Added a bunch of Virgin Islands cases today

Today I added twelve (as of this writing) cases from the U.S. Virgin Islands, working off this list of cases that came out in November. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find enough photographs and information to make casefiles for each of the names on that list.

Most of the people missing from the USVI are persons of color, which makes sense because the general population of the territory is mostly black and Hispanic.

I think it’s telling that the most famous missing persons cases from there–Hannah Upp, Sarm Heslop and Lucy Schuhmann–are all white women and none of them are originally from the USVI. Hannah moved there a few years prior to her disappearance to take a teaching job, and Sarm and Lucy were both tourists. There are quite a few islanders missing but very little press about those cases. Missing White Woman Syndrome strikes again.

I haven’t added Sarm to the Charley Project yet. I expect I’ll get to her tomorrow or something. Hannah I added in 2019. It’s likely she had another dissociative fugue state and went to the water like she had always done, and this time her luck ran out and she drowned. Why she moved to the USVI, when she knew she’d had repeated episodes of losing herself and turning up in water, is a mystery to me. If I were her I would have moved to someplace very far away from any body of water larger than a puddle.

A few years ago I actually spoke to one of Hannah’s island acquaintances on the phone and I asked her if it was possible for a person to go missing without a trace and without leaving the islands, since they’re so tiny. She said it was extremely possible due to the thick jungle terrain. She told me a story about a sheep or something that went missing and how its body was found months later; it had been lying unburied within yards of its home the entire time but nobody had found it before because of how thick the vegetation is there.

MP of the week: Isaac Robin

Hi, all. This week’s featured missing person is from the U.S. Virgin Islands; I think he might be the first Virgin Islands case I’ve ever made missing person of the week. Isaac Robin Jr., a twenty-year-old black man, disappeared on January 29, 2010.

A short geography lesson: the Virgin Islands are an archipelago in the Caribbean Sea; some British overseas territorial possessions, some are considered a part of the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and the rest comprise another U.S. territory, formally called the Virgin Islands of the United States. There are three main U.S. Virgin Islands and fifty or so tiny ones. Not many people live on the island of St. John; the main population is split roughly equally between St. Thomas (where the capital city, Charlotte Amalie, is located) and St. Croix (from where Isaac Robin disappeared).

Unfortunately I don’t really have any details about Isaac’s disappearance. He was last seen near his home and was reported missing by his family four days later. For what it’s worth, he didn’t disappear during hurricane season, which runs between June and November.

A year or two ago I spoke with a journalist from the Virgin Islands; I think it was the same woman who wrote this article about Virgin Islands missing persons. I asked her, given how tiny the land area is and how many tourists go tromping through islands, if it would be possible for a body to go undiscovered on land. She said the islands have a lot of thick tangles of tropical jungle where a person could be walking just a few feet from a corpse and have no idea. I am not going to speculate what happened to Isaac Robin, but I thought it was worth including that information.

If still alive, he would be 31 today. He’s been missing for ten, going on eleven years.

Thank you all for my birthday and wedding good wishes. I appreciate it.