MP of the week: Lisa Littles

This week’s featured missing person is Lisa Ann Littles, a 28-year-old woman who disappeared from Little Rock, Arkansas on September 27, 1994. She’s described as black, with black hair, brown eyes, pierced ears and a small scar on her forehead. She was wearing a white blouse with the logo, burgundy pants and black shoes.

Little info is available in the case: after an argument with an unspecified person inside a car, she calmed down, got out of the car to use the bathroom and never came back. She is also listed in the Arkansas state missing persons database, but without details.

Sorry it’s late. My pukes are finally gone though. Yay.

MP of the week: Debbie Prosser

This week’s featured missing person is Debbie Lynn Prosser, a 25-year-old woman who disappeared from Fort Lauderdale, Florida on May 15, 1984. 39 years ago yesterday.

The above photo is of Debbie when she was in high school, about eight to ten years prior to her disappearance. I couldn’t find any more recent photos of her that were of decent enough quality to post a large version. She has brown hair and gray eyes, is 5’6 tall, and weighed 116 pounds when she disappeared. Very thin build.

Debbie had a boyfriend, Julio Alfonso, and she had moved out of his home six weeks prior to her disappearance. There was some domestic violence going on in the relationship, I’m not sure from which side, with prior police involvement. They’d argue and her stuff would get tossed out on the lawn.

She disappeared the day after Alfonso was found murdered in his home in Pompano Beach, shot multiple times in his head and upper torso. No signs of forced entry. Articles about Debbie’s disappearance said police were seeking her for questioning as a material witness in the murder and also feared she could be in danger as well. The borrowed car she was driving was found abandoned in Pompano Beach. No sign of Debbie. I don’t know if the murder was ever solved.

I have no idea if Debbie shot Julio and went on the run, if she was another victim of Julio’s murderer, or if her disappearance had nothing to do with Julio’s murder and the timing was just a coincidence.

If still alive, she’d be 63 today. Turning 64 on the 21st of this month.

Probably won’t be updating Ylva Hagner’s case

Ylva Annika Hagner’s case is back in the news. The Stanford graduate student, a Swedish immigrant, has been missing since 1996. (Here’s an essay by a Stanford student who knew her), and I haven’t seen any news about her this century, until now.

Ylva

They have searched the Palo Alto, California home of her then-boyfriend, to see if she’s buried there. I’m not sure what prompted the search, whether some new evidence came up or they just felt like dusting off Ylva’s cold case file. The search didn’t turn up anything, unfortunately.

Some people would update Ylva’s casefile to add a sentence or two about the search. But I don’t see the point. Police search in a lot of places for missing persons, sometimes on evidence or a tip, sometimes on a hunch. And many times they find nothing. If I were to update the casefiles every time the cops learned yet a new place where the missing person is not, well…

Perhaps this search will still lead to something, even if they didn’t find Ylva. I hope so. She sounds like a lovely, interesting person. I’d love to be able to write a big update to the case. Better still, resolve it.

If still alive she’d be 68 today.

Interesting article in the Lancaster/Smith cases

This article has come out in the disappearances of Jennifer Lancaster and her baby daughters Monique Smith and Sidney Smith. The case is peculiar to say the least. I mean, an entire family doesn’t usually just vanish.

There are indications that they left on their own to start a new life (the removal of clothes and blankets on a pretext, the secretive removal of other belongings, the comment card filled out in another state), and also indications that something bad may have happened (the fact that they’ve all completely dropped off the map for the past 23 years).

I have to wonder if someone who wanted the kids lured Jennifer to her death. They were both so young: Sidney was going on fourteen months and Monique was just five weeks old. It could be a situation like with Holly Marie Clouse: the parents murdered and dumped, unfound or unidentified, while the baby survived to grow up in someone else’s home.

Or, given as Monique’s paternity seems to be disputed, perhaps Monique’s dad did not want to pay child support and decided to dispose of all three of them. That’s definitely happened before.

I cannot imagine the grief of Jennifer’s family, to have lost all three of them at once like that. I hope they get answers.

MP of the week: Kayla Rodriguez

This week’s featured missing person case is Kayla Rodriguez, who disappeared with Justin Winfrey and his small red and white single engine Piper Arrow plane off the coast of California on October 23, 2019. The pair are presumed to have been killed in a plane crash, but they never found either of them or the plane.

Kayla was 27 when she disappeared; Justin was 43. If still alive, they’d be 31 and 46 today. Kayla is described as Hispanic with brown hair and brown eyes. She was 5’5 and 205 pounds at the time of her disappearance. Justin is black, with black hair and brown eyes; he was 5’11 and 203 pounds.

Born to Lose

When I have one of my vomiting cycles, there’s not much I can do but lie in bed and try to be as still as possible. One of the few things I can do, is read, as long as it’s on my phone or a Kindle and not an actual paper book. (Holding the book up and turning pages takes enough movement that it makes the nausea worse.) During the most recent episode of the pukes, I read the Kindle edition of James G. Hollock’s Born to Lose: Stanley B. Hoss & the Crime Spree That Gripped a Nation.

Hoss was pretty much the worst of the worst. Like, I’m against the death penalty and I’ve said that many times, but Hoss is the kind of person the death penalty was made for.

In prison, doing a life sentence in the most secure part of the facility, having already killed a cop and presumably also Linda Mae and Lori Mae Peugeot, Hoss tortured a guard to death for no reason. I know that a malicious guard can make a prisoner’s life a misery, but Hoss and this particular guard didn’t have a problem with each other. Hoss and a few of his friends brutally murdered that poor man just because they could. What else can you do with such a person, besides kill them?

It’s kind of up in the air as to whether Hoss was created by nature, or nurture. I think some people ARE born bad. Hoss’s family were, for the most part, not criminals, and there’s no evidence that he was abused as a child. But there were indications that something was “off”. One of the few people Hoss cared about was his big sister Betty, and the way he and Betty were with each other gave rise to open speculation of incest from many people. We’ll never know the truth because both Hoss and his sister are dead now. But I wouldn’t be surprised.

The book had info about the kidnapping of the Peugeots and what Hoss told the cops about where he put their bodies. But I think it’s very unlikely they’ll ever be found, even if Hoss wasn’t jerking the police around, which he probably was. Crazy to think he traveled with them for days. He claims he took the baby all the way from Delaware to Kansas. Perhaps an Amber Alert, if it had existed in 1969, would have saved her and her mother.

Per the book, Linda’s mother suicided from grief. Hoss destroyed so many people’s lives.

It was a good book. I recommend it.

MP of the week: Laurel Rogers

This week’s featured missing person is Laurel Lea Rogers, a 28-year-old woman who disappeared from Port Orange, Florida on February 1, 2010. She’s described as white, with light brown hair, blue eyes, pierced ears, several moles on her back, scars on her wrists, and scars and bruising on her arms and legs. She’s tall, somewhere bweetn 5’7 and 5’10, and weighed somewhere between 150 and 166 pounds at the time of her disappearance. The Charley Project page has a detailed description of her clothes and a photo of her wearing said clothes.

Unfortunately Laurel had a lot of problems in her life, most notably health problems which caused chronic pain. She had to take ten different prescription medicines each day, and she doesn’t have her medicine with her; without it she will eventually die. She would sometimes buy drugs on the street if her legitimate prescriptions weren’t helping out her pain.

Given her state of health, I think it’s unlikely she’s still alive, unless she’s somehow getting her medicine under another name. Which is possible I suppose. Whenever illicit drugs are a factor in a case you have to consider foul play.

I hope everyone is doing well. I’ve been really tired lately and feeling down on myself. I think I’ve got a bit of seasonal depression; I think things will pick up when the weather gets warmer and sunnier. February is such a terrible month in the midwest.

MP of the week: Patricia Small

This week’s featured missing person is Patricia Marie Small, who was last seen when she was dropped off at Liberty High School in Liberty, Texas on May 11, 2002. She was eighteen years old at the time, white, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a tattoo of a heart with a ribbon reading “Jennifer Best Friends 4 Ever.”

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much info about her disappearance; it’s like she just vanished into thin air after being dropped off. No apparent evidence of either runaway or kidnapping.

If still alive, Patricia would be 39 today. There is a Facebook page set up to try to find her.

MP of the week: Samiya Haqiqi

This week’s featured missing person is Samiya Haqiqi, a 24-year-old Afghan immigrant and law student at Quinnipiac University who disappeared from Queens, New York on November 12, 1999. She is described as Asian, with black hair and brown or hazel eyes, 5’5 to 5’6 tall and 128 pounds. She went by the nickname Sammy. She was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, blue jeans, black platform boots, a baseball cap and a gold and diamond ring.

Authorities believe Samiya was killed by her boyfriend, Fahid “John” Popal, after she rejected his marriage proposal. In 2006, Fahid was sentenced to 26 years in prison for murder. His brother Farhad “Frank” Popal pleaded guilty to hindering prosecution.

Samiya’s body has never been found.

MP of the week: Barbara Johnson-Willard

This week’s featured missing person is Barbara Ann Johnson-Willard, a 29-year-old woman who disappeared from Jay, Oklahoma on June 17, 1996. She is white, 5’5 and 105 pounds, with pierced ears and scars on her nose, forearm and abdomen. Her nickname is Bobbie.

This is a murder-without-a-body case; authorities believe Barbara was killed by a coworker, John Lee Weeks. He was charged with her murder in 2011, but the charges were later dropped. Weeks is currently serving time in Kansas for sex crimes and isn’t due to be released until 2037. So he’s not going anywhere and perhaps could be brought up on charges again in Barbara’s case.

Whether or not he was involved in this case, somebody definitely hurt Barbara. As the casefile explains:

Shreds of clothing were inside the car’s trunk and gasoline tank. Blood and skin tissue samples discovered inside the trunk were matched to Johnson-Willard’s DNA; the body fluids found corresponded to a deceased person. Transmission fluid had been poured over the vehicle, but the car was not ignited.

I hope everyone is doing well. Unfortunately I’m still not feeling very well; I’m very tired and find myself struggling to stay awake at my desk when I try to work.