stuff, since I don’t have to write all the code by hand, or hand-add case names to the lists.

Make-a-List Monday: Runaways with medical conditions

This article with worrying information about Clayton McCarter’s medical conditions prompted me to make a list of runaways with medical problems.

1. Nova Cierra Awe: “may be in need of medical attention”
2. Hailey Eli Burns: Asperger’s Syndrome and past behavioral problems, takes medications which she doesn’t have with her
3. Lurline Michelle Bergeron: history of drug abuse
4. Emily Bracamontes: “may be in need of medical attention”
5. Jason Wayne Dennis: suicidal
6. Martha Wes Dunn: “may be in need of medical attention”, heavily involved with drugs
7. Shimeaka Renee Gibson: lupus
8. John Christopher Inman: has a shunt in his skull, needs anti-seizure medication which he doesn’t have with him
9. Janteyl Danielle Johnson: pregnant
10. Ashley Renee Martinez: bipolar disorder
11. Clayton Lynn McCarter: ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, mentally disabled and functions at a five-year-old level, takes psychiatric medication
12. Cynthia Lorraine Perry: history of drug abuse
13. Rachel Geraldine Pratt: pregnant
14. Cindy D. Valle: pregnant
15. Glenna Jean White: needs medication
16. Daniel Ted Yuen: depression and emotional problems, possibly a danger to self and others
17. Elsa Janell Wind: possibly pregnant
18. Fredrick James Workman: ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, needs medication

Select It Sunday: Ashley Eiffert

This week’s Select It Sunday is Ashley Marie Eiffert, chosen by Ashley’s mom. This tiny (under five feet tall) nineteen-year-old disappeared from New Orleans on January 9, 2003. She was last seen arguing with someone on her cell phone. She left her vehicle behind, but it was reportedly broken anyway. Ashley has two tattoos and she was seven months pregnant.

Ashley’s mother told me she’s got a Facebook page, but I can’t find it. I wish I could find out more about her case. Hopefully her mother can provide me more info. I wonder how much attention the New Orleans police have given it; I’ve heard terrible things about that police department, and then of course Hurricane Katrina trashing the city two years later can’t have helped matters.

If Ashley is still alive, she’d be 34 now. Her child would be 14 this month.

Hrmm…

I’ve been up all night doing this and that and have been combing over the under-eighteens on NamUs that have no photos, looking to see if I can find some photos. I found one for Tebble Anita Garrett, but it’s several years out of date; I found an archived article on Newspapers.com from when she ran away in 1985. She got found two and a half weeks later.

More interestingly, I found a 2001 obituary for a Mildred Armstrong of Greenville, South Carolina — Tebble disappeared from Pickens — that mentions one of her survivors as “a daughter, Tebble Garrett, who disappeared in 1991.”

NamUs says Tebble disappeared in 1988. I wonder if perhaps her family heard from her or saw her at some point in 1991? Or did they merely report her missing in 1991, when in fact she dropped out of sight years earlier?

She definitely disappeared more than once, and the NamUs profile indicates Tebble had some serious difficulties by 1988: she was seventeen, pregnant, had needle marks on her arms and four street names. By that point I wouldn’t be at all surprised in her family quite wasn’t sure when they’d seen her last, poor girl.

Make-a-List Monday: Heavily pregnant girls and women

This list is of teenagers and adult women (and one preteen, sigh) who were in the last trimester of pregnancy when they disappeared. If it’s uncertain how far along they were, I’ve included them in the list provided the upper end of the time frame is within the final trimester.

You’ll note how foul play is suspected in many of these cases. The most common non-natural cause of death in pregnant women in the United States is homicide. Plus, if you’re that far along, it’s not really the best time to just walk (waddle?) away from everything.

1. Karen Farmer Beard
2. Holly Lynn Davis Calbaugh
3. Vickie Carriere
4. Guadalupe Barajas Castro
5. Michelle Ngan Ho Chan
6. Cynthia Dyann Coleman
7. Jan Andre Cotta
8. Erin M. Davis
9. Ashley Marie Eiffert
10. Jeanette Gomez Espeleta
11. Angelina Joy Evans
12. Samantha Jean Hopper
13. Linda Ann House
14. Shelia Diane Hughes
15. Crystal Sue Hunt
16. Amanda Kay Jones
17. Amparo Lopez
18. Celina Janette Mays
19. Cecilia Elizabeth Newball
20. Geraldine Ann Obregon-Gingles
21. Ashley Marie Parlier
22. Lucero Sarabia
23. Sandra Ann Sollie
24. Lindsay Marie Wells

Happy Halloween, everybody.

More little updates

I’ve finished my updates for today — nothing terribly exciting, just a bunch of runaways and some small case details. (Does anyone think the conversation Shelia Diane Hughes had with her sister the night before her disappearance is incredibly creepy? Perhaps it meant nothing, perhaps they were just discussing mortality in general, I don’t know. But it seems very suspicious to me, given what happened later. I wish I knew the context of her statements.)

Anyway, as I often do, I made a little tiny few case updates of the kind I don’t usually add to the updates page:

1. Lisa Jane Borden has a new picture, emailed to me by a Charley Project irregular whose name I don’t know.
2. Amy Lee Fandel‘s age-progression has been updated. I’m not sure why hers was done and her brother Scott‘s was not.
3. Edward Joseph Garlinghouse Jr. has an alias name and a few alias dates of birth, courtesy of NamUs. Edward, incidentally, is a hero, as you can tell by the circumstances of his disappearance. I thought I should mention that.
4. Janteyl Danielle Johnson‘s name is pronounced “Jon-tel” so I added that in her distinguishing characteristics. I had thought it might be Jan-tayl or something.

Make-a-List Monday: Pregnant runaways, or ones who took their kids with them

This is a list of teens who are classified as runaways, and who were either pregnant or possibly pregnant at the time they disappeared, or they already had a kid whom they took with them. I don’t count teen runaways who left their children behind.

1. Janteyl Danielle Johnson
2. Jessica Ann Kinsey (maybe)
3. Sara Savannah Miller
4. Mariela Roblero Bravo and her one-month-old son, Wisley Tojil
5. Astrid Piola Rodriguez and her two-month-old son, Dylammsteven Miralda-Rodriguez
6. Shayna Mariah Saine-Garcia
7. Alicia Marie Scott
8. Cindy D. Valle
9. Elsa Janell “Lilly” Wind