Sunday, June 24, 2007

New Missouri Law will help the Missing


Gov. Matt Blunt signed SB 84 into law today, June 21, 2007, in Jefferson City. I was there to see the signing and receive an official copy of the legislation along with the pen Gov. Blunt used to sign the bill.

http://go.missouri.gov/
press release from Gov. Blunt
Senate Bill 84

As far as the missing endangered person’s alert, I am so proud it became law. We have already seen positive resolutions and hope to see more happy endings as a result of Missouri lawmakers doing the right thing. We thank Governor Blunt, Senator Rupp, Senator Champion, Rep. Franz, Senator Mayer and all others who were instrumental to SB 84’s passage.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Missing persons tour stops in Heartland

Missing persons tour stops in Heartland
By: Wes Wallace KFVS TV12

SIKESTON, Mo. - For families of missing loved ones, not a day goes by that they're not thinking of finding them.

That includes several people right here in southeast Missouri like Teresa Butler of Risco, Mary Lee Grobe of Poplar Bluff and Cheryl Ann Scherer of Scott City.

Their family members gathered Tuesday in Sikeston.

They hope to raise awareness of their missing loved ones in hopes someone can offer new information in the cases.

Some local cases date back a few years. Cheryl Ann Scherer went missing in 1979 from a Scott City gas station.

This is part of a national rally that stopped in Miner.

The National Center for Missing Persons heads up the event which travels across the country to maker sure not case fades from memory.

This is the 4th Annual Road to Remember Tour that strives to spread the word about missing persons and help bring them home.

KFVS CH12 with Video included

Monday, June 11, 2007

Bills would require DNA help in missing person cases

USA TODAY NEWSPAPER
By Julia Silverman, Associated Press
06/10/2007

Bills would require DNA help in missing person cases

SALEM, Ore. — Their faces were everywhere — first on fliers passed out in their hometown, then on billboards and even on the cover of People Magazine and in constant rotation on CNN.
After months of searching, the bodies of Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis, classmates and fellow dance squad members from Oregon City, were found in August 2002, buried in a sadistic neighbor's backyard. They would have graduated from high school this month.

Now their mothers have joined with other families across the nation who don't know if spouses and siblings are dead or alive to press for passage of laws requiring police to expand their searches in missing person cases.

Their proposal — which is under consideration by legislators in Oregon, Connecticut, Indiana and New Jersey — centers on the nearly 50,000 unidentified bodies that are held at morgues across the country while an estimated 105,000 missing persons cases remain open.

Under the bill, police would be directed to send DNA samples from bodies that remain unidentified after 30 days to a central laboratory, where they'd be entered into a national database for comparison to missing-persons cases. Families could submit their own DNA samples for loved ones who have been missing for more than a month.

Similar legislation is already in place in Colorado, Washington state and the District of Columbia, said Kelly Jolkowski, one of the founders of the Campaign for the Missing, whose 19-year-old son Jason disappeared without a trace three years ago from their home in Nebraska. Future campaigns are being organized in Missouri, New York, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, she said.

"How do I know some body in some morgue somewhere isn't my son, and they just didn't get the DNA from his body, so I will never know?" Jolkowski asked. "Families can go for years and maybe forever without an answer because these processes are not in place, and they should be."

Lending her name to the bill has made some painful memories flood back, said Lori Pond. In the earliest days of her daughter's disappearance, police thought 12-year-old Ashley Pond might be a runaway and she had to print her own fliers and hand them out on the streets of their hometown.

"There are times it brings up the loss of my daughter, but I am hoping for good to come out of all of this," Pond said.

Michelle Duffy, mother of 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis, said that in one way she and Pond were lucky, since their daughters' cases drew the national spotlight and, when the girls' bodies were found, positive identification took less than 24 hours.

Hundreds of other families never get the same kind of resolution, she said.

"If the kids wouldn't have disappeared in the same way, from the same place, no one would have cared," Duffy said. "If it weren't for Miranda disappearing, you never would have heard Ashley's name and that's sad."

Without identification, Jolkowski said, bodies may be buried in pauper's graves, or cremated, lost to a family forever.

USA TODAY

Monday, June 04, 2007

Vicki Sue Lour, Another Missing Missouri Mother

Wayne County, MO
Missing woman: one year later


June 4, 2007 06:55 PM CST


Missing woman: one year later
By: CJ Cassidy, KFVS TV12, Cape Girardeau MIssouri


Wayne County, Mo. - A $500 reward could be yours for information leading police to Vicki Sue Lour.

The 37-year-old Wayne County woman disappeared one year ago, and her family says they couldn't sit around and do nothing. So they put together any money they could scrape up for a reward.

Lour's boyfriend has always been a person of interest in the case, but so far no real suspects. Lour's family says their loved one couldn't have disappeared into thin air, so they're hoping the promise of money encourages anyone who knows anything to come forward.

Lour's family braced themselves for bad news when she disappeared last June.

They never expected to be waiting for answers one year later.

"If you had a baby you'd want to know what happened to her," Lour's dad, Fred Meinhardt said. He doesn't expect to see his child alive again, but he does hope for some answers.

"There's nothing I can do about it. It's done, but I want to know why," he said.

He and his son believe Vicki's boyfriend knows what happened to her.

"I think he's killed her and put her somewhere where nobody would find her," Fred said. His son Bob adds, "He has a very violent past against women and children."

Police say they've never had evidence to call her boyfriend a suspect, but they do say he's a person of interest.

He allegedly told police Lour checked into rehab for some drug problems weeks before her family reported her missing.

So far, investigators have no record of her doing so.

While police hunt for clues, her family concentrates on putting up posters advertising reward money and tries not to think of everything they left unsaid.

"That I care for her. We had sibling fights part of having brothers and sisters, but I never really did tell her that I care for her," Bob says sadly.

If you have any information, call the Wayne County Sheriff's Department or the Missouri Highway Patrol.

Lour has a 24-year-old daughter who now lives with the person of interest in her mother's disappearance - which her family says is strange.

KFVS TV12 June 04,2007

************


"I think he's killed her and put her somewhere where nobody would find her," Fred said.

Just like the Amanda Jones missing from Jefferson County Missouri & Mary Lee Grobe Missing from Butler County Missouri.

"I think he's killed her and put her somewhere where nobody would find her,"

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