Missing Persons Issues - General News

[Guest Kathylene]

WBAY-TV Green Bay-Fox Cities-Northeast Wisconsin News: Law Enforcers Changing Approach to Missing Persons

Law Enforcers Changing Approach to Missing Persons

Feb 22, 2007 06:17 PM CST

By Natalie Arnold

This week law enforcement from all over the state is meeting in the Fox Cities to learn better ways to handle missing persons cases. A lot of the training has to do with looking past the statistics and into the family's pain.

In August of 1992, Laurie Depies vanished, and no one knows where she is today. Yet at the time, early on, no one seemed to believe the 21-year-old was taken against her will.

"You still have that myth that the person is of age and a young adult, they have the right to go where they want to, to do what they want to, and they'll just show up. And that was not just the mentality locally but that's the national mentality, and still somewhat is," Jay Breyer, an advocate for missing persons, says.

The FBI says so far this year in Wisconsin alone more than 1,200 people have been reported missing-- an overwhelming amount.

"You'd like to treat them all the same. You'd like to give the resources, but sometimes you can't for whatever reason," Lt. John VanDruren of the Kaukauna Police Department.

"You have to look at all the circumstances: How they're reported missing, how long it's been since they've been gone," VanDruren said, "and then start looking at the background on the person... have they been reported missing before."

While they are somewhere out there, they are nowhere near the people who love them.

The problem for police is the reality of the missing. The majority of people who vanish are runaways or they are in the midst of a custody battle.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice on average more than 795,000 people are reported missing each year. Only one-percent result in death or ransom.

The likelihood of a violent abduction is very slim, and yet the emphasis at this conference is that there is still pain for the family left behind.

"There's something wrong that happened in the life of this young person. They want a response. Whether it's right, wrong, or indifferent, they want a response, and they want communication from law enforcement that they have indeed taken this seriously," Barbara Nelson at Fox Valley Technical College said.

Nelson says with the number of missing cases locally, it is a recent message that has been making an impact from the sensitivity to the speed of the response. Because there are too many reminders that some of the missing never come home.

"It's become more serious. When somebody's missing, it's more serious from the start," VanDruren said. "You always have to have that in the back of your mind, 'This could be something serious.'"

[Guest Kathylene]

Here's an article about hiring a private detective and what families need to know:

Project Jason-Voice for the Missing: 4/14/07 Considering a Private Investigator, Part I

Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski

President and Founder,

Project Jason

Project Jason - Assistance for families of the missing

Read our Voice for the Missing Blog

Project Jason-Voice for the Missing

---

Last edited by Kelly : 4 Weeks Ago at 12:28 AM.

[Guest Kathylene]

Part II of the series, Considering a Private Investigator, has been posted on the Project Jason Voice for the Missing blog. The purpose of this series is to provide families of the missing with enough information to be able to make a good decision about hiring a private detective to work on their missing loved one's case.

You may read part II here:

Project Jason-Voice for the Missing: 4/15/07 Considering a Private Investigator, Part II

Kelly Jolkowski, Mother of Missing Jason Jolkowski

President and Founder,

Project Jason

Project Jason - Assistance for families of the missing

Read our Voice for the Missing Blog

Project Jason-Voice for the Missing

[Guest Kathylene]

State law creates database for Louisiana's unidentified, missing

April 20, 2007

By Vickie Welborn

vwelborn@gannett.com

BATON ROUGE  Mary Manhein's desire for a comprehensive database for unidentified and missing people in Louisiana started years ago.

The need for the clearinghouse of information became more evident to her and others in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The remains of 29 people killed in the devastating storm still are nameless.

Manhein, a forensic anthropologist who's headed the LSU Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services Lab for more than 20 years, last year turned to state legislators who unanimously passed a law she crafted designating the LSU FACES Lab as the Louisiana Repository for Unidentified and Missing Persons Information Program.

Effective Aug. 15, the law requires state law enforcement agencies and coroners' offices to turn over unidentified human remains and provide information on cold and current missing persons cases. The goal is to build the best database of its kind in the country, Manhein.

But always at the forefront is the closure it will bring families.

"A case is never closed until a body is identified," Manhein said.

She's found that word of the state law is not widespread beyond the Baton Rouge area. That's why she's eager to share information about it through interviews and workshops.

And most important is that all of DNA or associated testing done on the cases she inherits or is called upon by law enforcement to assist is done free of charge. The state allocates money to cover the bills under the new law, including DNA testing that is done through a contract with the North Louisiana Criminalistics Laboratory in Shreveport.

"I think it's a great resource and you can't beat the price," DeSoto Parish Sheriff Rodney Arbuckle said of Manhein's current assistance with two investigations of unidentified human remains in DeSoto Parish. "She is working with us at no charge "» and I think she can provide help with unsolved cases not only with us but with other departments once this program gets up and running. Her help might solve cases that wouldn't be solved otherwise."

Recovered bones

On March 2, Manhein and the FACES staff recovered scattered human remains from a wooded area near Grand Cane. Testing of the bones revealed the black male, whose age ranges from 28 to 38, was shot in the head, and his remains had been there at least six months. DNA evidence and dental records are still being studied in that case in an attempt to reach a positive identification of the man who is not from Louisiana.

Unknown to DeSoto investigators until weeks ago was the "DeSoto 85" skull that Manhein and her staff of researchers were already working on. Manhein believes the skull belongs to a black male possibly in his early 20s, which could fit a missing person case dating back to 1984.

Manhein gained possession of the skull and more than a dozen other sets of remains in March 2006 from the Bossier City pathology lab operated by the late Dr. George McCormick. Fortunately, she got them four months before the lab burned down.

Manhein was asked several months ago to do a new facial reconstruction on a skull that was part of skeletal remains recovered from a Bossier Parish landfill in 1979. Manhein and imaging specialist Eileen Barrow estimate the skull belongs to a white male with American Indian background, ranging in age from 24 to 28, whose body had been buried from one to four years, putting his death between 1974 to 1978.

Bossier sheriff's spokesman Ed Baswell is unaware of the circumstances of the body recovered from the landfill, but said, "Mary Manhein is one of the best in the business ... and if anybody in the world can do something with a minute piece of evidence, she can do it."

Manhein has worked on more than 1,000 cases throughout her career, taking her to states outside Louisiana. One of the most noteworthy cases that drew national attention was the work Manhein and Barrow did on "Precious Doe."

The body and decapitated head of the 3-year-old girl was found in 2001 in Kansas City. Attempts to identify her were fruitless until July 2003, when Manhein exhumed the remains and she and Barrow did a more precise facial reconstruction and age estimation. The new photographs prompted a tipster to come forward, resulting in the arrests of a mother and stepfather in the death of the girl then identified as Erica Green.

'We've got to try'

Manhein admits she's not a one-person show. It takes a team, she said, from her staff of researchers hired specifically for their expertise to the dentists she calls upon to provide input on dental record comparisons. And because the repository is affiliated with LSU, Manhein can "cast a broad net" to get others in the university to help. Still, LSU doesn't spend a dime on the research or staffing; it's all covered by the state.

Manhein has committed to doing a workshop in DeSoto Parish in July so that area law enforcement agencies can hear firsthand about the new law and to also receive tips on the techniques she uses in identification and trauma analysis. She titles the workshop as "Forensic Anthropology: The Real CSI."

"We want to do this all over the state. It lets them know what we do and it reinforces the familiarity with the new law," Manhein said.

Manhein thinks she has possession of almost all of the unidentified human remains that once sat on storage shelves in labs scattered across the state. From those remains, the FACES staff has about 10 to 15 cases in progress.

Manhein estimates information on 60 to 75 unidentified human remains cases and more than 300 missing person cases has been fed into the new database so far.

Within the past three weeks, Manhein has been able to turn over remains to two families following identification. Exhumations are not out of the question when it comes to trying to identify the untold number of people who are buried in Louisiana without an identity.

"We've done one so far to get DNA samples," she said. Manhein says it's going to take years to build up the statewide database.

"But we've got to try; I've got to try," Manhein said.

The Shreveport Times

[Denise]

http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=6553141&nav=3YeX

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House passes bill to improve investigations of missing people

(Hartford-AP) _ The state House of Representatives has unanimously approved a bill that would improve standards for how police investigate missing person cases.

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The legislation is in response to the case of Billy Smolinski, a 31-year-old Waterbury resident who disappeared in 2004 and has yet to be found.

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Smolinski's family says police made them wait three days to report his disappearance, and authorities lost or misplaced Billy Smolinski's DNA samples three times. His relatives also say they had to pressure police to fingerprint his truck.

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The House approved the bill 148-0 and sent it to the Senate.

Representative Vickie Nardello of Prospect urged the House to approve the bill, saying no one should have to go through what the Smolinski family went through. The legislation would require the state's Police Officer Standards and Training Council to develop guidelines by next January for how police accept missing persons reports and what information they should provide to victims' families.

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Several other states are considering similar laws.

Posted May 22, 2007

3:40 PM

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[Denise]

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2007/05/the_web_site_for_clevelands.html

Survivors of Tragedy notes missing, murderedPosted by Donna J. Miller May 22, 2007 07:20AMCategories: Crime

The Web site for Cleveland's community support group, Survivors/Victims of Tragedy, now includes information about missing persons and unsolved homicides in Cuyahoga County.

Member Judy Martin asks that families call her at 216-990-0679 to have loved ones added to the site.

The group also helps families by making and distributing fliers and organizing rallies and vigils.

The site's address is survivorsvictimsoftragedy.org.

[Denise]

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=71061

New tools to help law enforcement find missing seniors

written by: Heidi McGuire , Backpack Journalist created: 5/30/2007 5:26:56 PM

Last updated: 5/30/2007 5:59:12 PM

DENVER - On Wednesday, Governor Bill Ritter (R-Colorado) signed a bill into law that helps law enforcement throughout the state quickly track people who have Alzheimer's and other disabilities.

Soon, additional counties will have access to technology linked to tracking devices such as transmitter bracelets for at-risk seniors.

Centennial resident John Wells, who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's in 2002, got his device three years ago through Project Lifesaver.

His wife, Deb Wells, says the radio transmitted device is important for law enforcement in all counties to have.

"It's great that most of the counties in the metro area have it now because that covers a huge part of the population," she said. "But the Alzheimer's population is a very active group, they go out and do things so getting it into those places we visit will give us more peace of mind."

According to the Alzheimer Association, 64,000 people in Colorado have the disease and most are cared for at home.

[Guest Linda]

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/409794,6_1_NA01_SPIRA_S1.article

Bill eases filing of missing person reports

Changes would allow quicker responses.

June 1, 2007

Naperville resident Renata Bielskis knew her boyfriend, John Spira, was missing Feb. 23. He wasn't returning phone calls and didn't show up to meet his friends.

After searching for Spira with no luck, Bielskis contacted the police in St. Charles, where Spira lived. She said the police told her she could not file a missing person's report because she was not next of kin.

Paul McCurtain, spokesman for the St. Charles Police Department, said the report was finally signed at 5:30 a.m. Feb. 25, when Spira's estranged wife, Suzanne Spira, agreed to sign the paperwork. McCurtain said there was no mention in the report of Bielskis's attempt to file one.

"It was precious hours and minutes ticking away," Bielskis, 44, said.

More than three months later, Spira, 45, is still missing.

Although the case originally was taken on by the St. Charles police, it is now under investigation by the DuPage County sheriff's office, because Spira disappeared in an unincorporated area of DuPage County.

A new piece of legislation, House Bill 0194, would help prevent situations such as these. The legislation states: "... all law enforcement agencies shall accept without delay any report of a missing person," regardless of who files the report or how long the person has been missing.

"I absolutely think it would've been different (if Bielskis's report had been accepted)," said Stephanie McNeil, Spira's sister from Phoenix. "Over 48 hours passed between him (going) missing and the police arriving at his office," where Spira was last seen.

The Senate and the House passed the bill May 22. It needs a signature from Gov. Rod Blagojevich to become a state law.

Rep. Joe Dunn, R-Naperville, said he voted in favor of the bill to eliminate delays.

Reps. Patricia Bellock of the 47th District and Sandy Pihos of the 42nd District are sponsors of the bill. Pihos said she knows the legislation comes at an extra cost to police stations, but she feels a law like this is necessary.

"If you suspect someone is missing, they should start the search right away," Pihos said.

Without the law, each police department can make its own policy when it comes to handling missing persons reports, said Lt. Dave Hoffman, public information officer for the Naperville Police Department.

In Naperville, Hoffman said a person may be declared missing if his or her whereabouts are unknown and the person reporting has some kind of relationship with the victim.

The Lisle Police Department will accept a missing person's report whenever circumstances warrant police investigation, said Lisle Police spokesperson Lt. Ron Wilke.

"Reports should be made by a relative or some other guardian, but we will waive that," Wilke said.

McCurtain said St. Charles has a similar policy, so it is unclear why Bielskis had a difficult time.

When Scott Arcaro of Lisle went missing Feb. 22, his boss, Sam Lento, said he had no problem filing a missing person's report with the Lisle Police Department.

Arcaro, 38, also still is missing.

Missing Plainfield mom Lisa Stebic, whose 38th birthday was May 19, was reported missing May 1 by a neighbor to the Plainfield police. Stebic, 38, was last seen on April 30.

Bradley Olsen, 26, of Maple Park was last seen Jan. 19.

Olsen's parents, Sue and Bill, were out of town at the time and reported him missing to DeKalb police when they returned home Jan. 24, Sue said. She said police officers were cooperative when she filed the missing person's report.

[Denise]

http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/139639.html

Posted on Wed, Jun. 06, 2007

‘Pings’ assist in missing-persons cases

Police agencies nationwide rely on high-tech help from phone companies.

By DAVID HAYES

The Kansas City Star

Cell-phone technology is becoming an increasingly important tool for law enforcement.

Mobile phones are, in essence, highly sophisticated two-way radios. To make and receive calls, they must be in relatively constant contact with the nearest cell tower.

That information from Kelsey Smith’s mobile phone was used Wednesday to help find her body. Similar information has been used by law enforcement in missing persons and criminal cases across the country.

To let a cellular network know where a mobile phone is, the handset sends out a signal  called a “ping† to nearby cell towers every two or three minutes. The towers relay the location of the phone to the network. The system only works when the phone is powered on.

A successful ping shows that the phone is within that tower’s coverage region, an area that could vary from a few square blocks to a few square miles.

That information, in turn, is used by the mobile phone carrier to locate the phone to pass along calls, text messages or e-mail to the phone.

When a phone is moving, a number of towers are involved, as calls or routine pings are handed off from tower to tower.

In Smith’s case, police were able to track her phone through routine pings and from calls made to her by friends and family Saturday evening.

Joseph Farren, a spokesman for the wireless industry’s trade association, said most major mobile phone companies have procedures to work with police in missing persons and criminal cases.

The companies keep records of calls to and from phones, and a limited number of recent routine locater pings  sometimes just the last ping, sometimes up to 24 hours worth of pings.

Phone company procedure requires police to get a judge to issue a subpoena for phone records, often a quick process done by telephone.

From there, Farren said, the process is even faster.

The mobile phone company keys in the phone’s number, and its last known location pops up on the screen.

The process can take under a minute.

[Kelly]

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-elizabeth-smart-book,0,1902223.story

Smart's Uncle Blasts Police in New Book

By Associated Press

10:41 PM EDT, April 18, 2005

SALT LAKE CITY - Elizabeth Smart's uncle has faulted the police investigation into her disappearance in a new book, claiming the teen would still be a kidnap victim if the family had not gotten involved.

"I don't think she would be back," Tom Smart said. "There's five or six things that had to happen, and all those things, thank God, happened, including help from the community, which raised awareness to find Elizabeth."

The book, "In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation," went on sale Monday.

Elizabeth was allegedly kidnapped from her home in June 2002 and found nine months later in the Salt Lake suburb of Sandy, walking down a street with Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. Mitchell is accused of taking Smart into the foothills near her home to keep her as his second wife.

While grateful for the "tireless efforts" of law enforcement, Tom Smart and co-author Lee Benson claim that in August 2002, two months after Elizabeth disappeared, police were alerted by a caller who thought he had spotted Elizabeth at a library.

An officer allegedly checked out a homeless man wearing robes and his two female companions, one a young girl behind a veil -- much like the garb worn by Smart and her alleged captors the day they were found in March 2003.

"Are you Elizabeth Smart?" the officer asked the young girl, the book says.

"No, I'm Augustine Marshall," the girl replied, according to the book. Without asking for identification, the detective walked away, the authors say.

The book claims that Elizabeth -- who was once tethered to trees by shackles -- had been continuously brainwashed by her captors, making her afraid to reach out. "Mitchell pecked away at Elizabeth's sense of what was true and real. It was up to him whether she ate, whether she had shelter, whether she lived or died," the book alleges.

"Playing his role as a prophet of God, Mitchell continued to terrorize Elizabeth, painting a picture that made black into white, and white into black. Up was down and down was up. Now she was Augustine. Elizabeth Smart was dead," the authors allege.

Salt Lake City Police Chief Rick Dinse "has no intention of reading the book and has no further comment on it," said police detective Dwayne Baird.

Ed Smart, Elizabeth's father and Tom's brother, also declined comment. Elizabeth, now 17, was not interviewed for the book.

Tom Smart said the book also shows why focusing on a particular theory or suspect, such as one-time "person of interest" Richard Ricci, can be damaging. Ricci had done work for the Smarts and the investigation centered on him for some time. He ultimately died of natural causes.

Police focused on Ricci even as Mary Katherine Smart, Elizabeth's younger sister and the only witness to the abduction, said the former Smart handyman was not the man she saw come into the girls' shared room.

The sister, according to the book, said as early as October 2002 that she thought another former worker at the Smarts' house, known as Emmanuel, was the abductor.

But the book claims officers were not alerted to that, including two who had arrested Mitchell earlier for shoplifting. The officers fingerprinted Mitchell and noted in their report that he used the name "Immenuel."

It was not until February 2003 that the Smart family held a news conference, divulging the name Emmanuel and releasing a police sketch against the wishes of the department, Tom Smart said.

A state grand jury charged both Mitchell and Barzee with kidnapping and sexual assault. Barzee, 59, was ruled incompetent to stand trial. Mitchell, 51, is having his second competency hearing.

[Denise]

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article...e=MISSING082007

It isn't a crime to go missing

August 5, 2007

BY JEFF SEIDEL

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

There are no reliable national statistics on missing adults.

"There is an epidemic of missing adults," said Kelly Bennett, a caseworker for the National Center for Missing Adults in Phoenix. "They aren't just drug dealers and drug addicts and prostitutes. These are grandparents and husbands and wives. Unless it's something like Laci Peterson, you don't hear about them."

There are about 50,000 active missing person records listed in the National Crime Information Center, according to Bennett. But critics say that number is not accurate because it relies on someone filing a report when another person goes missing. In addition, some law enforcement agencies and states do not report missing persons to the FBI.

"There could be 100,000 missing adults, but that's a guess," Bennett said.

Michigan does not list the number of missing persons in its annual Uniform Crime Report because it is not a crime.

"If you are an adult and want to leave and walk away from a marriage, or just leave because you don't like the town you are in, you can do that," said Sgt. Greg Jones of the Michigan State Police.

A missing adult has a profound effect on a family.

"The brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews are searching for them," Bennett said. "I personally have a missing uncle. My grandmother passed away, not seeing her oldest son. That just kills me. That's how I started working here. I hear the pain in the voices of the grandparents. I see the pain in the letters they write us. It's exhausting for these families. I know 'closure' is a horrible word. But it's an ambiguous loss. There is no answer. They don't get the burial. They don't get the memorial service. They don't get the things everyone else gets to have."

This year, in the first week of January, Bennett closed 15 cases because the missing person was found to have died. "The families get word that their family member is deceased and they almost sound relieved, that they at least know what happened."

[Kelly]

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/matsu/story/9301436p-9215933c.html

Palmer woman's daughter disappeared for 19 months

Photos of bodies on Web sites left mother with nightmares

By ANDREW WELLNER

Published: September 14, 2007

Last Modified: September 14, 2007 at 02:38 PM

PALMER -- The phone call came Sept. 24, 2005.

Mary Weir's daughter, Samantha Bonnell, had left Alaska for California earlier that year, just two or three days shy of her 18th birthday.

Now, Samantha's boyfriend was calling. He told Weir he and her daughter had had a fight at a movie theater in Montclair. Samantha had run off. Had Weir heard from her daughter?

She said she hadn't.

It was the last she heard of Samantha for almost six months. And it would be a year and a half before she found out what had happened that night.

Her daughter died crossing a busy highway on foot. Her body ended up in a San Bernardino County morgue, one of hundreds of unidentified corpses waiting for family members or friends to find them, claim them and take them home, according to deputy coroner David Van Norman.

Even after all this time, her mother still doesn't know exactly what led to Samantha's death. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department announced this week it had ruled out foul play, according to coroner's spokeswoman Sandy Fatland.

As authorities tried to piece together the girl's last minutes, Weir searched the Internet, scanning Web pages devoted to unidentified bodies for her missing daughter.

The search left her skeptical of -- and at times angry at -- the system that allows a body to go unidentified for so long.

"For the last 19 months I've been searching every Internet Web site I can find with unidentified bodies," Weir said in April. "It is, it's not something I would want anybody to have to go through,"

Though she said a handful of Web sites post photos of the actual bodies, photos that left her with nightmares, most show artist renderings or computer composite images instead.

But they still contain stories of what happened to the person. That, in some ways, is almost worse than the photos, Weir said.

"Before I knew what she was doing, she was staying up all night long while I slept, going through sites on the computer," said Weir's husband, Paul Weir.

"I thought as long as I kept it secret I wasn't looking for a dead body," Mary Weir said.

NO KNOWN ADDRESS

Samantha was an avid reader who wanted to be a corporate lawyer, her mother said. As a girl, she read law books and the entirety of Shakespeare before she left elementary school.

But her daughter was also a free spirit, Weir said. She got into the Valley meth scene in high school and was impossible to keep home. Though they'd fought in the past, it was strange Samantha hadn't called. The longest she'd stayed out of contact was six weeks.

Soon after Samantha's boyfriend called, Weir tried to file a missing persons report. She said she got the same response from all the agencies she called in California -- without a last known address she couldn't file a report. And besides, Bonnell was 18. It's not illegal for an adult to be missing, Weir said she was told.

Then, in February 2006, Bonnell's suitcases showed up, inexplicably, under a carport in Hanahan, S.C.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, she's still alive. There's hope. There's hope,' " Weir said. "But it just turned into another dead end."

The police in Hanahan called Weir asking if she knew her daughter's whereabouts. Weir told them the story and they told her to file a report with Alaska State Troopers, just to get the information into the system.

So finally a trooper, Sgt. Kathy Peterson -- now a lieutenant-- took the report.

Weir said she kept looking.

Nearly a year after they were found, Bonnell's bags arrived from South Carolina. Inside, Weir found one sock she'd bought her and a shirt that might have been hers. Otherwise, the contents belonged to someone else, probably a man, Weir said. She still has no idea how the bags ended up in South Carolina or who was using them.

In April she found a composite photo on a Web site, doenetwork.org.

"I looked at it and I said I think that might be her," Weir said.

April 1 she e-mailed the Web site to Peterson and asked that she check with San Bernardino County, where Jane Doe 17-05 was in cold storage. Peterson said she'd look into it.

More than two weeks later, on the 19th, Weir called San Bernardino herself.

"I said, 'I don't even know if I can do this but I think this is my daughter. I want to check it,' " Weir said.

Within 24 hours she'd sent them Samantha's dental records and been told they matched. In less than a week, she'd sent the coroner the originals and it was confirmed.

The young woman's body in that California cemetery belonged to her daughter.

SHE RAN AS IF BEING CHASED

Then more details of Samantha's death emerged.

Five months later, her mother says she's numb to the details but her words stall when trying to recount them.

The California police reports show that, within an hour of when Weir got that call in 2005, her daughter was hit by at least two cars on Interstate 10 in Montclair, Calif., Weir said.

"I don't even want to think about what kind of a mess it made," she said. "I'm afraid to ask."

The spot on the highway is close to a theater. Witnesses said Bonnell ran across the highway, as if being chased, Weir said. She was not carrying identification

"No personal belongings whatsoever except for the clothing on her back," Paul Weir said.

"Nothing, not Chap Stick or lip gloss," Mary Weir said.

Once Samantha was identified, Weir talked to coroners in California. They told her they had kept Samantha's body in cold storage longer than most because she seemed like the type of person who had people who cared for her.

The only people at the burial were coroner's staff.

Weir said that at first she was planning on leaving her daughter there. But then the coroner's office told her she was in the county cemetery, in a grave used to store unclaimed bodies.

They told her "right now she was in there by herself," Weir said, "I said, 'She's in there by her ... what?' Well, they stack them up to five deep."

She arranged to have Samantha's body flown to Oregon.

WHAT TOOK SO LONG?

Though she was noticeably more subdued during an interview this month, in April Weir was visibly angry with Peterson. What did Peterson do with the information she'd forwarded and why did she have to track her daughter down on her own? What took so long?

Earlier this month Peterson explained that law enforcement generally wants reports filed closer to where the person went missing.

"You don't have any idea where to start in another state," she said. "The reason I took this case is because she had already indicated she had tried those avenues and was unsuccessful."

Peterson said she did what she could, then forwarded the case to the state's Missing Person's Clearing House. Those folks have in-state cases to deal with that they prioritize before moving on to others, she said.

What angered Weir the most, she said, is her perception that she sent Peterson a link to Samantha's doenetwork.org page and the trooper did nothing with it.

Peterson said she did do something -- she sent it to the clearinghouse. But she didn't feel right asking Weir to work directly with them as she'd been bounced around so much already.

Weir this summer started working to get legislation passed to make it mandatory for law enforcement agencies to take missing persons reports, even for people over the age of 18 missing out of state. She's been talking to legislators and, really, anybody she can buttonhole. (Project Jason's Campaign for the Missing)

"You're not safe standing next to me at the grocery store," Weir said. "I've become the very thing I never wanted to be -- an activist."

She gets e-mails from people with missing children.

And she hasn't stopped looking at unidentified bodies on the Internet. There's one case she thinks she can solve -- a woman found wearing a necklace from a fraternity or sorority.

"I'll probably spend the rest of my life trying to put a name to somebody," Weir said.

On Mother's Day, Samantha was buried in Rainier, Ore., where a lot of Weir's family lives.

The funeral was well attended. There was a collection box for donations to doenetwork.org.

Afterwards, they collected petals from Bonnell's coffin piece and spread them on the aisle at her sister's wedding.

[Denise]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118938714106322174.html?mod=Letters

A Mother Takes On MIT

How University's Privacy Policy Complicated

Sue Kayton's Search for Her Missing Son

By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

September 10, 2007; Page A1

On April 12, Sue Kayton learned that her son, a 22-year-old senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had gone missing. Four days later, a student at Virginia Tech killed 32 people on that campus.

The following week, while Virginia Tech was being criticized for withholding information about the gunman due to its privacy policy, MIT's own privacy policy was leading it to reject Ms. Kayton's requests for information she believed would help her find her son. The administration refused to allow Ms. Kayton access to her son's dorm room or to his computer files. It demanded a subpoena even after her son was listed in a national missing persons database.

MIT's position "added to the anguish level immeasurably," says Ms. Kayton, who traveled to MIT's Cambridge, Mass., campus to search for her son, Daniel Barclay, herself. MIT's administrators "didn't want to deal with me."

School officials say they acted appropriately. "Privacy is important," says MIT Chancellor Phillip Clay. He says MIT protects student privacy not only because it's the law, but because it is central to maintaining students' trust. "Different students will do different things that they absolutely don't want their parents to know about," he says. "Students expect this kind of safe place where they can address their difficulties, try out lifestyles and be independent of their parents."

The Virginia Tech massacre raised national awareness of one of the thorniest aspects of the relationship between colleges and parents: student privacy. For decades, colleges were legally considered to be taking on the responsibilities of parents. Then a series of court decisions starting in the 1960s, amid the women's rights and civil-liberties movements, awarded students more legal rights. Now the pendulum is swinging back, as the generation that fought for students' rights becomes a generation of parents.

Mr. Clay, MIT's chancellor, says students have a much closer relationship to their parents than 10 or 20 years ago. He's noticed more parents coming with their children to attend the school's April tour for admitted students. He says he has even seen parents accompany their children to dentist appointments at the campus health clinic.

In 2000, MIT's staunch defense of student privacy came under scrutiny after the death of student Elizabeth Shin, ruled a suicide by the medical examiner. Her parents later agreed to a settlement from MIT after complaining officials should have alerted them to signs of their daughter's distress.

In the wake of the much-publicized case and settlement, MIT has overhauled the way it deals with students' mental health. The school won't say whether the Shin case affected its privacy policy for all its students.

The 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or Ferpa, bars schools from sharing information in a student's record without that student's permission. But the law provides several exceptions. Among them: if there's a "health or safety emergency" or if the student is declared a dependent on his or her parents' taxes.

Daniel's parents declared him as a dependent on their taxes. But MIT only recognizes the "health or safety emergency" contingency -- a situation it said didn't apply to Daniel despite his being declared a missing person. As a result, MIT made its campus police obtain a subpoena before releasing his electronic records, including his email records.

There's now debate over whether Ferpa should be changed. Last month, the Virginia Tech Review Panel issued a 260-page report. It recommended university policy recognize that law enforcement has an educational interest in student records. The report also recommended that the Department of Education "allow more flexibility" in defining an emergency exception.

In reaction to the report, an MIT spokeswoman said the school reviews "all of our policies and procedures periodically. Every university across the country is likely to take a renewed look at their policies given the events of Virginia Tech and the content of the report."

Legal experts say college campuses vary in their approaches to interpreting Ferpa. While many schools in liberal Massachusetts won't immediately turn over student information to the police, others in the South strongly support police intervention, says Peter Lake, director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University College of Law, in Gulfport, Fla. After Virginia Tech, "people will go in a direction of safety over privacy," he predicts.

Growing up in the affluent Silicon Valley suburb of Menlo Park, Calif., Daniel Barclay was a skinny, brainy kid. He loved to read and was something of a local celebrity -- leading his team to victory four years in a row on the San Francisco-area trivia TV show "Quiz Kids." He was shy, with few close friends.

A computer consultant who eschews makeup and favors jeans and T-shirts, 50-year-old Ms. Kayton is an MIT graduate herself. She is articulate and direct, with a matter-of-fact manner. She says she and her son were close but that he didn't like to talk about "emotional stuff."

Arriving at MIT in 2003, Daniel was on track to earn a bachelor's degree in economics as well as a bachelor's and a master's in political science, all in four years. Socially awkward, he had few friends his first few years at college.

The second semester of his sophomore year, Daniel took off. He stopped living in his dorm and dropped out of contact with his parents for several weeks, although he continued attending classes sporadically and emailing friends. Ms. Kayton says she called MIT repeatedly requesting that someone locate her son, who as it turned out was living in classrooms and the library. She says MIT administrators found Daniel and recommended he receive counseling at the mental-health center or leave school. Daniel chose counseling, she says. MIT declined to comment.

Ms. Kayton says the counselor initially rebuffed her efforts to speak to him, but Daniel gave her and her husband permission to speak to the counselor after they warned their son they would otherwise cease paying his tuition. She says she was told that "they saw no sign of depression or mental illness. They said they saw a kid who was physically sick and he needed to fatten himself and get some sleep." Ms. Kayton says Daniel later attributed his disappearance to a girl who was harassing him at his dorm, even jumping in the shower naked with him. MIT declined to comment, citing privacy issues.

When he became a junior, Daniel joined the school's debate team and began to make close friends at MIT for the first time. When she saw him last March, Ms. Kayton says Daniel "was just steaming with happiness."

Just a few weeks later, some of Daniel's new debate-team friends noticed he had skipped a seminar and a debate meeting and had failed to show up for his favorite class three times. For days, he hadn't answered his cellphone or returned emails.

The last day Daniel's family heard from him was Sunday, April 8. He posted a cryptic "away" message on his AOL Instant Messenger program: "dan has to meet with some sketchy people he thought he'd never have to deal with ever again." When Daniel's sister asked him about the message, he told her that he had to go to east Cambridge to see "very sketchy" people.

On Thursday night, April 12, a friend named Michelle Zimmermann called Daniel's parents and told them his friends were worried because they couldn't find him. She also reported Daniel's disappearance to the MIT police, which gets its law-enforcement authority from the state. The police began interviewing other friends and checked Mr. Barclay's empty dorm room.

The next day, Ms. Kayton called some of Daniel's friends. One of them, then-freshman Leslie Nachbar, was worried. Daniel had recently admitted he had a crush on her, she had explained to him that she didn't share his feelings, and they argued, she said. A draft of Daniel's master's thesis was due that day, but he didn't surface.

Although she says her son hadn't used his school identification card since April 8, Ms. Kayton says the police and Barbara Baker, MIT's senior associate dean for students, told her it wasn't unusual for students to take a break from school or drop out of communication to study. She says Ms. Baker offered to help with hotel arrangements if Ms. Kayton chose to visit. But Ms. Kayton says school administrators, citing privacy policy, refused to allow her access to Daniel's dorm room or his computer files. "They were convinced he was gone to stay with friends and what was the big deal," she says.

Undeterred -- and convinced something was wrong -- Ms. Kayton boarded a red-eye flight from San Jose, Calif., on Saturday. She says she was armed with two lock-picking kits and special software designed to crack computer passwords.

On Sunday, as a nor'easter raged outside, Ms. Kayton entered her son's room -- she declines to say how -- and searched for clues. Daniel's friends stopped by to help. In a pocket of a blue blazer, Ms. Zimmermann discovered a receipt for $112.21 from a Wal-Mart store in nearby Lynn, Mass. Among the items: a $10 inflatable boat, an oar, two packages of nylon cord, a sleeping bag, a folding knife, a flashlight, black dress socks and a 28-pound bag of cat-box litter. Daniel did not own a cat.

Ms. Kayton headed toward Daniel's desktop computer. The weekend of April 8 he had reviewed maps of the Boston area, she says. In his last search, she says he checked the weather.

Ms. Kayton says she contacted all of her son's instant-messenger chat buddies, as well as people he had emailed and friends listed on his Facebook page. She says she obtained his cellphone records by filling out a California subpoena form herself and sending it without a judge's signature to his cellphone provider. She says she called everyone he had last called. No one had seen Daniel or knew where he might be.

Some of Ms. Kayton's tactics made Daniel's friends uncomfortable. "All of us felt weird she was going through his instant-message conversations," says Linda Fang, a senior at the time. "It was as if [because] she was his mother, she had a right to them."

On her son's computer, Ms. Kayton also found a 20-odd page journal. It contained real and made-up conversations, quotes from movies, expressions of his feelings for Ms. Nachbar, and a to-do list that mentioned a meeting with people in east Cambridge.

Ms. Kayton shared her discoveries with the MIT police, requesting that Mr. Barclay be listed as a missing person. Two days after they learned he was missing, MIT police say, they listed Daniel in the national missing persons database. At this point he had been missing one week.

The next day, Monday, April 16, came the Virginia Tech massacre. Early that week, Ms. Kayton says she asked MIT for access to the files her son had stored on the school's server. She was told she would need a subpoena. With the help of her attorney husband, Ms. Kayton filled out another California subpoena form herself and sent it to MIT without a judge's signature. The school rejected it. Ms. Kayton says she was angry and frustrated. "They're protecting the privacy of someone who's been gone a week?" she says.

Meanwhile, the MIT police, led by Lt. Al Pierce, were conducting their own search, contacting police departments of local municipalities and inquiring at all local hospitals. At their request, the state police asked the Coast Guard to search Boston Harbor. No one turned up any clues.

On Tuesday, April 17, the MIT police asked the district attorney in Cambridge for a subpoena for Mr. Barclay's electronic files, and on Wednesday, April 18, the district attorney's office faxed it to the school. While it is difficult to generalize, a number of campus police chiefs and prosecutors say it is unusual to subpoena a school for a student's records in a noncriminal investigation.

Ms. Kayton sent an email to the university's president, Susan Hockfield, complaining that she was being stonewalled. Ms. Baker, the associate dean, called Ms. Kayton and told her that the school was doing everything it could. On Thursday afternoon, an MIT deputy general counsel mailed a letter addressed to Daniel saying the school would release the information no earlier than the close of business that day, Thursday, April 19.

At 11:30 p.m. Thursday night, a week after that first phone call from Ms. Zimmermann, Mr. Barclay's parents answered a knock on their hotel-room door and discovered Lt. Pierce and two MIT police detectives. The officers said a body of a young man wearing an MIT T-shirt had been found floating off Cape Cod, near Sandwich, Mass., that afternoon. The next morning, Mr. Barclay's parents identified their son's body.

MORE

MIT administrators called and emailed expressing condolences. The school paid the funeral-home bill and offered grief counseling, which the couple accepted. President Hockfield offered to meet with them, but they declined. "It would have been nice if she could have intervened and short-circuited some of this computer B.S.," says Ms. Kayton. "But what can she do now?" His parents returned to California and picked up Daniel's ashes at the post office.

Several days later, the couple received a disk from MIT with the computer files Ms. Kayton had requested. She says the files held no clues to what happened to him. Daniel's death certificate, filed earlier this summer, listed "suicide" as the manner of death. The date and time of death is unknown.

Ms. Kayton's search continues. Now she and her husband are working to appeal the suicide ruling. The couple believe that Daniel had rowed into the lower Charles River with the aim of re-enacting a scene from a novel he was writing. They have hired a private investigator to help them with their case.

[Kelly]

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-09-22-0154.html

Error adds to family's trauma

Daughter died six years ago, but police didn't tell them until last month

Saturday, Sep 22, 2007 - 12:09 AM

By DAVID RESS

TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Latanya Y. Williams was 30 when she died in 2001. She left a son and daughter.

Days after Latanya Y. Williams died, her family filed a missing-person report.

That was more than six years ago.

But they didn't find out she was dead until last month.

"She was somebody's daughter, she was a human being, and they didn't let us know," said Reginald Pryor, her father. "I guess the police didn't think she deserved that."

It was a huge paperwork error, and the Richmond Police Department now wants to apologize, Maj. David McCoy said.

"It's just awful," he said. "I really feel for this family. It's just awful, awful."

Williams was found dead in a Richmond house on June 23, 2001, after an accidental drug overdose. The missing-person report on her was dated June 26, police say.

The state medical examiner's office in Richmond, which performed an autopsy a few days after she died, said Williams was identified at that time.

On Jan. 9, 2002, the medical examiner's office turned her body over to the Richmond Sheriff's Office, which under state law is responsible for disposing of unclaimed remains in the city.

And on Feb. 4, 2002, Williams was cremated, according to sheriff's office records.

Her family never knew. Nobody from the police, medical examiner's office or sheriff's office contacted them.

Family members said they gave police three names of relatives, with addresses and phone numbers in the missing-person report, which have remained the same during the past six years. They said they first approached police a few days before officially filing the report, when Williams had not been seen for a day or two.

. . .

Pryor said police officers came to his house looking for Williams last year, apparently on a warrant for a probation violation issued two years after her death.

McCoy said the problem was the missing-person report was not cross-checked with death investigations. New technology and procedures now make such cross-checks automatic, he said. In addition, under a policy of Chief Rodney Monroe, Richmond police now make a priority of finding next of kin and notifying them of deaths within 24 hours.

He said police began backtracking through their paperwork when family members again asked for information about Williams in August. That was when they found the death investigation and the missing-person report.

. . .

Williams' mother, Louise Williams, said she still doesn't feel she got a real answer from the police about the delay. "They just looked at me like I was stupid," she said.

Latanya Williams was 30 when she died.

She left a son, now 16, and daughter, now 11.

A native of Richmond, she wanted to be a model when she was growing up, her mother said. She was fond of playing basketball.

"She was lovely," Louise Williams said. "A beautiful, smart, intelligent girl."

My Note: Had the Campaign for the Missing law with the Project Jason amendments been passed in this state, this would not have happened.

[Guest Kathylene]

http://www.local12.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=e447a43c-6f49-4f3f-b06e-775a453ecf6b

House To Vote On National DNA Database

September 25, 2007

The House could pass a resolution today inspired by the mother of a missing local woman.

Debbie Culbertson is pushing for a national database that would match unidentified human remains with records of missing people. Her daughter, Carrie, was murdered in 1996. Her body has never been found.

Carrie's boyfriend, Vincent Doan, is serving life in prison for her murder.

The House resolution calls for continued federal funding for DNA testing and the combined DNA index system used to identify victims.

______________________________

Linda Stovall

Project Jason

www.projectjason.org

Read our blog about missing persons:

http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post.

[Denise]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/28/missing.adults/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Case shows difficulty of finding missing adults

More than 576,000 people reported missing in U.S. this year

   

(CNN) -- Thousands of people are reported missing each year in the United States, and police say searching for adults can be particularly difficult, because it's hard to tell whether the person wants to be found.

Tanya Rider, 33, was able to respond to rescuers after eight days in her wrecked vehicle.

Tom Rider learned that lesson when his wife, Tanya, did not come home from her job at a Seattle-area grocery store.

Rider said Bellevue Police investigated the case, but turned it over to the sheriff's department when they found video that showed her getting into her car and leaving work.

He said the King County authorities were slow to file a missing persons report.

"I knew she was missing. I knew something happened and no one would believe me except Operator Number 65. He's the one that started the case," Rider said. "No one would believe me. They all thought that she's an adult, she can go where she wants."

She was found on Thursday, eight days after her car plunged off the road into a ravine.

King County Sheriff's spokesman Deputy Rodney C. Chinnick told The Associated Press the department took Rider seriously, but that "not showing up at home is not illegal."

"We don't take every missing person report on adults," he told the AP. "If we did, we'd be doing nothing but going after missing person reports."

And there are a lot of cases to go after. The FBI's National Crime Information Center said that 576,559 people had been reported missing this year as of September 15.

Atlanta, Georgia, Police Officer Ron Campbell said his department investigates every missing person case thoroughly, but in some cases, people don't want their spouses to know where they are.

"A lot of people have relationships with their significant others where they leave for days at a time and they get mad and leave for a few days and they come back. Every relationship's different," Campbell said.

Rider said he almost hoped that was the case with his wife.  Watch how husband said no one would listen

"I thought somebody had taken her, she was in an accident. I thought all kinds of things. And the only way that I was able to not crumple up in a little corner was to think, you know, the least damaging to anything was that maybe she just didn't want to be around me for a while, but I still wanted her found," Rider said.

When authorities did take the case, Rider said he did everything he could to make sure police eliminated him as a suspect and focused on finding his wife.

"I let them search the house. I told them they didn't have to have a warrant for anything, just ask. This morning they called and asked for me to come sign for phone records so they could try that. And I came, I signed, and they asked me to take a polygraph test. And I, of course, immediately agreed," Rider said.

He said he was about to take the test when a detective told him they'd found his wife by pinging her cell phone and tracing it to a road she frequently used to get to work.

Rider said he'd driven the route six times himself and that he wished the phone company had tracked the phone sooner.

"Had they pinged her cell phone when I first asked them to, she wouldn't be in the condition she is now. She wouldn't be fighting for her life. She'd probably have minor injuries she had, a broken clavicle, a cut on her forehead, and be leaving the hospital tomorrow instead of looking at -- I can't imagine how long a recovery," he said.

Doctors said Friday that Tanya Rider had kidney problems, muscle damage and other injures, but said her condition was improving.

Rider said his wife was not on his health insurance because she had just gotten her new job, but he's optimistic that she will recover.

"She's alive after eight days. If God was going to take her, he would have taken her before that," he said.

[Denise]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298567,00.html

If Police Have Ability to 'Ping' Missing Person's Cell Phone, Why Not Do That?

Friday, September 28, 2007

By Heather Nauert

Friday we spoke with a man who, while grateful that his wife is alive, is understandably frustrated that police didn't do more to locate 33-year-old Tanya Rider, who had been missing for eight days. Unbelievably, she survived a car accident and was tangled in the wreckage, which was hidden in a thicket of brush off a suburban Seattle highway.

After she failed to return home from work last week, Tom Rider contacted authorities to help him find his wife. It seems that a series of bureaucratic snafus and multiple jurisdictions prevented police from hunting for her. Moreover, they say, a missing adult doesn't necessarily warrant a search. Tell that to Tom who pleaded with authorities to do something because he knew his wife wouldn't simply run off.

Eight days after she disappeared, police "pinged" her cell phone and were able to pinpoint her location just off a highway and 20 feet down a ravine. She had been in a car accident and she was stuck in her vehicle for more than a week. Trapped any longer, she might not have survived.

It is understandable that police can't hunt for every missing adult, but some sanity should be brought to the situation. If authorities have the ability to "ping" a missing person's cell phone, then why not do that? Why wait eight days? (Yes, they correctly feared that her husband might have hurt her. That is so often the case with missing women.) So police likely did the right thing by giving him a polygraph test, but why not "ping" her mobile phone, too?

It seems logical that authorities need to cut through the red tape of jurisdictional issues and do what is necessary to find the missing person. The next one might not be as lucky as Tanya Rider.

[Denise]

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ipfH0PweAu8EQhSTd85oKxxvsblAD8RUMIB80

Doctor: Woman Trapped in Car Doing Well

By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP

SEATTLE (AP) A woman who spent eight days trapped in a wrecked vehicle has severe injuries, but her brain function is normal and she can move her arms and legs, her physician said Friday.

Tanya Rider, 33, was found alive but dehydrated at the bottom of a steep ravine in suburban Maple Valley on Thursday, more than a week after she failed to return home from work. After being cut out of her SUV by rescuers, she was taken to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, where she was in critical condition.

Dr. Lisa McIntyre said during a hospital news conference Friday that while Rider was doing better, she's "not out of the woods yet." McIntyre said Rider's kidneys failed because of toxins from a muscle injury in the crash and dehydration. She was being treated with intravenous fluids.

Rider was sedated and on a ventilator, McIntyre said. In addition to her kidney failure, she wife was being treated for extensive sores from lying in the same position for a week and nearly had to have a leg amputated, said her husband, Tom Rider.

Her husband also said Friday he was frustrated by the red tape he had to fight to get authorities to launch a search for his wife more than a week after she disappeared.

"She's a fighter, obviously," Rider said. "She fought to stay alive in the car and she's fighting now."

Authorities found the Maple Valley woman after detecting the general location of her cell phone Thursday morning, then searching along Highway 169 near Renton, southeast of Seattle, the route she took home from work. They noticed some matted brush, and below it found Rider's vehicle, smashed on its side, State Patrol spokesman Jeff Merrill said.

Tanya Rider left work at a Fred Meyer grocery store in Bellevue on Sept. 19 but never made it home. When her husband couldn't reach her, he said, he called Bellevue police to report his wife missing.

Bellevue police took the report right away, but when they found video of Tanya Rider getting into her car after work, they told her husband the case was out of their jurisdiction and he should notify King County, he said. Tom Rider said he tried that, but "the first operator I talked to on the first day I tried to report it flat denied to start a missing persons report because she didn't meet the criteria," he said.

"I basically hounded them until they started a case and then, of course, I was the first focal point, so I tried to get myself out of the way as quickly as possible. I let them search the house. I told them they didn't have to have a warrant for anything, just ask," he said.

Thursday morning, detectives asked him to come in to sign for a search of phone records. They also asked him to take a polygraph test.

"By the time he was done explaining the polygraph test to me, the detective burst into the room with a cell phone map that had a circle on it," he said.

His wife's car tumbled about 20 feet down a ravine and lay buried below brush and blackberry bushes. The air bags deployed, but she was injured and trapped. Rescuers had to cut the roof off to get her out.

"I know there were delays (in finding her) because of red tape," Tom Rider said.

Tom Rider said he also drove the route where his wife was found but didn't see any sign of a crash. He also offered a $25,000 reward for any information leading to her safe return.

Authorities said they followed procedure in the case.

"It's not that we didn't take him seriously," Deputy Rodney C. Chinnick said. "We don't take every missing person report on adults. ... If we did, we'd be doing nothing but going after missing person reports."

[Guest Kathylene]

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071001/COL16/710010391/1099/NEWS01

CHABOT RESOLUTION PASSES, 389-1

10/1/07

The House last week overwhelmingly passed - 389-1 - a resolution from Rep. Steve Chabot that expresses the House's commitment to providing a voice to victims of families involved in missing persons and unidentified human remains cases.

The resolution stems from a Cincinnati-area case.

Debra Culberson of Blanchester lost her daughter, Carrie Culberson, when she was murdered in 1996. Although her daughter's former boyfriend was convicted of the murder, her daughter's remains have not been recovered.

"This resolution highlights the importance of law enforcement agencies acquiring the tools and working together at all levels to identify human remains so families and loved ones can have closure," said Chabot, a Westwood Republican who co-chairs the Congressional Caucus for Missing and Exploited Children.

The resolution calls for continued federal funding for DNA testing and a database used to identify victims, greater cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement officials, and more training for these law enforcement agencies on missing persons cases.

It also seeks to provide medical examiners and coroners with better access to federal databases so victims - such as Carrie Culberson - can be located, identified and returned to their loved ones. The lone no vote: Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr110-340

[Guest Kathylene]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/02/BA40SHS9Q.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

DNA tests uncover identity of teen killed in Tiburon in 1979

October 2, 2007

(10-01) 16:04 PDT Tiburon - -- DNA testing has revealed the identity of a teenager killed 28 years ago in Tiburon, authorities said this week.

Seventeen-year-old Tammy Vincent was found in Blackie's Pasture on Sept. 26, 1979. She had been stabbed more than 40 times with an ice pick, burned - with acetone used as an accelerant - and shot in the head, according to police. Vincent's identity was unknown for nearly three decades, and her murder remains unsolved to this day.

The case was closed until Tiburon police asked the Marin County Sheriff's Office to revisit the evidence in 2001. The next year, Vincent's body was exhumed, but investigators were only able to obtain a partial DNA profile from the body.

In December 2006, investigators asked the California Department of Justice if its DNA laboratory in Richmond would examine additional evidence to obtain a better DNA profile of Vincent.

Sheriff's Lt. Rick Navarro said investigators believed that improvements in DNA analysis could warrant a more complete profile. They were right: The lab produced a full DNA profile from a hair collected as part of the investigation.

Authorities ran the profile through a state DNA database, the federal database, and a database at the University of Texas that collects DNA samples from missing persons and their families. They got a hit in the university database, which had collected DNA from Vincent's mother and sister in 2003. Nearly three decades after the killing, officials were able to identify Vincent as the victim.

Investigators said that Vincent testified against several people arrested in 1979 during a raid of two SeaTac, Wash., establishments believed to be prostitution fronts. Vincent was relocated from SeaTac to Spokane in an attempt to keep her away from the suspects, but ended up leaving, Navarro said.

Some of the people believed to be involved in the case had ties to San Francisco, Navarro said. Additionally, police said that the materials used to kill Vincent were purchased the evening before the murder at a Woolworth's store at Market and Powell streets by a man dressed in a white leisure suit and a woman matching Vincent's description.

At her family's request, Vincent was exhumed and cremated in August, Navarro said. Her remains were taken to her family in Washington.

The case is still under investigation, and anyone with information may call (888) 898-5818.

______________________________

Linda Stovall

Project Jason

www.projectjason.org

Read our blog about missing persons:

http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/

If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post.

[Denise]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/crime/story/178805.html

When a loved one goes missing

STACEY MULICK; The News Tribune Published: October 14th, 2007 01:00 AM

The case of Tanya Rider, the Maple Valley woman found in her crashed car seven days after she vanished, raised questions about searches for missing people.

Since she was found Sept. 27, concerns have surfaced about how quickly cell phone records can be obtained, how her husbands initial 911 calls were handled and why she wasnt found sooner.

The News Tribune asked Tacoma police and Pierce County sheriffs officials how their departments handle missing persons cases.

After saying each case is handled individually, the officials said officers follow the information they receive from those reporting the missing friend or loved one.

The information determines when search-and-rescue units are launched, when a team of detectives is deployed and when investigators access the missing persons bank records, cell phone accounts and other personal information.

You want to start from a good nucleus of information, said Tacoma police detective Ron Lewis, who investigates missing persons cases. We have to figure out what direction we are going to chose to put our resources. We do need a starting point.

The response is ramped up when the report concerns a young child or an adult with serious health concerns, or when the circumstances surrounding the disappearance are troubling, life-or-death, or out of the ordinary.

A majority of cases are filed, then resolved within 24 hours, said sheriffs spokesman Ed Troyer.

Most missing persons, officials said, are suicidal or depressed, suffer from Alz-heimers or dementia, or are domestic violence victims who dont want to be found by their abuser. Many dont come home for a couple of days for one reason or another, are reported missing after leaving an adult care facility, or intentionally go missing.

The circumstances surrounding Riders missing persons case that she got into a car accident no one saw, went over an embankment and was unable to get help are rare and not the best to judge how most missing persons cases are handled, officials said.

It was a fluke deal, Lewis said.

The Pierce County Sheriffs Department investigated 206 missing adult cases in 2006. On average, the department resolves 98.5 percent of the missing person reports each year.

The Tacoma Police Department handles about 3,000 adult missing person and juvenile runaway cases a year. The department could not provide figures on how many missing persons cases it solves.

Here are the law enforcement officials answers to frequently asked questions concerning missing persons:

In the Rider case, the King County Sheriffs Office was criticized for not taking her husband seriously. He repeatedly called 911 and was told he didnt meet the criteria for reporting a missing person. What are the criteria for reporting a missing person in Pierce County?

Theres no one set of criteria, officials said, but investigators do need to know some things to decide how to respond.

(One thing to remember at the outset: There is no minimum waiting period for reporting a missing person. People who hear you need to wait 24 hours before reporting someone missing are watching too much TV, Troyer said. Thats a myth.)

Dispatchers and their supervisors look at several criteria as they evaluate what steps should be taken by law enforcement, including:

Where was the person last seen and/or where was the person going?

How long has it been since the person has been seen, and when was he or she expected back?

Did the person take his or her personal items (including clothing and money)?

Do the terrain, weather or other environmental conditions come into play?

When should I report someone missing?

As soon as you realize the person is missing and you cant figure out where he or she is. Police officials especially want to hear about a missing person quickly if a crime might have been committed or if the persons life could be in danger.

If there is something strange, we dont want to be behind 24 hours, Troyer said. We want to know right away.

What happens when I call 911?

A communications officer takes down information such as where the person was last seen or where the person was going, how long the person has been gone and whether this is unusual behavior. The officer also will get a description of the missing person and whether the person took any personal items, such as clothing, money or a cell phone.

The more information provided to the 911 operators, the better. Detailed information can help direct the search for the missing person.

A supervisor checks the information, then decides what action will be taken. The communications officer writes a report and enters the missing persons description and other important details into a computer so area law enforcement officers receive it and can keep an eye out for the person.

Dispatchers notify the appropriate law enforcement agency. Tacoma police and the Sheriffs Department send an officer to get information for a more detailed report and search the immediate area and talk with neighbors. The officer and supervisors decide whether additional officers, a search team, a police dog or detectives are needed.

What steps are taken after a report is filed?

The missing persons information including a physical description and vehicle and license plate information is entered into regional databases.

Bulletins are sent out to area law enforcement agencies. Tacoma-Pierce County Crime Stoppers also sends out information to the media when investigators suspect a crime has occurred.

Missing persons cases are forwarded to detectives the next business day.

When are search teams dispatched?

Officials say they need a specific geographic area to search before they call for search-and-rescue personnel for example, if a dementia patient has walked away from his home or a small child runs off in the neighborhood.

Weve got to have somewhere to search, Troyer said. If we have a specific area to be searched, we will.

What do detectives do when they receive missing persons cases?

Detectives will interview family members, friends and co-workers. They will check the missing persons bank accounts and look on social networking Web sites such as MySpace. Theyll contact the Social Security Administration if the person receives Social Security or other types of payment.

Lewis said if the person has a history of running away or going missing, hell check the computer to see where he or she had been found before.

Investigators also will collect dental records and DNA profiles.

How quickly can law enforcement agencies get access to a missing persons cell phone records?

It depends on how urgent the situation seems to be. If there are urgent circumstances, such as when a sex offender kidnaps a girl or someone has been taken hostage, investigators can get cell phone records within two hours, Troyer said.

Outside of those urgent situations, officers need a subpoena or a court order to get cell phone records. Troyer said the Sheriffs Department has ways to rush those through to get them in a matter of hours.

The information is still hard to get, he said. Its still a process and procedure.

[Denise]

http://www.kotv.com/news/local/story/?id=138208

Police Take New Approach To Missing Persons Cases

KOTV - 10/18/2007 5:50 PM - Updated 10/18/2007 5:58 PM

Murder cases are devastating to families and a top priority for detectives. There are families who say not knowing what happened to their loved one is just as agonizing. They are the families of people who are missing. These cases often have often taken a backseat to more immediate cases for investigators, but not anymore. News On 6 crime reporter Lori Fullbright reports Tulsa detectives are revamping their approach to missing person cases, in order to get the answers families so desperately need.

Edward Roden still can't talk about his niece without crying. Kimberly Mullens was 33 and the mother of four children when she disappeared in 1998. She'd given birth to her youngest, just a few weeks before.

"Left her purse behind. Her kids behind. I'm telling you that girl wouldn't have left her kids behind, especially the new born baby, said her uncle Edward Roden.

Kim Mullens was in an abusive marriage, and family members say they were told she'd run off with another man. They became suspicious and reported her disappearance to police. That was nearly ten years ago. Her family fears the worst.

"If something has happened to her, justice needs to be served over it. Her whole family loves her. She has a right to a decent burial, said her uncle Edward Roden.

Tulsa's homicide squad room houses notebooks filled with about three dozen missing persons cases that detectives fear are the victims of foul play.

"When you start talking about looking for a needle in a haystack, that's what we do. There are methods we go through to establish they are not in existence," said Tulsa Police Sgt. Mike Huff.

The first step to making these cases a higher priority is to put them on the police department's website so citizens can see pictures, read the stories and send in tips.

Detectives also created a better screening system so they'll know faster which cases are suspicious. Plus, they'll be working with national groups like the DNA Project at the University of North Texas. They collect DNA from unidentified remains and compare it to missing people.

"It is a very hard thing for families to work with. There is no closure here and they know their family member is out there somewhere missing, said Tulsa Police Sgt. Mike Huff.

Police say 99% of the missing people resurface after a day or two or want to be gone. It's not a crime to be missing. And, people leave for lots of reasons sometimes family or mental health. But, there is still that 1% that is agony for families. For them, any answer is better than not knowing.

[Denise]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/missing/614159,CST-NWS-missing22.article

'They kept trying to convince us maybe she'd gone off'

October 22, 2007

BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA Staff Reporter/mihejirika@suntimes.com

Nancie was Anderson's oldest. She was the one who bought Anderson a home down South to escape Chicago's cold; the one who declared at age 8 that she was going to become an entrepreneur -- and indeed ended up a successful businesswoman.

Now, one of Nancie's sisters was calling to say Nancie was missing. She hadn't been seen in days.

The Chicago Police Department's files are packed with reports of missing people, mostly kids, but a growing number of adults. Despite the uptick, critics say police don't take missing-adult cases seriously enough. The Sun-Times examines the case of Nancie Walker, who went missing in 2003 and turned up murdered.

Anderson slumped into her chair. It was Jan. 31, 2003. The year was starting badly for her clan.

Even more heartache was to come for Anderson.

More adults tallied here, nationally

It's a sad fact that it's not that unusual for someone to vanish in Chicago. Chicago Police Department files are packed with missing-person cases -- kids, mostly, but also a growing number of adults.

Of the 20,000-plus people reported missing in Chicago last year, about 8,000 were 17 or older -- 40 percent of the total, up from 35 percent in 2000.

The figures are inching upward nationally, too. Last year, 169,447 adult missing-person cases were logged nationwide, up from 144,209 a decade ago.

Whether the actual number of missing adults is rising isn't clear. The increase might be due in part to better reporting and federal efforts that have spurred more police departments to take a report when anyone says a person they know is missing.

But when it comes to missing adults, law enforcement is severely lacking, critics say, with police opting to put their resources into the very young, very old, and those deemed "endangered."

There's logic to that thinking, the police figure: Adults have a right to disappear; most of the time when they're missing, it's of their own accord, and they almost always turn up fine. Indeed, 98 percent of such cases in Chicago end up "cleared" by police.

But often the authorities here are dismissive at first of what turn out to be legitimate cases of missing adults, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation found, potentially jeopardizing the safe return of victims and adding to the pain their families feel.

Nancie Walker's family says they had to beg the police to take her case seriously.

"They wouldn't take the report at first," recalled one of her five sisters. "They kept trying to convince us maybe she'd gone off. They kept asking, 'Does she drink? Does she do drugs?'

"The attitude was like they considered everyone on that end a drunk or a drug addict. We're like, 'Absolutely not!' Then, it was: 'Maybe she has a boyfriend. Maybe she went somewhere and didn't tell you.' Finally, we got irritated and demanded they take a report," her sister Vanessa Lankford said.

That's a common experience, according to the National Center for Missing Adults.

"There's an absolute lack of standardized procedures in first, whether police departments take the report, and second, how they respond to and investigate it," the center's Kym Pasqualini said.

In response to such complaints, Illinois lawmakers, with little notice, passed a bill this year -- which Gov. Blagojevich signed into law in August and which immediately went into effect -- that requires police to take a report on missing adults if anyone goes to a police station to notify them.

The new law also bars police from telling people: Come back later; we won't take a report until someone has been missing for 24 hours.

That's a huge step, advocates say, because the first 48 hours after someone goes missing are considered the most critical for their safe return.

'I sat, and I waited and waited'

On the day Nancie Walker went missing, the Morgan Park resident was supposed to have lunch with the sister to whom she was closest.

The pair talked on the phone around 10 a.m. that Tuesday as Nancie left her condo at 115th and Western and headed off to check on a 17-unit apartment building at 44th and Indiana -- one of the buildings her real estate company owned.

"We'd talked twice that morning, and she called me back, in one of her silly moods, just silly-happy that morning," Myrna Walker recalled. "I said, 'Girl, quit calling me!' She gave that laugh of hers.

"The last thing she said to me was, 'Girl, I just want to tell you what a difference a day makes.' "

She said her sister, a Buddhist, believed every day was an opportunity to create a new life.

At 2:30 p.m., Myrna ducked into a downtown Wendy's where the two always met. It was rainy, cold.

"I sat by the window, to watch for her," Myrna said. "I sat, and I waited and waited."

Nancie never showed up.

Myrna left phone messages that night, and Wednesday, too.

Then a friend told her that Nancie had missed rehearsal for the dance group she'd founded at Soka Gakai International. It was Nancie's way of sharing her lifelong passion for dance with kids. She'd never missed it before.

Something was really wrong, Myrna told Lankford.

On Thursday morning, three of Nancie's sisters went to her Bronzeville apartment building, where a longtime tenant relayed a strange story about seeing Nancie get into a black van that had tinted windows and two men inside. He said the driver honked, she got in, and it sped off.

"That didn't sound good," said Myrna.

Cops doubt it was foul play, family told

At Area 1 headquarters, Nancie officially became a missing person at 11:10 a.m. on Jan. 30, 2003.

The next day -- after police initially were reluctant to take a report, her sisters said -- the family was contacted by Special Victims Unit detectives. Myrna called Anderson, who hurried to town.

When interviewed, Nancie's tenant told police that Nancie had mentioned she was going away. Her family didn't believe it. As the owner of six properties, a beauty salon and a cross-country trucking service, Nancie would never just leave without telling her close-knit family, they said.

Police also learned that she had recently cashed a check for $1,600. Her sisters said it was to be wired to a brother-in-law in Mississippi who worked for her company -- Nancie's Trucks.

Within days, police told the family their suspicion: They didn't think Nancie was a victim of foul play. They would tell reporters the same thing.

Number of missing blacks soars

Local newspapers and TV had picked up on Nancie's story after the family turned to her friend, Delmarie Cobb, a publicist, for help.

"When they came to me that Friday, I said, 'We need to hold a press conference,' " Cobb recalled. "Myrna went and checked with the detective assigned to the case. He told her to give it till Monday. I told her, 'That's crazy. She's been missing since Tuesday.' We'd already lost too much time."

They held a news conference that Saturday.

Weeks passed. The family plastered the South Side with Nancie's picture, and tried but failed to interest the national media, which was consumed at the time with the case of Laci Peterson, a missing pregnant, white woman from Modesto, Calif.

"The Laci girl was getting all this national coverage, but we quickly learned it wasn't going to happen for Nancie," Myrna Walker said.

Cobb and her family suspect race played a role in the inattention, as she was black.

About five years later, however, another missing black woman got enormous attention -- pharmaceutical sales rep Nailah Franklin, whose body was found last month.

Regardless, a Sun-Times analysis of FBI data found that blacks account for a disproportionate number of the missing -- 32 percent last year, compared with a 12.8 percent representation in the U.S. population. A decade ago, they were at 24 percent, the newspaper's analysis shows.

Unsolved despite reward

On March 19, 2003, Lankford got a call. Her sister's body had been found by a road-cleaning crew at 108th and Stony Island -- dismembered and stuffed into two big plastic bags.

An autopsy found Nancie had been beaten, strangled and decapitated.

Only her head, arms and lower legs were found.

Despite her family's $50,000 reward, her murder remains unsolved -- a cold case, no suspects.

Nancie's mother wishes the police had reacted.

"They got stuck on: She walked away," she said.

Police won't comment on specifics of the case.

"Why someone would say they did not believe her a victim of foul play, I couldn't even comment on that," said Chicago Police Cmdr. Robert Hargesheimer. "But it's not unusual for families to say we want more done. And while we understand the frustrations of families, there's also 650 investigations going at one time on missing persons."

Anderson says that's not good enough.

"My Nancie was so timid. To think about how someone took her someplace and did that to her, sometimes I just can't sleep," her mother said.

"I just want police to stop saying an adult has the right to walk away. If the people who know them best -- a mother -- tells you something is just not right, you can believe them."

[Kelly]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/missing/619757,CST-NWS-missing25.article

'We can go look under rocks, look in alleys and kick over cans'

October 25, 2007

STORIES BY MAUDLYNE IHEJIRIKA | Staff Reporter

Calls can come from the city's 25 police districts, other agencies and the public.

The information is jotted on an index card and filed in a small thin box packed with other cards. When someone is found, his or her card is moved to an adjacent box.

The boxes represent the universe of missing persons cases in Chicago. But newly arrived cases are computerized as well, typed into city and federal databases, and faxed to Special Victims detectives for follow-up.

Before this particular September day is over, Missing Persons workers will field 75 reports.

This is the unit that fielded calls about Jesse Ross, a still-missing Missouri college student; Nancie Walker, a 55-year-old businesswoman who turned up murdered in 2003; Diamond and Tionda Bradley, children who vanished in 2001 after leaving a note that they were going to the park; and Lamar Randle, whose family reported him missing last July, not knowing he was laid up in a hospital, unable to tell anyone his name.

They were highlighted over the past week in the Chicago Sun-Times series "Missing in Chicago."

Today, the final day of the project, the focus shifts to how police handle missing persons cases -- which are not all investigated equally.

In Chicago, kids under 10, the elderly and those deemed "endangered" get priority -- something officials argue is necessary because of limited resources.

"Those are high-risk cases right on their face, and we ratchet up our resources accordingly," said Chicago Police Cmdr. Robert Hagersheimer, who oversees the Missing Persons Unit. "Beyond that, the level of follow-up is based on the circumstances surrounding the individual's absence."

While the level of urgency can certainly differ by case, the Sun-Times found that getting cops in Chicago and other jurisdictions to take a report -- particularly for adults -- can be an exercise in frustration, and sometimes there's only a cursory investigation.

One veteran detective who handles missing persons cases in Chicago rationalizes it this way: "If the citizens of Chicago want us to spend more time on missing persons, we can. Chicago's a big city. We can go look under rocks, look in alleys and kick over cans."

"But with a lot of my adults, someone left and didn't want someone else to know where they are, and most of the juveniles are teenagers who went off to do their thing, and they'll come home when they're ready. Sometimes you basically just have to give missings time, and ultimately, almost all of them just show up on their own."

Statistics bear him out.

In Chicago, 20,000 people are reported missing each year. The vast majority of cases -- 98 percent -- are solved, largely because missing individuals often want to be gone, and eventually return home.

But missing persons advocates complain that police are too often dismissive of what turn out to be legitimate cases of missing adults, potentially jeopardizing safe returns.

In Nancie Walker's case, police had to be arm-twisted to take a report, and then hemmed and hawed about following up, relatives said.

In Lamar Randle's case, investigators somehow missed the fact that he was in a hospital. He was reunited with his family not because of Chicago Police, but because a Sun-Times reporter put two and two together.

In some suburbs, police do little more than punch details into a database and hand out fliers to officers to be on the lookout.

"If there's not going to be a change of federal mandate, we must make changes on the local level, so that your missing person case is not handled one way in one jurisdiction, and another way just across the county line," said Kym Pasqualini of the National Center for Missing Adults.

There are hopeful signs of change.

The federal government is launching a new database that will, for the first time, allow coroners, police and others to simultaneously search records of missing persons and unidentified remains.

And spurred by a federal task force, Illinois recently passed a law forcing police to take reports on missing adults if complainants come to the station. Cops also must inform families about outside resources, such as Pasqualini's group.

According to state Rep. Dan Brady, Chicago Police initially balked at the law, telling him, "It's great that the Justice Department wanted to do this, but do you have any idea how many missing person reports we get?"

hicago Police Officer Mike Williams is manning the "Hot Desk," a gateway for the 20,000-plus missing person reports that flood the department each year. "Male? Which race? Age? Date of birth?" Williams asks. "What is his height and weight? Hair color and eye color? Date and time he was last seen? Complainant's name and address? Any physical or mental disabilities?" It's around 11 a.m., and calls are just trickling in to the Missing Persons Unit, based at 35th and Michigan.

[Denise]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003960134_loss210.html

How do families mourn loved ones they're not sure are really gone?

By Rebecca Morris

Beverly Burr's daughter Ann disappeared from the family's Tacoma home in 1961, when Ann was 8. She's never been found. Burr still thinks of her daughter every day.

IT STORMED THAT NIGHT, hiding any sounds that might be heard in a big house.

Sometime late on Aug. 31, 1961, 8-year-old Ann Burr brought her younger sister to their parents' bedroom. Mary was crying because she had gotten sand under the cast on her broken arm, and it itched. Beverly and Donald Burr reassured her and sent the girls back to bed.

The next morning, Beverly went to check on the children. Mary was asleep in her bed, but across the hall, Ann's room was empty. Beverly found a living-room window ajar and the front door, usually locked from the inside with a deadbolt, standing open. A bench had been pulled up outside the window. Someone had climbed in, then left through the front door with Ann. The abduction of the blond girl with bangs and a ready smile was Tacoma's biggest story of 1961. But months, then years, then decades passed. Beverly and Donald Burr had no body to bury, no cemetery to visit and no end to this devastating and complex grief. They suffered what psychotherapist and author Pauline Boss calls "ambiguous loss."

"Ambiguous loss is any kind of loss with no clear information on the status of a missing person," Boss explains. "People are denied the symbolic rituals that ordinarily help us cope with a loss, such as a funeral."

Ambiguous loss is not new wars are especially cruel in creating it but the study of it is. Boss calls it a grief that defies closure. It's a grief shared by many of the families of the missing that capture our attention: six men still trapped deep inside a Utah mine; Steve Fossett, the millionaire adventurer who vanished on a solo flight; Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teenager who went missing in Aruba.

Keeping hope alive

Families of the missing are members of a unique brotherhood. Many are afraid to move in case their child, now grown, tries to find them. They keep phone numbers unchanged for decades. They preserve their child's bedroom just as it was. They live as if their loved one might knock on the door any day.

That's the way it has been for the family of Air Force Col. John Robertson, a father of four from Edmonds who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966.

"He was always kept alive in the family," says his daughter, Shelby Quast, who was 4 when her father disappeared. Her mother, Barbara Robertson, still celebrates her wedding anniversary. She kept money set aside so she could buy her husband a new wardrobe and a Mercedes when he returned.

She encouraged her daughters to travel to Cambodia and Vietnam, investigating sightings of him in work camps.

After all these years, Quast, an attorney in Virginia, says if there were news of her father, she would pursue it, "But in a different way. I'd say, 'Prove it to me.' You can't say, 'Enough, I give up.' I would never say that. We always thought he was alive."

"I hate that closure thing"

"When I first saw that window open, I knew I would never see her again," Beverly Burr says. "I knew I would never know what happened."

In the faded newspaper clippings about Ann's disappearance, Beverly is a pretty blonde of 33, mother of four photogenic children. Burr is 79 now, and her hair is gray, but her memories of that period remain sharp.

Near the television where she watches "Dancing With the Stars" are albums filled with faded newspaper clippings. There are the first stories about Ann's disappearance, a missing-persons poster, stories about sightings of Ann in California, even the obituaries of the two lead detectives who had vowed to find Ann.

And there are more personal items: Ann's second-grade report card with a note from a teacher about how well she expects the girl to do in third grade; a newspaper story about Beverly and Donald adopting a baby girl, Laura, two years after Ann disappeared; and a photo of an azalea sent by author Ann Rule, who mentioned the Burrs in her book about Ted Bundy. There is even a page of photos of the Puyallup woman who showed up in 1994 claiming to be Ann. DNA tests showed she wasn't.

As time passed, the Burrs' friends or acquaintances would suggest that it might be time to move on, time to not think about Ann so much. "I don't pay any attention to that," Beverly says with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I hate that closure thing."

Criminal folklore has it that a 14-year-old named Ted Bundy was the Burrs' paperboy; he wasn't. But his uncle lived nearby, Ted visited and Ann passed the house on her way to and from piano lessons. Beverly doesn't know if Ann and Ted knew each other.

In the 1980s, when Bundy was on death row, he admitted to 35 murders but hinted there were far more. Beverly Burr wrote to Bundy, and they began a correspondence. In one letter, Bundy wrote: "Again, and finally, I did not abduct your daughter. I had nothing to do with her disappearance. If there is still something you wish to ask me about this, please don't hesitate to write again. God bless you and be with you. Peace, Ted."

Building resilience

Learning to live with the loss is the key to moving forward, even if that means keeping hope alive for decades.

"The only way to survive is to keep two opposing thoughts, to straddle between hope and hopelessness," according to Boss, psychotherapist and professor emeritus of the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota.

The author of two books on ambiguous loss, she has researched and worked with 4,000 families around the world including families who lost a loved one on Sept. 11, wives of pilots missing in Vietnam and of husbands lost at sea, and families in Kosovo where thousands of people have been missing since ethnic cleansing in the 1990s. She has expanded the focus of her research to work with families coping with the psychological absence of a loved one; for example, the families of patients with Alzheimer's.

If the ambiguous loss can't be resolved and often, it can't then the goal is to increase the resilience of those left behind. That happens by forming new attachments, and finding a new identity and new things to hope for. Those who don't, or can't, risk serious depression and broken relationships. Boss is convinced that unresolved grief is responsible for many personal problems.

Boss says it was a Minnesota couple, Elizabeth and Kenny Klein, who showed her how people with ambiguous grief go on.

In November 1951, three of the Kleins' four young sons, ages 4, 6 and 8, disappeared while playing by the Mississippi River. Although two of their caps were found in the river, the family is convinced the boys didn't drown, but were abducted. For a while the couple placed an ad in the newspaper "Lost: Three Boys" hoping one of the boys would see it and contact them.

Today, 56 years later, Elizabeth (Betty to her friends) continues to believe that one, or maybe all three, will someday walk through her door. Kenny Klein believed it too, to the day he died in 2005. "Course, they wouldn't know me now," Betty laughs, alluding to her age, 82. "And they would be in their 60s."

To many, such a declaration 56 years later might seem unbearably sad. But Boss says what makes the Kleins good teachers is that they exhibit hope tempered with reality. "They found a way to balance hanging on with letting go."

The power of a gesture

When there is no body to bury, symbolic gestures are important. After the search for the trapped miners in Utah was called off, families and friends stood on a hill and released a golden eagle into the sky. Boss has worked with families who have buried a favorite guitar in a coffin, or a husband's bowling ball. After Sept. 11, families were offered a vial of dirt from Ground Zero, which many found helpful and meaningful. The Burrs finally held a memorial for Ann in 1999.

Beverly says that after Ann vanished, what sustained her were the other children, all younger than Ann. "They needed me very much, and I had to remember that." Also helpful during a long police investigation: gardening and her Catholic faith. She made sure to add "And bless our little Ann" to any prayer.

During the 1999 memorial service, Ann's younger sister Julie who along with her brother Greg, slept soundly that night in 1961 thanked her parents. "You probably wanted to crawl into bed and bury your head as each day and year passed with no answer," she told them. "But instead you gathered strength and provided us with a wonderful childhood."

Julie was right about her parents wanting to hide, Beverly says.

"I think the hardest thing is that it was in our minds every minute, but school was starting. We, Donald and I, couldn't have cared less, but we had to pretend for the sake of the children. They were so young and they were terrified and would ask, 'Will he come and get us, too?' "

Donald Burr died four years ago. Since then Beverly has moved to a small, bright-blue house. Her son lives on Fox Island, and her daughters live in Bellingham; Seattle; and Albany, Ore.

Beverly thinks of Ann first thing, every day. But except for the albums, Ann has no more prominence in the house than Julie, Laura, Mary or Greg. Now there are pictures of grandchildren about Ann's age then on Beverly's refrigerator. In her den are photos of all the children. Ann, whether in her Blue Bird uniform, or with Santa Claus, or with her dog Barney, remains 8 years old.

There is only one other thing frozen in time. Beverly Burr's phone number is the same one the family had in 1961. She has never changed it, just in case.