Glad to see my serial killer knowledge is up to snuff

As a person who has read (I keep records) at least 848 crime books and counting, I’m glad to say my serial killer game is on point.

I was looking on NamUs yesterday when I saw the case of this boy, seventeen-year-old Mark Steven Scott, missing from Houston since 1972.

I thought: “Hmm… early seventies… teenage boy… Houston. That sounds like one of Dean Corll’s victims.” I knew Dean had been preying on adolescent boys in Houston during that very time period.

I would not normally have been very hopeful in trying a newspaper archive search for a name as common as “Mark Scott” as any articles about this Mark would be likely to drown in a sea of unrelated results. But I put in “Mark Scott Dean Corll” and discovered he was actually not just suspected but actually a confirmed victim. I hadn’t known that Corll even had confirmed victims who were still missing, but he did. (There’s also Norman Prater, whom I did know about, but he’s only a good guess rather than a confirmed victim.)

Poor Mark was actually misidentified, and by the time they corrected this error, in was too late to find him.

One of Corll’s accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley, said Mark was buried at High Island Beach with a bunch of other bodies of Corll’s victims. There were two other burial sites, one of which was a boat shed. One of the boat shed bodies is unidentified to this day. The other was misidentified as Mark in 1993.

A DNA comparison was done between this boy and Mark’s mother, and the results indicated there was a 98% chance they were “related.” Whatever that means. We’re all related to a degree.

This identification was accepted by everyone except, apparently, Henley, who insisted Mark had been buried at the beach and not the boat shed. There was also the minor fact that the body was missing two teeth (and they could tell they’d been extracted during life and not just fallen out during decomposition) and had dark brown hair while Mark had light brown/blond hair and no missing teeth.

In 2011, another DNA test was done with more advanced technology. Thus, the dead boy with dark brown hair was identified as another 17-year-old, Steven Kent Sickman.

Dean Corll got away with his crimes for three years with impunity because the Houston police were terrible. Imagine having to go to Mark’s parents and tell them he was missing again and would never be found.

Because there was no more High Island Beach, you see, by 2011. High Island Beach, and whatever secrets it carried, had been lost to Hurricane Ike in 2008, and Mark Scott was taken with it. He’s under the ocean and it’s not really possible to recover his remains.

Putting up Mark’s case has made me interested in Corll and now I’m reading a book about his crimes. I’m only a few chapters in.

My current impressions from what I know of him and his crimes are that his juvenile accomplices are a lot more interesting than Corll himself is. I have a degree of sympathy for both of them, because they had been so young when they were recruited by Corll. David Brooks was only about twelve. I believe I read they had suffered sexual abuse at his hands.

But I am sympathetic only to a degree. As in, “life in prison rather than the death penalty” degree. After awhile you have to start taking responsibility for yourself—which I suppose Henley ultimately did, in a way, by killing Corll.

Henley is the only one of them who is left alive. He’ll die in prison and he deserves it.

Have heard the news about Melissa Highsmith

According to everybody, Melissa Suzanne Highsmith, a toddler who was abducted by a phony babysitter from her family’s Fort Worth, Texas home in 1971, has been found alive and well and has reunited with the Highsmith family. She had been living under the name Melanie Warren.

This is obviously terrific news. She had been missing for 50 years, 51 years in August!

I am going to wait on official police confirmation on this because past hoax “finds” have made me wary. But it is really awesome news. Her family will have her home for Christmas.

MP of the week: Anita Luchessa

This week’s featured missing person is Anita Mary Luchessa, an 18-year-old college student who disappeared from Berkeley, California on May 7, 1972.

What happened to her is not a mystery: she was a victim of the serial killer Ed Kemper. Anita and a friend, Mary Anne Pesce, were hitchhiking when he picked them up. He later said he strangled and stabbed both of them to death, dismembered their bodies and dumped them near Loma Prieta Mountain. Mary Anne’s skull was found on the mountain in August 1972, but Anita has never been located.

Sometimes people ask me why I have cases on the Charley Project of people who are obviously deceased. Two reasons:

1. To help identify them, if their remains are found.
2. In memory of them.

If Anita Luchessa had not been murdered fifty years ago, she would be 68 today.

MP of the week: Darren Rogers

This week’s featured missing person is Darren Conway Rogers, a 13-year-old boy who disappeared from Modesto, California on February 27, 1973. He was last seen walking to school that day. He never arrived there.

It always depresses me when I’ve got a long-ago case of a missing child or teenager and no real details. My guess is that, given the time period and Darren’s age, the police probably assumed he was a runaway and didn’t really investigate. Even now, there’s very little information and Darren isn’t even listed on the NCMEC site.

If still alive, Darren would be turning 63 in two weeks. He was tall for his age in 1973, six feet, and had plenty of growing years left, so if he’s still alive he might be more like 6’3 or 6’4. He has blond hair and he’s partially blind in his left eye.

Darren Rogers has been missing for almost fifty years.

I hope everyone is doing well. My husband is now covid-free and I never tested positive myself. Score one for the vaccines! I have stopped sleeping on the floor of my office and returned to the marital bed.

I’ll be out of Facebook Jail in a week. Here’s some more news.

From California:

• They’re still looking for Khrystyna Carreno, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared from Bakersfield in November 2020. (The article spells her name “Khrystina” but the NCMEC and CDOJ spell it “Khrystyna” so I’m going to go with that.) I don’t have her on Charley but figure I should add her. Twelve is very young, obviously, and she’s been missing for a year and a half now. I hope she’s alive and hasn’t been trafficked. Here’s Khrystyna’s NCMEC poster.

From Florida:

• The police searched a Largo, Florida property in connection with the long-ago disappearances of three women, who were all dating the same man: Margaret R. Dash, missing since 1974, Retha Lee Hiers, missing since 1982, and Donyelle Chrishum Johnson, missing since 1989. Unfortunately the search turned up nothing.

From Georgia:

• They have finally identified the little boy whose corpse was found outside Atlanta over 20 years ago. His name was William DaShawn Hamilton and he was six years old when he was murdered. William was never reported missing. His mother, Teresa Ann Bailey Black, has been charged with felony murder, cruelty to children, aggravated assault and concealing the death of another.

From Michigan:

• They’re still looking for Kathy Sue Wilcox, a 15-year-old girl last seen in Otsego in 1972. She got into an argument with her parents over an older boy she was dating, stomped out angrily and was never seen again. Kathy would be 65 today. Kathy’s sister does not believe she ran away, and made reference to a “significant antisocial person who was in [Kathy’s] life,” whom she thinks could have been involved.

From Minnesota:

• Remains found in Rosemount in 2014 have been identified as James Everett, a New York man who was not listed as missing. They do not know the cause or manner of death, but they believe Everett died sometime in the autumn months of 2013. I wonder if he died of exposure; Minnesota can get very cold, and I doubt a “decommissioned railroad utility shed” would have heat or insulation.

From New Hampshire:

• They’re still looking for 15-year-old Shirley Ann “Tippy” McBride, last seen in Concord in 1984. Although there haven’t been any new developments, the article talks about the case in great detail.
• They’re still looking for Maura Murray, and are searching an unspecified “area in the towns of Landaff and Easton.” This search isn’t based on any new info, though, they’re just shooting in the dark.

From New York:

• They’re trying to find Judith Threlkeld, a 22-year-old woman who disappeared from Chautauqua County in 1976. She was last seen walking home from the library. I added the case to Charley yesterday.

From North Dakota:

• Check out this awesome in-depth three-part series on the 1996 disappearances of Sandra Mary Jacobson and her son, John Henry Jacobson: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 (this last part is paywalled, but I was invested enough to fork over two bucks for a subscription). Very mysterious case. I feel terrible for Sandra’s older son, Spencer: he lost his mom and half-brother, literally, and later on his father was murdered, and neither of these cases have been solved. A few years after the murder of Spencer’s father, Spencer’s wife died tragically young at 24, from strep throat of all things, leaving him a young widower with three kids. Poor Spencer has had enough bad luck to last a lifetime.

From Ohio:

• They’re still looking for Charles King Blanche, a 39-year-old man who disappeared from his Youngstown group home in 1991. Blanche’s cousin says he was a very talented musician who was recruited to tour in Europe in a marching band, but his life kind of cratered after he developed an unspecified severe mental illness. An all-too-common story on the Charley Project.

From Texas:

• It’s being reported that sometimes when Texan foster kids run away, the agencies just wash their hands of them and end their guardianship over them. This sounds terrible, but given how often foster agencies fail their wards, and given as it’s Texas where they can’t even keep the lights on, I’m not entirely surprised.
• Using genetic genealogy, they have identified a Jane Doe whose partial remains were found south of Midland in 2013. The victim was Sylvia Nicole Smith, who disappeared in 2000 at the age of sixteen. The case is being investigated as homicide.

From Virginia

• Cory Bigsby, the father of four-year-old Codi Bigsby, has been indicted on thirty counts, the majority of them child neglect charges. Codi has been missing since January. None of the indictments are related to his disappearance; they’re connected to Cory’s allegedly terrible parenting from prior to Codi’s disappearance. Codi has not been missing long enough to go up on Charley, so here’s his NCMEC poster, and here’s another poster for him.

From Washington state:

• There are forty known Native American people listed as missing from the Yakima area. And here’s a list of all the Native Americans listed as missing from the entire state.

From Washington DC:

• They’re still looking for Relisha Tenau Rudd, an eight-year-old girl who disappeared from a Dickensian homeless shelter in 2014. I’ve blogged about Relisha several times, as recently as earlier this week when they put up a new AP for her. If still alive, Relisha would now be 16. Here’s another detailed article about her case, with links to the earlier series of articles the Washington Post did about it.

And in general:

• Although they don’t drop kids from the guardianship rolls when they disappear, in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Illinois, most missing foster kids who resurface are not screened to see if they were trafficked during the time they were gone. The article says Texas actually has a better record in this regard, with over 80% of missing-and-then-located foster kids being screened. But the number should ideally be 100%.
• My husband has persuaded me to finally turn the Charley Project into an official registered nonprofit organization. Right now we’re saving up the money to pay a lawyer to file the paperwork to do this though it’s going to be awhile at this rate; money is super tight right now. If the Charley Project is a registered nonprofit, all donations will become tax-deductible and also the organization could become the recipient of grants. I’d use the grants to travel to more missing persons events, and pay the subscription fees for more databases to use in researching cases, and maybe hire an editor or something.

MP of the week: Solomon Rose

This week’s featured missing person is Solomon Gomile Rose III, a three-and-a-half-year-old boy who disappeared from a Baltimore, Maryland shopping center on April 1, 1972. His mother took him and a seven-year-old cousin with her to the shopping center, and Solomon disappeared when his mom left the kids unattended while she was cashing a check. He was never seen again.

Solomon’s nickname is Poon. He was last seen wearing a dark brown fake fur coat, a navy blue turtleneck, blue and white checkered pants and tan shoes. If still alive, he’d be 53 today.

I wonder what his cousin has to say about it all. She probably remembers the incident. I wonder if she remembers anything that could be useful in finding him.

Sitting here pondering about minutae that’s of interest to no one

So what’s going on with Carole Louise Rodriguez‘s dress? This photo is said to have been taken just hours before her disappearance, but…

NamUs, which is the source of the photo, claims it’s a “purple mini dress with a print of Chinese pagodas and other Chinese decorations.” But I’ve had a good close-up look (and you can too, click on the photo above to make it larger) and the images on the dress look nothing like pagodas except for their shape. They appear, to me, to be images of snow-covered evergreen trees, snowflakes, reindeer and an all-around winter/Christmas theme, nothing Chinese.

But she disappeared in August. Why was she wearing a Christmas dress (assuming I’m correct and it was a Christmas dress)? And why, if it was indeed a Christmas dress, was it purple? It’s not a scandalous color choice but it is strange, given that most Christmas-themed clothes are red or green.

I think this has got to be either the wrong description or the wrong photo or both. But the dress is long since gone now, like Carol herself. I suppose no one really cares that much what the print on it was. No one except me.

Even modern day photos can be so difficult to figure out when you get into the small details. I put up a guy today who’s been missing only a year, and I found photos of him showing his tattoos, but they are all blurs to me except one.

MP of the week: Mercedes Lodge

This week’s featured missing person is Mercedes Lodge, a 39-year-old woman who disappeared from Castro Valley, California on December 14, 1974 — close to fifty years ago. She’s described as white, with brown hair and brown eyes, and short, at 4’11 tall and 140 pounds. She may have been last seen wearing a black sweater, a green corduroy jacket, black pants and white sneakers. One notable characteristic for people attempting to make matches with Jane Does: Mercedes’s left leg is shorter than her right one.

Unfortunately I don’t know very much about the case, and don’t even have a particularly good photo of her (though I’ve seen worse). She’s considered missing under suspicious circumstances. The only other info available is that she was in Alcoholics Anonymous and attended meetings in Hayward, California.

MP of the week: Andria Bailey

So this week’s featured missing person is Andria Ann Bailey, missing from Spanaway, Washington. Exactly WHEN she went missing isn’t clear; it was sometime in either 1978 or 1979. She would have been anywhere between 15 and 17 at the time.

At the time of her disappearance, Andria was living with her grandma and her parents were living in Germany. She wasn’t reported missing until October 29, 1989, which is nine or ten years after she was last seen.

(I want to add here that her family’s failure to report her missing is not necessarily an indication that they didn’t care about her. Back in the 1970s, law enforcement routinely refused to accept missing persons reports for teenagers, who were automatically presumed to be runaways. It’s entirely possible her family tried to file a report back then and couldn’t, or they did file one and it was misplaced or destroyed by the police and they had to file another. Or perhaps her family also thought she had run away and would return home on her own.)

Very little information is available in Andria’s case, if you couldn’t tell already. Given that she was in King County, I have to wonder about the Green River Killer, Gary Leon Ridgway. I’m not sure he was operating that early but I’m convinced he had more victims than he admits to.

Andria was born on September 27, 1963. If she’s still alive she’d be 58 today. She was about 5’5 and 110 pounds at the time of her disappearance, with brown hair, brown eyes and a two-inch brown birthmark in the middle of her back.

As for me… I’m here. Still struggling to get out of bed, dealing with some pretty awful fatigue. This is actually the first day in what seems like ages that I woke up 1) before noon and 2) not completely exhausted. I don’t know what’s going on, maybe it’s the change of seasons or something. I am trying my best.

Two long-missing people turn up alive and well

Just another one of those “never give up hope” reminders: Nicole Denise Jackson, a Birmingham, Alabama woman who dropped out of sight in 2018, and Sajid Thungal, a man from Kottyam in the state of Kerala in India who was last heard from in 1974, have both resurfaced alive.

Neither of these people were ever listed on the Charley Project: Sajid because he didn’t disappear on American soil, and I’m not sure Nicole was ever officially listed as missing. They also have something else in common, in that both of them vanished after leaving their home countries.

Nicole stopped contacting her family after moving to Germany to be with a guy she met online. Her family finally hired a private investigator who was able to locate and speak to Nicole’s employer and landlord, and as a result Nicole went to the authorities with her ID and verified that she’s ok. She hasn’t gotten in touch with her family though. I don’t know if there were prior family problems, if she’s in a bad situation, if she’s embarrassed or what. But I’m glad to hear she’s alive and has a job and a place to live, anyway.

Sajid left home to make his fortune in the United Arab Emirates, taking a job managing a group of entertainers who were also Indian nationals. At some point in the ensuing few years he lost touch with his family. Then a plane with the entertainers he’d been managing crashed in Mumbai with the loss of all onboard. His family thought, given the circumstances, that Sajid might have died in the crash as well. However, that wasn’t the case.

The truth was that Sajid hadn’t made his fortune after all and was embarrassed by his poverty, and didn’t want to return home with his tail between his legs. And I suppose the more time passed without him writing his family, the more difficult it became to get started, and he just never did it. Until now. His father had passed away in the intervening years but his mom, wife and brothers are still alive.

When a person vanishes voluntarily like that, and then reappears after years have passed, re-integration into the family unit is often difficult. This Washington Post article from 2019 (which I’m quoted in) talks about several real-life cases of a missing person resurfacing and encountering bumps along the way.

The family members, though delighted that their loved one is back in their lives, may also be very angry at the them for causing them so much pain by not picking up the phone. Often, whatever problems that led the no-longer-missing person to go missing in the first place (be it mental illness, family issues, etc.) are still there when they return, and the person might have picked up some new problems along the way while they were missing. Furthermore, they may have built another life for themselves in the meantime, a life which didn’t include their family, and now they have to find a way to fit their family into that life.

It’s a big adjustment and I recommend individual and family therapy in such cases.