The Last Place You'd Look (22 page)

Ann Leach, director of Life Preservers, a global grief support community, says not knowing what happened to a loved one is the toughest part.

“You always wonder, ‘Could I have done more?’ It’s part of the natural process of grieving,” she says.

For the families of the missing, all of the second-guessing makes for vicious self-punishment, but Leach says it is normal to heap on the self-blame. Added to the worry and uncertainty of a missing loved one, the emotional baggage can be almost too much to bear, and that multiplies when the missing person is a child.

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Since July 2006, the mother of an Austin, Texas, teen has targeted highways and hotels, parks and alleys, city streets, and the middle of nowhere looking for her daughter. But no matter how many times or how many places Elizabeth Harris searches in her quest to find her missing daughter, Roxanne Paltauf, none of it has helped ease her heart.

Roxanne vanished on the night of July 7, 2006. Elizabeth says the striking eighteen-year-old was last seen leaving the Budget Inn in the vicinity of Interstate 35 near Austin. Wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a pink tank top, Roxy, as friends called her, stands five feet, four inches tall and weighs about 115 pounds. She has long, light brown hair and luminous green eyes, which are accentuated by a feminine, heart-shaped face and generous, pouty lips.

Elizabeth says that from what she knows, Roxanne and her longtime boyfriend had apparently engaged in an argument earlier that day. Her daughter is reported to have stormed out of the motel, carrying nothing more than the clothes she was wearing and some identification. Roxanne has not been seen since, despite multiple media campaigns, a billboard in her hometown, and her family’s efforts to keep Roxanne’s case on the front burner.

“We celebrated her twenty-second birthday on January 3, [2010],” Elizabeth says. “Her family gathered to sing . . . happy birthday to her, and we hung balloons and a banner along with her missing flyers. It was bittersweet.”

Roxanne is the eldest of five children, and Elizabeth says the younger kids have trouble putting her disappearance into context, but they lean on one another. “We are a strong family and support each other through the ups and downs of this journey that we are going through,” she says.

Elizabeth works hard to keep her daughter’s name and face in the news. She gives interviews, tacks up posters, and talks about Roxanne whenever the opportunity presents itself. Sometimes the despair overpowers her attempts to keep her hopes up: after the passage of several years, it has become more and more difficult to stay optimistic that Roxanne will be found alive. Elizabeth wants to find her, no matter what her fate. Until she does, she will never stop looking and never find the peace she needs. It is like falling down a rabbit hole. Elizabeth sums it up: “It’s a strange trip to be on.”

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It
is
a strange trip, and a lonely one, too. And no one knows it better than other families who have walked the same twisted path. Lisa Ann Murray is another traveler on that long, terrible, infinite highway. Lisa last saw her younger sister, Lynn, on December 4, 1985, and she has never stopped searching for her.

Jeffery Lynn Smith, who goes by Lynn, was born on October 12, 1969, to Clarice Minner Hay, who was was working as a babysitter and housekeeper for Virginia Clinton Dwire, former President Bill Clinton’s mother. Lynn was named for Virginia’s third husband, Jeff Dwire.

Lisa says her younger sister by three and a half years led a quiet, unremarkable life and dreamed of becoming a gymnast until she ended up in a volatile relationship. Then the petite sixteen-year-old disappeared. Lynn says her sister, who was dressed in a brown jacket and pink pants, was last seen walking with a boy she knew.

“There were all kinds of rumors—that she was a runaway, that she was staying with one of her girlfriends, all those kinds of things,” Lisa says. “None of those rumors ever panned out and we often felt as if we were on a wild goose chase.”

Lisa returned home from college and joined the family’s search for the missing teenager. After no success, her mother notified the police that Lynn could not be found. She was listed as a runaway—a classification that persisted for weeks. A ring Lynn received as a gift for her fifteenth birthday turned up at a local pawnshop. Police confiscated it, but after that, official interest in the case seemed to dwindle.

Jeffrey Lynn Smith. Courtesy of Lisa Ann Murray.

“The police [at that time] just let it go, and that, basically, was that. [After that] it was just us looking for her,” Lisa says.

Lynn’s disappearance forever changed her family’s dynamics. Her mother slipped in and out of depression—a depression that continues until this day, according to Lisa. And although they held out hope that Lynn would return alive and unharmed during the first year after she vanished, Lisa says she now believes her sister was murdered—and she has a suspect in mind, but police have yet to make any arrests.

“Unless we find her body, it’s going to be pretty difficult to prove, though,” Lisa admits.

Lisa hasn’t quit looking for Lynn, even though more than two decades have passed since she last saw her younger sister. Although she now lives and works in Pennsylvania, Lisa continues to act as her sister’s advocate in every way: she has talked to her sister’s friends and neighbors—anyone she can find who might shed light on what happened to the shy, quiet girl with the large, luminous eyes and high cheekbones. Lisa has done her best to get her sister’s case out to the press. She created a YouTube video about Lynn, made posters, and prevailed upon the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to create an age progression on Lynn to show what she would look like at the age of thirty-eight.

Lisa also has found a new ally in her search for a conclusive answer to the question of what happened to her baby sister: a police detective now assigned to the case who has shown an interest in this coldest of cold cases.

“She has been wonderful,” Lisa says, remarking on the contrast between current attitudes and those of investigators when Lynn first disappeared. She is somewhat bitter that authorities dismissed her sister as a runaway.

“I think it was racially motivated,” Lisa says of the police department’s lack of interest in the case when it first hit the blotter. Lisa also believes the media is less inclined to publicize crimes when minorities are the victims.

“Look at the media. It’s all about what appeals to the majority. You don’t see many minority kids profiled anywhere, especially ones that are missing. In fact, in all honesty, you don’t see much about the missing at all,” she says.

Lisa wants nothing more than to bring her sister back—alive or not. “I want to see my sister in a final resting place . . . in peace next to our sister who is buried in Topeka, Kansas. I want some closure, but I also want justice for my sister and our family,” says Lisa.

And although it has been more than twenty-five years since she saw Lynn, she won’t stop trying until she finds her.

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Reza Jou tries to apply logic to his own daughter’s disappearance and to what the man who claims to be the last to have seen her alive says happened to her, but Reza fails each time. There is no logic to what transpired when the intelligent, vivacious Donna Jou vanished, and his sense of loss is palpable, as well as heartbreaking.

Donna Jou. Courtesy of Reza Jou.

Reza, the system integration manager for the International Space Station, finds himself almost unable to speak his daughter’s name without tearing up. Only nineteen when she disappeared, Donna is an all-around good girl who never gave her close-knit family a minute of worry.

A brilliant, straight-A student with an almost perfect SAT score, Donna hoped to attend Johns Hopkins University or Harvard Medical School in her quest to become a neurosurgeon. She was in the process of obtaining her undergraduate pre-med degree from San Diego State University—a feat she planned to accomplish in three years.

Donna is well known for her kindness and generosity, which are at a level quite unusual for one so young. She volunteered with battered women’s shelters and at a hospital laboratory. She tutored math students at her high school. She played basketball, worked hard at her studies, and told her father she was studying medicine so she could be his physician when he grew old.

Donna seems to have no enemies. Born as the youngest in a family where academic achievement is high, Donna set lofty goals for herself and always met them. She is not one to brag or nurture conceit—she is modest, good-natured, and devoted to her family. Donna has always been the kind of daughter to make a parent proud.

Reza says he fell in love with his baby girl the first moment he laid eyes on her. She did not cry like other newborns, he says, his voice stumbling over the memory. Instead, she opened her big bright eyes and looked at her father for the first time as if she were sizing him up. Over the years, their bond would grow unbreakable. She would never disappoint him nor bring him pain. And she possesses an unusual amount of common sense for one so young.

On June 23, 2007, Donna vanished, splintering the happiness Reza and Nili Jou had always known and shared with their three children. The Jou family’s lives imploded into a blur of worry, pain, and sorrow.

Reza says their nightmare began when Donna advertised her tutoring services on Craigslist, a free online classified advertising Web site. She was trying to earn a little extra money and was very advanced at math. Her father says he warned his youngest daughter to be careful in her dealings with strangers and to never go to their homes. He says she assured him she would remain cautious, but Reza was still uneasy.

Donna, like many teens, was naive, according to Reza. No matter how much her parents cautioned her, she believed she could take care of herself. Never having faced true evil, she didn’t understand it and never imagined she would ever cross paths with someone capable of hurting her. Reza says she was wrong.

Although her father asked her not to advertise as a math tutor on Craigs-list, Donna met thirty-seven-year-old John Steven Burgess, who also went by the alias Sinjin Stevens, when he answered her ad on the online site. After exchanging e-mails, the pair arranged to meet for a tutoring session. On the night Donna disappeared, she left on a motorcycle with a man police believe to be Burgess.

The following night, on June 24, Donna’s mother received a text message sent from her daughter’s cell phone that said her cell phone battery was dying and that she was in San Diego and would be home soon. The Jou family lives in Los Angeles.

On June 25, two days after they last saw her, Donna failed to show up for work or attend classes. Her parents went into panic mode. They felt certain Donna would not vanish on purpose.

They started calling everyone they knew, as well as everyone Donna knew or had ever mentioned, looking for clues to her whereabouts. Police told the Jous that since their daughter was over eighteen, she could go wherever she wanted without notifying them. They intimated Donna had left on her own, not because someone forced her.

“I told them that was impossible. We are very close. She wouldn’t do anything like that,” Reza says.

Leads poured in, says Reza. They piled up, one on top of the other, a mountain of information. The family passed them along to authorities. “I forwarded [the leads] and trusted them to follow them up. Later on I found most of them were not pursued,” he says.

Police developed Burgess as a suspect, naming him a person of interest in connection with Donna’s disappearance. Burgess reacted by packing up and vanishing. On July 9, a search warrant was executed on the suspect’s house. His roommate was also questioned. A little over two weeks later, Burgess was picked up in Florida on drug charges and extradited to California, where he was allowed to post bond.

In the meantime, the Jou family hired a search-and-rescue team to conduct a search for their daughter. They found nothing. Reza and Nili hired well-known California attorney Gloria Allred to represent them in their quest to find out the truth about their daughter.