MP of the week: Dena McHan

This week’s featured missing person is Dena Viola McHan, a 19-year-old college student who disappeared from Stockton, California on December 6, 1981. She was on her way home when she stopped to get gas.

While she was there an attendant noticed some men “harassing” her, but Dena said she didn’t need any help. She has never been seen again and her car was never found either.

Foul play is suspected in her case, and obviously the first suspects that come to mind are the two men who were bothering her. I wonder if these men have ever been identified and if they were known to Dena. I wonder if maybe they followed her and ran her off the road, or perhaps abducted her at the station itself, though this is less likely.

I also wonder whether Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog were ever investigated in this case. They are known or suspected in several murders and disappearances in that same area in the 1980s and 1990s. It seems reasonable to at least ask Shermantine about this; he’s still alive, though Herzog suicided in 2012.

This doesn’t make much sense

Per the Stockton Police Department’s missing persons section, Dena Viola McHan was last seen wearing a thick white sweater, too-big Jordache jeans, nylons and open-toed shoes. Fine. It also says: “She was originally wearing brown wool pants.”

What does that mean, anyway? My own clothing description noted the pants and says they were soiled; I’ve since taken that part out.

My guess is that Dena put on the wool pants that morning, they became soiled while she was out and about, and she had to borrow someone else’s jeans to replace them, which is why they were three sizes too big. But in that case, why does the Stockton PD mention her wool pants at all? Was she carrying them with her? Did they get found somewhere after she vanished? Inquiring minds want to know. LE sure works in mysterious ways sometimes.