MP of the week: Aaliyah Bell

This week’s featured missing person is Aaliyah Shadeay Bell, (pronounced “A-lee-a”, and she could use the last name Hall) an 18-year-old black, black-haired, brown-eyed teenager who was last seen in Rock Hill, South Carolina on November 25, 2014.

Aaliyah was last seen wearing a black peacoat, gray leggings or jogging pants, neon blue and green shoes, and a silver lip ring. She was 5’6 tall, 145 pounds and 18 years old, and she has stars tattooed on the left side of her abdomen. Though a relative wired her $100 the day she went missing, she never picked up the money. It was two days before Thanksgiving, and she was just gone.

If still alive, Aaliyah would be 29 today.

MP of the week: Daniel Tsosie

This week’s featured missing person is Daniel Andy Tsosie, a 21-year-old who disappeared from Chinle, Arizona on July 1, 2014. He is 5’6 and 160 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes, and is a member of the Navajo Nation. He was last seen wearing a brown shirt and gray pants.

Daniel Tsosie, photo taken from his Facebook page

Tsosie disappeared after being dropped off so he could go visit his grandparents. Very little info is available in his disappearance, but Chinle is very remote and I wonder if he got lost or injured in the desert. There really isn’t enough info to speculate.

If still alive, Daniel Tsosie would be about 30 today.

MP of the week: Khori Richards

This week’s featured missing person is Khori Navor Richards, missing from Miami, Florida since November 4, 2014, when he was 29. Khori is black, 5’7 – 5’9 tall and 110 to 130 pounds, with black hair, brown eyes and a possible goatee. He has a tattoo of a treble clef on his hand.

I don’t have many details in his disappearance. He simply walked out of the house and didn’t come back, so they say. If he is still alive, today, Khori would be 39.

MP of the week: Albert Haft

This week’s featured missing person is Albert Charles Haft IV, last seen in Columbus, Ohio on December 12, 2014. Haft was 52 then, and would be 61 now. He has black hair and green eyes.

Haft had been staying in a transitional home after being discharged from a psychiatric hospital. He was caught drinking which was against the rules of the home, and they kicked him out. This was a few days before he was last seen. He wound up with a room in a motel, but had gone missing by morning.

His sister believes he could be dead. Certainly that’s possible, even likely by now. But I wonder if he is still adrift in the homeless community somewhere.

I’ll be out of Facebook Jail in a week. Here’s some more news.

From California:

  • They’re still looking for Khrystyna Carreno, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared from Bakersfield in November 2020. (The article spells her name “Khrystina” but the NCMEC and CDOJ spell it “Khrystyna” so I’m going to go with that.) I don’t have her on Charley but figure I should add her. Twelve is very young, obviously, and she’s been missing for a year and a half now. I hope she’s alive and hasn’t been trafficked. Here’s Khrystyna’s NCMEC poster.

From Florida:

From Georgia:

  • They have finally identified the little boy whose corpse was found outside Atlanta over 20 years ago. His name was William DaShawn Hamilton and he was six years old when he was murdered. William was never reported missing. His mother, Teresa Ann Bailey Black, has been charged with felony murder, cruelty to children, aggravated assault and concealing the death of another.

From Michigan:

  • They’re still looking for Kathy Sue Wilcox, a 15-year-old girl last seen in Otsego in 1972. She got into an argument with her parents over an older boy she was dating, stomped out angrily and was never seen again. Kathy would be 65 today. Kathy’s sister does not believe she ran away, and made reference to a “significant antisocial person who was in [Kathy’s] life,” whom she thinks could have been involved.

From Minnesota:

  • Remains found in Rosemount in 2014 have been identified as James Everett, a New York man who was not listed as missing. They do not know the cause or manner of death, but they believe Everett died sometime in the autumn months of 2013. I wonder if he died of exposure; Minnesota can get very cold, and I doubt a “decommissioned railroad utility shed” would have heat or insulation.

From New Hampshire:

  • They’re still looking for 15-year-old Shirley Ann “Tippy” McBride, last seen in Concord in 1984. Although there haven’t been any new developments, the article talks about the case in great detail.
  • They’re still looking for Maura Murray, and are searching an unspecified “area in the towns of Landaff and Easton.” This search isn’t based on any new info, though, they’re just shooting in the dark.

From New York:

  • They’re trying to find Judith Threlkeld, a 22-year-old woman who disappeared from Chautauqua County in 1976. She was last seen walking home from the library. I added the case to Charley yesterday.

From North Dakota:

  • Check out this awesome in-depth three-part series on the 1996 disappearances of Sandra Mary Jacobson and her son, John Henry Jacobson: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 (this last part is paywalled, but I was invested enough to fork over two bucks for a subscription). Very mysterious case. I feel terrible for Sandra’s older son, Spencer: he lost his mom and half-brother, literally, and later on his father was murdered, and neither of these cases have been solved. A few years after the murder of Spencer’s father, Spencer’s wife died tragically young at 24, from strep throat of all things, leaving him a young widower with three kids. Poor Spencer has had enough bad luck to last a lifetime.

From Ohio:

  • They’re still looking for Charles King Blanche, a 39-year-old man who disappeared from his Youngstown group home in 1991. Blanche’s cousin says he was a very talented musician who was recruited to tour in Europe in a marching band, but his life kind of cratered after he developed an unspecified severe mental illness. An all-too-common story on the Charley Project.

From Texas:

  • It’s being reported that sometimes when Texan foster kids run away, the agencies just wash their hands of them and end their guardianship over them. This sounds terrible, but given how often foster agencies fail their wards, and given as it’s Texas where they can’t even keep the lights on, I’m not entirely surprised.
  • Using genetic genealogy, they have identified a Jane Doe whose partial remains were found south of Midland in 2013. The victim was Sylvia Nicole Smith, who disappeared in 2000 at the age of sixteen. The case is being investigated as homicide.

From Virginia

  • Cory Bigsby, the father of four-year-old Codi Bigsby, has been indicted on thirty counts, the majority of them child neglect charges. Codi has been missing since January. None of the indictments are related to his disappearance; they’re connected to Cory’s allegedly terrible parenting from prior to Codi’s disappearance. Codi has not been missing long enough to go up on Charley, so here’s his NCMEC poster, and here’s another poster for him.

From Washington state:

  • There are forty known Native American people listed as missing from the Yakima area. And here’s a list of all the Native Americans listed as missing from the entire state.

From Washington DC:

  • They’re still looking for Relisha Tenau Rudd, an eight-year-old girl who disappeared from a Dickensian homeless shelter in 2014. I’ve blogged about Relisha several times, as recently as earlier this week when they put up a new AP for her. If still alive, Relisha would now be 16. Here’s another detailed article about her case, with links to the earlier series of articles the Washington Post did about it.

And in general:

  • Although they don’t drop kids from the guardianship rolls when they disappear, in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Illinois, most missing foster kids who resurface are not screened to see if they were trafficked during the time they were gone. The article says Texas actually has a better record in this regard, with over 80% of missing-and-then-located foster kids being screened. But the number should ideally be 100%.
  • My husband has persuaded me to finally turn the Charley Project into an official registered nonprofit organization. Right now we’re saving up the money to pay a lawyer to file the paperwork to do this though it’s going to be awhile at this rate; money is super tight right now. If the Charley Project is a registered nonprofit, all donations will become tax-deductible and also the organization could become the recipient of grants. I’d use the grants to travel to more missing persons events, and pay the subscription fees for more databases to use in researching cases, and maybe hire an editor or something.

New age-progression for Relisha Rudd just dropped

So I just put up a new age-progression for Relisha Tenau Rudd, last seen in Washington D.C. in 2014 at the age of eight. The AP shows her as she might appear at her current age of 16.

I don’t normally make whole new blog entries just for one AP, but I have a particularly soft spot for Relisha as it seems every adult and every institution she came across in her short life, failed her miserably.

MP of the week: Clayton McCarter

This week’s featured missing person is Clayton Lynn McCarter, a 15-year-old boy who disappeared from the Potter Children’s Home in Bowling Green, Kentucky on January 15, 2014. He and another resident of the facility, 13-year-old Rodney Michael “Mikey” Scott, reportedly ran away together and haven’t been seen since.

Although the boys did apparently leave on their own and are still listed as runaways, there is significant reason to be concerned here: both boys left without any shoes, and Clayton has ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder, and is also mentally disabled with the capacity of a five-year-old. These were quite vulnerable boys. Less is known about Rodney, but Clayton’s disabilities make it unlikely that he could have survived on his own for even a week or two, never mind eight years and counting.

Clayton is white, 5’11 and 160 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes and a pierced left ear, though he wasn’t wearing an earring at the time of his disappearance. Rodney, also white, is 5’4 and 110 to 120 pounds, and has brown hair and brown eyes. He has a small birthmark on his forehead. Clayton was last seen wearing a t-shirt over a collared shirt, pajama pants and socks. Rodney was wearing a black jacket and socks; I’ve got no info on his pants.

MP of the week: Tyriq Pope

This week’s featured missing person is Tyriq Jaquan Marlon Pope, a 21-year-old man who disappeared from his home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on March 28, 2014. He traveled to Hot Springs, Arkansas after he went missing and was sighted there on May 4, then vanished again. He may have been seen at the Mexican border area in Texas sometime after that. It doesn’t look like there’s been any indication of his whereabouts since that spring, however.

Tyriq’s family said he was using drugs and they were afraid he might harm himself. It is odd that this young man hasn’t resurfaced in seven years. I wonder if he was at all equipped for life in Mexico; did he speak any Spanish, for example? I also wonder about the possibility of a drug overdose.

Tyriq is described as black, 5’5 and 130 pounds. He would be 28 years old today. Both Wisconsin and Arkansas police are investigating the case.

MP of the week: Kristian Justice

This week’s featured missing person is Kristian Dejuan Justice, age 7 months, who disappeared with his six-year-old half-sister, Kaylah Neveah Hunter, from Detroit, Michigan on May 24, 2014.

Kristian’s father is Erin Maurice Justice. (Kaylah has a different father.) Erin had been married to the children’s mother, Alicia Marie Fox, for only four months when the couple separated and Alicia moved out with both kids. June 6, nearly two weeks after the children were last seen, Kaylah missed her kindergarten graduation ceremony and their family reported Alicia, Kaylah and Kristian missing. On June 9, Alicia’s body was found in the basement of a vacant home in Detroit.

Erin was subsequently arrested in Atlanta and charged with murder in Alicia’s case. He had left town on May 29. Although Erin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 45 to 80 years, he never revealed what happened to the children.

Authorities can only hope that Kristian and Kaylah are still alive. There has been no indication of their whereabouts since 2014.

MP of the week: Amanda DeGuio

This week’s featured missing person is Amanda Ann DeGuio, a 24-year-old woman who disappeared from Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania on June 3, 2014. She left her mom’s home without any belongings and never came back. About a week later, she (allegedly) picked up someone else’s OxyContin at the pharmacy and a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Her family reported her missing on August 27, almost three months after they last saw her; Amanda had bipolar disorder and addiction issues and had been known to drop out of sight from time to time. Due to her lifestyle and the lack of contact it’s believed she met with foul play, but as far as I know there aren’t any suspects in her case.

Amanda has several tattoos and I’ve got photos of three of them. If still alive she’d be 31 today.

I hope everyone is safe and well. I have been doing well and have been reading a great deal lately.