MP of the week: Sarah Murray

This week’s featured missing person is Sarah Lee Murray, a 14-year-old girl who disappeared from Kenbridge, Virginia on February 18, 1997. She had been living with a relative at the time of her disappearance; her mother had died a year and a half earlier. The police, at the time, thought Sarah had run away, and perhaps she did. But it’s been over 20 years, almost 25, and that’s a long time for someone to be under the radar. There is little evidence to support any theory.

If still alive, Sarah (also known as Susana) would be 38 years old today.

A scattering of missing persons news

Lee Evans has finally made bail while awaiting trial for five counts of murder. He and his co-defendant Philander Hampton are suspected of killing the still-missing Clinton Avenue Five in 1978: Melvin Pittman, Randy Johnson, Michael McDowell, Ernest Taylor and Alvin Turner. Bail was initially set at five million dollars, then lowered to $1.25 million, and now to just under $1 million, and Evans and his family were able to come up with property worth that much. It will most likely be years before this case goes to trial and I’m sure Evans is happy he won’t have to be in jail all that time.

Authorities have made an arrest in the 1999 disappearance and presumed murder of three-year-old Pilar Rodriguez. They’re not saying who, how or why, but promise to release more info this afternoon.

I found this article about Sarah Lee Murray, a fourteen-year-old who’s been missing since 1997. I don’t have much on her and I still don’t, but the article provides a little more info. She’s apparently an orphan who was living with relatives at the time of her disappearance.

It has now been nine months and then some since Ilya Lastovkin disappeared. He was 22 and suffering from depression, and he’d left home before, but never for longer than a day or two.

Lastly, in two days it’ll be exactly one year since Jaycee Dugard was found safe.