Flashback Friday: David Blockett

This week’s Flashback Friday case is David Ezell Blockett, who was only two weeks old when he was abducted by a “social worker” from his Newport News, Virginia home on December 11, 1980. His older brother was also taken but was found abandoned, unharmed, later that day in a town ten miles away. The boy was just old enough to sort of remember what happened, but his recollections haven’t been of much use and there’s been no sign of David or his abductor since 1980.

Two of David’s nephews were abducted by a stranger, a mentally ill woman, thirty years later. The boys turned up alive and the abductor was sent to a mental institution. The one incident has nothing to do with the other but I did note it in David’s file just cause it’s a weird coincidence.

David’s mother died young but his brother is still alive and, I’m sure, would like to be reunited with his lost sibling. The case has never been closed and there’s no reason to suppose David is dead. Somewhere out there, there’s probably a 34-year-old man who doesn’t know who he is, and perhaps doesn’t even know that he doesn’t know.

The Charley Project’s on TV again

Back when Carlina White got found, some national television show, Good Morning America I think, profiled her and was flashing her various missing child posters across the screen and one of them was Charley’s casefile for her. It was only for like two seconds, and it was closely cropped and didn’t say “The Charley Project” or anything, but someone who watches the show (I hardly ever watch TV myself) recognized it and wrote to me about it. I checked the online video and sure enough, it was my site.

And now it’s happened again. Look at the video, and look at David Blockett‘s page on Charley. They’re using my images, I’m sure of it. No credit, of course, but whatever.

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.