A bunch of “they’re still looking for…” and other stories

Lee and Anthony Redgrave are working with the the DNA Doe Project to identify transgender and nonbinary murder victims. They’ve started the Trans Doe Task Force, which helps police and medical examiners with cold cases involving transgender people.

Alaska: An unusually high number of people have gone missing from Fairbanks in the past ten months. Fairbanks averages five missing persons a year, but since May 2020, eleven people have disappeared and have not been found. (I wonder if the political, economic and emotional turmoil caused by the pandemic has anything to do with it.) Five of the missing eleven are Native. The community is concerned and held a vigil about it.

Colorado: Wendy Stephens, a Denver teenager who disappeared in 1983, has been identified as a victim of Gary Leon Ridgeway, the Green River Killer. He pleaded guilty to 49 murders but is believed to have killed more than 71. Not all of his presumed victims have been found, and three that have been are still unidentified.

Indiana: This article details the uncertainty about the veracity of a suspect’s confession in the Denise Diane Pflum case. Denise was 18 when she disappeared from Connersville in 1986. Her body has never been found. In 2020, her ex-boyfriend, Shawn McClung, confessed to her killing after being offered immunity for her death and also the dismissal of two charges he was in jail for. At the time he was dying. Before he passed away a few months later, McClung retracted his confession, saying he’d only made the statement because he didn’t want to die in jail.

Louisiana: They’re still looking for Cory Marie Rubio, a 24-year-old mother of two who disappeared from Shreveport in 1999. The most logical person to look at is her ex-husband; they were in the middle of a custody battle, and he had a history of violent behavior.

New Hampshire: Authorities have determined that the remaining unidentified body in the Bear Brook murders case has maternal relatives in the Pearl River, Mississippi area. DNA testing indicates the child and her mother were descendants of Thomas “Deadhorse” Mitchell, who was born in 1836, or William Livings, who was born in 1826. The dead child also may have suffered from anemia.

New Mexico: They’re still looking for Robert Marcos Romero, an eight-year-old boy who disappeared from Santa Fe in 2000. The most plausible theory is that his brother Ronnie killed him accidentally while under the influence of drugs, but nothing has been proven and Ronnie died over a decade ago.

New York: They believe the car found in the Muscoot Reservoir, which I wrote about earlier, is that of Brenda Kerber, a 40-year-old woman who disappeared from White Plains in 1989. I’d never heard of this case before.

Also New York: They’re still trying to identify a Jane Doe found in Chautauqua County. She now has her own Facebook page.

Oklahoma: They’re still looking for Darian Michelle Hudson, age 23, who went missing from Stillwater in 2017. She was going through a lot of personal problems and may have had a mental breakdown. Her family thinks foul play was involved in her disappearance, but the police say they aren’t sure.

Also Oklahoma: A proposed missing persons bill, House Bill 1790, is being called the Aubrey Alert, after missing transgender Native woman Aubrey Dameron. Aubrey was 25 when she disappeared from Grove in 2019. The Aubrey Alert bill, if passed, would require “critically missing” adult cases to be investigated immediately. The text of the bill can be read here.

Oregon: They’re still looking for Jodie Marie Anderson, a 29-year-old woman who disappeared from Crescent City in 2017. She may be in the Linn County area.

South Carolina: They’re still looking for Shelton John Sanders, a 25-year-old man who disappeared from Columbia in 2001. He now has a Facebook page.

Tennessee: They’re still looking for married couple Kristie Wilson, 39, and Henry Wilson, 45, who disappeared from Monterey in 2018. Their car was found at the bottom of a ravine months after they went missing; it had been there so long there were plants growing in it. No sign of either of them. There have been multiple tips that the Wilsons were murdered, but no solid leads.

Texas: They’re still looking for Fredrick Joseph “Little Joe” Boehm, age 23, who disappeared from Marshall on this day twenty years ago. He was temporarily staying with a friend when late one night he got a mysterious phone call, changed from his pajamas into street clothes and left, saying he’d be back later. He never returned.

Also Texas: They’re still looking for Andrea Leigh Cotten, a seventeen-year-old girl who disappeared from Corsicana in 2004. She left her cousin’s house in the night and never returned. She disappeared the day before she was supposed to visit her child, who was in foster care, and her family doesn’t think she would have missed that on purpose. Since she went missing there’s been no activity on her Social Security number, which is ominous.

Canada: The four-month-old disappearance of 30-year-old Megan Michelle Gallagher from Saskatoon is now being investigated as a homicide.

England: The brother of Suzy Lamplugh, a 35-year-old woman who disappeared from London in 1986, has issued an appeal for answers in her case.

“An Uncertain Future for a Key Missing Persons Program” and other stories

Another article dump (I’ve decided to make a regular thing of this, even after I’m out of Facebook Jail):

This article about the near-defunding of NamUs. Key highlight: “Meanwhile, according to a statement from NIJ, the program could be facing staffing and service cuts, at least in the short-term — and it remains unclear what exactly the longer-term future of NamUs may be.”

From Alaska: four Native people disappeared this fall after visiting the city of Fairbanks, and they are all still missing. Their names are Willis Derendorf, Frank Minano, Debbie Nictune and Doren Sanford. Police don’t think the cases are related.

From Florida: Ashley Lucas disappeared in September, a few months after traveling from her home in Texas to the Florida Panhandle for work. She was hospitalized and has not been seen since her release at the end of the month.

From Massachusetts: it’s coming up on the sixth anniversary of the disappearance of Sabrina Lee Hatheway from Worcester.

From Mississippi: they’ve installed Crime Stoppers kiosks in Walmarts in Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula to help find missing people from the area.

From Nevada: A body found in 2004 has been identified as Aldo Araiza, who disappeared in 2000 at the age of 20.

From North Carolina: the police are still looking for two people missing from Shelby: Kenneth Jamison, missing since 2017, and Walter Vernon McCraw, missing since 2018.

From Ohio: Brian Rini, who surfaced in Cincinnati in April 2019 and falsely claimed he was Timmothy James Pitzen, who disappeared from Wisconsin in 2011, has been sentenced to two years in prison for identity theft as a result. But because he gets credit for 20 months of time served, he’ll be out in four months. A year of probation follows his release.

Also from Ohio: the police are still looking for Jeffrey Hayes Pottinger, who disappeared on Christmas Eve in 2009 from Warren County.

From Texas: the police are still looking for Orville Seaton, who disappeared from Navasota two days before Christmas in 1997. He was 71 at the time and would be 94 today.

From Virginia: Ronald Roldan, recently charged with the kidnapping of Bethany Anne Decker, has now been charged with her murder as well. Bethany has been missing since 2011.

From Wyoming: Angela Laderlich disappeared from Casper on September 25 and is still missing.

From England: they found some human bones in Solihull, which were thought to possibly be those of thirteen-year-old David Spencer and eleven-year-old Patrick Warren, who disappeared the day after Christmas in 1996. However, it turns out the bones are over a century old.

From Nigeria: in an all-too-familiar story, the terrorist group Boko Haram has kidnapped more than 330 boys from a government-run boarding school in Kankara.

From Pakistan: despite promises to end the practice, security forces are still regularly abducting, torturing and murdering people. Thousands of victims are still missing.

From Scotland: A review of missing people from Glasgow.

MP of the week: Kevin Maclin

This week’s featured missing person is Kevin Lydell Maclin, a 32-year-old African-American man who disappeared from Unalaska, Alaska on November 19, 1997. A fisherman, he was last seen leaving the fishing vessel at the Unisea Docks at 9:30 in the evening, and may have gone to a local bar. The circumstances of his disappearance are unclear.

Unalaska is a small town of a little over 4,000 people on Unalaska Island and neighboring Amaknak Island in the Aleutian Islands off mainland Alaska. Given that the islands are not large, I’m surprised no trace has been found of Maclin. I can’t find any news articles on this case.

I’m sorry this is a day late. I’ve been feeling super depressed for over a week now and I’m not really sure why; in spite of what’s going on in the world, nothing terrible has happened to me. I’m thinking it might just be a bipolar downswing. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway. If it is, that means I’ll swing back up eventually.

MP of the week: Virgil Tackett

This week’s featured missing person is Virgil Wade Tackett, a 17-year-old boy from Ohio who was spending the summer up in Alaska when he disappeared while out on his skiff near Chichagof Island in the Alaskan Panhandle area on June 11, 1986.

His family seems to think he’s still alive and possibly suffering from amnesia; they have pointed to unconfirmed sightings in Alaska and Canada. I think it’s unlikely. But if still alive, Virgil would be 51 years old today.

I hope everyone is well and staying safe and healthy. Michael started work again today.

Lost at sea

So yesterday I added a case of six commercial fishermen who disappeared off the coast of Alaska when the fishing vessel Destination sank in 2017 with the loss of all hands on board. I think this was the largest “lost at sea” group of disappearances, and possibly the largest group of “lost/injured missing” people I’ve put up: Kai Jamal Hamik, Jeffrey Hathaway, Charles “Glenn” Jones, Lawrence Vincent “Larry” O’Grady, Darrik Monroe Seibold and Raymond Jay Vincler.

I also added Eric Lawrence Eder, an Alaska fisherman who fell off a fishing trawler off the coast of Alaska, and Angela Chingliak, whose body was never found after her boat sank in Goodnews Bay off the coast of Alaska.

I’m sure you’re sensing a pattern here. I got all those names off this list of missing persons in Alaska, which has 1,231 entries as of this writing. It’s just names and dates of disappearance, nothing else. The list of active missing persons bulletins, which has fliers with photos and the standard info, is much shorter. It has I think 117 people, unless I lost count.

Alaska DOES have a pretty high crime rate, but a lot of the missing persons on its list are only “missing” in a technical sense: their fates are known, and in many instances so are their approximate whereabouts. They’re just on the lists in case their bodies turn up and need to be identified.

I’m not sure how far I’m willing to go with groups of lost/injured missing people. I mean, six is one thing, but I know there’s one ship that sunk in the Bering Sea and with like 45 people on board, almost all of whom perished, and they never found the bodies. I wouldn’t want to put up THAT group, and those 40-some people may very well be on that list of Alaska missings.

I guess it’s just a judgment call.

Native American Heritage Month: David George

In honor of Native American Heritage Month I’m featuring a Native American missing person for every day in the month of November. Today’s missing person is David Post George, age 21. I don’t have any tribal info for him.

He was last seen in Juneau, Alaska on March 7, 2005, but for some reason he wasn’t reported missing till 2007. I have no other information.

Native American Heritage Month: Marion Gonangnan

In honor of Native American Heritage Month I’m featuring a Native American missing person for every day in the month of November. Today’s missing person is Marion Gonangnan, a 32-year-old woman who disappeared from Anchorage in 2003. I don’t have tribal info for her. The site Justice For Native Women says she had spent a lot of her life in the lower 48 states, was unhappy in Alaska and wanted to return to California, where she’d spent her younger years.

Marion may have been suffering from an ectopic pregnancy at the time of her disappearance. Basically, that happens when the fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube rather than the uterus. The only treatment is to terminate the pregnancy; if left untreated, this is a life-threatening condition.

That alone would make her disappearance concerning, but Marion’s lifestyle indicates foul play could have been involved in her case. She had a history of drug abuse, sex work and “residential instability”, and a violent relationship with her boyfriend. (He was in jail when she went missing, though, so he isn’t a suspect.)

It seems likely that Marion is deceased. If still alive, she would be 48 today.

National Hispanic Heritage Month: Valeriano Flores-Mata

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month I’m featuring a Hispanic missing person every day from September 15 to October 15. Today’s case is Valeriano Flores-Mata, who was last seen on July 24, 2004, when he was 32 years old.

His disappearance appears to be either an accident or foul play. He was last seen either on or near the fishing vessel Deep Pacific as it was preparing to leave port at St. Paul, Alaska. It wasn’t until several hours later that anyone realized he was missing, by which time the ship was out to sea.

These circumstances would indicate an accident, but it says he’s missing under “suspicious circumstances” which leads me to believe there’s more to the story than this.

If still alive, which seems unlikely Flores-Mata would now be 47 years old.

Five (sorta) missing people in the wreckage of a crashed plane

So, if a plane crashes and they find the crash site but are unable to recover the bodies for whatever reason, I don’t usually consider those people to be missing, even by my quite generous definition. After all, their fate and the location of their remains is known.

But today, I added five people whose case fit those parameters: plane crash, wreckage found. I decided I could just about wedge the case within the Charley Project’s case requirements because, after the crash site was initially located, it vanished again. It moved.

I doubt that happens all that often, but this was in Alaska, the Land That Eats People.

A small plane carrying four Polish tourists and their pilot was on an aerial tour of Denali National Park when it hit the side of the mountain. This was at 11,000-foot elevation, on an unstable field of ice and snow. When park rangers found the site a few days later, the plane was embedded in snow right on the side of a cliff, as you can see in the photo accompanying this article. The fact that it’s gone now is not terribly surprising: shifting/melting ice and snow, wind, etc.

So anyway, the victims are now up on my site: the pilot, Craig Layson, from Michigan, and the four passengers: Janusz Intek, Maria Libacka, Kazimierz Miernik and Robert Sieniawski, all of them Poles. Rest In Peace. The mountain is their grave.

Wanted to refer everyone to this article

Charley Project Facebook user Michelle S. found this article about the 1987 disappearance of Ronald Oquilluk (who was not on Charley) and how he was identified over thirty years after he went missing. It’s a very good article and there’s a bit at the bottom about the recent identification of missing hunter Patrick Chambers.

Oquilluk’s case reminds me of the 2016 disappearance of Walter Hawk, another Native Alaskan man with special needs who wandered into the wilderness and never came back. What’s particularly frustrating in Hawk’s case is that searchers actually saw him in the days after he went missing, just hoofing it across the tundra, but apparently they weren’t able to get his attention. So close, yet so far.

I’ll say it again: Alaska eats people.

Oquilluk’s remains were found a full 450 miles from where he was last seen, and I wonder whether Hawk wandered as far as that. He disappeared during the summertime, and if he knew how to live off the land he might have been able to survive for an extended time period.