At last, some Aleacia Stancil news

You’ll recall that last year (almost exactly one year ago, July 28), I got an NCMEC notice that Aleacia Stancil had been found alive. No details. I had blogged about the case in 2009.

Well, almost a full year later there is finally news about it! See this: Missing Phoenix girl found alive nearly 24 years later.

It is about what I expected. I’m sorry Aleacia’s life has not been a happy one, though she might still be better off than she would have been if raised by her biological mother. I hope she has a happier existence going forward and can at least get ID now.

Wasn’t expecting this

I got an NCMEC message in my email saying Aleacia Di’onne Stancil has been found alive. This comes as a most unexpected surprise. Frankly, I had not expected her to be found at all, never mind found alive. The police were outright admitting they had no idea where to look for her.

The NCMEC, of course, offers no details, and as of this writing, there’s nothing in the news. I’d love to know the circumstances under which Aleacia, who would now be 23 years old, was located, and what sort of woman she’s become. I’m hoping she was properly raised and is in college or something like that. It seems like the odds are against her growing into a functional young adult, but we can hope, right?

I’ve got a case, one of my “foul play is suspected but few details are available” cases, involving a toddler who disappeared in the eighties. A relative emailed me to say the child’s mother sold it for drugs. I don’t doubt this information, but I wasn’t able to confirm it with any official source so it’s not in the casefile, just in my head. In a way I hope that kid WAS sold for drugs, because if it was, maybe it’s still alive.

I often wonder about the little babies on my site who disappeared ages ago and are presumed to be still alive — I wonder what they’re like now. Alexis Manigo/Kamiyah Mobley and Nejra Nance/Carlina White seem to have turned out all right in spite of being raised by their abductors. Aleacia’s mother struggled with drug addiction and was murdered a year after her daughter disappeared; it’s entirely on the cards that whoever raised Aleacia was able to provide a more stable home environment than she could have gotten from her biological family. But the circumstances of Aleacia’s disappearance aren’t that clear and I’m not sure if she was, in fact, abducted.

I hope there’s something in the news soon. I’m happy to learn this baby lived to grow into a woman.

 

Yay, an update…and MP news overview

First since the 21st. I suddenly realized I had just enough time to take care of that huge stack of APs before the clock struck midnight and…voila.

As for the latest news in the MP world:

There is, at last, an article about the 1983 disappearance of Clifton Leonard. This is the first press I’d seen on him. Clifton was 16 and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia several years prior, and took an antipsychotic drug, Thorazine. He disappeared a few days after his release from the hospital. He went out to go to the lake with some friends and never returned. His parents don’t think he ran away, since he left everything behind and he was happy at the time of his disappearance, glad to be out of the hospital, looking forward to school, etc.

(I don’t know anything about Clifton’s mental illness but it is worth noting that a lot of people who were diagnosed with “schizophrenia” back in the early 1980s and before would not be diagnosed with that disease today. Schizophrenia at the time was a kind of catchall term for any serious mental illness with psychotic features. The label is not as frequently used now as it used to be.)

Russell Smrekar, an imprisoned murderer who is terminally ill, has confessed to killing his college classmate Michael Mansfield back in 1975, and Ruth Martin in 1976. Mansfield disappeared right before he was supposed to testify against Smrekar in a matter regarding a stolen guitar. Smrekar was later convicted of murdering Robin and Jay Fry, a married couple (Robin was pregnant) because they had witnessed him shoplift from a grocery store and were going to testify against him. Martin, another witness in that case, disappeared, and Smrekar is presumed to have killed her too, but he was never charged and her body was never found. Christ, so many murders over a few piddling little thefts. How much time could he have possibly gotten for stealing a guitar and a couple of steaks? He got 200-600 years in prison for the murders.

There’s an article about David Blockett, a two-week-old baby who was abducted by a woman pretending to be a social worker back in 1980. I heard from the reporter in this case and she said it was her TV channel that convinced the cops to reopen the case and put David back on the NCMEC. New details: David’s brother remembers a little bit about the abduction and thinks a man was also involved.

The police have a suspect in the 1979 disappearances of cousins Billy Sena, 11, and Mary Lou Sena, 9. The suspect is Billy’s mother’s then-boyfriend, Michael Cordova. Cordova grew marijuana in the family’s backyard and sold it. Shortly before Billy’s disappearance, one of the plants came up missing. Cordova blamed Billy and was reportedly furious and beat the crap out of him. The idea is that maybe he killed the two kids and staged the abduction. But right now the police don’t know where Cordova is, or even if he’s still alive.

There’s an article about Aleacia Stancil, who disappeared from Phoenix, Arizona in 1994 at the age of 9 months. The article has some more details about her mom, Toni, who was addicted to drugs and allegedly gave Aleacia to an unknown woman who never returned her.

Kendrick Jackson‘s dad has been convicted of his murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Two jailhouse informants said Kendrick’s dad told them the boy deserved it because he’d peed on himself. Yes, 3-year-olds should be expected to maintain perfect bladder control.

The family of eight-year-old Sebastien Metivier, who disappeared from Quebec 27 years ago, have held a memorial service for him.

A little more on Aleacia Stancil

A Phoenix Police Department detective emailed me about another case and I took the opportunity to ask about Aleacia Stancil. What he told me was unsurprising. Toni Stancil was a crack addict. She reported Aleacia missing after she herself was jailed for something or other. The MP report may have just been a ploy to get out of jail. Then not too many months later, Toni was murdered. The homicide is unsolved. The detective said the case “fell through the cracks” and they’re trying to figure out who “Dee” is and so on, and he hopes Aleacia is being raised by another family.

I can only hope this is true.

Genealogical databases

I signed up for a seven-day free trial at World Vital Records, an international genealogical database with all kinds of records. I only want the US database though — I’m looking for info on missing people. My free trial lasts seven days, and if I find it useful enough I suppose I’ll buy a year’s access. It’s only forty bucks. (And seven days from now I’ll know whether I have to actually pay that $150 speeding ticket or not. I plan to challenge it in court; wish me luck!)

I did a search for Toni Stancil, Aleacia Stancil‘s mom. I found a death record for T. L. Stancil which is probably her. Same state, same month and year of death. It says T. Stancil was born on May 17, 1959.

I’m not sure how useful this database will be for me, but I figure I have nothing to lose.

Found some more info on Aleacia Stancil

I found more info on Aleacia Stancil, a nine-month-old baby who disappeared in 1994, about which I knew nothing. According to the Phoenix Police Department (which spells her name “Alecia”), Aleacia’s mother, Toni, gave her to another woman known only as Dee and never saw either of them again. Toni didn’t report Aleacia missing for three months. She died in late 1995.

From what little I know, it sounds like another Caylee Anthony or Ke’Shaun Vanderhorst. I wish I knew more, though. Like, what was the arrangement between Toni and this woman, and what reason did Toni give for not reporting the disappearance for so long? I haven’t been able to find out anything about Toni — no obituary, nothing in the Social Security Death Index either. Perhaps her legal first name wasn’t Toni but Antoinette or something. I haven’t been able to find any articles or anything about Aleacia’s disappearance, either. It’s such a shame, when you think about all the attention Caylee received.

I suppose there’s reason to hope Aleacia is alive today, assuming Toni was telling the truth. We may never know.