Interesting article in the Lancaster/Smith cases

This article has come out in the disappearances of Jennifer Lancaster and her baby daughters Monique Smith and Sidney Smith. The case is peculiar to say the least. I mean, an entire family doesn’t usually just vanish.

There are indications that they left on their own to start a new life (the removal of clothes and blankets on a pretext, the secretive removal of other belongings, the comment card filled out in another state), and also indications that something bad may have happened (the fact that they’ve all completely dropped off the map for the past 23 years).

I have to wonder if someone who wanted the kids lured Jennifer to her death. They were both so young: Sidney was going on fourteen months and Monique was just five weeks old. It could be a situation like with Holly Marie Clouse: the parents murdered and dumped, unfound or unidentified, while the baby survived to grow up in someone else’s home.

Or, given as Monique’s paternity seems to be disputed, perhaps Monique’s dad did not want to pay child support and decided to dispose of all three of them. That’s definitely happened before.

I cannot imagine the grief of Jennifer’s family, to have lost all three of them at once like that. I hope they get answers.

Black History Month: Monique and Sidney Smith

In honor of Black History Month I’m profiling one African-American MP every day on this blog for the month of February. Today’s case is actually three rolled into one: sisters Monique Rae Smith, one month old, and Sidney Keara Smith, one year old, and their mother, eighteen-year-old Jennifer Dawn Lancaster. They all disappeared together from Topeka, Kansas on May 12, 2000. The children are biracial, black and white, and their mother is white.

The family’s car was found at an apartment complex a week later, and that doesn’t look good to me at all. However, I have been able to find very little information on this case, no articles, nothing.

If Sidney and Monique are still alive, they’d be 19 and 18. Jennifer would be 37.