This week’s Flashback Friday is for not one, not two, but three persons: three-quarters of the Giusti family, who vanished from the family farm five miles outside of Port Townsend, Washington on March 5, 1963. There was the young mother, Sharon, age 20. She had two daughters, and I only have a photo for one of them: Michelle Renee, who was three weeks’ shy of her second birthday. Ten-month-old Clara Arlene (or Arleen; I’ve seen it spelled both ways) has no photo, and hence no Charley Project page. Both the girls were redheads; Sharon had brown hair and blue eyes.
Sharon’s husband didn’t report his wife and daughters missing for four days. He said they simply vanished one day while he was out working on the farm, and the car and some clothes and money disappeared along with them. Perhaps he thought his wife had taken the kids and left him. The day after Mr. Giusti finally filed the missing persons report, however, the missing car was found unlocked and abandoned under a highway overpass just two miles away. No sign of Sharon or the babies. No sign of them from that day to this, fifty years and counting.
The Giusti family’s disappearances are, naturally, considered “suspicious” and foul play is suspected. I have no idea whether the husband is a suspect or whether he’s even still alive. I don’t even know the man’s name. Very little information is available on this case. Michelle and Clara aren’t even on the NCMEC site.
I don’t hold out much hope for Sharon having lived long after her disappearance. But Michelle and Clara could still be out there. What reason would there be to kill babies? It’s not like they could have testified against whoever-it-was that did whatever-it-was to them and their mother. Maybe they have been raised by other families; maybe they think they were adopted through normal channels; or maybe they think they were raised by their biological family and they have no idea there are people looking for them.
Stranger things have happened…we can only hope.
The Charley Project Blog 