Article Dump III

The Washington Post has done a three-part feature, called Indifferent Justice, on the serial killer Samuel Little. He is confirmed to have had over fifty victims, including former Charley Project missing person Mary Gertrude Brosley, and claims he’s killed as many as ninety-three. Part One: The Perfect Victim. Part Two: Through the Cracks. Part Three: Still Unsolved.

Discover Magazine has done this article that isn’t about missing persons may be of interest to y’all: What Explains the Decline of Serial Killers? Me, I have noticed a rise in mass murders in the past few decades and wonder if perhaps some of the people who might have been serial killers have decided to become mass murderers instead. Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and injured fourteen others near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2014, comes to mind as the sort of person who could have turned into a serial killer if he hadn’t taken the mass murder route instead.

Dateline is now honoring seven years of doing their Missing in America thing. 156 of the people featured on Missing in America are still missing.

From California: Woman Missing Out of Arcata since January; Mother and Law Enforcement Seek Information. The woman is named Jennifer Lynn Dulin and was last seen January 10.

Also from California: Missing Pico Rivera Woman Carolina Martinez Found After 5 Months. She was found alive (I think), but no other info is available.

From Colorado: Glenwood Springs teen Daniela Trejo-Noyola reported missing since September. She is 16 and was last seen on September 8. She will be 17 soon.

From Florida: Brevard County deputies search for missing woman last seen more than 1 year ago. Tara Coppola was last seen in West Melbourne on September 12, 2019.

From Iowa: Person of interest in missing-girl case set for trial on unrelated charges. The missing girl in question is Breasia Terrell missing from Davenport since July 10. She was ten at the time and would be eleven now, if still alive.

From Missouri: Missouri woman desperate to find mother Echo Lloyd who has been missing since Mother’s Day. Echo has been missing since May.

From North Carolina: Fayetteville police looking for woman missing since September. Heather Nichole Holmes was last seen on September 28.

From Ohio: Youngstown police seek info on man they just found out has been missing since 1969. The man is named Frank Cerimele and he was 21 years old when he went missing.

From Pennsylvania: Family & Friends Of Missing 22-Year-Old Tonee Turner Hold Silent Walk. She disappeared from the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh on December 30, 2019.

From South Carolina: Human remains found in Murrells Inlet park in 2018 identified as missing man. The man, David Scott Woolslayer, is listed on the Charley Project; I’ll resolve his case.

From Tennessee: Retired homicide investigator taking on two missing persons cases out of Dunlap. Tiffany Diane Holbert, missing since June 13, 2018, and Matthew Tyler Henry, missing since April 15, 2018. Though they both disappeared from the same town just a few months apart, the cases aren’t believed to be related.

From Texas: 33-year-old veteran missing from Houston home since October, mother says. The man, Marshall Powell, was last seen on October 23.

Also from Texas: Crime Of The Week: Cold case missing person last seen in 1961. Eleven-year-old Scott Andreas “Andy” Sims was last seen in Wichita Falls on December 9, 1961 — that’s 59 years ago tomorrow.

From Wisconsin: MPD: Plea for help in search for woman missing since Oct. 2016. Jamie Lee Hoaglan was last seen in Milwaukee on October 20, 2016.

From Australia: Missing kids campaign: “We’re frozen in time”. About the 1968 disappearances of sixteen-year-old Maureen Braddy and seventeen-year-old Allan Whyte, who disappeared after going out together to a dance at the YMCA in Bendigo, Victoria.

Also from Australia: Human remains found in bushland believed be missing NSW woman. Allecha Boyd has been missing from Coolamon, New South Wales since August 10, 2017; they found remains in the woods near Wagga Wagga, New South Wales and think they’re hers.

From Canada: Remains found in 2009 identified as missing Penticton man. James “Jim” Neufeld disappeared from Penticton, British Columbia in January 2009. His remains were pulled from the Salish Sea about half a mile north of Orcas Island off the Washington coast a few months later, but not identified till now.

From Ireland: Ireland’s missing people: 823 cases remain ‘open’ with the Garda.

From Mexico: The Search for the Disappeared Points to Mexico’s Darkest Secrets. Apparently as a result of the drug war, Mexico now has more missing persons than Guatemala, El Salvador and Argentina do.

From the UK: Fears of rise in Christmas missing people rates due to lockdown.

Also from the UK: Mum of missing Saltdean teen Owen Harding prepares for Christmas. Owen was sixteen when he went for a walk on March 26, three days into the UK’s national coronavirus lockdown, and never returned. This was in Saltdean, a coastal village in the city of Brighton and Hove, England.

Another article dump, stuff I would normally have posted on Facebook

Madeleine McCann investigators to keep searching for missing girl until ‘all possibilities have been exhausted’

Authorities end search in river for missing Columbia woman (Mengqi Ji Elledge, who disappeared from Missouri in October 2019)

Three suspects charged with murder after remains found of missing woman (Melanie Steele, who disappeared from Savannah, Georgia in September 2019)

FBI asks for information on missing Iowa girl’s birthday (Breasia Terrell, who disappeared from Davenport, Iowa in July this year)

Missing man last seen at Orlando bus station months ago, police say, (Stanford Knight, who disappeared in August)

HLN Special Examines Case of Timmothy Pitzen, Missing Boy Whose Mom Wrote Taunting Suicide Note (Timmothy’s case on Charley is here, he went missing from Wisconsin in 2011)

Final Sentencing Set For Ohio Man Who Claimed To Be Long-Missing Child From Illinois (he pretended to be Timmothy Pitzen, see above)

Cops seek help finding woman missing for nearly 2 years (Robin Best-Bey, who disappeared from Buena Borough, New Jersey in February 2019)

Police search for Houston woman who went missing nearly 4 months ago (Micaela Helene Roberson, last seen August 15)

Friend says woman found dead at Fort Myers apartments disappeared 2 years ago (Cassandra Clermont)

Missing kids campaign: “I used to talk to her picture on the mantelpiece” (Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon, missing from Adelaide, Australia since 1973

B.C. couple in final bid to bring children of their missing daughter back to Canada (kids are not named, but their mother is Kimberlee Kasatkin, missing since since 2016; this is a murder-without-a-body case in Peru)

Daughters still desperate for answers 20 years after mother disappeared from Florida home under suspicious circumstances (Geanna Jones, missing from Jacksonville since 2000)

Officials identify Baby Jane Doe found dead in 1982; suspect is deceased (the baby was also called Delta Dawn, her body was found in Mississippi; her real name is Alisha Ann Heinrich, she’s from Missouri, and her mother, Gwendolyn Mae Clemons, has not been seen since Alisha’s body was found)

WC toddler identified in MS cold case (same case as above)

Delta Dawn and her mother identified as Missouri woman, child missing since 1982 (same case as above)

Reminder: DPS Seeking Information in Refugio County Cold Case Homicide (unidentified woman whose remains were found in Texas in 1992)

Outstanding Indigenous Woman: Meet Cheryl Horn, advocate for families of MMIW victims

Brother of man missing for 73 years still ‘bewildered’ (James “Jimmy” O’Neill, who disappeared from County Waterford, Ireland in 1947)

National Missing Persons Day: ‘You don’t ever give up hope’ (more about missing people from Ireland)

Searching for the disappeared: the challenges facing Mexico’s search commissioner

Spalding authorities excavating wells in missing persons case (Spalding County, Georgia, but they haven’t said which case)

Son Determined To Find What Happened To Mother Who’s Been Missing For 34 Years (Rogene “Jeannie” Annette Helm, missing from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma since October 1986)

Family, missing persons group offers $5,000 reward in missing Florence man case (Tracy Herion, missing from Florence, South Carolina since January 2020)

ET yesterday: three alleged rioters

I had another Executed Today entry run yesterday: three men who were alleged to have participated in a riot and machine-breaking in Nottingham. I think this entry is a good example of how well Jason (owner of the blog, aka the Headsman) and I work together. I submitted an entry about the hangings, and then he added the information about the motivations for the riot and how dubious the evidence was against the three condemned, which made the entry much better.

Some other things: after two postponements, I finally saw the pain management doctor about my headaches. I was impressed with him, actually. He told me he had “no idea” what was causing my headaches and then he was like “because of your symptoms, I get the idea that Treatment X might work. Or it might not. We don’t know until we try. So I’ll write the prescription, and next time you get a headache try Treatment X.” I’m supposed to call the office to report the results. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, they’ll try something else. Frankly, it’s nice to hear a doctor admit he doesn’t know what the answers are.

Yesterday and today I spent some time in purging cases from Charley — notably from New Jersey. I went over the entire state and removed a bunch of outdated cases. I also got some additional information on some of them. Stephen Davaris, for example, was declared dead last May, a presumed suicide. His family has actually kept in touch with the people who found his bag washed up on a beach in Ireland. I was struck by this because I’ve actually been to the Cliffs of Moher, in January 2003, about two and a half years before Davaris is presumed to have leaped to his death.

I was going to update yesterday but in the evening the internet unexpectedly kicked it and didn’t come back on for ages. I should get something up today.

ET: Con O’Leary

Another Executed Today post: Irish fratricide Cornelius “Con” O’Leary. He was convicted of the murder of his brother Patrick and hanged in 1925. It was a pretty brutal crime — the victim brutally attacked, probably as he slept, then dismembered.

All of the family members who still lived at home were charged with murder: Con, the family’s elderly mother and two sisters, Maryanne and Hannah. If there were witnesses to the crime, they never talked; all the evidence was circumstantial. I’m sure Con was guilty. As for the others, I think they may well have guilty knowledge, but I’m not at all convinced they were directly involved in Patrick’s murder.

The mother (I don’t remember her name) was released without being tried due to ill health. Maryanne, who was probably not involved, died of cancer while awaiting trial. Hannah was convicted — unjustly, I believe. I don’t know whether she was guilty or not, but the case against her was very weak and the judge, I think, biased. She served 17 years in prison before being released.

Maybe they’ll find Mary Boyle…

Mary Boyle is a famous Irish missing child: she vanished in 1977 at the age of six, while walking from her uncle’s farm to a neighbor’s home. We have a pretty good idea as to what she’d look like if she were still alive today, because she has an identical twin. However, Mary is presumed dead.

Well, the police — the New York City police at that — are now saying they know know who killed Mary and they know where her body is.

Me — well, I hope they’re right but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve seen a lot of “We’ve almost solved such-and-such ancient case!” things deflate and fade from the headlines.

Second Barry Cummins book

I’m presently reading Without a Trace: Ireland’s Missing, which is journalist Barry Cummins’s second book on missing persons in Ireland. The first book I talk about on Charley’s recommended books page (which needs to be updated, but that’s neither here nor there). Instead of individual chapters for each MP, he talks about them in a continuous narrative, also covering unidentified bodies, and MPs who were found murdered, etc. The book covers both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

A lot of the MPs Cummins talks about in this book were victims of the Troubles, in all probability killed by the Irish Republican Army. The IRA has since then directed authorities to a lot of bodies, but not all of them. The problem is, this book is obviously written for an Irish audience. Cummins doesn’t go into detail about the Troubles, because he assumes the reader already knows plenty about them. But I know jack about the Troubles (the British were acting like jerks and there were people campaigning for Northern Ireland to separate from the UK, and there was a lot of violence — that’s all I know) and I found myself mystified as to just why these particular people were kidnapped in the first place, and what they were “interrogated” about, etc.

News about the missing in Ireland

Ireland is very concerned about underaged, unaccompanied asylum seekers in their country, who are going missing at an alarming rate. Eleven disappeared last year, and according to the article: “A total of 512 unaccompanied children seeking asylum went missing from State care between 2000 and 2010. Just 72 of these children were subsequently found by the authorities.”

Some of them may have run away, particularly if they were afraid of being deported. Some of them may have gone, voluntarily or otherwise, with human traffickers. There doesn’t seem to be suspicion that the missing children are dead, but obviously there is a lot of concern for their safety. Many nationalities are affected. Another article from the same paper adds: “[C]hildren from Somalia have gone missing while living in the hostels. The list of missing children includes Chinese, Nigerian, Romanian, Moldovan, Afghans and Congolese.”

Both articles place some of the blame on the system that’s set up to care for these young asylum seekers. Many of them, despite being underaged and mostly unable to read or speak English, were sent to live in hostels without any supervision at all. Basically like sticking a kid in a hotel and leaving them there. That’s going to change. The Irish Health Service Executive has closed the last of those hostels and from now on, unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in Ireland are sent to live either in foster homes, children’s homes or “supported lodgings.” (Not sure what the last one is. Group homes?) Hopefully this will cut down on the number of disappearances.

I found this article about Annie McCarrick. She disappeared from Ireland in 1993 and is profiled on Charley due to her American citizenship. There’s a new theory that she didn’t just meet up with some random serial killer but instead went on a date with someone, a date she wanted to keep secret, and came to harm there. It could still be a serial killer, but the forensic psychologist who espouses the “secret date” theory thinks otherwise.

And, there has been yet another failed search for little Mary Boyle, who disappeared from Ireland in 1977 at the age of six. This search was prompted by a psychic who suggested that Mary’s body could be found in a swamp near where she went missing. (This seems like plain common sense to me.) The search has been called off due to “poor conditions,” presumably bad weather.