Stephanie Condon and Kaelin Glazier

Stephanie Condon was 14 when she disappeared from Myrtle Creek, Oregon in October 1998. This was right around the time when I got interested in missing people and I recall the early days of her case. The NCMEC classified her as a runaway, for just a few days, and then as endangered missing. She had been babysitting and vanished without a trace, her toddler charge left unharmed. Anyway, as I blogged previously, Stephanie’s body was found in 2009. Last spring, Curtis Hill was acquitted of kidnapping and murdering her. There simply wasn’t enough evidence to convict.

Stephanie’s father, Martin “Marty” Condon, shot himself to death at his Douglas County, Oregon home on Wednesday evening. He was 53 years old. Everyone seems to be assuming it’s a suicide, although the police haven’t officially ruled it as one. My thoughts go out to Christine Condon, Marty’s wife and Stephanie’s mother, as well as the rest of their family. As if they hadn’t suffered enough already.

Also in Oregon, the Kaelin Glazier murder trial has been concluded. Kaelin disappeared from the town of Ruch in November 1996, at the age of 15. In 2008, her body was found only eighty feet from where she disappeared from. A suspect, William Frank Simmons, was arrested in 2011. He was sixteen at the time of Kaelin’s disappearance and was the last person known to have seen her before she vanished. Well, he’s just been acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter. (Oddly enough, it was by a 10 to 2 vote: apparently this is allowed in Oregon.) Simmons’s defense attorney asked that sentencing — a mandatory decade in prison — be delayed because he had “additional information that might have substantial bearing on the verdict.”

MP news of the past week

William Frank Simmons, the accused killer of Kaelin Rose Glazier, is set to go to trial next week. Kaelin, who was 15, disappeared from Ruch, Oregon in 1996. Simmons, who was in his late teens at the time, was the last person known to have seen her. In 2008, her body was found across the street from his parents’ home. He was charged in 2010.

Sofia Juarez will have been missing nine years next Saturday, as noted in this article. She vanished without a trace, presumably kidnapped, the day before her fifth birthday — making her just old enough to have some memories of her former life, assuming she’s still alive. After Jaycee Dugard, etc., you can never say never. Sadly, though, Sofia’s mother will never be reunited with her daughter on this earth. Maria Juarez died three years ago. She was only twenty-six years old. Natural causes.

(Another article about the case which says “Sofia is the only open missing child case on record for the [Kennewick] police department, but the oldest missing person case is from 1978 when June Howard disappeared.” Who’s June Howard? Inquiring minds want to know. They ought to do an article on her.)

The police are re-examining the case of Virginia Rambus, who disappeared from Washington state in 1985. She was nineteen and last seen leaving home to go to a party. They had previously mentioned a person of interest, a neighbor known only as the “Candy Man.” Well, he’s been identified as Jesse Pratt, who’s currently doing life in an Oregon prison for killing another Seattle woman. Prior to the murder he had kidnapped yet a third woman. Click here for a picture of a car Pratt drove, which might have some connection to Virginia’s case.

The family of Tracy Melton, a 32-year-old Stockton, California woman who disappeared in 1998 and is profiled on Charley, are very angry that the police identified a bone fragment as hers all the way back in last April but didn’t bother to inform them for nine months. The police are sorry and promised to mend their ways. With so little remains to go off of, they may never know how or when Tracy died.

There’s going to be a TV show focusing on black missing persons, hosted by S. Epatha Merkerson, who used to be on Law and Order.

Suspect arrested in Kaelin Glazier murder

You can find Kaelin Glazier in Charley’s resolved section. She was fifteen years old when she disappeared from Ruch, Oregon in November 1996. Her body wasn’t found until April 2008; it was in the same general area where she was last seen. Well, over thirteen years after her murder and two years after she was located, a suspect has been charged in her death. It’s William Frank Simmons, the last person known to have seen her. He’s 30 now, which would have made him 16 or 17 when Kaelin was killed. Her body was found across the street from his home.

Simmons faces 25 years to life if convicted of murder. He’d been a suspect in her case since 1999.

Articles:
The Mail Tribune
KTVL