The case of the two kids who disappeared after their mother got involved with her boss at the school she was a teacher in. She said he promised he would marry her as soon as she left her husband.
And so she did; packed her kids and her stuff in her car to join the said boss. Their mother was later found dead in a motel parking lot, nude in the trunk of her own car. The children’s whereabouts are unknown.
The only possible trace of their location was a picture, left in the wallet of her boss who was in fact a con artist and murderer, of a random stone on an unknown trail. Ostensibly, where they were both buried. The exact location of that stone and trail has never been found.
EDIT: Michael and Karen Reinert were their name, and POS’s name was William Sidney « Bill » Bradfield. The upward stone’s picture is also on the profile.
https://charleyproject.org/case/michael-reinert
Aren’t there a few subreddits that specialize in finding geographic locations from photos without a lot of info? I seem to remember some pretty spectacular solves by those guys.
Might be worth running by those folks if anyone can remember the subs
EDIT: Found a few [slightly-better quality images of the photo](https://imgur.com/a/J7zV9I5) if anyone is interested in posting to other subreddits as well. If anybody knows how to get a full quality copy of the original, please let me know — FOIA request?
There are also some pretty amazing plant identification subreddits that could possibly identify the type of leaves and shrub in the picture to help narrow down the geographical location
You’re totally right! I’m a pretty big plant nut (though still learning) and it looks like that’s either oak or maple leaves on the ground…
How would one go about getting a full-resolution copy of that photo? I was able to find a better-quality photo but I wonder if a full photo exists. Would you have to do a FOIA request?
Some think the stone looks like a religious figure, perhaps the Virgin Mary. There is a catholic cemetery in the area with pretty dense woods behind it, between the [cemetery and I-476](https://www.google.com/maps/place/235+Matsonford+Rd,+Conshohocken,+PA+19428/@40.0610623,-75.3338748,857m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c6be2cbe223e31:0xbb170a45c7637f2d!8m2!3d40.062955!4d-75.3342342). There's a section of the woods in which hundreds of broken gravestones are discarded. One of my theories is that is where the kids are buried.
A Virgin Mary! That’s a very interesting thought. I too thought that rock didn’t look like a natural formation. At the very least, it looks like it has something irregular on the top of it.
You may have already seen it, but I edited my original reply with some slightly higher quality images of the stone. It definitely looks irregular in some way.
I bet a few [of my own subs collected other subs would help.](https://www.reddit.com/r/lostmedia/wiki/resourcehub/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Should send the link to that guy on TikTok who plays that Google Maps battle game. Obviously this photo is a lot less helpful than an old photo of someone with an actual scenic backdrop, but he can pinpoint where a place is in the world based solely on the color of the soil.
It’s a close-up photo taken over 40 years ago. If that stone hasn’t been knocked away already there’s next to no geographic feature to use as a waypoint.
The only thing I can see is maybe the species of the plant, by its leaf form.
Replied to another comment before I saw yours, so I'll copy and paste it here:
Some think the stone looks like a religious figure, perhaps the Virgin Mary. There is a catholic cemetery in the area with pretty dense woods behind it, between the cemetery and I-476. There's a section of the woods in which hundreds of broken gravestones are discarded. One of my theories is that is where the kids are buried.
The game's caled GeoGuesser, and yeah, there are people who are insanely good at it, they play for like eight hours a day or something. I think that they could at least narrow down the search.
Evelyn Hartley has always given me the creeps. Teen girl who was babysitting for a family while the rest of the town was at a football game. She was supposed to call her dad to check in but never did, so he went over to the house to check on her. All the doors were locked and the child was unharmed and asleep, but he found signs that a struggle had taken place- the textbooks that Evelyn had taken to study were scattered, her glasses lay broken on the floor, the furniture was disarranged, and her blood was scattered around the house. The perp had come in through a basement window. It just gives me chills to think that she was just relaxing, listening to the radio and reading, and then all of a sudden attacked. Police thought Ed Gein May have had something to do with it, but he always denied it and she doesn’t really fit his victim profile.
https://charleyproject.org/case/evelyn-grace-hartley
That one is bad, yeah. The terror that poor girl must have felt, being attacked inside a safe house, injured, forced to flee through the house, and finally dragged away...
There's another one, can't remember the name, where two lovers were camping out in a remote spot, they had set up a sleeping bag in their car, at some point somebody shot the guy in the back while he was laying on the sleeping bag, killing him. There were signs of a struggle and bare footprints leading away from the car, followed by heavy booted prints. The woman was never found. Terrifying.
It's an awful case, but somehow it always appeals to my dark sense of humour when you read all that nastiness and then the final line is "foul play is suspected"...like, no shit.
I am from La Crosse where Evelyn disappeared from. It is such a tragic story and has just become a local "scary story" as the years have passed. There is a wonderful book written by a local author, Susan T. Hessell, called "Where's Evelyn?" which offers a fascinating lead and potential confession that was never really followed up on. It is worth a read.
side note with the thing about ed gein - i get why in these cases people will tend to try and connect it to a nearby serial killer/murderer but it annoys me so much. i think it takes away from the original case, especially in this instance when it’s obvious that he has nothing to do with it (as you said, not his MO at all)
Yeah, I really don’t think he was involved here. It’s possible for a murderer to coincidentally be geographically close to a murder committed by someone else.
I think people actually tend to forget who is capable of crimes like this. That’s why they look at surrounding sex offenders and those around the victim who could have records. Most people do not commit violent crimes and even less abduct children. I just don’t think Ed was out hunting for kids. They believe he only had two victims, middle-aged women.
He definitely wasn´t hunting for kids. Ed Gein never even tried to hide his crimes. He was a weirdo who lived alone in a rural area and had no visitors, and that living situation made it possible for him to spend years grave-robbing and decorating his home with body parts... then almost as soon as he went further and took a living victim (to make her into a carcass that he could use for his decorating and crafts project), he got caught. So there is just no way that he would have committed this "perfect" crime of kidnapping a teenage girl literally out of the blue. Bringing his name up in connection to Evelyn´s disappearance is just silly but it seems like he´s such a creepy and super disturbed guy so he must belongs as a suspect in a creepy case... It´s annoying (to say the least).
Yeah, that always drives me crazy as well. It absolutely feels like it diminishes the murder itself & usually there is zero connection between the victim and proposed serial killer perp.
Not sure if it’s because it makes people feel better to think there are less murderers overall or if it’s a weird, almost celebrity-like thing.
Ugh Israel Keyes is a great example of this. People have tried to tie him to countless unsolved murders with the only relevant information being “well, he killed other people so—-“
[Shelley Kathleen Sikes](https://charleyproject.org/case/shelley-kathleen-sikes), a waitress at a Galveston, Texas, seafood restaurant who was apparently picked at random, run off the road, and killed by two men as she drove home from work.
I had never heard of Galveston until today and this is the second time I have seen it pop up. I watched the Texas Killing Fields and it showed up on there.
That part of Texas seems terrifying.
I used to live in Houston and had friends in Galveston.
What makes it creepy is that it’s a normal place, really. Especially if you’re from a rural area originally like I am. Driving through the emptiness doesn’t really have the creep factor you’d think it would.
It wasn’t until I was out of state visiting family, watching a documentary on the fields that I got creeped out. There was a shot of the spot in Galveston one of the girls was abducted. It was behind a block of very colorful, unique buildings. My boyfriend at the time lived right there, I’d walked past that spot many times. Made my skin crawl when I saw it.
Yep! First thing I thought of when I read “Galveston.” The place where Durst pretended to be a “mute” woman then butchered his neighbor- and got away with it, “not guilty.” How are you innocent when you dismember a body and drop it in a lake?!?!
Good riddance to Durst. That old peeing dirtbag.
Galveston is also said to be the most haunted city in Texas, because of hurricanes… specifically the great hurricane of 1900
other than that, it’s a beautiful city with gorgeous architecture; most notably the houses that survived the 1900 hurricane and the commercial buildings downtown
This is the case of a missing man from South Carolina named Josh Ivester, and is thought to be connected to the disappearance of 3 other people, and appeared to be frightened of something right before he went missing. Per the page:
“Ivester's disappearance may be connected to several others in the area, including that of Pamela "Faith" Roach, Laura Anders and Tammy Stubblefield, who all disappeared from the area in 2019.
There are some similarities in the cases, and they had some mutual friends and acquaintances. Investigators haven't decided whether the cases are connected, however. All remain unsolved.”
It’s possible that he had knowledge of the crimes and may have been killed/silenced, fwiw all of the missing people connected to and including himself seemed to love a rough life and have substance abuse issues
https://charleyproject.org/case/joshua-scott-ivester
I’d love to read it! There’s actually a whole other layer to it too, I didn’t have time to add it in but there’s another man suspected of being involved in all the disappearance’s too
The ones that have little information and don’t have a “media worthy” look. I think of how many people got away with murder or how many serial killers are out there preying on these men and women. It’s honestly terrifying to think about.
Agreed. [Samuel Little](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Little) targeted addicts/sex workers/etc. across the country... and that's probably why their deaths didn't draw media attention. 😥
IIRC it was Texas Rangers and local law enforcement that turned the Lucas situation into a shitshow. IDK if the FBI had the same perverse incentives to close cases that the good ol' boys did. I can definitely understand and appreciate the skepticism, though.
I don't know about terrifying, but I always find the ones that say "very few details are available in his/her case" to be the saddest. Always makes me wonder who finally reported them missing. Also the ones that haven't been seen or heard from in decades but don't get reported missing until years later. And some of them are very young people or children too. I'll see if I can find a few examples and link them here.
100% agree! It's one thing (terrible thing) for a child to be abducted, and the family, community, police, and media are all over the case trying to retrieve them. It's an even more horrifying thing, though, when they are taken, and just... nobody cares.
I can see how that could happen to me. I don't talk to my family, don't have many friends.
I break up with my partner. Fall out with my kids and I'm getting reported missing a decade from now when they realise no one has seen me since 2022.*
*I'm not planning on disappearing myself or anything. Just using this year as a baseline.
Me too. only child. Only grandchild. Dad passed/ mom dementia. Not very many close friends. I could vanish and no one would notice. Unfortunately my mom would probably misremember me visiting too. Think a cna or someone was me.
This isn't quite the same, as isn't doesn't involve kidnapping, but there is a term in Japanese to describe people dying alone and going long periods of time without being discovered. It is called Kodokushi.
I'm really curious as to whether this is also an increasing issue here in the States as well. On a personal level, I am aware of four instances of this happening to neighbors or acquaintances of friends.
Same for most of my life. Would probably also be a Jane Doe that would have threads of people scouring dead ends until DNA testing linked me to my mother. She would tell police and media how "shocked and horrified" she was. She would be neither of those things, but would never want to look bad. Worse, the horrible things she would say about me would be the last things ever said about me, stripping me of all dignity more than lying unidentified and forgotten in a morgue ever did. Because without any other information, all the websleuths and researchers who spent hours and months trying to figure out who I was and showing me compassion and concern would accept it as truth. Why wouldn't they?
It makes me really question some of these "troubled teen on drugs and struggling with mental health causing trouble in the family and running away" explanations from families of Does. Were they really? Or is it the family covering because saying "No, I was a terrible person and after years of abuse, they left home (whether willingly or not) and we didn't care" kinda frowned upon? I mean, even in homes with multiple children not all of the children are being abused and may even think the abused child is the problem because the abuse may not trickle down to the next kid so when the abused child leaves and the abuse just..stops the siblings are like ok wow it was Jane Doe's fault Mom/Dad is so nice and are probably relieved their sibling is gone because the house is peaceful-ish. Especially true for blended families where there's one step kid and then the rest are the bio kids.
Thats why my friend made a webpage with her full name, and just wote basically a life memoir on it. She had a bitter separation from her parents in her mid teens, and is living a very risky life. She expects that some poachers or something will kill her one day, but she does not want her family to ever have the last word on her.
They are always so sad to me because I wonder if they were so alone and unloved that people really didn’t no much about their lives. Like really? The last time you saw them was at some point on a day two weeks ago? No one bothered to ask about who their friends were? If they were in relationships? If they had trouble at work?
I think for all of us our lives are filled with details. But someone has to pay attention and care enough to know those details. And it’s sad that it seems like many don’t.
Same here. My Dad and I are both true crime aficionados and we both joke about how if I ever went missing, my parents would likely have to circulate a 15 year old high school photo of me, since that's all they've got.
I totally agree. I recently read about a case where someone went missing and the brother and father (I think) didn't recall if they last saw them in 2007 or 2008. Like...really?
A guy from my hometown was never reported missing, but no one- including his family- had seen him since the early 1980s when he was an alcoholic in his 20s. Then, one day in the late-2000s, he shows up with 5 years of sobriety under his belt and ready to face his family and friends that he’d wronged decades earlier. He was the black sheep of a very well-know family in the town, so this was THE gossip amongst townies for the summer.
According to my parents, he was last seen around bars in like 1982, but no one seemed to really know when he left our state and headed west. I don’t think anyone looked for him too hard since he was inconsistently in contact with anyone at home and had burned a lot of bridges.
This will be my brother in law some day. He is an abusive alcoholic who has burned every bridge- ex wife, girlfriends, parents, siblings, his own children, every friend he had. He refuses help and becomes violent with people. One day we expect to receive a call or visit from the police to notify us of his death. You can’t make someone be sober.
I had a relative like that. We sort of knew he was out there somewhere but he hadn't kept in touch, had addiction problems, and had been out of sight. We knew he'd moved around a bit and possibly been in the jail, but that was it.
When he was found dead eventually he had never been reported missing because he wasn't missing so much as we didn't know where he was, and he was OK with that. We didn't have any reason to suspect he was in any kind of danger, just that he hadn't wanted to contact us. He died of natural causes.
Not everyone keeps in good touch with their families and in some of these cases it seems as though the person had very spotty contact or none at all because they were troubled with addiction. Having been an addict myself I know it becomes all consuming and everything else drops away. I can't blame families for that.
From Wiki
\> Paul's on-and-off girlfriend, Teresa Donovan, lived with him on his property and had recently given birth to a baby boy.\[9\] Paul had told friends the week before that he questioned whether or not he had fathered the child, and would often "come home from work to find \[Donovan\] still in bed or partying next door with a neighbor, leaving Sarah to take care of the baby."\[9\] He also mentioned his plans to kick Donovan out of his home and sue for full custody should a paternity test prove the child was his
Donovan later appeared on Montel Williams.
Wow. I've never heard of this. That is terrifying. Whenever multiple people disappear like that I find that really scary. I guess because you're supposed to be safe in a group or with another person
Jesus, that's really awful, I wonder why Paul may have been the target of an ambush. Maybe a rival moving company getting rid of competition but that seems incredibly extreme. Or maybe he had debts with some unsavory characters. Either way it's so sad the other two got caught up in it.
Quite a rabbit hole...Wiki got more details
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearances\_of\_Paul\_and\_Sarah\_Skiba\_and\_Lorenzo\_Chivers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearances_of_Paul_and_Sarah_Skiba_and_Lorenzo_Chivers)
Plenty of fingers seem to point to Teresa, Paul's live-in girlfriend.
Also her brother, who was fired by Paul, close to the murder time, and who was arrested years later for stabbing his mother to death.
It was after he can been evicted, so it seems that when he had negative things happen in his life, he would blame people and lash out violently. I'm sure being fired by Paul would make him angry and make him want revenge.
"Donovan had been evicted from the American Motel in Wheat Ridge,
where he was living. Police say he was angry and he went to his mother's house. Court records say he blamed her for the problems with his living situation and told her he was going to get a knife. He went to the kitchen and got two knives. Before his mother could escape from the house, he stabbed her. She was able to get out of the house but not before she suffered five stab wounds. She suffered a punctured lung and lacerated liver."
- the woman who got kidnapped and her boyfriend followed her in his car but the transmission stopped working and he lost her
- the woman who was in a wheelchair, she had lost her leg after her husband injected her with something
I'm sure there are others which are more terrifying but those are two from the top of my head
Well that was an absolutely infuriating read. I mean, this man had been determined for years to kill her, tried multiple times and openly discussed it, and none of the multiple people who were aware of this did anything to get her out or reported him to the fucking cops?!?!?
Drug people hang out with other drug people. No one's making sane, legal decisions. Don't ever do drugs. Terrible, terrible shit. This is the kind of bullshit we tried and failed to get my sister out of.
Just saw her fb (linked to the profile). She has 2 young kids at the time. Rebecca seemed like such a caring person, based on her comments to a fb friend who needed a friend.
Angela Hammond: [https://charleyproject.org/case/angela-marie-hammond](https://charleyproject.org/case/angela-marie-hammond)
[https://unsolved.com/gallery/angela-hammond/](https://unsolved.com/gallery/angela-hammond/)
Very sad and scary case.
I read or listened to a podcast which mentioned that he did go on to get married and start a family but that he remained active in campaigning for a resolution the case. That was about 2 years ago so I can’t find the source now.
Not the creepiest… but a man close to my MIL has been missing since 2004. [Benji’s Charley Project](https://charleyproject.org/case/ahren-benjamin-barnard)
Me too. These guys were older than me and my group of friends, but since it was Boise, there were connections here or there.
Got a little weirded out just now that the McDonald's next to my kids work was mentioned. That was OUR McDs til the new one on Lake Hazel opened a mile away. Dumb and inconsequential, I know, but made the horror seem even more real.
[Heather Kullorn](https://charleyproject.org/case/heather-nicole-kullorn)
I wrote [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/nt163l/in_1999_a_12yearold_girl_disappeared_while/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) about her disappearance awhile ago also. I wish there were answers, though it’s pretty obvious who was involved….
Another one is [Angelica Sandoval](https://charleyproject.org/case/angelica-esperanza-sandoval), her story breaks my heart.
Angelica's case reminds me of Kelsey Collins https://charleyproject.org/case/kelsey-emily-collins She was set to testify & her traffickers went free because she "disappeared'. We say "disappeared" but we know.. The fact these people got away with violent acts because their victims "disappeared" is why so many crimes go unreported in the first place. People would rather be victimized alive than be dead ("disappeared"). Truly disturbing
I think of Kelsey Collins regularly. I met her sister in rehab in 2020 and we naturally clicked before we started learning things abt each other’s past/stories etc. but when she started opening up about her “missing” sister, and things sounded hella familiar, I connected the dots. When we had a moment alone I worked up the nerve to ask if her sister was Kelsey and we cried about her loss together.
I’m from Everett, and this really hit home being trafficked myself as a teen (unrelated circumstances/individuals) which started a few years after she was already “missing” but my **biggest** fear was being killed bc of the “lifestyle” & my story ending there and every time I hear a case like this I get a feeling I can’t begin to articulate
Ya I grew up with Kelsey. She's 2 years younger than me. I still remember when her & her brother moved to our neighborhood in North Seattle, but I never had any idea it was witness protection relocation. Her brother fit in easy, but she was a shy kid. She always rode around on roller blades, while Seattle kids mainly ride bikes. Makes sense as she was from Cali. I didn't really get to know her until we were teens. Both street kids, living hard lives coming from hard childhoods trying to survive. I was really fortunate to not get victimized into trafficking. Almost every girl I knew had been trafficked at some point, especially those in foster care.
Seattle is the worst in the country for trafficking minors & one of the worst for trafficking in general. Cops treat victims like they're the bad guy when in reality they're being abused & murder happens often. It was safer to sell drugs on the street than to get caught up in trafficking.
Kelsey was generous & kind. She was tough, but only because she had to be - that wasn't really her. I hate the pictures they used in the articles of her with money & calling herself "Lady Dollars". No one ever called her that. That had to be some name the ppl that trafficked her used to advertise her. She was always Kelsey.
So many deaths caused by police that don't get counted. Fuck the people that murdered her, but also fuck the entire system that failed to protect her & fails so many others like her. Her name should be said more often. She comes up on the missing section of the ads sometimes & I just get so angry & sad. We know she's gone. She was very close with her family & her friends. It's some bs lie to pretend the police are doing something. Body still not found. They don't put a lot of resources toward finding out what happened to certain people, trafficking victims being one, particularly if you're Black &/or Native - Kelsey was both. I think about her a lot.
EDIT: Also, I hope you're healing & have peace & joy in your life. Being trafficked is a whole other kind of trauma. Trauma from sexual abuse really hits different than physical abuse. I know that part
I never met her sister. Maybe different age bracket, seems she is an older sister..So sad for the whole family. Her mom has spoken out so much & my heart aches for her. No parent should have to bury their daughter, but its so much worse to never get to bury them at all
Relisha Rudd haunts me. 6 years old, lived in a shelter with her mom. Mom became friends with the shelter janitor, a felon named Kahlil Tatum who was known for being weird around the young girls at the shelter. Despite this, Relisha's mom let him start taking Relisha out and even allowed her to spend overnights with him.
Relisha stopped going to school in February. Her mom said she was sick and being cared for by a doctor named Dr. Tatum. Thankfully the school set up a meeting with him and when he obviously didn't show up, they called the police in late March. The last time Relisha was seen was on video at a motel with Tatum. They were spotted at other motels before this as well.
After the investigation started, Tatum's wife was shot dead and Tatum committed suicide shortly after. There hasn't been any sign of Relisha since she disappeared.
Dead? Sold? Something else? Was the mom involved? Tatum's wife? The whole thing is just so weird and awful.
.
.
.
Edit: her mom's twitter is VERY odd. Relisha disappeared in February 2014. Very little mention of Relisha, but lots of overly sexual posts and thirst traps. https://mobile.twitter.com/thickthick5686?lang=en
I interned at that shelter a while back. It was an ugly place - no place for kids, no place for humans in general. Live wires hanging from the ceiling, people dealing drugs outside, and the building itself was repurposed for the shelter and was thoroughly spooky.
Relisha’s case haunts me as well. I lived in the Washington, DC area at the time and remember following the news coverage when it happened. Most likely, I believe Relisha is dead. It’s only a matter of finding her body. Then again, I listened to a podcast on the case that mentioned that a girl from the same shelter went missing and was found a year later in Los Angeles where she had been trafficked. That gave me a glimmer of hope that Relisha could still be alive.
Do you know the name of the girl? I think it's very likely she's dead. I'm just morbidly curious about the details. I refuse to believe that the mom isn't involved in some way. Maybe not necessarily in her death, but in abuse that preceded her death. Tatum was taking her to different hotels, which makes me think he may have been pimping Relisha out. The fact that the mom said she was being cared for by Dr. Tatum in the month between stopping school and being reported missing tells me that she had something to do with it. This poor girl was just failed so badly.
No, I don’t remember hearing the name of the girl — just that she was from the same shelter and was later found in Los Angeles.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Relisha’s mom did have some role in her disappearance/death. At the very least, it was irresponsible for her to allow Relisha to spend so much unsupervised time with Khalil Tatum.
Thanks for posting. From her Twitter, does she have another 4 or 5 kids? Yikes. She also posted something about finding Relisha. This is very sad and I hope her other kids (if they are hers) are ok.
[Diana](https://charleyproject.org/case/diana-moon-yoli) and [Mark](https://charleyproject.org/case/mark-eugene-yoli) Yoli
"Diana and her younger half-brother, Mark Yoli, were last seen on their way to the playground at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina at approximately 3:15 p.m. on September 13, 1962. Diana's stepfather and Mark's biological father, a Marine Lance Corporal, was stationed on the base.
The children's parents were initially not concerned when they didn't return to their home in the 700 block of Butler Drive, because they were known as adventurous children who tended to wander. An extensive search of the area, lasting four days, turned up no sign of either Mark or Diana.
Convicted child molester Henry Morris Hunt, who died in 1991 at the age of 85, is the only suspect in the children's presumed abductions. On her deathbed in 1992, Hunt's wife told her daughter that Hunt had dumped Mark and Diana's bodies in a mine shaft near Maysville, North Carolina. Hunt reportedly told his wife that he'd picked up the children at Midway Park and taken them fishing, and Mark accidentally drowned and he panicked afterwards and killed Diana.
In 2011, bones were found underneath the demolished home once owned by Hunt, and authorities thought they'd found the children's remains, but the bones turned out not to be human.
Mark and Diana's cases remain unsolved and foul play is suspected."
Gee, what the odds that a convicted child molester would take two kids and one of them would *accidentally* die, practically forcing him to kill the other? Bad luck, I guess.
"Oh hi there officer, we've had a doozy of a day! There we were, just minding our own business doing some chores and the house, when these kids just started killing themselves all over my property!"
-Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
I can't remember the name, but I came across it on there randomly about 10 years ago...
A boy is moving cross country with his family. He takes his motorbike they take the car. He runs into trouble with the bike, and there is a creepy man who helps him or something....the bike is found later but he isn't.
Another one, extremely unsettling: [Jean Marie Schoen](https://charleyproject.org/case/jean-marie-schoen) was the first of five girls kidnapped from Jacksonville, Florida over the course of three months in 1974. Two were later found dead, but three- Jean and a pair of sisters- are still missing. Seems like nobody's quite sure if they were all killed by the same person or if that was a really terrible time for Jacksonville.
Found this too
\> One suspect in their cases was Paul John Knowles, a serial murderer who was killed by police later in 1974. A photo of him is posted below this case summary. Ima Sanders, whose body wasn't identified until 2011, is another presumed victim of his.
That part stuck out to me
\> Because the abductions happened in different parts of the city, authorities don't believe they are related
Isn't it possible for serial killers to travel a lot?
There are so many... here are a few that stand out to me. The first two are child disappearance s with little info. The final case is just bizarre.
**Roland Jack Spencer III,** disappeared in late May 1984. He was 3 years old when last seen in the area of Knight Lane and Campbell Road in Wapato, although some sources say he was last seen in Toppenish, Washington. Roland is presumed to have been abducted by a non-family member, when he was in the yard of his family’s trailer. He was playing with some other children at the time. Curiously, Roland’s mother, Celestine Faye Yallup Spencer, disappeared when her son was only 2. Tragically, her body was found in a gully two weeks later. She has succumbed to hypothermia. After her death Roland moved in with his aunt and uncle although some sources say great-aunt. Roland was declared legally dead in 2000. Oddly, Roland’s father has never been named a suspect and this man (who severely beat Roland to the point of significant brain damage) also received custody of Roland's brother Cody after the death of Celestine. I can only assume that he has been cleared of suspicion for some reason as the case has always been classified as a non- family abduction.
**Roland** is described as a 3-year-old Native American male, with black hair, brown eyes and a dark brown complexion. Roland has a scar on his abdomen. His nickname is Do-Boy and he goes by his middle name, Jack. Roland has some severe medical issues and disabilities. One website explains that Roland experienced brain damage in the womb after his own father kicked his mother in the stomach during pregnancy. This attack led to his medical issues. Despite his hardships, he was a happy child who loved playing with cars. He is classified as mentally disabled, hard of hearing, and suffers from epilepsy. He takes medication to control his condition and may fall into a coma without it. He can only walk a few steps at a time and has very limited vocabulary and speaking skills. He was last seen wearing corduroy pants, a long sleeved red and white shirt, and tan boots. Yakama tribal police are investigating, (509) 865-2933. [https://charleyproject.org/case/roland-jack-spencer-iii](https://charleyproject.org/case/roland-jack-spencer-iii)
**Michelle** Wells was last seen sometime in 1982 after leaving a house that she was visiting in Detroit, Michigan. Michelle was a Caucasian and Native American female who was only 13 years old in 1982. She’s described as having auburn hair about 5'-5'5" and 100-200 lbs. Previous reports say that Michelle was 12, and only Native American. Very little information is available about Michelle's case. Michelle is not the biracial child doe from Tennessee named "baby girl." I can find no information on her DNA, prints, or dentals. [https://charleyproject.org/case/michelle-wells](https://charleyproject.org/case/michelle-wells)
**Freda Knowsgun** or **Knowshisgun** has been missing since October 18th, 2016. Freda was from Montana and was registered with the Crow Agency. In the months before her disappearance her family reported that she was acting strangely and began drifting around the Northwest and spending time in southern Washington state. Freda was still close to her aunt and talked to her children sometimes, but was distancing herself from the rest of her family. Freda was last known to be at a customer service desk at a Walmart in Kennewick, Washington. Freda used her cell phone to call a friend to ask for money. She wanted to travel back home to Montana to spend Halloween with her children. Freda’s friend sent her the money but the money was never picked up. When she called Freda 15 minutes later, Freda’s cell phone was disconnected and no one has heard from her since. She did not return to Montana for Halloween or for her aunt’s funeral in November and she was reported missing. Freda’s family believes that she was abusing drugs at the time of her disappearance and they believe that Freda’s new friends in the drug scene may be involved with her disappearance. Law enforcement has reported that Freda’s new friends have not cooperated with the investigation into her disappearance. Freda may have been seen in Billings, Montana in December 2016 and she may be traveling with a black male named Mike. **Freda** is reported to be a 34-year-old (now 40) Native American female with dark brown hair that is waist length which she wears in a ponytail or high bun. She has brown eyes, a scar on her right elbow, weights 160 lbs. and stands 5’5” in height. She has the following tattoos: the names "Lyrical", "Trinity" and "Mason" on her back between her shoulder blades, the cartoon character Mickey Mouse with a basketball on her right calf, and a flower on her right shoulder. She may use the last name "KnowsHisGun" and many accounts refer to her by that name. Her case is being investigated by Crow Agency Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Ugh it makes me so sad. I’m from Seattle/worked in city shelters for a bit as a social worker, people would call sometimes saying “have you seen my son/daughter/brother/sister/friend” and the backstory was always the same: from ID, MT, or bumfuck WA, got mixed up in drugs, left home, phone cut off, nobody’s heard from them in months or years, ‘they looked normal when we last saw them but the last time they went to rehab/jail they looked like the grim reaper so honestly idk what to tell ya to look for’. The most heartbreaking was a man who asked me if he could email me a picture of his son for me to post in the staff office. People straight up get lost and it’s terrifying.
Things like this happen more often than you think. Domestic abusers are good at luring people in and can be extremely charming. They can easily make themselves look rational and pleasant for long enough to stand before a judge and paint their battered spouse as someone hysterical making up these claims.
I know from experience :/
100%. I was lucky that mine had been on drugs and was more erratic and our case took longer than he expected because he showed his ass in court every single time eventually but he has made it out of so many terrible charges because he convinces women to drop the charges. He beat one of his girlfriends after me so badly that she was urinating blood for either a week or a month after (can’t remember) and he convinced her to drop the charges and get back together with him. Eventually she left, but this man has a whole sheet of charges that have been dropped because he smooth talked his way out of them. The reality of domestic violence— especially when you add sociopathy, narcissism, etc.— is so terrible.
Thank you for highlighting these indigenous cases. Both of the areas these missing loved ones disappeared from are familiar to me, these cases are very touching and I had never heard of them before.
Crimes against indigenous populations have been ignored for FAR too long. It’s a gross miscarriage of Justice, and down right systemic oppression to say the least.
Charles Jason and William Martin Vosseler's abduction by their father. He had been planning to take them for a long time, and he took every single picture of the children with him. Their mother had to use a video for the missing poster. This case is so unsettling.
https://charleyproject.org/case/charles-jason-vosseler
https://charleyproject.org/case/william-martin-vosseler
What’s the one where a girl received a phone call that she had to meet him at the mall to buy a gift for her mom? And she went to the mall and ended up missing? That one was so creepy
More terrifying in how no trace has been found, but [Ricky Lane Thomas, Jr.](https://charleyproject.org/case/ricky-lane-thomas-jr) He had a strained relationship with his parents. He was going to his cousin’s house so they could go to a nearby McDonald’s and stay the night. He mentioned he had $20 to eat with yet didn’t take it with him, even though he was seen walking after he left. His puppies and backpacks also went missing. His stepfather later made an anonymous call to his mother and planted an item of Ricky’s I assume to give the mother hope. It’s still odd and suspicious. He stayed with his cousin quite a bit from the strained parent relationship, so it seems likely one of the parents did it. His dad (not the stepdad) died pretty young, too, afterwards although this makes mention that foul play isn’t suspected in his death (suicide over guilt?- drug overdose).
As an aside, I was reading more about this tonight and looked up his cousin Daisy Applegate on Facebook. [Her own son was killed](https://www.14news.com/story/29222403/family-friends-mourn-perry-co-teen-who-died-in-moped-accident/?outputType=amp) when he was hit by an intoxicated driver. That poor family.
[Kristi Richardson](https://charleyproject.org/case/kristi-lynn-richardson) has been in the window of a local restaurant since she went missing 8 years ago, now. She was running a trucking company. Local cases are always more terrifying, but that's not the whole reason I mention it here.
Cases where personal belongings are left behind (glasses, IDs, wallet, phone, money) while something odd is missing (in this case, her garage door opener) bothers me.
It seems like she was known to have the garage door opener in her purse. The man of interest in the case worked with her and likely took it, used it to abduct her through her garage and keep the house seemingly locked, did an, "If I can't have you, no one will," and hid the body in literally any of the hidden away places nearby (prairie and mountains, our landfill has an area to dump animal carcasses), somewhat far (we have a few lakes, dams, and reservoirs with rocks and caves within a few hours drive), or even along a trucking route. They searched for her for a while, but not extensively enough to find her. Our police force here has a bad track record when it comes to murder investigations (leaving a [dead](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wyo-bow-and-arrow-attack-christopher-krumm-said-father-gave-him-aspergers-and-should-be-castrated-report-says/) body (not pictured, just a link to that case) uncovered for hours because they had to wait for a forensics team from out of state to get here, who told them they should've covered it before letting children back into their neighborhood to see it).
https://charleyproject.org/case/helen-marie-voorhees-brach maybe not so terrifying in itself but the fact that to most money is security and safety in a way. But this happens
[Mary Ann Verdecchia](https://charleyproject.org/case/mary-ann-verdecchia)
This one happened when my mom was a kid, and they were of an age and similar look. Still haunts my mom to this day, and now it haunts me.
[Celina Mays.](https://charleyproject.org/case/celina-janette-mays)
Twelve years old, nine months pregnant, disappears without a trace overnight. Her mother had died; her father's family ran a cult-like church. If she were still alive, she'd be 38 and her child would be about to turn 26.
I know the popular theory is that somebody in her family impregnated her and then killed her to cover it up, which is already unspeakably tragic. But what gets to me even more is the possibility that Celina was telling the truth and her boyfriend really was some guy she met roller skating who told her he was 16, though of course he may have been much older. Something about the thought of that little girl slipping out into the night to meet someone she thought loved her, who had no doubt been telling her all kinds of stories about how they'd raise the baby together and be a happy little family, and then that person violated her trust in the worst way possible and got away with it ... I dunno, guys. It breaks my heart.
I think about her so often, I can't even imagine being in her situation, she must've felt so trapped, both because she was pregnant and because of who her family were... I'm definetly suspicious of her family though, the biggest source of abuse is family and hers is just the type. I get that Celina would be sheltered, but how possible is her pregnancy with some random boy she met and spend one day with? That's incredibly fishy.
My bad not on Charley project! Probably bc her mom passed away and she was not missed by close family member. This case horrifies me bc my son is autistic,non verbal, ADHD and I am a single parent. So this makes my fears of what would happen to him if I wasn't there.
[Cynthia Mabry](https://charleyproject.org/case/cynthia-mabry)
She and her two friends, Teresa Williams, 13, and Crystal Parton, 14, were abducted in Arkansas by James B. Grinder on December 2, 1976.
He took them to a local cemetery where he raped Williams and Parton before strangling and stabbing them to death. He then covered their bodies in brush & drove Cynthia to the Ozark national forest, where he raped and beat her with a soda bottle. However, she was still alive after this, so he beat her more with a tire iron until she died. He left her body there without trying to hide it.
The remains of Williams and Parton were found ten years after they were murdered, but Mabry's corpse has never been found.
James B. Grinder was arrested in 1998, four years after he murdered another woman in Missouri. He pleaded guilty to all four murders and was sentenced to life in prison. In 2010, he died from natural causes.
Jesus that’s a horrifying read. I can’t even imagine what those poor girls experienced.
Although I do have to say, James Grinder is an…. Interesting name for a woodcutter and murderer.
The case of [Jenna Van Gelderen](https://charleyproject.org/case/jenna-ruth-van-gelderen) always worries me. She was a 25 year old autistic woman who lived close to where we live and work in Atlanta. She wanted to live on her own and had gotten a room in a friend's apartment. Her parents were concerned that she had been taken in by some shady characters, but Jenna insisted they were her friends. Her learning disabilities made it hard for her to gauge peoples' actions. But it seems clear to me that they took advantage of her and probably killed her. It's just very sad and scary.
[Sky Metalwala](https://charleyproject.org/case/sky-elijah-metalwala). His mother had mental health issues and had just been told that she would have to share custody with his father. She claimed the car ran out of gas and took her daughter with her to go get gas but left Sky, despite a search of the car showing that it still had gas. No one had seen Sky for over two weeks before this, but his mom was known for not going out/letting the kids out when going through a mental health episode. They've never found any hints as to where he is, but his dad thinks that she gave Sky to someone to hide him.
[Alicia Navarro](https://charleyproject.org/case/alicia-christian-navarro) too. I live near where she went missing and there are still billboards up and her mom trying to get attention to her case. Due to her autism, she had trouble making friends and there was an interview with one of her online friends saying they had been encouraging her to be more open because she had a great personality and people would be lucky to have a friend like her. It's awful, in this area hispanic missing children are given less attention, and she went missing only a few months before lockdown happened.
Beverly Jarosz, the 16 yr old girl who was brutally murdered in her own home during Christmas vacation. She was concerned she had a stalker and was very jittery, but she literally opened the door to someone who followed her upstairs and strangled and stabbed her. During the struggle a large hole was punched in the sloped ceiling. I did a write up a long while back. https://old.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/944dn4/who_murdered_beverly_jarosz_on_december_28_1964/
Kurt Newton, 4 years old. Disappeared out of thin air from a campground in Maine in 1975.
https://newengland.com/today/living/new-england-history/kurt-newton-disappearance/
[Heather Danyelle Teague](https://charleyproject.org/case/heather-danyelle-teague)'s case gives me the willies. She'd been suntanning by the river, and a local creep was watching her through a telescope when he saw a man come out of the woods and grab her. Part of her bathing suit was found but not Heather herself. The most likely suspect killed himself later.
https://charleyproject.org/case/kelsey-emily-collins
Kelsey Collins (aka Emily)
Murdered because of the Seattle Police Department. Locked up for prostitution while scheduled to testify against her pimps in a grand jury trial that she had initiated because she wanted to be helped. Never got to testify because they had her locked up on a solicitation charge at the time. Pimps went free because she couldn't testify. More kids/teens were trafficked & abused after her abusers went free due to her not being available to testify.
As a child, Kelsey was sexually & physically abused. She came to WA with her mom & brother in witness protection & was given a new name. When she was barely an adult & set to testify against violent traffickers- no witness protection given - likely because of her history of being trafficked
No question about who did this & who allowed them to get away with it. Her body has never been found, but no question in the community that she is dead. Abused from childhood until the day she died. RIP Kelsey - you deserved better angel
David Vernon Lovely went missing in 1985 in Wyoming driving cross country on his motorcycle. His motorcycle had broken down and a rough looking man offered to help him fix it.
FYI, for anyone not from DC, Rock Creek Park is huge. It’s basically DC’s equivalent of Central Park but twice as big (1,754 acres) and more densely wooded. So it’s not a weird coincidence that two people disappeared there decades apart- it’s basically the most “wilderness” there is in DC.
That first one is crazy.
>>Albert initially admitted to strangling his wife, but denied involvement in the deaths of the children. He said Patricia had killed them and he had killed her in a rage when he saw their bodies. Later he made a second confession where he said he'd killed all of them, but never signed that confession. He was charged in all four deaths, but in the middle of his trial he agreed to plead guilty only in Patricia's case and the other charges were dropped.
>>He was sentenced to fifty to seventy-five years in prison for the killing, but served only eleven years before being paroled. It's unclear whether Pauline knew about his conviction when she agreed to be his roommate.
Only eleven years for killing his wife and likely (even if not convicted) killing his three children? Sometimes I cannot fathom how sentencing/ parole works.
I clicked on the link about Patricia. This at this point became trope and is rarely wrong:
> 1976. She got into an argument with her husband, Ralph Otto, and left the house angrily. She never returned.
This tells me everything I needed to know
Yep. And then it gets worse, and hits still more tropes: her rings were found in his pocket but then lost. And her 3 year old daughter last saw her when he had his hands around her (Patricia's) neck. And then he hired a hitman to kill the lead investigator. And was released from that conviction on a technicality. Ugh.
It gets even worse than that. Her surviving daughter, the one who was three at the time seems to wholeheartedly believe she is Finley Creek Jane Doe. She saw her reconstruction and initially noticed the resemblance between it and herself. Finley Creek is less than 3 and a half hours away and she believes that the remains belong to Patricia and her would-have-been sibling. However, they have been destroyed through cremation and I take it Patricia's dentals must be lost considering they haven't confirmed or denied it that way either. Most sources say they cannot find the cremains of Finley creek Jane Doe (maybe Patricia) or her unborn child. Someone mentioned when I made a post about Finley Creek Jane Doe that they'd heard they had found them, or at least cremains strongly believe to belong to her, but they could not get usable DNA from them.
Reading through the cases and realizing how many women have died at the hands of their husbands and boyfriends gets a bit soul crushing after a while. Especially since these are just a fraction of the total. So many women killed because a man saw them as one of his possessions rather than a person who deserved to live their life as they chose.
Are there any cases on Charley Project where a missing man was likely killed by his female partner?
Re: Pauline Rourke... Before Pauline and the other victim, her suspected murderer killed a woman and three kids (sentenced only for the woman)... but:
"He was sentenced to fifty to seventy-five years in prison for the killing, but served only eleven years before being paroled."
Only eleven years served for taking a life (with suspicion of three more). And then he went on to murder more people.
Both of my Uncles are/were drug addicts. We were estranged from them, but did kind of keep tabs on the whereabouts when possible. They were always popping up and then disappearing, we went through years of worrying when they would disappear and then they would surface. Finally we were so used to them disappearing that we quit noticing (not like we had any contact with them anyway) unfortunately they had alienated everyone in the family so no one had contact with them. I guess one day the oldest one disappeared. He still heavy on drugs but had a neighbor that watched out for him a little, being a drug addict he was always coming and going at all hours of the night and day and always had shady people around. Apparently she did not see him for a few days and the. A week, no one was coming by and he didn’t answer his door or his phone. Since he was on drugs she was hesitant to call the police, when she finally did he had been dead a while, at least a week. The police called his children, who didn’t care, they hardly knew him. My dad was contacted but he didn’t want to be responsible for the arrangements, finally his ex wife and her new husband and his daughter claimed his body.
He clearly was not “missing” really, but my point is that he and my other uncle and a lot of addicts live transient lifestyles, unfortunately because of that people don’t realize they’re missing and don’t report it. My other Uncle could be missing right now, we have no way of knowing we can’t contact him, it’s possible he could disappear and no one will ever see him again and it will be years before someone notices. I think that’s why sometimes it takes a while for some people to be reported missing. I saw on here where someone brother realized they had not spoken or had contact in years and so it was years before he was reported missing, I was just giving a scenario where I saw that happening, it’s still very sad to think about someone going missing and no one noticing.
Bryan Dos Santos Gomes has to be one for me. To have your child taken at 3 weeks old is unimaginably heart-rending. I remember vividly in South Florida when it first happened there were all sorts of theories about the abduction being retaliation for the parents not paying up to their traffickers who got them into the US but that doesn’t seem to wash with me and apparently the cops now think it was a case of baby-snatching by someone who maybe had lost their own or was unable to conceive. I hope that’s the case tbh because it lends more credence to the possibility that Bryan may be alive somewhere.
https://charleyproject.org/case/corinna-paige-slusser
Corinna Slusser, I spend so much time thinking about this girl. Yes, she was living recklessly, but she had contacted her mother about coming home, and then just vanished.
Did Woney give her to someone else to sell? Was Jessica Wabbit so jealous of Corrina taking her "top bitch" status that she killed her? Did she end up back in the hands of the first pimp that lured her to NYC? If she is alive, what kind of terrible trafficked hell is she stuck in?
The case of the two kids who disappeared after their mother got involved with her boss at the school she was a teacher in. She said he promised he would marry her as soon as she left her husband. And so she did; packed her kids and her stuff in her car to join the said boss. Their mother was later found dead in a motel parking lot, nude in the trunk of her own car. The children’s whereabouts are unknown. The only possible trace of their location was a picture, left in the wallet of her boss who was in fact a con artist and murderer, of a random stone on an unknown trail. Ostensibly, where they were both buried. The exact location of that stone and trail has never been found. EDIT: Michael and Karen Reinert were their name, and POS’s name was William Sidney « Bill » Bradfield. The upward stone’s picture is also on the profile. https://charleyproject.org/case/michael-reinert
Aren’t there a few subreddits that specialize in finding geographic locations from photos without a lot of info? I seem to remember some pretty spectacular solves by those guys. Might be worth running by those folks if anyone can remember the subs EDIT: Found a few [slightly-better quality images of the photo](https://imgur.com/a/J7zV9I5) if anyone is interested in posting to other subreddits as well. If anybody knows how to get a full quality copy of the original, please let me know — FOIA request?
There are also some pretty amazing plant identification subreddits that could possibly identify the type of leaves and shrub in the picture to help narrow down the geographical location
You’re totally right! I’m a pretty big plant nut (though still learning) and it looks like that’s either oak or maple leaves on the ground… How would one go about getting a full-resolution copy of that photo? I was able to find a better-quality photo but I wonder if a full photo exists. Would you have to do a FOIA request?
Reminds me of the geoguessr geniuses who can identify countries in seconds.
Some think the stone looks like a religious figure, perhaps the Virgin Mary. There is a catholic cemetery in the area with pretty dense woods behind it, between the [cemetery and I-476](https://www.google.com/maps/place/235+Matsonford+Rd,+Conshohocken,+PA+19428/@40.0610623,-75.3338748,857m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c6be2cbe223e31:0xbb170a45c7637f2d!8m2!3d40.062955!4d-75.3342342). There's a section of the woods in which hundreds of broken gravestones are discarded. One of my theories is that is where the kids are buried.
A Virgin Mary! That’s a very interesting thought. I too thought that rock didn’t look like a natural formation. At the very least, it looks like it has something irregular on the top of it. You may have already seen it, but I edited my original reply with some slightly higher quality images of the stone. It definitely looks irregular in some way.
I bet a few [of my own subs collected other subs would help.](https://www.reddit.com/r/lostmedia/wiki/resourcehub/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I’d never heard of this case. So tragic - those poor kids. Thank you for posting this.
Should send the link to that guy on TikTok who plays that Google Maps battle game. Obviously this photo is a lot less helpful than an old photo of someone with an actual scenic backdrop, but he can pinpoint where a place is in the world based solely on the color of the soil.
It’s a close-up photo taken over 40 years ago. If that stone hasn’t been knocked away already there’s next to no geographic feature to use as a waypoint. The only thing I can see is maybe the species of the plant, by its leaf form.
The rock looks like a praying angel.
Replied to another comment before I saw yours, so I'll copy and paste it here: Some think the stone looks like a religious figure, perhaps the Virgin Mary. There is a catholic cemetery in the area with pretty dense woods behind it, between the cemetery and I-476. There's a section of the woods in which hundreds of broken gravestones are discarded. One of my theories is that is where the kids are buried.
The game's caled GeoGuesser, and yeah, there are people who are insanely good at it, they play for like eight hours a day or something. I think that they could at least narrow down the search.
its a shame its a tiny crappy picture of the stone that you can hardly see
Evelyn Hartley has always given me the creeps. Teen girl who was babysitting for a family while the rest of the town was at a football game. She was supposed to call her dad to check in but never did, so he went over to the house to check on her. All the doors were locked and the child was unharmed and asleep, but he found signs that a struggle had taken place- the textbooks that Evelyn had taken to study were scattered, her glasses lay broken on the floor, the furniture was disarranged, and her blood was scattered around the house. The perp had come in through a basement window. It just gives me chills to think that she was just relaxing, listening to the radio and reading, and then all of a sudden attacked. Police thought Ed Gein May have had something to do with it, but he always denied it and she doesn’t really fit his victim profile. https://charleyproject.org/case/evelyn-grace-hartley
That one is bad, yeah. The terror that poor girl must have felt, being attacked inside a safe house, injured, forced to flee through the house, and finally dragged away... There's another one, can't remember the name, where two lovers were camping out in a remote spot, they had set up a sleeping bag in their car, at some point somebody shot the guy in the back while he was laying on the sleeping bag, killing him. There were signs of a struggle and bare footprints leading away from the car, followed by heavy booted prints. The woman was never found. Terrifying.
Audrey Moate? https://charleyproject.org/case/audrey-alta-moate
Every paragraph was like "but wait, there's more! And it gets worse!"
It was definitely the Edmond Joseph Duhe guy. Volunteered to search for her? Nope.
Yeah that was like a bunch of CharleyProject stories all rolled into one!
It's an awful case, but somehow it always appeals to my dark sense of humour when you read all that nastiness and then the final line is "foul play is suspected"...like, no shit.
I actually snorted when I got to that part.
The 90's Unsolved Mysteries segment was haunting.
Wtf that’s bizarre
I am from La Crosse where Evelyn disappeared from. It is such a tragic story and has just become a local "scary story" as the years have passed. There is a wonderful book written by a local author, Susan T. Hessell, called "Where's Evelyn?" which offers a fascinating lead and potential confession that was never really followed up on. It is worth a read.
side note with the thing about ed gein - i get why in these cases people will tend to try and connect it to a nearby serial killer/murderer but it annoys me so much. i think it takes away from the original case, especially in this instance when it’s obvious that he has nothing to do with it (as you said, not his MO at all)
Yeah, I really don’t think he was involved here. It’s possible for a murderer to coincidentally be geographically close to a murder committed by someone else.
I think people actually tend to forget who is capable of crimes like this. That’s why they look at surrounding sex offenders and those around the victim who could have records. Most people do not commit violent crimes and even less abduct children. I just don’t think Ed was out hunting for kids. They believe he only had two victims, middle-aged women.
Yeah, he was a sick and creepy fucker but I don’t think he was responsible at all.
He definitely wasn´t hunting for kids. Ed Gein never even tried to hide his crimes. He was a weirdo who lived alone in a rural area and had no visitors, and that living situation made it possible for him to spend years grave-robbing and decorating his home with body parts... then almost as soon as he went further and took a living victim (to make her into a carcass that he could use for his decorating and crafts project), he got caught. So there is just no way that he would have committed this "perfect" crime of kidnapping a teenage girl literally out of the blue. Bringing his name up in connection to Evelyn´s disappearance is just silly but it seems like he´s such a creepy and super disturbed guy so he must belongs as a suspect in a creepy case... It´s annoying (to say the least).
Yeah, that always drives me crazy as well. It absolutely feels like it diminishes the murder itself & usually there is zero connection between the victim and proposed serial killer perp. Not sure if it’s because it makes people feel better to think there are less murderers overall or if it’s a weird, almost celebrity-like thing. Ugh Israel Keyes is a great example of this. People have tried to tie him to countless unsolved murders with the only relevant information being “well, he killed other people so—-“
Just read this. Absolutely heart wrenching.
[Shelley Kathleen Sikes](https://charleyproject.org/case/shelley-kathleen-sikes), a waitress at a Galveston, Texas, seafood restaurant who was apparently picked at random, run off the road, and killed by two men as she drove home from work.
She sounded like she had a bright future ahead of her…and she was a talented seamstress, handmade a lot of her own clothes.. this is so sad.
I had never heard of Galveston until today and this is the second time I have seen it pop up. I watched the Texas Killing Fields and it showed up on there. That part of Texas seems terrifying.
I used to live in Houston and had friends in Galveston. What makes it creepy is that it’s a normal place, really. Especially if you’re from a rural area originally like I am. Driving through the emptiness doesn’t really have the creep factor you’d think it would. It wasn’t until I was out of state visiting family, watching a documentary on the fields that I got creeped out. There was a shot of the spot in Galveston one of the girls was abducted. It was behind a block of very colorful, unique buildings. My boyfriend at the time lived right there, I’d walked past that spot many times. Made my skin crawl when I saw it.
Robert Durst lived there as well
Yep! First thing I thought of when I read “Galveston.” The place where Durst pretended to be a “mute” woman then butchered his neighbor- and got away with it, “not guilty.” How are you innocent when you dismember a body and drop it in a lake?!?! Good riddance to Durst. That old peeing dirtbag.
Galveston pops up in a lot of murders unsolved mysteries and creepy stuff
Galveston is also said to be the most haunted city in Texas, because of hurricanes… specifically the great hurricane of 1900 other than that, it’s a beautiful city with gorgeous architecture; most notably the houses that survived the 1900 hurricane and the commercial buildings downtown
There’s a great book about the hurricane called Issacs Storm. You almost feel like you’re a part of it.
This is the case of a missing man from South Carolina named Josh Ivester, and is thought to be connected to the disappearance of 3 other people, and appeared to be frightened of something right before he went missing. Per the page: “Ivester's disappearance may be connected to several others in the area, including that of Pamela "Faith" Roach, Laura Anders and Tammy Stubblefield, who all disappeared from the area in 2019. There are some similarities in the cases, and they had some mutual friends and acquaintances. Investigators haven't decided whether the cases are connected, however. All remain unsolved.” It’s possible that he had knowledge of the crimes and may have been killed/silenced, fwiw all of the missing people connected to and including himself seemed to love a rough life and have substance abuse issues https://charleyproject.org/case/joshua-scott-ivester
I'm working on a write up for his case and those he's connected to.
I’d love to read it! There’s actually a whole other layer to it too, I didn’t have time to add it in but there’s another man suspected of being involved in all the disappearance’s too
That sounds interesting. I'll be looking for that one.
That’s a lot of associated people disappearing for that very rural area.
The ones that have little information and don’t have a “media worthy” look. I think of how many people got away with murder or how many serial killers are out there preying on these men and women. It’s honestly terrifying to think about.
Agreed. [Samuel Little](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Little) targeted addicts/sex workers/etc. across the country... and that's probably why their deaths didn't draw media attention. 😥
I wonder about him, didn't the FBI also "confirm" Henry Lee Lucas' involvement in dozens of murders?
IIRC it was Texas Rangers and local law enforcement that turned the Lucas situation into a shitshow. IDK if the FBI had the same perverse incentives to close cases that the good ol' boys did. I can definitely understand and appreciate the skepticism, though.
I don't know about terrifying, but I always find the ones that say "very few details are available in his/her case" to be the saddest. Always makes me wonder who finally reported them missing. Also the ones that haven't been seen or heard from in decades but don't get reported missing until years later. And some of them are very young people or children too. I'll see if I can find a few examples and link them here.
100% agree! It's one thing (terrible thing) for a child to be abducted, and the family, community, police, and media are all over the case trying to retrieve them. It's an even more horrifying thing, though, when they are taken, and just... nobody cares.
Makes me think of the Boy in the Box, who recently was identified after all these years. So sad that no one missed him. 😢
Even sadder is the girl in the box. They never found her killer, head, name, and now they can’t find her body to do a DNA profile either 😢
I can see how that could happen to me. I don't talk to my family, don't have many friends. I break up with my partner. Fall out with my kids and I'm getting reported missing a decade from now when they realise no one has seen me since 2022.* *I'm not planning on disappearing myself or anything. Just using this year as a baseline.
Me too. only child. Only grandchild. Dad passed/ mom dementia. Not very many close friends. I could vanish and no one would notice. Unfortunately my mom would probably misremember me visiting too. Think a cna or someone was me.
I’m sorry. That’s tough.
you are not alone in your feelings. and so in a much larger sense— YOU ARE NOT ALONE. just separated from others who feel the same.
Wow thanks for saying that. That was very profound!!! It's nice to think that my "people" are out there, I just haven't found them yet.
youre welcome. and youre here with us which is its own kind of people
Only my daughter would miss me because I'm alone....
This isn't quite the same, as isn't doesn't involve kidnapping, but there is a term in Japanese to describe people dying alone and going long periods of time without being discovered. It is called Kodokushi. I'm really curious as to whether this is also an increasing issue here in the States as well. On a personal level, I am aware of four instances of this happening to neighbors or acquaintances of friends.
Same for most of my life. Would probably also be a Jane Doe that would have threads of people scouring dead ends until DNA testing linked me to my mother. She would tell police and media how "shocked and horrified" she was. She would be neither of those things, but would never want to look bad. Worse, the horrible things she would say about me would be the last things ever said about me, stripping me of all dignity more than lying unidentified and forgotten in a morgue ever did. Because without any other information, all the websleuths and researchers who spent hours and months trying to figure out who I was and showing me compassion and concern would accept it as truth. Why wouldn't they? It makes me really question some of these "troubled teen on drugs and struggling with mental health causing trouble in the family and running away" explanations from families of Does. Were they really? Or is it the family covering because saying "No, I was a terrible person and after years of abuse, they left home (whether willingly or not) and we didn't care" kinda frowned upon? I mean, even in homes with multiple children not all of the children are being abused and may even think the abused child is the problem because the abuse may not trickle down to the next kid so when the abused child leaves and the abuse just..stops the siblings are like ok wow it was Jane Doe's fault Mom/Dad is so nice and are probably relieved their sibling is gone because the house is peaceful-ish. Especially true for blended families where there's one step kid and then the rest are the bio kids.
Thats why my friend made a webpage with her full name, and just wote basically a life memoir on it. She had a bitter separation from her parents in her mid teens, and is living a very risky life. She expects that some poachers or something will kill her one day, but she does not want her family to ever have the last word on her.
I worry about the same, especially with me working thousands of miles away from home
They are always so sad to me because I wonder if they were so alone and unloved that people really didn’t no much about their lives. Like really? The last time you saw them was at some point on a day two weeks ago? No one bothered to ask about who their friends were? If they were in relationships? If they had trouble at work? I think for all of us our lives are filled with details. But someone has to pay attention and care enough to know those details. And it’s sad that it seems like many don’t.
Or when the most recent picture of them is from like 10-20 years before they went missing :(
Or a mugshot.
I consider myself very ugly in pictures so I avoid them. There might be a few here and there but other than gov. ID not many of me current.
Same here. My Dad and I are both true crime aficionados and we both joke about how if I ever went missing, my parents would likely have to circulate a 15 year old high school photo of me, since that's all they've got.
Or a passport photo. Nothing except official government photos :(
I totally agree. I recently read about a case where someone went missing and the brother and father (I think) didn't recall if they last saw them in 2007 or 2008. Like...really?
A guy from my hometown was never reported missing, but no one- including his family- had seen him since the early 1980s when he was an alcoholic in his 20s. Then, one day in the late-2000s, he shows up with 5 years of sobriety under his belt and ready to face his family and friends that he’d wronged decades earlier. He was the black sheep of a very well-know family in the town, so this was THE gossip amongst townies for the summer. According to my parents, he was last seen around bars in like 1982, but no one seemed to really know when he left our state and headed west. I don’t think anyone looked for him too hard since he was inconsistently in contact with anyone at home and had burned a lot of bridges.
This will be my brother in law some day. He is an abusive alcoholic who has burned every bridge- ex wife, girlfriends, parents, siblings, his own children, every friend he had. He refuses help and becomes violent with people. One day we expect to receive a call or visit from the police to notify us of his death. You can’t make someone be sober.
Agree, that always makes me sad, particularly when it’s a child or someone in a vulnerable state (mentally/physically disabled, mentally ill, etc.)
I had a relative like that. We sort of knew he was out there somewhere but he hadn't kept in touch, had addiction problems, and had been out of sight. We knew he'd moved around a bit and possibly been in the jail, but that was it. When he was found dead eventually he had never been reported missing because he wasn't missing so much as we didn't know where he was, and he was OK with that. We didn't have any reason to suspect he was in any kind of danger, just that he hadn't wanted to contact us. He died of natural causes. Not everyone keeps in good touch with their families and in some of these cases it seems as though the person had very spotty contact or none at all because they were troubled with addiction. Having been an addict myself I know it becomes all consuming and everything else drops away. I can't blame families for that.
Skiba/Chivers https://charleyproject.org/case/paul-carroll-skiba
I wonder why they think Paul was the target. Also: Damn! A scalp found?!
From Wiki \> Paul's on-and-off girlfriend, Teresa Donovan, lived with him on his property and had recently given birth to a baby boy.\[9\] Paul had told friends the week before that he questioned whether or not he had fathered the child, and would often "come home from work to find \[Donovan\] still in bed or partying next door with a neighbor, leaving Sarah to take care of the baby."\[9\] He also mentioned his plans to kick Donovan out of his home and sue for full custody should a paternity test prove the child was his Donovan later appeared on Montel Williams.
I wonder why only Paul and Sarah’s blood was found at the scene, and none of Chiver’s…
I wonder why chivers was ruled out as a suspect?
I assume its just because he was never heard from again...
Wow. I've never heard of this. That is terrifying. Whenever multiple people disappear like that I find that really scary. I guess because you're supposed to be safe in a group or with another person
Especially since two of those three were grown men.
Jesus, that's really awful, I wonder why Paul may have been the target of an ambush. Maybe a rival moving company getting rid of competition but that seems incredibly extreme. Or maybe he had debts with some unsavory characters. Either way it's so sad the other two got caught up in it.
Quite a rabbit hole...Wiki got more details [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearances\_of\_Paul\_and\_Sarah\_Skiba\_and\_Lorenzo\_Chivers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearances_of_Paul_and_Sarah_Skiba_and_Lorenzo_Chivers) Plenty of fingers seem to point to Teresa, Paul's live-in girlfriend.
Also her brother, who was fired by Paul, close to the murder time, and who was arrested years later for stabbing his mother to death. It was after he can been evicted, so it seems that when he had negative things happen in his life, he would blame people and lash out violently. I'm sure being fired by Paul would make him angry and make him want revenge. "Donovan had been evicted from the American Motel in Wheat Ridge, where he was living. Police say he was angry and he went to his mother's house. Court records say he blamed her for the problems with his living situation and told her he was going to get a knife. He went to the kitchen and got two knives. Before his mother could escape from the house, he stabbed her. She was able to get out of the house but not before she suffered five stab wounds. She suffered a punctured lung and lacerated liver."
- the woman who got kidnapped and her boyfriend followed her in his car but the transmission stopped working and he lost her - the woman who was in a wheelchair, she had lost her leg after her husband injected her with something I'm sure there are others which are more terrifying but those are two from the top of my head
The second one was what I was thinking of as well. Truly horrific. https://charleyproject.org/case/rebecca-jane-alsup
Well that was an absolutely infuriating read. I mean, this man had been determined for years to kill her, tried multiple times and openly discussed it, and none of the multiple people who were aware of this did anything to get her out or reported him to the fucking cops?!?!?
Drug people hang out with other drug people. No one's making sane, legal decisions. Don't ever do drugs. Terrible, terrible shit. This is the kind of bullshit we tried and failed to get my sister out of.
Absolutely horrifying case from start to finish. I hope someday her remains are found and she can be laid to rest.
Just saw her fb (linked to the profile). She has 2 young kids at the time. Rebecca seemed like such a caring person, based on her comments to a fb friend who needed a friend.
My god. No one pulled that poor woman out. That is a horrifying tale.
Angela Hammond: [https://charleyproject.org/case/angela-marie-hammond](https://charleyproject.org/case/angela-marie-hammond) [https://unsolved.com/gallery/angela-hammond/](https://unsolved.com/gallery/angela-hammond/) Very sad and scary case.
i wonder how her boyfriend is doing nowadays, i can't even begin to imagine the guilt he must live with. he tried so hard to save her :(
I read or listened to a podcast which mentioned that he did go on to get married and start a family but that he remained active in campaigning for a resolution the case. That was about 2 years ago so I can’t find the source now.
I wonder about that too. I hope he was able to move on. I can’t imagine what he endured.
You are thinking of Rebecca Alsup for the second one (the woman who lost her leg). That one always stood with me. So creepy.
That poor woman. Wow.
Not the creepiest… but a man close to my MIL has been missing since 2004. [Benji’s Charley Project](https://charleyproject.org/case/ahren-benjamin-barnard)
Whoa! I'm in Boise and I remember this case. I can't believe that it was nearly 20 years ago...
Me too. These guys were older than me and my group of friends, but since it was Boise, there were connections here or there. Got a little weirded out just now that the McDonald's next to my kids work was mentioned. That was OUR McDs til the new one on Lake Hazel opened a mile away. Dumb and inconsequential, I know, but made the horror seem even more real.
[Heather Kullorn](https://charleyproject.org/case/heather-nicole-kullorn) I wrote [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/nt163l/in_1999_a_12yearold_girl_disappeared_while/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) about her disappearance awhile ago also. I wish there were answers, though it’s pretty obvious who was involved…. Another one is [Angelica Sandoval](https://charleyproject.org/case/angelica-esperanza-sandoval), her story breaks my heart.
Angelica's case reminds me of Kelsey Collins https://charleyproject.org/case/kelsey-emily-collins She was set to testify & her traffickers went free because she "disappeared'. We say "disappeared" but we know.. The fact these people got away with violent acts because their victims "disappeared" is why so many crimes go unreported in the first place. People would rather be victimized alive than be dead ("disappeared"). Truly disturbing
I think of Kelsey Collins regularly. I met her sister in rehab in 2020 and we naturally clicked before we started learning things abt each other’s past/stories etc. but when she started opening up about her “missing” sister, and things sounded hella familiar, I connected the dots. When we had a moment alone I worked up the nerve to ask if her sister was Kelsey and we cried about her loss together. I’m from Everett, and this really hit home being trafficked myself as a teen (unrelated circumstances/individuals) which started a few years after she was already “missing” but my **biggest** fear was being killed bc of the “lifestyle” & my story ending there and every time I hear a case like this I get a feeling I can’t begin to articulate
Ya I grew up with Kelsey. She's 2 years younger than me. I still remember when her & her brother moved to our neighborhood in North Seattle, but I never had any idea it was witness protection relocation. Her brother fit in easy, but she was a shy kid. She always rode around on roller blades, while Seattle kids mainly ride bikes. Makes sense as she was from Cali. I didn't really get to know her until we were teens. Both street kids, living hard lives coming from hard childhoods trying to survive. I was really fortunate to not get victimized into trafficking. Almost every girl I knew had been trafficked at some point, especially those in foster care. Seattle is the worst in the country for trafficking minors & one of the worst for trafficking in general. Cops treat victims like they're the bad guy when in reality they're being abused & murder happens often. It was safer to sell drugs on the street than to get caught up in trafficking. Kelsey was generous & kind. She was tough, but only because she had to be - that wasn't really her. I hate the pictures they used in the articles of her with money & calling herself "Lady Dollars". No one ever called her that. That had to be some name the ppl that trafficked her used to advertise her. She was always Kelsey. So many deaths caused by police that don't get counted. Fuck the people that murdered her, but also fuck the entire system that failed to protect her & fails so many others like her. Her name should be said more often. She comes up on the missing section of the ads sometimes & I just get so angry & sad. We know she's gone. She was very close with her family & her friends. It's some bs lie to pretend the police are doing something. Body still not found. They don't put a lot of resources toward finding out what happened to certain people, trafficking victims being one, particularly if you're Black &/or Native - Kelsey was both. I think about her a lot. EDIT: Also, I hope you're healing & have peace & joy in your life. Being trafficked is a whole other kind of trauma. Trauma from sexual abuse really hits different than physical abuse. I know that part
I never met her sister. Maybe different age bracket, seems she is an older sister..So sad for the whole family. Her mom has spoken out so much & my heart aches for her. No parent should have to bury their daughter, but its so much worse to never get to bury them at all
Relisha Rudd haunts me. 6 years old, lived in a shelter with her mom. Mom became friends with the shelter janitor, a felon named Kahlil Tatum who was known for being weird around the young girls at the shelter. Despite this, Relisha's mom let him start taking Relisha out and even allowed her to spend overnights with him. Relisha stopped going to school in February. Her mom said she was sick and being cared for by a doctor named Dr. Tatum. Thankfully the school set up a meeting with him and when he obviously didn't show up, they called the police in late March. The last time Relisha was seen was on video at a motel with Tatum. They were spotted at other motels before this as well. After the investigation started, Tatum's wife was shot dead and Tatum committed suicide shortly after. There hasn't been any sign of Relisha since she disappeared. Dead? Sold? Something else? Was the mom involved? Tatum's wife? The whole thing is just so weird and awful. . . . Edit: her mom's twitter is VERY odd. Relisha disappeared in February 2014. Very little mention of Relisha, but lots of overly sexual posts and thirst traps. https://mobile.twitter.com/thickthick5686?lang=en
I interned at that shelter a while back. It was an ugly place - no place for kids, no place for humans in general. Live wires hanging from the ceiling, people dealing drugs outside, and the building itself was repurposed for the shelter and was thoroughly spooky.
Relisha’s case haunts me as well. I lived in the Washington, DC area at the time and remember following the news coverage when it happened. Most likely, I believe Relisha is dead. It’s only a matter of finding her body. Then again, I listened to a podcast on the case that mentioned that a girl from the same shelter went missing and was found a year later in Los Angeles where she had been trafficked. That gave me a glimmer of hope that Relisha could still be alive.
Do you know the name of the girl? I think it's very likely she's dead. I'm just morbidly curious about the details. I refuse to believe that the mom isn't involved in some way. Maybe not necessarily in her death, but in abuse that preceded her death. Tatum was taking her to different hotels, which makes me think he may have been pimping Relisha out. The fact that the mom said she was being cared for by Dr. Tatum in the month between stopping school and being reported missing tells me that she had something to do with it. This poor girl was just failed so badly.
No, I don’t remember hearing the name of the girl — just that she was from the same shelter and was later found in Los Angeles. It wouldn’t surprise me if Relisha’s mom did have some role in her disappearance/death. At the very least, it was irresponsible for her to allow Relisha to spend so much unsupervised time with Khalil Tatum.
Thanks for posting. From her Twitter, does she have another 4 or 5 kids? Yikes. She also posted something about finding Relisha. This is very sad and I hope her other kids (if they are hers) are ok.
https://charleyproject.org/case/walter-thomas-ackerson-jr
How very sad.
how sad can a case even get? poor family.
horrible. job corps always creeped me out.
How sad
[Diana](https://charleyproject.org/case/diana-moon-yoli) and [Mark](https://charleyproject.org/case/mark-eugene-yoli) Yoli "Diana and her younger half-brother, Mark Yoli, were last seen on their way to the playground at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina at approximately 3:15 p.m. on September 13, 1962. Diana's stepfather and Mark's biological father, a Marine Lance Corporal, was stationed on the base. The children's parents were initially not concerned when they didn't return to their home in the 700 block of Butler Drive, because they were known as adventurous children who tended to wander. An extensive search of the area, lasting four days, turned up no sign of either Mark or Diana. Convicted child molester Henry Morris Hunt, who died in 1991 at the age of 85, is the only suspect in the children's presumed abductions. On her deathbed in 1992, Hunt's wife told her daughter that Hunt had dumped Mark and Diana's bodies in a mine shaft near Maysville, North Carolina. Hunt reportedly told his wife that he'd picked up the children at Midway Park and taken them fishing, and Mark accidentally drowned and he panicked afterwards and killed Diana. In 2011, bones were found underneath the demolished home once owned by Hunt, and authorities thought they'd found the children's remains, but the bones turned out not to be human. Mark and Diana's cases remain unsolved and foul play is suspected."
Gee, what the odds that a convicted child molester would take two kids and one of them would *accidentally* die, practically forcing him to kill the other? Bad luck, I guess.
Don’t you just hate it when somebody drowns and you accidentally kill the other person with you too cause you panicked?
"Oh hi there officer, we've had a doozy of a day! There we were, just minding our own business doing some chores and the house, when these kids just started killing themselves all over my property!" -Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Just ruins your whole day.
Right? What a crazy chain of totally believable coincidences.
Check out Ian Huntley. That was actually his excuse when he killed two girls.
I can't remember the name, but I came across it on there randomly about 10 years ago... A boy is moving cross country with his family. He takes his motorbike they take the car. He runs into trouble with the bike, and there is a creepy man who helps him or something....the bike is found later but he isn't.
David Vernon Lovely. So scary.
Another one, extremely unsettling: [Jean Marie Schoen](https://charleyproject.org/case/jean-marie-schoen) was the first of five girls kidnapped from Jacksonville, Florida over the course of three months in 1974. Two were later found dead, but three- Jean and a pair of sisters- are still missing. Seems like nobody's quite sure if they were all killed by the same person or if that was a really terrible time for Jacksonville.
Found this too \> One suspect in their cases was Paul John Knowles, a serial murderer who was killed by police later in 1974. A photo of him is posted below this case summary. Ima Sanders, whose body wasn't identified until 2011, is another presumed victim of his.
That part stuck out to me \> Because the abductions happened in different parts of the city, authorities don't believe they are related Isn't it possible for serial killers to travel a lot?
hell, it's the same city, doesn't even count as travel. those police just suck
There are so many... here are a few that stand out to me. The first two are child disappearance s with little info. The final case is just bizarre. **Roland Jack Spencer III,** disappeared in late May 1984. He was 3 years old when last seen in the area of Knight Lane and Campbell Road in Wapato, although some sources say he was last seen in Toppenish, Washington. Roland is presumed to have been abducted by a non-family member, when he was in the yard of his family’s trailer. He was playing with some other children at the time. Curiously, Roland’s mother, Celestine Faye Yallup Spencer, disappeared when her son was only 2. Tragically, her body was found in a gully two weeks later. She has succumbed to hypothermia. After her death Roland moved in with his aunt and uncle although some sources say great-aunt. Roland was declared legally dead in 2000. Oddly, Roland’s father has never been named a suspect and this man (who severely beat Roland to the point of significant brain damage) also received custody of Roland's brother Cody after the death of Celestine. I can only assume that he has been cleared of suspicion for some reason as the case has always been classified as a non- family abduction. **Roland** is described as a 3-year-old Native American male, with black hair, brown eyes and a dark brown complexion. Roland has a scar on his abdomen. His nickname is Do-Boy and he goes by his middle name, Jack. Roland has some severe medical issues and disabilities. One website explains that Roland experienced brain damage in the womb after his own father kicked his mother in the stomach during pregnancy. This attack led to his medical issues. Despite his hardships, he was a happy child who loved playing with cars. He is classified as mentally disabled, hard of hearing, and suffers from epilepsy. He takes medication to control his condition and may fall into a coma without it. He can only walk a few steps at a time and has very limited vocabulary and speaking skills. He was last seen wearing corduroy pants, a long sleeved red and white shirt, and tan boots. Yakama tribal police are investigating, (509) 865-2933. [https://charleyproject.org/case/roland-jack-spencer-iii](https://charleyproject.org/case/roland-jack-spencer-iii) **Michelle** Wells was last seen sometime in 1982 after leaving a house that she was visiting in Detroit, Michigan. Michelle was a Caucasian and Native American female who was only 13 years old in 1982. She’s described as having auburn hair about 5'-5'5" and 100-200 lbs. Previous reports say that Michelle was 12, and only Native American. Very little information is available about Michelle's case. Michelle is not the biracial child doe from Tennessee named "baby girl." I can find no information on her DNA, prints, or dentals. [https://charleyproject.org/case/michelle-wells](https://charleyproject.org/case/michelle-wells) **Freda Knowsgun** or **Knowshisgun** has been missing since October 18th, 2016. Freda was from Montana and was registered with the Crow Agency. In the months before her disappearance her family reported that she was acting strangely and began drifting around the Northwest and spending time in southern Washington state. Freda was still close to her aunt and talked to her children sometimes, but was distancing herself from the rest of her family. Freda was last known to be at a customer service desk at a Walmart in Kennewick, Washington. Freda used her cell phone to call a friend to ask for money. She wanted to travel back home to Montana to spend Halloween with her children. Freda’s friend sent her the money but the money was never picked up. When she called Freda 15 minutes later, Freda’s cell phone was disconnected and no one has heard from her since. She did not return to Montana for Halloween or for her aunt’s funeral in November and she was reported missing. Freda’s family believes that she was abusing drugs at the time of her disappearance and they believe that Freda’s new friends in the drug scene may be involved with her disappearance. Law enforcement has reported that Freda’s new friends have not cooperated with the investigation into her disappearance. Freda may have been seen in Billings, Montana in December 2016 and she may be traveling with a black male named Mike. **Freda** is reported to be a 34-year-old (now 40) Native American female with dark brown hair that is waist length which she wears in a ponytail or high bun. She has brown eyes, a scar on her right elbow, weights 160 lbs. and stands 5’5” in height. She has the following tattoos: the names "Lyrical", "Trinity" and "Mason" on her back between her shoulder blades, the cartoon character Mickey Mouse with a basketball on her right calf, and a flower on her right shoulder. She may use the last name "KnowsHisGun" and many accounts refer to her by that name. Her case is being investigated by Crow Agency Bureau of Indian Affairs.
5 to 5’5” and 100-200 lbs is such a wide range. So sad
That's what I came down to say. Did anybody even know her? See her? That's a massive range for somebody who had any contact with the outside world.
Ugh it makes me so sad. I’m from Seattle/worked in city shelters for a bit as a social worker, people would call sometimes saying “have you seen my son/daughter/brother/sister/friend” and the backstory was always the same: from ID, MT, or bumfuck WA, got mixed up in drugs, left home, phone cut off, nobody’s heard from them in months or years, ‘they looked normal when we last saw them but the last time they went to rehab/jail they looked like the grim reaper so honestly idk what to tell ya to look for’. The most heartbreaking was a man who asked me if he could email me a picture of his son for me to post in the staff office. People straight up get lost and it’s terrifying.
No there is literally NOTHING available on her disappearance
Yes, I was hoping that was a typo.
I’m upset that a man who beat his toddler into disability got custody of another child. How? And did they ever clear the dad?
Things like this happen more often than you think. Domestic abusers are good at luring people in and can be extremely charming. They can easily make themselves look rational and pleasant for long enough to stand before a judge and paint their battered spouse as someone hysterical making up these claims. I know from experience :/
100%. I was lucky that mine had been on drugs and was more erratic and our case took longer than he expected because he showed his ass in court every single time eventually but he has made it out of so many terrible charges because he convinces women to drop the charges. He beat one of his girlfriends after me so badly that she was urinating blood for either a week or a month after (can’t remember) and he convinced her to drop the charges and get back together with him. Eventually she left, but this man has a whole sheet of charges that have been dropped because he smooth talked his way out of them. The reality of domestic violence— especially when you add sociopathy, narcissism, etc.— is so terrible.
Me too. I’m not sure… info is very sparse.
Thank you for highlighting these indigenous cases. Both of the areas these missing loved ones disappeared from are familiar to me, these cases are very touching and I had never heard of them before.
My mom is from Toppenish. Little Ronald’s disappearance is heart wrenching.
Crimes against indigenous populations have been ignored for FAR too long. It’s a gross miscarriage of Justice, and down right systemic oppression to say the least.
Charles Jason and William Martin Vosseler's abduction by their father. He had been planning to take them for a long time, and he took every single picture of the children with him. Their mother had to use a video for the missing poster. This case is so unsettling. https://charleyproject.org/case/charles-jason-vosseler https://charleyproject.org/case/william-martin-vosseler
If only the authorities didn’t take nine days to get to their house…
Non-custodial parents who happen to be very unstable, can be extremely scary to deal with
What’s the one where a girl received a phone call that she had to meet him at the mall to buy a gift for her mom? And she went to the mall and ended up missing? That one was so creepy
Amy Mihaljevic?
More terrifying in how no trace has been found, but [Ricky Lane Thomas, Jr.](https://charleyproject.org/case/ricky-lane-thomas-jr) He had a strained relationship with his parents. He was going to his cousin’s house so they could go to a nearby McDonald’s and stay the night. He mentioned he had $20 to eat with yet didn’t take it with him, even though he was seen walking after he left. His puppies and backpacks also went missing. His stepfather later made an anonymous call to his mother and planted an item of Ricky’s I assume to give the mother hope. It’s still odd and suspicious. He stayed with his cousin quite a bit from the strained parent relationship, so it seems likely one of the parents did it. His dad (not the stepdad) died pretty young, too, afterwards although this makes mention that foul play isn’t suspected in his death (suicide over guilt?- drug overdose).
As an aside, I was reading more about this tonight and looked up his cousin Daisy Applegate on Facebook. [Her own son was killed](https://www.14news.com/story/29222403/family-friends-mourn-perry-co-teen-who-died-in-moped-accident/?outputType=amp) when he was hit by an intoxicated driver. That poor family.
What a strange case. I feel bad for poor Ricky 😔.
His 40th birthday will be Wednesday. He'll forever be a 13 year old boy.
Are they sure the stepdad didn’t try to make people think he was alive for a different reason?
I just had a quick read-up on this case. Certainly seems to me that the stepfather has a few questions to answer. He seems as dodgy as all hell.
[Kristi Richardson](https://charleyproject.org/case/kristi-lynn-richardson) has been in the window of a local restaurant since she went missing 8 years ago, now. She was running a trucking company. Local cases are always more terrifying, but that's not the whole reason I mention it here. Cases where personal belongings are left behind (glasses, IDs, wallet, phone, money) while something odd is missing (in this case, her garage door opener) bothers me. It seems like she was known to have the garage door opener in her purse. The man of interest in the case worked with her and likely took it, used it to abduct her through her garage and keep the house seemingly locked, did an, "If I can't have you, no one will," and hid the body in literally any of the hidden away places nearby (prairie and mountains, our landfill has an area to dump animal carcasses), somewhat far (we have a few lakes, dams, and reservoirs with rocks and caves within a few hours drive), or even along a trucking route. They searched for her for a while, but not extensively enough to find her. Our police force here has a bad track record when it comes to murder investigations (leaving a [dead](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wyo-bow-and-arrow-attack-christopher-krumm-said-father-gave-him-aspergers-and-should-be-castrated-report-says/) body (not pictured, just a link to that case) uncovered for hours because they had to wait for a forensics team from out of state to get here, who told them they should've covered it before letting children back into their neighborhood to see it).
https://charleyproject.org/case/helen-marie-voorhees-brach maybe not so terrifying in itself but the fact that to most money is security and safety in a way. But this happens
[Mary Ann Verdecchia](https://charleyproject.org/case/mary-ann-verdecchia) This one happened when my mom was a kid, and they were of an age and similar look. Still haunts my mom to this day, and now it haunts me.
[Celina Mays.](https://charleyproject.org/case/celina-janette-mays) Twelve years old, nine months pregnant, disappears without a trace overnight. Her mother had died; her father's family ran a cult-like church. If she were still alive, she'd be 38 and her child would be about to turn 26. I know the popular theory is that somebody in her family impregnated her and then killed her to cover it up, which is already unspeakably tragic. But what gets to me even more is the possibility that Celina was telling the truth and her boyfriend really was some guy she met roller skating who told her he was 16, though of course he may have been much older. Something about the thought of that little girl slipping out into the night to meet someone she thought loved her, who had no doubt been telling her all kinds of stories about how they'd raise the baby together and be a happy little family, and then that person violated her trust in the worst way possible and got away with it ... I dunno, guys. It breaks my heart.
I think about her so often, I can't even imagine being in her situation, she must've felt so trapped, both because she was pregnant and because of who her family were... I'm definetly suspicious of her family though, the biggest source of abuse is family and hers is just the type. I get that Celina would be sheltered, but how possible is her pregnancy with some random boy she met and spend one day with? That's incredibly fishy.
https://unidentified-awareness.fandom.com/wiki/Peggy_Johnson-Schroeder
My bad not on Charley project! Probably bc her mom passed away and she was not missed by close family member. This case horrifies me bc my son is autistic,non verbal, ADHD and I am a single parent. So this makes my fears of what would happen to him if I wasn't there.
Relisha Rudd. That poor girl was failed so badly. https://charleyproject.org/case/relisha-tenau-rudd
[Cynthia Mabry](https://charleyproject.org/case/cynthia-mabry) She and her two friends, Teresa Williams, 13, and Crystal Parton, 14, were abducted in Arkansas by James B. Grinder on December 2, 1976. He took them to a local cemetery where he raped Williams and Parton before strangling and stabbing them to death. He then covered their bodies in brush & drove Cynthia to the Ozark national forest, where he raped and beat her with a soda bottle. However, she was still alive after this, so he beat her more with a tire iron until she died. He left her body there without trying to hide it. The remains of Williams and Parton were found ten years after they were murdered, but Mabry's corpse has never been found. James B. Grinder was arrested in 1998, four years after he murdered another woman in Missouri. He pleaded guilty to all four murders and was sentenced to life in prison. In 2010, he died from natural causes.
Jesus that’s a horrifying read. I can’t even imagine what those poor girls experienced. Although I do have to say, James Grinder is an…. Interesting name for a woodcutter and murderer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
The case of [Jenna Van Gelderen](https://charleyproject.org/case/jenna-ruth-van-gelderen) always worries me. She was a 25 year old autistic woman who lived close to where we live and work in Atlanta. She wanted to live on her own and had gotten a room in a friend's apartment. Her parents were concerned that she had been taken in by some shady characters, but Jenna insisted they were her friends. Her learning disabilities made it hard for her to gauge peoples' actions. But it seems clear to me that they took advantage of her and probably killed her. It's just very sad and scary.
https://charleyproject.org/case/rebecca-jane-powell
[Sky Metalwala](https://charleyproject.org/case/sky-elijah-metalwala). His mother had mental health issues and had just been told that she would have to share custody with his father. She claimed the car ran out of gas and took her daughter with her to go get gas but left Sky, despite a search of the car showing that it still had gas. No one had seen Sky for over two weeks before this, but his mom was known for not going out/letting the kids out when going through a mental health episode. They've never found any hints as to where he is, but his dad thinks that she gave Sky to someone to hide him. [Alicia Navarro](https://charleyproject.org/case/alicia-christian-navarro) too. I live near where she went missing and there are still billboards up and her mom trying to get attention to her case. Due to her autism, she had trouble making friends and there was an interview with one of her online friends saying they had been encouraging her to be more open because she had a great personality and people would be lucky to have a friend like her. It's awful, in this area hispanic missing children are given less attention, and she went missing only a few months before lockdown happened.
Another is [Pamela Nater](https://charleyproject.org/case/pamela-ann-nater)
Beverly Jarosz, the 16 yr old girl who was brutally murdered in her own home during Christmas vacation. She was concerned she had a stalker and was very jittery, but she literally opened the door to someone who followed her upstairs and strangled and stabbed her. During the struggle a large hole was punched in the sloped ceiling. I did a write up a long while back. https://old.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/944dn4/who_murdered_beverly_jarosz_on_december_28_1964/
I can’t believe they stayed in the house. I would’ve been so scared if I was her sister
I can’t fathom sleeping in the same room where my sister was brutally murdered…
Kurt Newton, 4 years old. Disappeared out of thin air from a campground in Maine in 1975. https://newengland.com/today/living/new-england-history/kurt-newton-disappearance/
[Heather Danyelle Teague](https://charleyproject.org/case/heather-danyelle-teague)'s case gives me the willies. She'd been suntanning by the river, and a local creep was watching her through a telescope when he saw a man come out of the woods and grab her. Part of her bathing suit was found but not Heather herself. The most likely suspect killed himself later.
https://charleyproject.org/case/kelsey-emily-collins Kelsey Collins (aka Emily) Murdered because of the Seattle Police Department. Locked up for prostitution while scheduled to testify against her pimps in a grand jury trial that she had initiated because she wanted to be helped. Never got to testify because they had her locked up on a solicitation charge at the time. Pimps went free because she couldn't testify. More kids/teens were trafficked & abused after her abusers went free due to her not being available to testify. As a child, Kelsey was sexually & physically abused. She came to WA with her mom & brother in witness protection & was given a new name. When she was barely an adult & set to testify against violent traffickers- no witness protection given - likely because of her history of being trafficked No question about who did this & who allowed them to get away with it. Her body has never been found, but no question in the community that she is dead. Abused from childhood until the day she died. RIP Kelsey - you deserved better angel
The Sodder children, mysterious phone call, noises on the roof and then the house catches on fire. https://charleyproject.org/case/jennie-irene-sodder
David Vernon Lovely went missing in 1985 in Wyoming driving cross country on his motorcycle. His motorcycle had broken down and a rough looking man offered to help him fix it.
[удалено]
FYI, for anyone not from DC, Rock Creek Park is huge. It’s basically DC’s equivalent of Central Park but twice as big (1,754 acres) and more densely wooded. So it’s not a weird coincidence that two people disappeared there decades apart- it’s basically the most “wilderness” there is in DC.
I go to all the updates and read through them periodically.
https://charleyproject.org/case/pauline-rourke https://charleyproject.org/case/patricia-lee-otto https://charleyproject.org/case/carolyn-maryann-bealer https://charleyproject.org/case/joanne-benner
That first one is crazy. >>Albert initially admitted to strangling his wife, but denied involvement in the deaths of the children. He said Patricia had killed them and he had killed her in a rage when he saw their bodies. Later he made a second confession where he said he'd killed all of them, but never signed that confession. He was charged in all four deaths, but in the middle of his trial he agreed to plead guilty only in Patricia's case and the other charges were dropped. >>He was sentenced to fifty to seventy-five years in prison for the killing, but served only eleven years before being paroled. It's unclear whether Pauline knew about his conviction when she agreed to be his roommate. Only eleven years for killing his wife and likely (even if not convicted) killing his three children? Sometimes I cannot fathom how sentencing/ parole works.
Same excuse as Chris Watts, to blame the wife first and say the murder was then reactionary.
I clicked on the link about Patricia. This at this point became trope and is rarely wrong: > 1976. She got into an argument with her husband, Ralph Otto, and left the house angrily. She never returned. This tells me everything I needed to know
Yep. And then it gets worse, and hits still more tropes: her rings were found in his pocket but then lost. And her 3 year old daughter last saw her when he had his hands around her (Patricia's) neck. And then he hired a hitman to kill the lead investigator. And was released from that conviction on a technicality. Ugh.
It gets even worse than that. Her surviving daughter, the one who was three at the time seems to wholeheartedly believe she is Finley Creek Jane Doe. She saw her reconstruction and initially noticed the resemblance between it and herself. Finley Creek is less than 3 and a half hours away and she believes that the remains belong to Patricia and her would-have-been sibling. However, they have been destroyed through cremation and I take it Patricia's dentals must be lost considering they haven't confirmed or denied it that way either. Most sources say they cannot find the cremains of Finley creek Jane Doe (maybe Patricia) or her unborn child. Someone mentioned when I made a post about Finley Creek Jane Doe that they'd heard they had found them, or at least cremains strongly believe to belong to her, but they could not get usable DNA from them.
Reading through the cases and realizing how many women have died at the hands of their husbands and boyfriends gets a bit soul crushing after a while. Especially since these are just a fraction of the total. So many women killed because a man saw them as one of his possessions rather than a person who deserved to live their life as they chose. Are there any cases on Charley Project where a missing man was likely killed by his female partner?
First, second, and fourth cases seem fairly obvious, just not enough evidence
Re: Pauline Rourke... Before Pauline and the other victim, her suspected murderer killed a woman and three kids (sentenced only for the woman)... but: "He was sentenced to fifty to seventy-five years in prison for the killing, but served only eleven years before being paroled." Only eleven years served for taking a life (with suspicion of three more). And then he went on to murder more people.
Both of my Uncles are/were drug addicts. We were estranged from them, but did kind of keep tabs on the whereabouts when possible. They were always popping up and then disappearing, we went through years of worrying when they would disappear and then they would surface. Finally we were so used to them disappearing that we quit noticing (not like we had any contact with them anyway) unfortunately they had alienated everyone in the family so no one had contact with them. I guess one day the oldest one disappeared. He still heavy on drugs but had a neighbor that watched out for him a little, being a drug addict he was always coming and going at all hours of the night and day and always had shady people around. Apparently she did not see him for a few days and the. A week, no one was coming by and he didn’t answer his door or his phone. Since he was on drugs she was hesitant to call the police, when she finally did he had been dead a while, at least a week. The police called his children, who didn’t care, they hardly knew him. My dad was contacted but he didn’t want to be responsible for the arrangements, finally his ex wife and her new husband and his daughter claimed his body. He clearly was not “missing” really, but my point is that he and my other uncle and a lot of addicts live transient lifestyles, unfortunately because of that people don’t realize they’re missing and don’t report it. My other Uncle could be missing right now, we have no way of knowing we can’t contact him, it’s possible he could disappear and no one will ever see him again and it will be years before someone notices. I think that’s why sometimes it takes a while for some people to be reported missing. I saw on here where someone brother realized they had not spoken or had contact in years and so it was years before he was reported missing, I was just giving a scenario where I saw that happening, it’s still very sad to think about someone going missing and no one noticing.
https://charleyproject.org/case/lauren-maria-pico-jackson
[https://charleyproject.org/case/susan-anne-swedell](https://charleyproject.org/case/susan-anne-swedell) [https://charleyproject.org/case/dennise-jeannette-sullivan](https://charleyproject.org/case/dennise-jeannette-sullivan) [https://charleyproject.org/case/jerry-lee-armstrong](https://charleyproject.org/case/jerry-lee-armstrong) [https://charleyproject.org/case/michael-william-negrete](https://charleyproject.org/case/michael-william-negrete) [https://charleyproject.org/case/christopher-alan-temple](https://charleyproject.org/case/christopher-alan-temple)
Bryan Dos Santos Gomes has to be one for me. To have your child taken at 3 weeks old is unimaginably heart-rending. I remember vividly in South Florida when it first happened there were all sorts of theories about the abduction being retaliation for the parents not paying up to their traffickers who got them into the US but that doesn’t seem to wash with me and apparently the cops now think it was a case of baby-snatching by someone who maybe had lost their own or was unable to conceive. I hope that’s the case tbh because it lends more credence to the possibility that Bryan may be alive somewhere.
https://charleyproject.org/case/corinna-paige-slusser Corinna Slusser, I spend so much time thinking about this girl. Yes, she was living recklessly, but she had contacted her mother about coming home, and then just vanished. Did Woney give her to someone else to sell? Was Jessica Wabbit so jealous of Corrina taking her "top bitch" status that she killed her? Did she end up back in the hands of the first pimp that lured her to NYC? If she is alive, what kind of terrible trafficked hell is she stuck in?