2020

Missing man reappears after suspects mistakenly arrested for his “murder”

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So I wanted to call everyone’s attention to this New York Post article about a British case. 46-year-old Ismail Ali went missing from Bradford, England in May 2020, and earlier this month five people were arrested on suspicion of his murder. After news of this arrest hit the airwaves, Ismail Ali went to the police station to explain to them he was not dead. The article didn’t say why he went missing or where he’s been these last five and a half years.

I know that in the UK, because the legal system there is different, people are “arrested on suspicion” a lot of times and then held for questioning and then released without charge. This doesn’t happen nearly as often in the US. I have to wonder whether there would have been charges brought against those five suspects if Ismail Ali hadn’t suddenly popped up and been like “I’m not dead, guys!”

MP of the week: Jesse Minott

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This week’s featured missing person is Jesse Oswald Minott, a 32-year-old man who disappeared from Morro Bay, California on September 6, 2020. He’s black and Filipino, with black hair and brown eyes, and was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, shorts and rubber shoes. He’s 5’10 and was 150 pounds at the time of his disappearance.

There isn’t much info in Jesse’s case, other than which high school and university he attended, and the fact that his car was found abandoned. If still alive he’d be 37 today.

Enlightening article on Hayden Mansis’s disappearance

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I have already updated Hayden’s case with the info, but I wanted to highlight this in-depth article about the 2020 disappearance of Hayden Manis. It’s a very good article with lots of new information and some corrections to previous information.

The article has interviews with Crystal Hall, Hayden’s father’s girlfriend; Paul Hall, Crystal’s father; and Amber Roberts, who was a coworker of Crystal’s at the time Hayden disappeared. Crystal had very little to say for her interview, but Amber had some interesting information and Paul had a LOT to say.

Mainly what is corrected is that Hayden was last seen in August, not January. Paul knew Hayden and saw him, Crystal and his father Dustin watching a go-kart race on August 30. The media was able to verify that Crystal’s daughter was racing at that race track on that particular day. So I would consider that to be a confirmed sighting.

That poor little boy. This is a situation where everyone basically knows who did this, but it’s still very much open to question whether anyone can be successfully prosecuted.

Still not done with the corpus delicti updates and not sure what to do with this case

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So I am now about halfway through checking my “not concluded/unknown outcomes” corpus delicti list to check for conclusions and outcomes in those cases. I put up another twenty updates for today. It will probably take another day or two’s worth of updates to finish. I have a rule about not updating more than twenty cases a day because sometimes I used to get carried away and spend too long at the computer desk and mess my back up.

Soooo much domestic violence in those corpus delicti lists. It makes me feel lucky to not have a violent husband, and also sad that I have to feel lucky about this. That your husband/boyfriend doesn’t abuse you just should be a given, not something women have to feel lucky to have. I really don’t understand why a man would abuse his partner. I especially don’t understand it when they’ve got kids. It doesn’t do any good for the kids to see their father beating their mother. To expose children to that is in itself a form of abuse.

I mean, I DO understand on an intellectual basis that some people are just incredibly controlling of their relationships and when they feel like they’re losing control they go ballistic and commit violent acts. I know that’s why it happens. But at the same time I don’t get it at all.

Worldwide, domestic violence in relationships seems to be more common than otherwise. It’s just that in some countries, women can do something to protect themselves, and in some countries they can’t because of that country’s culture or the law.

One of the cases I updated today is Andelka Morariu and I’m not sure whether or not she should be on Charley anymore. They found a part of her body, you see. It’s a really small part, and the rest of her is still missing. But this wasn’t a fingertip they found, like in the Diane Augat case; I still consider her to be missing because you’re not going to die from losing a fingertip. In Andelka’s case they found a skull fragment, which seems like a very strong indicator of death to me, and a medical examiner testified that she probably could not have survived this injury even with medical attention.

I don’t know how big that skull fragment was. I suppose it doesn’t particularly matter. But I am not sure whether Andelka should stay on my site or not.

Right now she’s up there and I updated her case this morning, adding info about her former husband’s conviction for murder. Like an idiot he represented himself at trial, and suggested whatever happened to Andelka was “justifiable homicide”, which I think can’t have sat well with the jury given as how they convicted him after only an hour.

With the evidence against him, he probably would have been better off negotiating a plea. A good defense attorney (and he did have a public defender advising him) might have been able to reduce the case to manslaughter, since there’s no body or witnesses, and he’d go to prison but he’d see the light of day again eventually. But this man tried to get away with murder instead and now he’s serving a life sentence.

MP of the week: Aaron Johnson

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This week’s featured missing person is Aaron Scott Johnson, a 34-year-old man who disappeared under kind of strange circumstances from Birchwood, Wisconsin on October 12, 2020.

After getting into an argument with his wife on October 10, he spent the night with friends. At 6:00 p.m. on October 11, his friends dropped him off near his car, which had mechanical issues but was still driveable. On October 12, someone saw Johnson walking down a remote logging road wearing only his undies: boxer shorts, a tank top and socks. In Wisconsin in October. The witness was weirded out by this and took this photo:

The witness asked Johnson if he needed help, and Johnson said no. He walked down the road and off into oblivion. Never seen again.

I think Johnson’s disappearance is probably drug-related, as he was battling a meth addiction. He may have taken off his outer clothes because he was high and disoriented. I checked the weather in that area during the time he disappeared and the highest temperature that day was 65, which is pleasant enough but isn’t really the greatest weather to be wandering around in when one is just in their undies. The day’s lowest temperature was 40, and the average for the day was 52. If a person is outside in those temperatures for an extensive time period dressed in what Johnson was wearing, there’s a chance they could develop exposure, especially if they happened to get wet. A lot of hypothermia deaths happen on days when it’s not really that cold, it’s just that the victim was outside for too long and/or was under-dressed for the temperature and/or got wet.

Johnson has loads of tattoos and would be recognizable by them. I have photos of them on his page. If still alive he’d be 37 today.

One of those cases where everyone did it right except the authorities

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I put up the Nakota Kelly case today. I don’t know how I missed it earlier; perhaps because it isn’t on the NCMEC site?

Anyway. It is quite horrible. And it’s one of those cases where civilians (except the murderer obviously) did all the right things and the authorities (in this case Indiana DCS and the police) did it wrong.

I highly recommend WRTV’s three part series in the case: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3. Though you might cry, reading it.

I feel so bad for Nakota’s mom. She was trying to do right by her son and abide by the court’s orders and she couldn’t do both. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to her, having to drop him off for visitation when Nakota had already said his father was going to kill him this weekend. His mom notified Indiana DCS of his fears but they did nothing. If she had not complied with the court-ordered visitation she would have lost custody altogether and Nakota would have been full time with his abusive dad.

And then, when Nakota’s dad told a relative he had killed his son, the relative did the right thing and immediately called the police. Who went to the dad’s apartment… then noped off back to the station when no one answered the door, even though they heard movement inside, even though there was a report of a murdered child. (The supervisor who made that judgment has since retired.) Had they forced entry they would probably have caught Nakota’s dad midway through a dismemberment, which isn’t terrific but which at least gives Nakota’s mom something to bury.

I don’t even know why Nakota’s dad wanted anything to do with the kid in the first place. He didn’t attend Nakota’s Little League games. He didn’t seem very interested in Nakota at all. It seems to me that his insistence on visitation was more about causing trouble for Nakota’s mom, and maybe also a defense against deportation to Nigeria: “You can’t boot me out, I’ve got an American citizen child who depends on me.” Despicable.

And about Nigeria… since when are countries allowed to refuse to take back deportees? I don’t understand that at all.

Pretty awful. That poor little boy.

In another case I put up today I was extremely annoyed after I found the missing person’s Facebook page and couldn’t use any of the photos of her because EVERY SINGLE ONE had that stupid dog face filter on it. Of course, the MP does have the mental capacity of a seven-year-old, which makes sense. Strange case; I wonder if she’s been trafficked. A young woman with the mental capacity of a first-grader would be very vulnerable.

MP of the week: Richard Reid

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This week’s featured missing person is Richard Allen Reid, a 61-year-old man who disappeared from Missoula, Montana on July 21, 2020. That day he quit his job without warning, left a goodbye message for his family, and vanished.

I do not know the text of the goodbye message, its form (like, a note or a voicemail or what) or whether it was goodbye in the sense of running away or in the sense of suicide. Of course, sometimes it’s hard to tell one from the other. Suicide notes rarely explicitly say, “I am going to kill myself.” It’s worth noting that Reid has a history of depression and might have been suicidal when he disappeared.

If still alive, Richard Reid would be 63 years old today. He has two tattoos, including a distinctive one on right middle finger of a cross and five hatchmarks.

Sorry about missing last week. Really not feeling great. Stupid brain.

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

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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.

Since I’m in Facebook Jail again, here’s the news

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Facebook didn’t like a meme I posted — despite the fact that it’s elsewhere on Facebook — and gave me 30 days in jail. But then they changed their minds and decided the meme is okay after all, but forgot to remove my 30-day sentence. Shrug. It is what it is. Facebook is broken.

In California:

  • The biological parents of Classic and Cincere Pettus, later known as Orson and Orrin West, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the state of California, alleging the state wrongfully removed the Pettus boys from a safe home and placed them with the people who have since been charged with their murders.

In Massachusetts:

In Michigan:

In Minnesota:

  • There’s a new podcast about the disappearance of Joshua Cheney Guimond, a St. John’s University student who disappeared from the university’s Collegeville, Minnesota campus in 2002.

In New Hampshire:

  • They’re still looking for Harmony Montgomery, and her father Adam’s lawyers have asked for police body cam footage of his arrest. Adam is charged with abusing Harmony prior to her disappearance, and with failure to report her missing. A little over a week ago the police searched Harmony’s old apartment and removed items, including a refrigerator. My guess would be they’re checking anything large enough to conceal a five-year-old child’s body.

In New York:

  • On this coming Saturday, the New York City Medical Examiner is holding an event to publicize missing persons in NYC. At the event, the ME’s office will accept “will accept any voluntarily shared information, like photos and DNA samples to help identify missing people.”

In South Carolina:

  • They interviewed the lead investigator in Shelton John Sanders‘s disappearance and presumed murder, asking him why they were unable to get convictions in that case. The investigator still thinks the suspect in guilty.
  • They have identified remains found at a recycling plant as Duncan Gordon, a missing man. He was last seen sitting on top of a shredding machine, and “a substance that looked like ground up flesh” was later found in that machine. Sounds awful; I hope it was quick. I’m predicting Gordon’s family files a lawsuit and OSHA hands out fines for this.

In Virginia:

In Washington state:

  • Othram has identified two more unidentified bodies: they are Blaine Has Tricks, who disappeared in 1977, and Alice Lou Williams, who disappeared in 1981. I know with Alice they got some help from the Charley Project; I know because the guy who owns Othram told me so.

In Canada:

  • They’re still looking for Vernon George Martin, who disappeared in 2009 after a fire at the airport hangar he co-owned. He could be missing or he could be on the run, as he’s wanted for sex offenses.

In New Zealand:

In the UK:

  • The father of Claudia Lawrence, who disappeared in 2009, died in February, and in his will he left £10,000 to a charity for missing persons.
  • They found Michael Anthony Lynch, a man who had been missing for 20 years. It appears he drove his car into Lough Erne, near Corradillar Quay, in Northern Ireland.

EastPark John Doe, missing persons events, and other stories

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Colorado: There will be two events to honor the May 10, 2020 disappearance of Suzanne Morphew from Chaffee County. (I haven’t added her yet cause it hasn’t yet been a year.) The first will be held at the Poncha Springs Visitor Center at 7010 U.S. Highway 285 in Poncha Springs, Colorado at 7:00 p.m. on April 30. This day would be/have been Suzanne’s fiftieth birthday. The second event is scheduled for 4:00 p.m. on May 2, at the Community Garden at 202 East Church Street in Alexandria, Indiana; Suzanne grew up there and many family and friends still live there. I might attend that event as it’s only an hour and ten minutes from where I live.

Kentucky: In EastPark, on the edge of Boyd County, last July, hunters found the badly decomposed remains of a murdered man partially buried. He had been dead for between approximately two weeks and a month. The man was wearing only boxer shorts and there were no personal effects. The man was between 20 and 40 years old and about 5’8 and 140 to 160 pounds, with brown hair between earlobe length and shoulder length. He had been shot, but also had drugs in his system when he died. The place where he was buried, although somewhat secluded, had easy access to the interstate; the dead man “literally could have come from anywhere.” The man has yet to be identified.

Also in Kentucky: Skeletal remains found in Hardyville in February 2020 have been identified as Jacob Lewis Tipton, a 24-year-old man who disappeared from Berea on April 23, 2016. Unfortunately there wasn’t much left of him and they couldn’t establish a cause of death.

Also in Kentucky: They’re still looking for Andrea Michelle Knabel, a 37-year-old woman who disappeared from Louisville on August 13, 2019. A retired homicide detective has taken an interest in the case and believes he’s found a three-hour discrepancy in the timeline of the night of Andrea’s disappearance.

Mississippi: They’re still trying to identify a Jane Doe who were found under a bridge over the Pearl River in Rankin County in 1978. She was nude and wrapped in an old blanket. She had died of multiple blows to the head and may have been killed by serial killer Samuel Little, who died late last year. They’re looking into the possibility that the Jane Doe may be Wendy Susan Byron, a 24-year-old woman who disappeared from Glendora, California just two days before Jane Doe was found in Mississippi.

New York: They’re still looking for Flossie A. Wilbur, a 75-year-old woman who disappeared from Angelica on August 24, 1985. David Sherk, one of her then-neighbors, confessed to her murder in 2020 and told authorities he had buried her body near the Almond Dam, but the body has never been found. Doesn’t mean the man was lying; the dam has flooded multiple times since 1985. Sherk had terminal brain cancer when he made his confession and I’m not sure he’s still alive now, but he was never charged.

South Dakota: In Rapid City, groups and leaders both from town and from Native American reservations across the state united yesterday to raise awareness for missing and murdered indigenous people. Here are some photos of the event.

Virginia: It’s been ten years now since Robert Lee Hourihan disappeared, leaving behind a wife and six-year-old daughter her adored. Foul play is suspected in his case. His wife has never remarried and still hopes every day that he will be found.

Also Virginia: Human remains found in the woods on the campus of Hollins University back in February have been identified as Jessica Darling Dickson, a 30-year-old woman who disappeared from Roanoke on June 1, 2019. Jessica’s death is under investigation, but the police said there doesn’t seem to be any connection to the university and they don’t think the students (it’s a women’s college) are in danger.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada: There’s an interesting article/podcast episode on the systemic failures of Toronto Police and missing persons cases.

New Waterford, Nova Scotia, Canada: They’re still looking for Debbie Hutchinson, 59-year-old woman who disappeared on April 15, 2017 and wasn’t reported missing for twelve days. Her niece found groceries lying on the floor of Debbie’s home, and her car later turned up abandoned and burned.