2007

MP of the week: Adam Kellner

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This week’s featured missing person is Adam Christopher Kellner, a 34-year-old man who disappeared from Stevenson Ranch, California on November 8, 2007. He’s white, with black hair and brown eyes, 5’6 tall and 165 to 175 pounds. He always wears a hat, even indoors, perhaps to hide his bald patch. He may have been last seen wearing a black jacket.

Keller has schizophrenia and is considered a dependent adult as a result. Schizophrenia presents with what they call “positive symptoms” such as hearing voices (Kellner heard voices), and also “negative symptoms”, which aren’t as well known and are basically things that should be there but aren’t, like having a blunted emotional range or being mute. It sounds like Kellner had a lot of negative symptoms; the casefile says he was unable to keep a job, “had no friends and hadn’t left the house for months, except to go to doctor’s appointments.” He lived with his mother and stepfather, but his mom was away from home on a trip when he went missing.

He left all his belongings behind, including all of his hats, which is weird because he always wore a hat. He didn’t own a car or know how to drive, and none of the local bus drivers recalled picking him up. He was just gone. His mom and stepdad can’t even think of a reason why he would have left. His psychiatrist doesn’t think he was suicidal.

It’s been almost twenty years. I think probably Kellner is not alive anymore, though I’m not sure what happened to him. If he is alive he’s probably living among the homeless somewhere. He was on his meds at the time of his disappearance and considered to be stable, but people with mental illnesses can deteriorate quickly when they go off their meds, and there are many people with untreated mental illness in the homeless community.

If still alive he’d be 52 today.

Skeletal remains found; maybe it’s Jaliek

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They found skeletal remains near Burden Pond in Troy, New York earlier this month. They are thinking it might be Jaliek Rainwalker, a 12-year-old boy who disappeared from his adoptive home in 2007. Because of in utero exposure to drugs and years in foster care, Jaliek had emotional/behavioral problems and his family was considering canceling the adoption and giving him back to the state, but they had been told it wasn’t possible to do this. At the same time, though, Jaliek wasn’t receiving any treatment for his issues.

His adoptive father is the prime suspect in his disappearance. Jaliek’s adoptive maternal grandmother and some of his former foster parents have been the most active in the search for him, which I think is really sad; his actual family who agreed to be legally responsible for him does not seem to care that he’s gone. I know he was probably a lot to deal with but he was a child, and he was a responsibility this family agreed to take upon themselves. And I think, regardless of how he disappeared or whether he’s alive now, that his family let him down.

I think he’s probably dead and hope these remains will be identified as his. I don’t see how a 12-year-old with disabilities could survive on his own for this long and without leaving a trace.

[Edited to add: found another article. Remains are not his.]

Because thats not suspicious or anything

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Yeah, Blake Deven? Whom I wrote about earlier? Another relative, a girl named London, is missing too. From this article:

FPD reported Thursday that investigators recently identified another possible missing relative. London Deven, who would be 28 years old today, was last seen in 2019 in Fayetteville. The most recent photo of London available to investigators was taken in approximately 2007, when she was likely 12 years old. No age progression photo is available for London.

Press X to doubt she actually went missing in 2019.

Navajo-language missing persons posters and more stories

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From the border states: the the Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act has been approved by Congress and awaits the President’s signature to be signed into law. The Act is designed to enhance the recording and reporting of missing persons and unidentified persons along the U.S./Mexico border and includes several measures towards that end.

From Arizona/New Mexico: the FBI has released some Navajo-language posters about unsolved missing persons and murder cases that occurred on or near the Navajo Nation. The missing persons include Anthonette Christine Cayedito, missing from Gallup, New Mexico since 1986; Laverda Sorrell, missing from Fort Defiance, Arizona since 2002; and Jamie Lynnette Yazzie, missing from Pinon, Arizona since 2019. Serious question, and I mean no disrespect to the Navajo Nation: is there actually anyone who can read Navajo who cannot also read English, or are these posters more of a public relations exercise than anything?

From Arkansas: this article details the murder-without-a-body case of Christopher Todd Armstrong, who went missing from Magnolia on March 7, 1998. Although Kenny Wayne Whiddon Jr. pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the case, served his prison term and was released in 2008, Armstrong’s body has never been found.

From California/Oregon: they’re still searching for Danielle Bisnell, who disappeared on December 10 last year, while traveling from Lebanon, Oregon to Redding, California.

From California: they’re still searching for Angela Marie Fullmer, a 34-year-old mother of three who disappeared from Mount Shasta, California on December 15, 2002.

Also from California: they’re still searching for Manuel Calderon, who disappeared from Hacienda Heights on September 8 this year.

Also from California: they’re released more info on a “few details” case I had, the disappearance of Amber Aiaz and her twelve-year-old daughter Melissa Fu from Irvine on November 22, 2019. According to Aiaz’s husband, a Chinese man and woman rendered him unconscious with an unknown substance and when he woke up his wife and daughter were gone. Very strange. If the police think this is a kidnapping, I don’t understand why this information didn’t appear in the news for over a year.

From Illinois: Angela Renee Siebke has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of a newborn girl whose body was found floating inside a trash bag in the Mississippi River in Moline, Illinois on April 11, 1992. Siebke lives in Ohio now, but in 1992 she was a resident of Orion, Illinois. DNA proved she was the unidentified baby’s mother.

Also from Illinois: they’re still looking for Requita “Aaliyah” Goff, who disappeared from Chicago on November 28, 2019.

Also from Illinois: they’re found remains believed to be of Kimberly Stewart-Whittington, who went missing from Harrisburg in September 2019.

From Montana: the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are creating a tribal community response plan for missing Native American people.

From New Mexico: This article states the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Task Force, which was formed a year ago to address the problem of violence against Native American women, has made a “dogged but incomplete effort” in the face of the pandemic and incomplete data. The entire 64-page report is here.

From Texas: there’s an article about Rusty Arnold’s search for his sister Mary Rachel Trlica and her friends, Lisa “Renee” Wilson and Julie Ann Moseley, who all disappeared under strange circumstances from Fort Worth in 1974.

From British Columbia, Canada: They’re still looking for Randolph Quilt, a Xeni Gwet’in First Nation man who disappeared from Williams Lake on September 26. He wasn’t reported missing till November 29.

From Germany/the UK: two-year-old Emmanuel Biendarra, who was abducted from the UK by his mother in 2019, has been found safe in Germany and returned to Britain, where his searching father lives.

From Nigeria: the 344 abducted Nigerian boys mentioned in the last article dump have been freed. It turns out they were taken not by Boko Haram, but by bandits pretending to be Boko Haram.

From Singapore: A suspect, Ahmad Danial Mohamed Rafa’ee, has been charged with murder in the disappeared of Felicia Teo, a fine arts student who went missing in 2007. Teo’s body has never been found. A suspected accomplice in the murder, Ragil Putra Setia Sukmarahjana, has been named also, but the police haven’t located him yet; he is no longer in Singapore. This article has more info on the case.

From Taiwan: they’ve found a woman, identified only as Hsieh, who went missing from Changhua County twelve years ago when she was only eleven years old. She was apparently abducted by her non-custodial mother and turned up in Kaohsiung in an “undernourished state” weighing only 36 kilograms, or 79 pounds. To keep Hsieh from being found, her mom had confined her to their apartment and not let her go to school or to the hospital. When she was reunited with her father and brother, she no longer recognized them, and she “appeared to be suffering from social behavioral disorders.” No wonder, after being imprisoned in an apartment for over half her life. Such an awful story.

Sorry for the recent silence

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Yeah, I haven’t updated in a bit and I’m sorry. The last week has been super busy, mainly with wedding stuff. Michael and I are getting married Saturday.

I picked up my dress at the alterations place yesterday and it fits me perfectly. In my completely unbiased opinion I’m going to be the most beautiful bride in the world. There’s not going to be any honeymoon because of Covid. Michael will go back to work on Monday and so will I.

So, in lieu of Charley Project updates, here’s a sample of the more interesting recent missing and unidentified persons news:

  1. A woman whose body was found off Interstate 5 in Sacramento, California in 1981 has been identified as 26-year-old Lily Prendergast, who was last seen when she left her family’s Texas home in late 1980.
  2. John Michael Carroll disappeared from Victor, Idaho in 2005. His skeletal remains were found “in the general area” where he lived in 2013, and were identified this month.
  3. Hollis Willingham has been arrested in the murder of Jim Craig Martin, who disappeared from Normangee, Texas on August 6, 2007. It doesn’t look like Martin’s body has been found, however.
  4. Thomas Drew disappeared from Salisbury, Connecticut in 2007. He used to be on Charley but then his daughter asked me to remove the case. She didn’t like what I’d written, I guess. Anyway, he is still missing, and his daughter has recently published a memoir, Searching for My Missing Father: An American Noir. It sounds very interesting and I added it to my wishlist.
  5. Blackfeet Community College, in corroboration with Montana’s Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force, has launched a website to help streamline missing persons reports of Native American people: “The website [linked here] allows families and friends to complete a Contact Information Form about the missing person online. In the past, missing persons’ loved ones have expressed reluctance to report missing individuals directly to law enforcement. The BCC reporting system will serve as the go-between for those reporting and all levels of law enforcement. Once the form is submitted on the website, an automatic notice will be sent to local tribal law enforcement.”
  6. A woman’s torso found washed ashore in the seaside community of Benicia, California in 1979 has been identified as Dolores Wulff, who disappeared from Woodland, California that year. Dolores’s husband Carl Wulff Sr. had actually been charged with her murder in 1985, but the charge was dismissed later that year and he died in 2005.
  7. A skull found on Mount Hood in Oregon in 1986 has been identified as that of Wanda Ann Herr, who had left a Gresham, Oregon group home a decade earlier at the age of nineteen. No missing persons report was filed at the time and the most recent photo available showed her at age twelve. The police are asking anyone who knew Wanda or has any info on her 1976 disappearance to contact them.
  8. The police have identified a new suspect in the 1973 disappearance of Barbara Jean Aleksivich from Bath, New York. The suspect, Richard W. Davis, is now dead, but he was recently identified through DNA as the killer of Siobhan McGuinness, a Missoula, Montana six-year-old who was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1974. Barbara, who was 24, was way out of Richard Davis’s preferred age range for victims, but he did live in Bath at the time Barbara disappeared. A previous suspect in her case, who still lived in the Bath area last I knew, has been cleared.
  9. The body of Ethan Bert Kazmerzak, who disappeared from Hampton, Iowa in 2013, has probably been found. At least they found his car submerged in a local pond, with human remains inside. The remains have been sent to the state medical examiner to be identified, but it’s highly unlikely it’s anyone but Ethan.

MP of the week: Dalia Castro

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This week’s featured missing person (it’s a day late, sorry) is Dalia Bayardo Castro, a 43-year-old Hispanic woman who was last seen in Bellmead, Texas on April 1, 2007. Bellmead is a small town in central Texas, a suburb of Waco.

Very little information is available on Dalia’s case, just that she might be in Austin (a major city about two hours to the southwest) and that she might require medical attention for unknown reasons.

If still alive, Dalia would be 56 today. She may use the surname Gavini.

MP of the week: Heather Zimmerman

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This week’s featured missing person is Heather Dawn Mullins Zimmerman, a 19-year-old who disappeared on May 26, 1997. She was married, but living with her parents while her husband was stationed with the Marines in Japan. She apparently disappeared after leaving her parents’ Gifford, Illinois home to attend a party in nearby Rantoul. She may have been dropped off near her parents’ home at 3:00 a.m., but that hasn’t been confirmed.

Another woman, 20-year-old Jamie Harper, disappeared from Rantoul in 2007. Both Jamie and Heather are missing under suspicious circumstances, and the police stated they had the same person of interest in both cases.

MP of the week: Jessica Ortiz

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This week’s featured missing person — the last of the decade — in Jessica Eileen Ortiz, a 29-year-old woman who disappeared from Pueblo, Colorado on April 12, 2007. If still alive she’d be 42 today.

It’s not likely Jessica is still alive, though. She had advanced cervical cancer, something she was unaware of when she disappeared. And the man she was last seen with, her longtime boyfriend, Wade Albrow, has a long history of violence. This was probably yet another case of fatal intimate partner violence, something that appears in the Charley Project’s pages a lot.

MP of the week: Jamal Mohammed

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This week’s featured missing person is Jamal “James” Mohammed, a Tampa, Florida dance club owner who disappeared on October 17, 2007. I’ve got a pretty broad weight range for him, 145 to 220 pounds. From his photo (which, admittedly, only shows his face and neck) I’d be guessing he was at the lighter end.

He was last seen on his way to the club he owned. He was never seen again and his car turned up abandoned with some of his stuff inside. Foul play is suspected.

National Hispanic Heritage Month: Francisco Nino-Vasquez

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In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month I’m featuring a Hispanic missing person every day from September 15 to October 15. Today’s case is Francisco Javier Nino-Vasquez, a 20-year-old man who disappeared from Watsonville, California on August 1, 2005.

His is one of my “few details are available” cases unfortunately. He does have several tattoos, some of which may suggest gang affiliation.