Dwight Stallings’s mom admits to probation violations but nothing else

Tanisha Edwards, mother of the long-missing baby Dwight Stallings, has pleaded guilty to six counts of violating her probation and could get up to three years in prison. She had been on probation for a weapons charge. It looks like all her probation violations are drug offenses; none of them are related to the extremely suspicious disappearance of her son. Tanisha has told all sorts of stories about what happened to him, and it looks more and more like foul play.

Dwight’s disappearance has gotten coverage locally in Sacramento, California where he disappeared from, but there hasn’t been much on a national level. He does have a family besides Tanisha,: his maternal grandmother, at least one uncle, his father and nine half-siblings, two on his mother’s side and five on his father’s. Unlike Tanisha, the rest of his relatives seem to care about him, but they say they don’t know where he is. Dwight’s father is not a suspect in the case because he in jail in the spring of 2011, which was when Dwight disappeared.

The very similar case of Amir Jennings in South Carolina has gotten far more attention, I think because Amir had a loving family to advocate for him. It doesn’t sound like Dwight had many people who cared about him, except his grandmother. Those two cases have a lot of features in common with Qua’mere Rogers: all of them black male babies/toddlers last seen in the care of a parent who never reported them missing and has provided multiple unsatisfactory explanations for their disappearance.

A fourth child whose disappearance fit all those criteria, four-year-old Jadon Higganbothan, was found dead last year. One of his accused killers — his mother’s boyfriend — just pleaded guilty. The other five who were allegedly involved, Jadon’s mother among them, haven’t had their cases concluded yet. Unfortunately I don’t have any reason to believe Qua’mere, Dwight and Amir’s disappearances will turn out any differently than Jadon’s did.

As for Tanisha Edwards, they’re still trying to get her to tell the truth about what happened to her little son. The latest idea is to take her to dependency court and order her to speak. But I highly doubt that’s going to work. If Tanisha did what I think she did, she has nothing to gain by admitting it and a great deal to lose.

While I was out

While I was away (and I’m fine, I appreciate you all asking), of course the missing person world kept carrying on as usual. Some items of interest:

Five years and one day ago, two-year-old Everlyse Cabrera was reported missing from her foster home in North Las Vegas, Nevada. There’s an anniversary article about it, quoting Everlyse’s biological mother. The child and her brother were taken into care because their parents both had problems with drugs. The cops are looking pretty hard at the foster parents, in part because no one besides them recalls having seen Everlyse for nearly a month before her disappearance was reported.

A grand jury is investigating the 1984 disappearance of Mary Edna Badaracco from Connecticut. She supposedly left her husband and walked away into oblivion. Her case has been classified as a homicide and her daughters have been active in lobbying for it to be solved. I think I heard from one of them once.

Nancy Dunsavage has taken a plea for the 1984 abduction of her six-year-old daughter, Eva Marie Fiedler. Eva didn’t turn up until last fall. They’d both been living under assumed names and Eva didn’t know about her history. Dunsavage pleaded guilty to custodial interference and got…16 days in jail. Time served. She’s claiming the usual “he was abusive” crap. Eva has legally changed her name to Melissa Olszewski (Melissa being the name she went by for most of her life, Olszewski being her husband’s name), and has only spoken to her left-behind father once. She has, however, said she might establish a relationship with him once she’s processed everything that happened. There’s a video at the link. Sigh. I hope she’s in therapy.

The body of Jadon Higganbothan, who was reported missing last October, has probably been found. His mom got involved with some crazy cult called the Black Hebrews. Nine adults and and least nine children were living together in this one house. Authorities have long suspected the Black Hebrews in the disappearance of Jadon and also Antoinetta Yvonne McKoy, who disappeared after him. Well, they just turned up two bodies in the backyard of the home where the Black Hebrews had lived: one woman, one child. No prizes for guessing who, but the cops haven’t confirmed the identifications yet. Pete Lucas Moses Jr., the cult’s leader, has been charged in Jadon’s murder. Moses and six others — including Jadon’s mother — have been charged in McKoy’s murder.

I found this interesting article about chronic runaways in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Some of them are staying in youth shelters, run from there, get found, get put back in the shelter, then run again, etc. The article mentions one thirteen-year-old who ran away 18 times in one year. The thing is, being a runaway is not a crime in Pittsburgh, and the police can’t force them to stay in the shelters, so there’s a bit of a conundrum. A juvenile court judge quoted in the article suggested they need to find foster homes for older teens instead of putting them in shelters. Good luck with that!

In Alberta, Canada, two skulls have turned up close to each other and one of them has been identified as 19-year-old Rene Gunning. Rene disappeared with a 16-year-old friend, Krystle Knott, back in 2005. Both of them were regular hitchhikers. Presumably the other skull is Krystle’s, but the police haven’t released the ID yet.

In Australia however, they have identified the body of 13-year-old Declan Crouch, who had been missing for nearly three months. His body was found in a mangrove swamp near his home. The police, citing unspecified “evidence,” believe he committed suicide — a double blow, perhaps, for Declan’s parents. I can’t find anything about the cause of death.