On the 31st of October, 1955, Marilyn and the two children went to a bakery in East Meadow, New York, to pick up some fresh bread. While Marilyn popped into the bakery at 2:45PM, she left Steven and Pamela, who was in her stroller, outside the store. There were several other strollers parked outside and Marilyn told Steven to be good and that she would be back in just a few minutes. “It was something which I had done a thousand times, and other women still do,” Marilyn recalled. It was a decision she came to regret forever.¹

When Marilyn exited the store, she found the stroller and Steven missing. Eventually the stroller was found a few blocks away. Pamela was safe and sound inside the stroller but Steven was nowhere the be seen. Marilyn had to be rushed to the hospital to be treated for shock while a search party consisting of around 2,000 volunteers as well as personnel from Mitchel Field, Boy Scouts, police officers and firemen was set up. They searched the area surrounding the bakery and fanned out searching parks, golf courses and waterways.

A missing person poster described Steven as 38 inches, 32 pounds, blonde hair and blue eyes, with a scar under his chin and a birthmark resembling a mole on the back of his lower calf. He was last seen wearing blue overalls, a blue polo shirt, a red sweater with white and blue ships on the front and brown shoes. Posters were distributed across the city while locals were asked if they had seen Steven or witnessed anything suspicious. Police officers drove Marilyn throughout the city in a sound truck. As they drove, she called “Stevie, where are you?” into the speaker.

Marilyn said she didn’t believe that Steven would have been able to move the stroller himself, stating: “He never wanders. He’s kind of a momma’s boy.” She and Jerry pleaded on national television for their son to be returned to them. They said that Steven suffered from anemia and that he needed to take medication including vitamins, aspirin and a tonic. ²

Over the forthcoming years, FBI followed tips all across the country. In November of 1955, three letters were sent to Steven’s family demanding ransom for his safe return. Each letter requested a larger amount of money: the first one requested $3,000, the second requested $10,000 then the third requested $14,000. Steven’s family attempted to comply to the demands but would soon discover the letters were from a fraudster who knew nothing about Steven’s disappearance and were simply trying to con them out of money.³

One popular theory was that Steven was “The Boy in the Box” – a young boy who was found murdered in a box in Philadelphia two years after Steven disappeared. Using Steve’s sister’s DNA, this theory was ruled out in 2003. There were also several reports of a female hitchhiker with a small boy resembling Steven in Minneapolis. There was another claim of a woman and a boy who looked like Steven in a tavern in Kansas. However, none of the leads ever panned out: “It was a never-ending fruitless search,” recollected Detective Matthew Bonora.⁴

A promising lead came to the surface in 2009, when a man in Michigan went to police and relayed the belief he was Steven. The man, John Barnes, looked strikingly similar to Jerry and gave Steven’s family hope. Jerry stated: “It’s a possibility… It’s not 100 percent yet. It would be nice to find out he’s still alive after all those years. It’s been a very hard time.” He said that he had given up hope that he would find out what happened to his son but this new lead had given him a glimmer of hope. “After all those years, you partially give up. You kind of figure that it won’t be solved after all is said and done.”⁵

Jerry spoke with John who said that he was too young to remember anything from around that time frame and said that the family that raised him had never suggested that he was anything other than their biological son. However, he said that he had never felt as though he was part of the family he was brought up in and started looking into missing person cases, eventually zoning in on the disappearance of Steven.⁶

John’s claims were taken very seriously and he provided a DNA sample which was taken to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, to see if it were a match with DNA from Steven’s family. Unfortunately, however, DNA tests proved that he was mistaken. John’s father, Richard, would come forward to say that John certainly was his son and that he believed his son was disgruntled over the fact that his father divorced his mother in 1972. His sister, Cheryl, said that John had long believed that he was adopted or that he had been switched at birth.⁷ John spoke with the media following the DNA test and apologised for any heartache that he had caused, stating: “I honestly thought I was that kid that was kidnapped…”

The whereabouts of Steven and what happened to him on that fateful afternoon still remains a mystery.

Suzy Lamplugh worked as an estate agent, and on Monday 28^th July 1986 she left the office of Sturgis and Sons in Fulham to attend an appointment to show a house in Shorrolds Road. She took her house and car keys as well as her purse containing £15 and her credit cards, but left her handbag behind in the office. Ten minutes later she was seen waiting outside the empty property at 37 Shorrolds Road, which had been on the market for just one week. A few minutes later she was seen walking away from the house with a man. That was the last time Suzy was seen alive.  When she failed to return from the appointment, her manager phoned Diana to see if Suzy had decided to drop in on her parents for lunch.

She had written her appointment in her diary at work and it read as follows: 12.45 Mr Kipper – 37 Shorrolds O/S. The O/S annotation means ‘outside the property’.  No one in the office knew who Mr Kipper was, and his identity has never been discovered to this day, almost 34 years later.

As time passed on that day in 1986 and fears grew for her whereabouts, Suzy’s manager phoned the police and officers were dispatched to start an investigation. Suzy’s white Ford Fiesta car was found that night outside a property for sale in Stevenage Road Fulham, which is about a mile and a half away from Shorrolds Raod. The car was unlocked but the key was missing. Her purse was in the side pocket of the car door and there was no sign of a struggle. Eyewitness accounts spoke of a black left hand drive BMW seen in the vicinity, and it was later speculated that ‘Mr Kipper’ was a mis-spelling of the Dutch name ‘Kuiper’ However police officers found no evidence to back this up at the time.

Diana Lamplugh recalled going out with her husband and their dogs that night to Stevenage Road. They called their daughter’s name and searched in vain until the police asked them to go home and await news. Two days later it was Diana’s 50^th birthday and their house was surrounded by journalists. Both Diana and Paul always welcomed the media attention, they saw it as a way to help find Suzy.

On Thursday 31^st July they appeared on both channels of Breakfast TV and appealed for help in finding their child. Diana said ‘I feel she is shut up somewhere, that she is being held against her will. I feel that because she hasn’t contacted us. She is a very strong, very fit lady … so she should be able to cope with most situations.’

In the following weeks and months the case attracted extensive media coverage and a reconstruction took place to try and bring forth some new information. No positive sightings, nor any evidence was the very sad result of all the efforts made. Some years later Diana wrote: ‘There has not been a single trace of her. Nothing. Just as though she has been erased with a rubber’

As the years passed many lines of enquiry were opened and subsequently closed. Police have also tested the DNA of over 800 unidentified bodies and skeletal remains that have matched Suzy’s description, but to no avail. Previous to working as an estate agent, Suzy had been employed as a beautician on the QE2. In 1982 when she was on the ship, a man called Steve Wright was also working on board as a steward. Wright was later convicted in February 2008 of the murder of 5 prostitutes in Ipswich, Suffolk. This was a line of enquiry that went nowhere, and a senior Metropolitan Police Officer described the link as ‘speculative’

Acting on information received, police also excavated a field near the former Norton Army Barracks in Worcestershire in 2000 and 2001. Another search was carried out on land near the village of Drakes Broughton in 2010. This was also abandoned when nothing connected to the case was found. By far the strongest lead that officers acted upon was thought to be the connection to convicted killer John Cannan, who is currently serving 3 life sentences in prison.

He was jailed for crimes including the murder of Shirley Banks in Bristol in 1986, the same year that Suzy went missing. Cannan had been released from a nearby prison hostel not long before Suzy went to meet Mr Kipper on that sunny day in July of 1986. Police took the unprecedented step of naming him as the prime suspect in the case and he was questioned at length in both 1989 and 1990. Cannan was also arrested in December 2000 and questioned once more, but without enough evidence he was not charged. Later on in 2002 another attempt was made to link Cannan to the crime, but this time the Crown Prosecution Service itself stated that there was not sufficient evidence and the case against him was dropped once more. That month Scotland Yard held a press conference, at which they named John Cannan as the only suspect in the case and said that they strongly believed that he had murdered Suzy Lamplugh and disposed of her body.

It is said that Cannan’s nickname in prison is ‘Kipper’ and in April 2000 his ex-girlfriend Gilly Paige told detectives that he had confessed to her that he murdered Suzy and put her body in concrete.  None of this counted for a thing without a body. In the summer of 2019 police once again started to search a field near Pershore in Worcestershire after new information came to light. In November last year a team of 15 officers and staff, acting on a tip off from one of Cannan’s fellow prisoners excavated a garden in Shipton Road, Sutton Coldfield. This was a property where Cannan’s mother Sheila once lived. After 2 weeks the search was called off after no fresh evidence was found.

John Cannan, who was also convicted for the attempted kidnap of Jane Holman in Bristol in 1986, suffered a stroke in Full Sutton prison in 2019. He is now 66 years old , and police feel that time is running out for the chance to find out what happened to Suzy Lamplugh. Cannan’s minimum tariff is 35 years, and he will be eligible for parole in 2023. There has been speculation over the years that Suzy may even have been involved in a relationship with John Cannan. She had spoken to her friends of a meeting with a new man with Bristol connections, who she described to one girlfriend as ‘scary’.

Suzy Lamplugh was officially declared dead in 1994. Her parents Paul and Diana were both awarded the OBE in 1992 and 2005 respectively for their charitable work with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. They never gave up hope of finding the remains of their beloved daughter. Paul continued raising money and awareness until his death aged 87 in June 2018, 32 years after Suzy disappeared.

Sources:

Daily Telegraph, 6 November, 2002 – “Police Name Man Who Killed Suzy Lamplugh”

BBC News archives

The Guardian, 22 February, 2008 – “Police Investigate Link Between Wright and Suzy Lamplugh”

The Independent, 27 July, 2001 – “Lamplugh Police to re-examine Unknown Bodies”

On the 17th of December, 1993, Chance left his mother’s home to spend the Christmas period with his father and Latricia in Latricia’s home.

On Christmas Day, Gaye called Chance to wish him a happy Christmas and ask him if he was having a good time. She said he sounded extremely excited about the Christmas presents he had received from his father, especially the Old West-style duster coat and GI Joe figures. In fact, Chance said that he was having such a good time with his father that he asked Gaye if he could stay a few extra days.

“I told him to call me later so we could set up a time when he would come home, but I never heard from him again,” said Gaye.⁸

On the 27th of December, Latricia was discovered murdered in her home by her father, Jack. “I just called her name and then I went over and felt her. And I knew that she was dead,” he recollected. She had been shot six times in the head with a .22 calibre gun. There was so signs of a struggle and nothing appeared to be missing, ruling out a robbery gone wrong. Chance and Lee were nowhere to be found.

It was announced that Lee and Chance were being sought by federal, state and local law enforcement officials. Three arrest warrants – including one alleging murder – were filed against Lee. “He needs to bring his son home, or at least call somebody and let us know if he’s okay. We’re not even sure if he’s alive,” said Gaye. She said that despite what police were theorising had happened, she didn’t believe that Lee would have ever harmed his son.

However, several of Latricia’s friends came forward to tell police that Lee was a jealous man. “I think she just told him the relationship was over and he just couldn’t take the rejection,” suggested her friend, Susan White.⁹

Lee’s car was discovered abandoned in Austin, Texas, three days later. Inside, police found Lee’s hunting rifle, check book and wallet. However, an examination of the gun revealed that it hadn’t been used recently. Police also found bloodstained Christmas presents, a toolbox, and spare tire. DNA testing indicated that the blood wasn’t from Latricia. However, DNA testing couldn’t determine if it came from Chance or Lee.

Despite being featured on “America’s Most Wanted,” the case went cold. Around four months later, Chance’s grandfather received a phone call from somebody who whispered “help me” before hanging up. He is adamant that the call was from Chance but Lee’s family aren’t so sure and believe it was simply a cruel prank.

Police originally believed that Lee had killed Latricia before fleeing with his son. However, in 2016 they announced that they had new evidence to indicate that both Lee and Chance were victims of foul play. They now speculated that the murder was a crime of passion, perpetrated by somebody close to either Latricia or Lee.

“Investigators found nothing in the home appeared to be missing and believe that this murder was most likely a crime of passion committed by someone closely associated to one or more of the victims,” the release said.¹⁰

Nevertheless, their whereabouts still remains unknown.

Her stepfather, LaRon Bourgeois, said that he and Alexis had walked half a block from their home to Hi-Mount Community School. After that, Alexis crossed the road towards the school. He said he watched a crossing guard take Alexis the rest of the way, and then he himself turned around and walked back home.

This was the last time he ever saw Alexis.

When Alexis didn’t come home from school, her mother, Ayanna Patterson, called police. While some of Alexis’ classmates said that they had seen her in the school grounds that morning, other classmates and her teacher said that she hadn’t been in attendance, meaning Alexis most likely vanished before entering the school.

Following her disappearance, the Milwaukee Police Department and Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office embarked on one of the largest joint efforts in their history. Searchers trudged through woodland and they searched on boat, motorcycle and horseback. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department helicopter was also deployed to assist in the search.

Missing person posters with Alexis’ smiling face emblazoned on the front were distributed throughout the city. She was described as being 4 feet tall, 43 pounds and with light brown skin. On the morning she vanished, she was wearing two French braids in the front and a ponytail in the back. She was wearing a red and grey hooded jacket, light jeans, a purple shirt and white tennis shoes. Alexis’ family created laminated badges bearing Alexis’ picture, contact information and the question: “Have you seen my baby?” They canvassed the streets handing out fliers and searching but to no avail.¹¹

Police Chief Arthur Jones speculated early on in the investigation that Alexis had run away after the argument over cupcakes. Ayanna and LaRon made tearful pleas for her return and held on to the hope that she was “only” missing. “We’re doing terrible. If someone has her, please just return her. Just let her out on the corner. Someone will see her,” pleaded LaRon.¹² Ayanna said that if Alexis did run away, she wouldn’t have gone off with a stranger.

Milwaukee Public School officials came under criticism for not contacting Alexis’ family as soon as it was discovered that Alexis was not in class. “It makes me angry, this being a neighbourhood school and all, that they just wouldn’t send somebody a half a block over here to knock on the door and check on Lexi,” said Lena Ramirez, whose daughter was Alexis’ half-sister. According to the school, they followed correct protocol which was to notify a parent or guardian by the end of a second day if a child is missing from school. Their policy was staunchly defended by Superintendent Spence Korte, who said that there are enough absences in Milwaukee schools each day.

As is protocol in missing children cases, both Ayanna and LaRon were brought in for questioning. LaRon was extensively questioned in regards to the disappearance. He had a criminal record which included involvement in a 1994 bank robbery which resulted in Glendale police officer, Ronald Hedbany, being shot dead. LaRon – who was the getaway driver – was granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony against Brook Telegaro Ship III, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.¹³

Alexis’ disappearance was featured on “America’s Most Wanted” and it led to a flurry of tips and reported sightings. Sadly, however, none of these leads ever panned out. Meanwhile, police announced that Alexis’ disappearance had entered a “criminal investigation phase” indicating that it was now believed that Alexis had met foul play as opposed to ran off. “It’s not normal for any child to (willingly) be away from her parents this long. We’re going to look at this that someone might have this child and she might not be free to go,” said Police Chief Leslie Barber.¹⁴

Towards the end of the month, a $10,000 reward was offered for information that could lead to the whereabouts of Alexis but to no avail.

As the weeks turned to months, the leads and tips dried up. Then in late August, there was an anonymous tip to a television station from somebody who said that Alexis was in the Milwaukee River. However, despite an extensive and exhaustive search, there was no sign of Alexis.¹⁵

In early September, Police Chief Arthur Jones announced that it was very unlikely that they would ever find Alexis alive.  “It’s frustrating, because at some point in your heart and mind you still hope against hope that she’s still alive, you know, that someone is caring for her, but experience says that’s probably not the case,” he said.

There had been national coverage of the disappearances of several missing white girls in other states. Family and friends said that Alexis received little national coverage because she is African American. This was something that Police Chief Arthur Jones agreed with: “There’s no question in my mind that there’s a media racial bias. It certainly is true here in Milwaukee, at every level from the electronic media to the print media,” he said.¹⁶

Shortly thereafter, a volunteer group formed shortly after Alexis’ disappearance disbanded due to lack of funds. The founder, Keith Martin, said that the community were no longer interested in Alexis’ disappearance. In fact, when he sponsored a rummage sale, only four people showed up. “I guess the attitude out there is, `It didn’t happen to me. So I’m going to leave it alone.’ It’s just sad,” he said.¹⁷

In April of 2003, LaRon was arrested and charged with beating Ayanna and threatening to kill her. According to Ayanna, LaRon had not been supportive since her daughter’s disappearance and became controlling and abusive. The week before his arrest, Ayanna told him that a detective was coming to their home to talk about Alexis and he reportedly responded: “What the fuck does he want? I don’t give a fuck about him.” The arrest warrant also said that Ayanna accused LaRon of selling drugs and pimping out women.¹⁸

Over the forthcoming years, age-progression images showing what Alexis may look like as she grew into a young woman were issued. In 2016, police thought they cracked the case when a man came forward to say the age-progression images looked eerily like his ex-wife who he said had a very murky past. However, DNA testing ruled her out.

Each year, Ayanna holds a birthday party for her absent daughter. She says that until there is evidence to prove that she is dead, she will live under the assumption that her daughter is alive and well.

Trevor was just 22 years old at the time of his disappearance. He was born on 15^th August 1978 and he was the youngest of four siblings. Trevor grew up in Naas, Co Kildare, and moved to Dublin when he took up a computer course. In May 1999 he started work in the IT Department of the Bank of Ireland. 

On the night he vanished, along with his colleagues he went to the Hilton Hotel on Charlemont Place to celebrate the festive season. After the company ‘do,” he and some of his work friends decided to continue the night in Buck Whaleys nightclub on Lower Leeson Street. At around 3.30am on the morning of 8^th December 2000, Trevor left and started walking towards his flat on Serpentine Avenue in Ballsbridge, a suburb of Dublin. He never arrived home.  

It was raining heavily that night and there was a taxi strike, and so Trevor made his way to his office building across from Leeson Street Bridge. CCTV footage released by the police showed Trevor interacting with a man outside the gates of the Bank of Ireland Asset Management Building.  Just seconds before their brief chat Trevor had walked past this man who had been standing in the rain beside a pillar around the corner for half an hour. Was he waiting for Trevor? Was it a pre-arranged meeting? After speaking with this man Trevor went inside the gates of his place of work, locking them behind him.  

He then spent half an hour inside his office, and had a hot drink with a colleague, Karl Pender, who was working a late shift. He also checked his emails and made a list of tasks he needed to perform the next day. Trevor then took an umbrella from the office and left, heading towards Baggot Street Bridge, presumably to continue his walk home. Karl Pender was the last known person to see Trevor all those years ago. At around this time, Trevor was known to have made a phone call to a friend back home in Naas. A voicemail that he left for him told his friend that he missed him, all was good and he would call him back later in the day. Sadly that voicemail was deleted and the police made no effort to retrieve it.  

The last possible sighting of Trevor Deely was captured by CCTV in Haddington Road at about 4.14am, which shows a man walking past the AIB Bank with an umbrella. This footage was enhanced in 2017 and is now known to definitely be Trevor, as the logo on the umbrella matches the one taken from his office. Police have also established that a man in dark clothing passes this camera about 34 seconds after Trevor goes by and appears to be following him. The Police believe that this is the same man who was seen speaking to Trevor outside his workplace. This man has never come forward or been identified, despite numerous TV appeals. Trevor’s case has been featured on news items and TV programmes over the last number of years, but to no avail.  

When Trevor failed to show at work the next day, no one thought anything of it as it had been a very late night. His flatmates were away for the weekend and they had no idea that he had not arrived home after his Christmas night out. It was only when he didn’t appear at work on the Monday morning that it was established that no one had seen or spoken to him since Thursday night. The alarm was then raised, but valuable time and possible information and clues were lost. 

In the intervening years Trevor’s sister Michele has called the situation a ‘relentless nightmare’ and has made personal appeals on many occasions. At the time of his disappearance an extensive search of the area was made, and the River Dodder and Grand Canal were  thoroughly examined. Potential witnesses were hard to track down, but dozens of night workers and party goers were interviewed. Not a single piece of information was worth pursuing. In 2016 a full cold case review was carried out, but yet again nothing new came of it.  

Finally in 2017, Police thought they had maybe benefitted from a breakthrough when an informant came forward. This informant told of how Trevor had become involved in an argument with a notorious drug dealing gang and had been murdered on the night he disappeared. The informant advised a search of a wooded area in Chapelizod, approximately 9 kilometres away from where Trevor was last seen. Despite the discovery of a gun and a significant amount of drugs, no connection was made to the disappearance of Trevor Deely, and the search was called off in the September of 2017. Once again Trevor’s family were left with no closure on how their son/brother had simply vanished. 

At the time of writing this piece ( December 8^th 2019, exactly nineteen years since Trevor was last seen) there may finally be some new information. A month ago a potential witness came forward. This witness has not been identified by the Police, but it has been disclosed that their information supports the theory that Trevor was murdered after an argument with a criminal gang. A senior source describes this witness as ‘highly significant’ and it is hoped that a conclusion may be reached at last and his family may find some peace. His brother Mark has said that he still holds out hopes that one day Trevor will walk through the door. 

On the 19th anniversary of Trevor’s disappearance, police announced an appeal and urged anybody with any information, to please come forward. Crimestoppers is still offering a reward for anyone with information relating to the disappearance of Trevor Deely. They can be contacted anonymously if desired on 1800 25 00 25.

Footnotes:

• Irish Times, 28 February, 2015 – “The Disappearance of Trevor Deely”
• Irish Times, 4 March, 2015 – “The Disappearance of Trevor Deely”
• Irish Times, 23 September, 2015 – “Trevor Deely: The Search Ends and Continues”

St. Kilda Street was a thriving newly built area and was a new start for many hopeful families. That morning, Sandy and his younger sister, Donna, had been dropped off at their grandmother’s house so that their mother, Margaret, could go to work at the machinist factory. Sandy and his little sister, Donna, played outside with their dog, Kissie. As they were playing, Kissie ran out through the garden gate which had been opened. Sandy ran out of the garden in an attempt to find Kissie and never returned.

‪Donna ran inside and told her devastated family that a “bad man” took Sandy.

At the time, there was a new estate being built nearby and many believed somebody had abducted and murdered Sandy and buried him underneath. A neighbor working in his garden at the time told investigators that he saw Sandy leaving the area in a car with a strange man but said that Sandy didn’t seem distressed so he thought nothing of it at the time. Another theory was that Sandy fell into a nearby river and drowned. The river was subsequently dragged but uncovered no evidence. Some others speculated that Sandy had been abducted by travelers.

In 2015, a witness came forward to tell investigators that he had been abducted and violently abused by a teenage girl from the same neighborhood at around the same time that Sandy disappeared. “There was a rope swing on the river and I had been playing down there with some other kids. I was going back to my house and this lassie ambushed me and dragged me into the bushes. She had a kind of den inside a big hedge, like a lair, and you had to crawl to get in it. She smashed me on the head with a rock and did things to me. I remember crying out in terror for my mother. I must have passed out because I’d been missing for a while, about an hour or so, and the locals were out looking for me. The next thing I remember was seeing policemen everywhere and I was being taken to hospital,” he recollected.

Following the witnesses ordeal, police took him and his mother to see the girl’s parents but no charges were ever filed. He described how the attack had made him mentally and physically scarred and in later years, he also became the victim of another sexual assault in a Scottish boarding school. The unnamed witness said he believed that teenage girl who attacked him may have murdered Sandy but investigators dismissed his theory as “unreliable” and refused to investigate.¹⁹

In 2016, a fresh appeal was issued by detectives in a bid to uncover what happened to Sandy. His father, Phil, said he thinks about his son all the time and remembers the day he vanished “like it was yesterday.” He said that despite the fact it had been 40 years since he last saw his son, it felt like just 40 minutes, adding that he still sees “him every day in my head.”²⁰

Donna had also spoken with the media over the forthcoming years. “There isn’t a day when I don’t think about Sandy. I wonder where he is and what happened to my brother. I’m still here and he isn’t, and I feel guilty about that. I was the one left behind and Sandy has been out of our lives for 30 years,” she said. Donna went on to have a family of her own but because of the trauma of losing her brother, she was overly-protective. “I would love for Sandy to walk through the door but I don’t think it will happen. Sometimes I think maybe someone found him and brought him up. “But I think he was abducted. Until we find him, we’ll never know.”²¹

As the new appeal was launched, Donna urged First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to make her brother’s disappearance her main priority. She said that she had hoped Holyrood ministers would launch a task force similar to Operation Grange, the investigation into Madeline McCann’s disappearance that was authorized by Home Secretary Theresa May. “I want to push the next Scottish Government to provide money like the British Government did for the McCanns. I don’t see why they can’t do the same for us. “Nicola Sturgeon was born in Irvine and she was only a couple of years older than Sandy. She went to school in Dreghorn, which is just across the river from Bourtreehill. She might even remember the search when Sandy went missing,” she said.²²

Detective Superintendent David Halliday, the senior investigating officer, said: “It’s hard to imagine the distress and sadness Sandy’s family have endured over the last 40 years, not knowing what has happened to their beloved son and brother, who was only a toddler when he went missing. “Despite the passage of time, this missing person investigation remains open and I’d like to take this opportunity on the anniversary of Sandy’s disappearance to ask people to cast their minds back to Friday April 23 1976.” He urged anybody that may have any information – no matter how small – to please come forward.

Officers worked very closely with the charity, Missing People, in a bid to renew the appeal into Sandy’s disappearance. They plastered his face as well as computer-generated images of how he may look now over digital billboards and online to try and raise awareness of his disappearance. Jo Youle, the chief executive of Missing People, said: “To spend any length of time with a loved one missing is heartbreaking for a family desperate for news. Sandy’s family have had to endure an unimaginable 40 years since Sandy disappeared. “Everyone at the charity joins Police Scotland and the rest of the public in the hope that this new appeal will finally end the limbo that Sandy’s family has been living in since the day he disappeared.”²³

Despite a huge search operation at the time of Sandy’s disappearance and a series of appeals for information in the decades that followed, what became of Sandy still remains unknown.

Cherrie was known to be a cheerful little girl. She was in the third grade. Leroy wasn’t Cherrie’s birth-father. Her birth father had never acknowledged her or attempted to have any kind of relationship wit her.²⁴

That afternoon – like usual – Cherrie was seen climbing off the bus and heading down the hill towards her driveway. She was wearing Cabbage Patch earmuffs, blue leg warmers and a denim skirt.

The short walk should have only taken a few minutes but Cherrie never arrived home.

Other children on the bus and a neighbour told police that they had seen a blue or green van with a skier and mountain scene painted on the side following the bus from Winfield Elementary School to Cherrie’s bus stop. Another person saw Cherrie walk past the van which was seen parked at the side of the road.

Word of the potential abduction spread quickly throughout the rural community. A search party was assembled and they worked tirelessly through the afternoon, evening, and well into the night. “We drove down the road like madmen. We almost hit Leroy. He was running up and down the road… He kept saying, ‘My little girl’s gone. She’s disappeared.’ He was numb. You could just tell he was numb,” said Kathleen Yates, a neighbour.

Unfortunately, a thick fog fell across Winfield Township and the searchers could barely see further than a few feet in front of them. Over the forthcoming weeks, firefighters and helicopters assisted in the daunting search alongside around 250 volunteers. They combed through the farmland and fields off Cornplanter Road where the family lived. The elementary school became a headquarters and a local grocer donated food for those assisting in the search.

Eventually the FBI was called in to assist in the search yet no clues turned up.

Early on in the investigation, it was theorised that Cherrie had been abducted. “It’s a kidnapping. For what motive, we don’t know. There’s been no ransom note,” said Lt. Francis Walton of the state police. “It’s very frustrating. There’s nothing to point the finger of suspicion at anybody. The last we know of her is she got off the bus. There’s no trace of her at the scene. She just disappeared,” he said.²⁵

By April, neighbours and family had raised $39,000 as a reward for Cherrie’s safe return.²⁶ Local businesses pledged another $10,000 for information about Cherrie’s whereabouts.

There was an intensified nationwide campaign to find missing children and photographs of Cherrie were featured on spaghetti boxes and tucked inside telephone and utility bills. Missing person fliers were distributed which described Cherrie as 4 feet 2 inches tall and 68 pounds with brown hair and hazel-eyes. The fliers also contained a description of the van following the school bus.

Letters and posters were sent to every television station and daily newspaper in the nation. MicroComputers, a Pittsburgh company, donated a personal computer for volunteers to keep track of addresses. They also wrote to prisoners in the area, hoping that one of them would have some information about Cherrie. A local songwriter even wrote a song for Cherrie and several radio stations picked it up and played it on air hoping to generate some tips but to no avail.

“It was like the Earth opened up and she fell in,” said her mother, Janice. While she had accepted that her daughter had most likely been abducted, she refused to let herself consider the fact that she could be deceased. “The longer it goes… If the good Lord feels she’ll be better off with him, he’ll take her,” she said. When Janine had a dream that she found Cherrie wrapped up in a blanket sleeping in her car that was parked in the driveway, she kept the door unlocked every night in the hopes that it was a premonition.²⁷

The case gradually went cold. In 1995, the case was taken over by state Trooper Frank Jendesky. He said that there had been no leads for years but said that they were still treating the case as a stranger abduction. Janice had moved to Mars with Leroy and the couple now had a 5-year-old son, Robert. She would drive Robert to and from school, and even walks him into the building. “It’s every mother’s dream to have a child graduate, go on to college and get married. I’m still hoping for the day she comes home and I can marry her off,” she said.²⁸

In November of 1998, Cherrie was declared legally dead. Her family sought this action so that a trust fund in Cherrie’s name could be transferred to her brother.²⁹ “This is not over. We’ll always look for Cherrie. If nothing else, she’ll always be in our hearts,” said her mother. Shortly thereafter, they donated the $58,000 reward fund to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.³⁰

Then in 2015, cadaver dogs descended on a Winfield property based on something somebody claimed to have seen around the time of Cherrie’s disappearance. A forensic team excavated a mount there but uncovered nothing related to Cherrie or her disappearance. She still remains missing.

There was nothing extraordinary about Christmas Eve, 1945, for the Sodder household in Fayetteville, West Virginia. The tree was decorated and presents for the nine Sodder siblings were waiting for the following day.

Still too excited to sleep, five of the middle children asked permission to stay up late to play with some of the presents that they had been allowed to open on the 24th. Mother Jennie agreed with the understanding that before they went to bed, they had to turn off the lights in the house and lock the front door. The children readily agreed.

After a couple of hours, the phone rang and Jennie got up to go answer it. The caller was a woman who asked for a person Jennie didn’t know. Jennie told the woman that she had the wrong number. Jennie would later state that the woman then laughed strangely and hung up.

Before going back to bed, Jennie noticed that the lights were still on in the house and that the front door was unlocked. She thought at the time that the five children had forgotten to close up the house. She turned off the lights and locked the door and went back to bed.

Before she could fall asleep, however, she heard a noise that she later claimed sounded like something hitting the roof and then rolling down and onto the ground. Feeling too tired, she did not investigate and attempted to go back to sleep.

But before she could drift off, she smelled smoke. She quickly woke her husband George and ran out of the room only to find the hallway in flames. She shouted over the growing sounds of the fire – calling for the children to get out of the house and run into the front yard. Two of the older boys did so, but there was no sign of the five who had stayed up late.

Thinking that the five children were trapped in their upstairs rooms, George went for the ladder that was always near the house only to find it missing. George then thought that he could drive one of his trucks up to the side of the house, stand on the top of it, and get the children out through a window. But mysteriously, neither truck would start.

Horrified, the family members who had made it out of the house, two daughters and two older sons and the parents, could do nothing but hope that the children would soon run out the front door and to safety.

But the house burned to the ground without any sight of the five children.

Once the firemen and police arrived, hours after the house had completely burned to ashes, they did a quick inspection and declared that the five children had undoubtedly died in the fire that was most likely caused by faulty wiring.

But George and Jennie didn’t believe that conclusion. They distinctly remembered the lights being on in the house while the building was burning. How was that possible if faulty wiring had been the cause?

Also, there were no human remains to be found in the house, and neither had anyone detected the distinctive stench of human flesh burning.

Unsatisfied with the official conclusions, George and Jennie decided to investigate on their own.

Unfortunately, one of the first things George did in the days following the catastrophe was to cover the house’s remains with dirt, stating that he couldn’t stand seeing the rubble of the fire. This destroyed a lot of possible evidence that would help determine the cause and consequences of the fire.

But slowly, over time, evidence started to show that went against the official statements as to the cause and results of the fire.

First off was the lack of those skeletons. Jennie discussed the situation with a local crematorium and discovered that a body had to burn for at least two hours at a very high temperature to completely burn up human bones. Jennie puzzled over this, as the fire of her home burned for less than an hour at a much lower temperature than was needed to cremate a body. It was then obvious to George and Jennie that there should have been skeletons in the rubble. Other similar house fires had left complete skeletons within the wreckage.

Various witnesses eventually came forward who claimed to have seen someone throwing “fireballs” at the house in the early morning of Christmas Day, had seen the children in a car driving away from the house while the fire burned, or had seen the children in the company of several adults in distant towns.

George and Jennie thought that all of this pointed to the fact that the children had not died but had been kidnapped. But the legal authorities didn’t believe them, much to their frustration – so they continued on with their own investigation.

They went through all of the remains of the house and eventually found what they thought was evidence that the authorities were right – a few bones and what seemed to be an inner organ. Surprisingly, after being tested, the bones turned out to be from a person older than any of the lost children and the organ was a cow’s liver.

Thinking that somebody of the area must have seen something, they fashioned a billboard near their house with photos of the missing five children and offering a reward for the return of the children.

Nobody would ever attempt to claim that reward.

Years went by but George and Jennie refused to give up their search.

Their investigation went nowhere until 1968, when Jennie received an anonymous envelope that contained a photo of a man. On the back was written:

   Louis Sodder

   I love brother Frankie

   Ilil Boys

   A90132 (or possibly A90135)

The authorities were skeptical, but George and Jennie were convinced that the young man in the photo was their missing son Louis.

That photograph was, in many ways, the conclusion of the entire story. George and Jennie eventually passed away, never knowing answers to questions such as: who moved the ladder? – and why had neither of George’s trucks worked, despite the fact that they were in perfect order the day before the fire? – and where did those bones found later at the site and the cow’s liver come from?

There are currently many websites on the Internet that feature the “solutions” to and discussions about the puzzling story. Amateur sleuths pore over the known facts in attempts to solve the crime – and still debate whether it was kidnapping or murder.

The reward no longer stands and the chances of coming up with the true story of this bizarre story at this late date is very slim indeed.

SOURCES:

MacGowan, Douglas. “Sodder Family Tragedy,” Quarrier Press, 2016.

It was a chilly winter morning on the 17th of December, 1962, when 3-year-old William Ebeneezer Jones Jr. was playing with his sister, Jill, outside their Vineland, New Jersey, home. Their mother, Evelyn, periodically watched from the window while looking after her younger son and preparing lunch. William lived on Taylor Avenue with his parents and two younger siblings. The family home was decorated for Christmas which was fast approaching. Underneath the Christmas tree, were William’s presents, including coloring books and a toy tank.

Tragically, young William never got the chance to play with his news toys; maybe he never got a chance to play with any toys ever again because on that fateful day, William vanished.

It started out like a typical busy pre-holiday  day. William’s father departed the home that morning to start his shift at the New York Shipbuilding Co. in Camden.  Evelyn ran some errands in the morning with the children; William got a haircut and then they stopped at the bank. Upon returning home, William and Jill went to play outside with the family dogs, a Basset hound and a Collie. While playing outside with his sister, William was wearing a blue-grey snowsuit, a matching hat, and tan high tops with yellow laces.

The toddler had bright blue eyes, big ears, and a vaccination scar that was shaped like a giraffe on his upper left arm. William loved dogs, reading and playing with toy cars. He was just three months shy of his 4th birthday and had a habit of twisting curls in his hair and walking with a quirky shuffle.³¹

At around 11:45AM, a neighbour spotted William on his own and suggested that he go back home. Then at 1PM, Evelyn heard a knock at the door. She opened the door and was shocked to see only Jill standing in the doorway. Jill, who was only 2-years-old at the time entered the home carrying a plastic potted poinsettia that she told Evelyn she got from William. She also told Evelyn that “the bogeyman” had taken William. Mrs. Jones rushed from the home and frantically ran up and down the street looking for William. While searching, an unknown man approached Evelyn in his green car and asked: “Are you Mrs. Jones?” Evelyn didn’t reply; she didn’t know the man and didn’t ask for his name or ask why he was looking for her.³² She continued her search but when William was nowhere to be seen, he was reported missing by Evelyn.

The family’s Basset hound, Baby, was also missing. However, she was later found a short distance from the home, soaking wet.³³ Meanwhile, neighbours were already searching for him, kicking off a four-day search which included hundreds of police officers, firefighters, national guard troops and volunteers alike.

All of the area’s emergency services were called in and they trawled through the area on foot, by boat and by air. They searched the woods and swampland in the vicinity of William’s home and Maurice River was searched. Two Navy helicopters were flown in to scour the area from above. Bloodhounds from Philadelphia were also shipped in but they lost the scent near the family home; the entire area had already been stomped over and driven over.  Unfortunately, the search was unfruitful; there was no sign of William anywhere.

The disappearance evoked fear in the city and made national news. Understandably, William’s parents couldn’t come to terms with his disappearance and moved away from the city shortly afterwards. William’s father began to drink and the family didn’t speak much about the disappearance at home. As a result of the disappearance, Mr. and Mrs. Jones became extremely overprotective.

One early line of investigation was the plastic poinsettia. It became somewhat a cause célèbre in the investigation. There were early reports that somebody had been selling the flowers around the neighborhood shortly before William vanished. However, it was later uncovered that it had simply come from a neighbor’s trash and had been passed around by several local children. After learning there was a trash collection in the area between 1:30PM and 2PM on the day William disappeared, investigators questioned whether he could have crawled into a trash bin or even whether he could have been killed and thrown into a trash bin. They questioned the trash men who said they hadn’t seen the boy and they would have noticed him being emptied into the truck. Nevertheless, investigators went to the landfill to search for any sign of the boy but to no avail.

At one point in the investigation, the Jones family turned to a local psychic who claimed that William was still alive. She told the family that he had been abducted by a man whose wife was having a mental breakdown due to the death of her own toddler son. She theorised that William was taken to an Amish area in Pennsylvania and raised by a new family. However, investigators doubted this theory, stating that William would have memories of his real family and would have informed somebody of his true identity as he got older.³⁴

In 1964, another local psychic told investigators that William had been struck and killed by somebody who did not intend to harm him. They panicked and then buried William in a nearby area. The psychic gave investigators a description of the man’s car and appearance.

Years later, Jill would be put under hypnosis in the hopes that she could recount more information about the day her brother disappeared. She recalled holding hands with William as two men fought in front of an oil-drum fire at the Palace of Depression, a landmark near the family’s home. “I remember running, and eventually I could see the door to my house,” she said. During the investigation, the Palace of Depression – an attraction built from discarded materials – was extensively searched as it was theorised that William could have wandered in there or could have been hit by a car and disposed if there. In the wake of the disappearance, Jill had dreams about her brother: “It’s like he’s on the other side of a brick wall, and he’s calling me, and I have to find a way to get to him,” she said. “I still say I’m going to find him.”

Over the forthcoming years, age progressions of William have been released showing what he may look like as an adult. Information about William’s disappearance was entered into the National Crime Information Center system. His sister provided a DNA sample. Despite hundreds of leads and tips, no body was found, no arrests were made, and no credible sightings have ever been reported. “Somebody has to know something. I really do believe that,” said retired Vineland Police Sgt. Patrick Dougherty. “Until I see a body, I’m not going to rule out that he’s alive.”

It’s now generally believed that William was abducted as opposed to wandered off. Despite a lengthy search and extensive investigation, William remains missing. Jill is now the last remaining member of William’s immediate family. On top of a cabinet in her home, she has an urn containing the ashes of her mother, father and younger brother. “When someone dies, you know where they’re at,” she said. “But with Billy, you don’t have an answer…”³⁵

Anyone with information about Billy Jones’ disappearance is asked to call the Vineland Police Department at 856-691-4111.

It was a balmy evening on the 10th of August, 1989, when Rosa took her son, Shane, to the playground at 113th St. and Lennox Ave., beside the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers housing project where they lived. Shane was wearing a blue and white shirt and blue pants. As Rosa sat on the bench eating ice-cream, a 10-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother asked if they could play with Shane. Rosa agreed despite the fact she found it somewhat strange because Shane was so much younger than them. As the children played, a man came and sat beside Rosa on the bench and struck up a conversation about the recent kidnapping and how places weren’t safe no longer. “I was watching them play on the swings and the sliding board until a man with a crippled arm came and sat on the bench and started talking to me,” she recalled.³⁶

Her head was turned for no longer than a couple of minutes but by the time she turned back to check on Shane, he was gone.  Rosa searched frantically around the park as well as another park situated beside it. When she returned to the first park, she encountered the two children that Shane had been playing with before he disappeared. She asked them where Shane was and they replied that “they left him in the (first) park, and didn’t know where he was.”  After Rosa reported he disappearance to police, they questioned the two children as well as the man who was speaking to her. Neither could offer any insight as to where Shane went. After speaking with other witnesses in the park, police said they were looking for an African American man who was between 19 and 24-years-old, around 5 feet 8 inches, who was wearing a yellow shirt and acid-washed jeans.

The disappearance of Shan bore striking similarities to the earlier disappearance of Christopher Dansby. On the 18th of May, 1989, Christopher and his brother, Levon, were playing at the same playground beside the Martin Luther King Jr. Towers. It was around 7PM when Christopher was last seen. “We was playing and Choo-Choo (Christopher) got lost,” recalled Levon. “I didn’t see him. I called my mommy. If somebody has him, if they see that he’s Choo-Choo, they can bring him to my house with my name on him.” Christopher had been seen playing with the same two children that Shane had been playing with before he disappeared.³⁷ Another child at the park later told police that he had seen Christopher walking along West 111th street in the company of an African American man with braids.

Despite the similarities, police initially declined to link the two disappearances, stating that the descriptions of the suspects didn’t match. Many locals were outraged. “Two kids the same age, taken from the same park?” questioned Cindra Cameron. “This can’t be a coincidence.” The family members of the toddlers were also adamant that the disappearances were linked: “In both cases, the kids were taken right under our very noses,” said Elizabeth Manley, Christopher’s grandmother. Shortly thereafter, police announced they were looking for “two black men, similar only in their dreadlock hairstyles” but refused to elaborate any further.

The bizarre disappearances sent shivers down the spine of Harlem residents who couldn’t help but wonder: could my child be next? In the wake of the disappearances, police officers patrolled the project and the surrounding neighbourhood. The officers were assisted by a sound truck which blared out information about the two missing toddlers. Missing person fliers were distributed across the state.

Early on in the investigation, rumors began to circulate that Allison Dansby, Christopher’s mother, was somehow involved because she was an admitted drug addict. “They said a lot of mean things, that I was buying crack when my baby was taken, that I traded by baby for drugs. They’re all lies. I’ve done crack almost five years, in and out. But I never owed nobody money. I passed a lie detector test,” she said. Another popular theory – and one that Shane’s aunt believed – was that the two children seen playing with both Shane and Christopher before their disappearance were involved somehow. The two children were extensively questioned by police but could provide no insight. “We’ve investigated the backgrounds of their parents thoroughly and there is no reason to believe they are involved in this conspiracy,” said an officer.³⁸

The city put up a $30,000 reward for information that could lead to the boys and a plethora of missing person posters were printed and distributed across the state. Police searched all 1,800 apartments in the Martin Luther King. Jr Towers and had a sniffer dog search nearby sewers and abandoned buildings. In the wake of the disappearances, they investigated 500 reported sightings – even as far as Puerto Rico – but each one was a dead end. One lead was that a “cult was emanating from the islands,” according to Detective Julius Sills. “That possibly, children were being taken for sacrifice…”³⁹ Eventually police put out a profile of a male sex offender who operated in the area and a female drug addict whose child had died or was taken away from her by child welfare. They questioned the numerous pedophiles and sex offenders on the register.

Eventually police announced that they now speculated that the two disappearances were linked. “Whoever abducted the children are related to each other… either related by some type of conspiracy to steal children or related to each other in stealing children.”⁴⁰ They considered the possibility that both boys disappearances were connected to a black market baby-ring operation. Private adoption agencies in the area disagreed with this theory. They said that they placed large numbers of African American children with adoptive parents, adding “there is a black market for white babies, but for black babies, I don’t think so…”

Then in January of 1991, police were alerted to the body of a child dumped in the woods around 30 miles outside of Atlantic City. Due to the advanced decomposition, he was unrecognizable. It was determined that the little boy had been bound and then strangled to death. Due to his size, it was theorised it could have been Christopher. However, the footprints didn’t match.

In 1997, Rosa Glover waged a legal battle to collect the proceeds of a life insurance policy she obtained just days before Shane disappeared. A state judge ordered that Golden Eagle Mutual Insurance pay her $10,000 death benefit, saying that Shane must be presumed dead since it was “unlikely” he would ever be found. At the time of the disappearance, Rosa never told investigators about the life insurance policy she had obtained. “We have enough to be suspicious,” said Detective Frank Saez.⁴¹ The insurance company said that Rosa attempted to collect the money just seven weeks after her son’s disappearance but was turned down as she had no death certificate. According to Rosa, she had purchased the policy because she was taking her son on a flight to Florida and was worried about the plane crashing. Understandably, this arose suspicions. However, police ruled Rosa out as a suspect shortly after the disappearance.

Throughout the investigation, police checked out so many leads that they filled nine file folders. They looked into drug related motives, cults, baby-selling rings and a number of other theories that appeared. “There has been not a word about them…” said Detective Cameron Brown.⁴² Despite an exhaustive search, spanning over numerous states, Christopher or Shane have been found. In the wake of the disappearances, the two families – who live in the same apartment block – have bonded over their shared tragedy.  “That day never leaves my mind,” recollected Rosa in 2001. Both families DNA have since been entered into a database in the hopes that one day, their DNA could lead to answers.

Police are asking anyone with information about what happened to Shane or Christopher to call Crime Stoppers at 1800-577-TIPS for an up to $2,500 reward.