Twelve-year-old missing for four months is classified as a runaway, and other stories

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. Mine was pretty good. Very quiet of course, cause of covid.

In California: the body of Barbara Thomas, a 69-year-old woman who disappeared hiking in the Mojave Desert in 2019, has been found in the desert near Essex.

In Louisiana: they’re still looking for David Claude Yeager, a seventeen-year-old boy who disappeared from Shreveport in 1971, and there’s little indication as to what happened to him. His cousin has created a Facebook page for him.

In Missouri: they’re still looking for Cheryl Anne Scherer, a 19-year-old girl who disappeared from Scott City in 1979. The article doesn’t have a lot in terms of information, just focuses on her family’s pain and grief.

In New York: they’re still looking for Jaylen Griffin, a 12-year-old boy who disappeared under unclear circumstances from Buffalo in August. The police have this preteen listed as a runaway.

In Ohio: they’re still looking for Mary Jane Vangilder, a 33-year-old woman who disappeared from Willard in 1945. They’re going to check some Jane Does and see if any of them are her.

In Pennsylvania: Justo Smoker, who had previously been charged with Linda Stoltzfoos’s kidnapping, has been charged with her murder as well. Linda, an 18-year-old Amish girl, disappeared while walking home from church in Lancaster County back in June. She has never been found. Smoker was arrested on the kidnapping charges in July.

In Texas: they’re still looking for Patty Inez Brightwell Vaughan, a 32-year-old woman who disappeared from La Vernia on Christmas Day, 1996. She went missing after an argument with her estranged husband, who is the prime suspect in her case, but he has never been charged.

In Virginia: they’re still looking for two people missing from the Richmond area: Stephanie Collette Wallace, a 45-year-old woman who went missing from Richmond in 2005, and Robert Lee Hourihan, a 33-year-old man who disappeared from Palmyra in 2011. They also are hoping to identify a white or Hispanic man whose skeletal remains were found near a vacant apartment in Highland Springs in 2014.

In Australia: they’re still looking for Russell Hill and Carol Clay, who disappeared while on a camping trip in the Wonnangatta Valley in eastern Victoria back in May. They are believed to have been murdered.

In Canada: they’re still looking for Melanie Ethier, a 15-year-old girl who disappeared while walking home from a friend’s house in her small Ontario town in 1996. Melanie’s birthday is on Christmas Day.

Three cold Canadian cases

The North Bay Nugget notes that fifteen-year-old Melanie Ethier disappeared from New Liskeard, Ontario fifteen years ago today. According to another source, at the time Melanie was walking home, three weddings were letting out and the bars were closing with customers leaving, yet nobody saw a thing. There’s no evidence that she ran away.

The 26th was the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of Jesokah Adkens from British Columbia. She was seventeen.

And in Quebec, the cops are searching the Mile-Illes River for Julie Surprenant (French language link), who disappeared in 1999 at the age of 16. A man dying of cancer reportedly confessed that he killed her and dumped her in the river. The nurse who heard his confession didn’t tell anyone about it for five years.

Cold case disappearance articles

I found several today, all from 14-year-old cases, oddly enough:

A Daily Item one for Jesus De La Cruz, a six-year-old missing fourteen years today from Lynn, Massachusetts.

A Tundra Drums article for Stella Evon, age seventeen, who disappeared fourteen years ago tomorrow from Bethel, Alaska.

And a Northern Life article and a Bay Today article for Melanie Ethier, a fourteen-year-old missing from New Liskeard, Ontario fourteen years ago tomorrow. She’s not on Charley cause there’s no American connection.

Also, an article about missing people in Botswana.