Flashback Friday: Darron Glass

For Flashback Friday I’ve got Darron Glass, a ten-year-old who disappeared from his Atlanta foster home on September 14, 1980. He’s presumed to be a victim of the Atlanta Child Killer, the only one whose body was never found.

I don’t know much about the Atlanta Child Murders, but I do know that some people don’t believe Wayne Williams, the prime suspect who’s in prison for two of the killings, is guilty. According to this commenter on my blog, it’s possible Darron Glass was found deceased long ago and his body was misidentified as one of the other victims.

36 years ago today…

Ilene Rebecca “Becky” Scott disappeared on this day in 1980 from her Carson, California home. I wrote about her for Flashback Friday two years ago and a guy named Marshall commented, saying he was Becky’s next-door neighbor in 1980 and he thinks he actually saw her roller-skating the morning of her disappearance. It was Marshall who asked me to mention her on the blog again today, the 36th anniversary of her disappearance. (The FF entry has some other interesting comments in it too.)

There’s a Websleuths thread about Becky and Marshall’s been there too:

My wife Marcia and I lived right next door to the Scott family when Becky disappeared. We had seen her out roller-skating when we left to do some shopping that Saturday morning, and returned to the mobile home park to find the place crawling with L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies.

It would sure be great if Becky could be found. I know there is one gal who has posted on another missing person’s forum or two that she thinks she might be Becky, but seems to be afraid to follow up.

I do think about this sad case from time to time. One thing I was wondering – what if Becky went ‘exploring’ and perhaps got knocked unconscious / trapped underneath one of the mobile homes? I know the Sheriffs looked under some of the mobile homes (including ours), but did they search under all of them in the immediate area? (Might have been 10 units within 100′ or so……)

I updated Becky’s case back in October with additional info I dug out of the newspapers.com archive. Unfortunately I still know very little.

Heard from the cops about Kenneth Welch

I got an email from a detective with the Flagstaff, AZ police department asking me where I got my photo of Kenneth Lawrence Welch, since the Flagstaff police had none available. Welch’s case has never been updated and may have been created by Jennifer Marra back in the MPCCN days.

I was able to tell him where I got the photo — the CDOJ — and now I’m going to have to correct Mr. Welch’s casefile, because Flagstaff says the date of disappearance was April 3, 1980, not April 5, 1990. Whoops.

I’m feeling a lot better. When I took Dad back to his apartment yesterday, we had dinner (my first meal since Monday!) and he gave me a sack of apples to take home with me.

Flashback Friday: Ted Wall and Jeff Mays

This week’s Flashback Friday case(s) are Ted Haywood Wall and Harold Jeffrey “Jeff” Mays, two commercial fishermen who disappeared (together with their supposedly unsinkable boat) at Cape Hatteras off the coast of North Carolina. It was November 13, 1980; they were 22 and 21 respectively.

There’s a possible drug connection here, at least according to Jeff’s family and his best friend. Jeff’s mother wrote a book about called Outer Banks Piracy: Where is My Son Jeffrey?

Select It Sunday: Jackie Boyer

Chosen by Heather, this week’s Select It Sunday case is Jackie Kay Boyer, who vanished from her bedroom in the night, two weeks after her twelfth birthday, in 1980. She disappeared from Windsor, a town in Sonoma County, California. It looks like an abduction to me; there were pry marks on her window, it says. But I have very little information on this case, even after digging through newspaper archives, which is really sad.

Jackie isn’t on the NCMEC site OR on NamUs OR on the California DOJ database, which makes me wonder if her case is even still open anymore — and, if it isn’t, why it was closed. The only photo is black and white and not of the greatest quality — although you do get a pretty good look at her teeth. She had a nice smile.

If she’s still alive, Jackie would be 48 today. But it seems like she would have called home if she could have.

Flashback Friday: Judith O’Donnell

This week’s Flashback Friday case is Judith Erin O’Donnell. She disappeared from Baltimore, Maryland on November 30, 1980, but she actually lived in New York City. She’d been visiting Baltimore with her family for Thanksgiving and the last time they saw her was when they dropped her off to get a bus back home.

Given Judith’s lifestyle, I think it’s very unlikely that she’s still alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a Jane Doe somewhere. Common sense would indicate that wherever she is, it’s somewhere between Baltimore and New York.

Flashback Friday: Harold Jeffrey Mays and Ted Haywood Wall

This week’s Flashback Friday case goes to two young men, Harold Jeffrey Mays (who went by his middle name) and his friend Ted Haywood Wall. They were 21 and 22 years old respectively when they disappeared off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina on November 13, 1980. Both of them were commercial fishermen. They were never seen again and their boat was never located either.

Apparently, the type of boat Jeffrey and Ted were using is extremely difficult to sink. Even if it were swamped, its flotation would keep it just below the surface of the water. Yet the Coast Guard never found it, although they covered over 100,000 square miles of ocean.

Jeffrey’s family believes he and Ted did not meet with an accident. They think their disappearances could be drug-related. Jeffrey’s mom, Shirley, self-published a book called Where is My Son Jeffrey? I can’t find it for sale anywhere though, and besides the Library of Congress, the only library that has it is the University of North Carolina’s at Chapel Hill.

Growl. Muttergrumble.

I’ve been obsessively entering names into Newspapers.com today for info on older missing persons cases and gotten some good results. But some things are just not good enough. For example, I found a new photo of Megan Ginevicz, but it is of just such terrible quality that I am not going to use it. Don’t believe me? Check it out. I can tell it’s a different picture from the one I already have only because you can see her hand up in front of her face. There’s no point in posting this thing. I’ll just have to hope I come up with a better version somewhere else in the archives.

[UPDATE: Yay, someone found me a better version!]

Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered

I was looking for information on Darron Glass and came across this fascinating website about the Atlanta Child Murders. I don’t know much about the murders but I know there is a lot of doubt and controversy about them. This website has loads of info about the various connections between the people and places involved. It also has pictures of the victims and their families — and, in some cases, the crime scenes with the bodies in situ. (Just warning you.)

MP of the week: Khymbrly Scruggs

This week’s featured missing person is Khymbrly Marcella Scruggs, age 19, missing from Sacramento, California since January 12, 1980. I’ve never seen Kimberly spelled that way before. Whether she liked the spelling or not, it must have been a pain in a butt. I like the spelling of my name but it is inconvenient to have to correct everyone when they spell it wrong, and spell it out for people over the phone.

As for Khymbrly, the police believe the local rapist probably killed her. He dropped out of sight for months after her disappearance and, when he was located, the cops questioned him for twelve hours. He denied everything, they could prove nothing against him and they let him go. Later he was imprisoned for rape.

She has, apparently, been declared legally dead.