The Last Place You'd Look (6 page)

Although law enforcement acknowledges that there are problems in waiting two days to begin a missing persons investigation, many agencies still resist taking a report on a missing adult. Some of this resistance comes from tradition—there is no law preventing an adult from disappearing and not telling anyone. Other agencies have too few officers to work cases without definitive indications that the adult is either endangered or has been the victim of foul play; there is also the lack of agency policy or trained personnel to conduct these investigations.

Although his primary focus is juvenile justice, Ron Laney, associate administrator of the Child Protection Division of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, could be speaking for all missing persons cases when he talks about how fast an agency should implement an investigation.

“What do you mean by immediate? Start right now,” Laney said in an address during Fox Valley Technical College’s annual conference, “Responding to Missing and Unidentified Persons” (see chapter 11).

Laney says when he hears an officer say, “Here in my jurisdiction, I don’t have any missing kids,” his response is that they’re not looking hard enough. There are kids—and adults—who go missing all of the time. Many turn up, but for some families the agony seems never-ending.

Wayne Sheppard, associate director of training and outreach for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), says agencies and organizations must work together to improve police response. He points to the 2004 abduction and murder of eleven-year-old Carlie Bruscia as a good example of an investigation that could have gone better.

The judicial system was second-guessed when it came to light that
the killer, Joseph P. Smith, had been cited back to court by his probation officer for a violation and freed by the courts a month prior to Carlie’s kidnapping and slaying. In the beginning, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Department decided not to issue an Amber Alert because there were no witnesses to her abduction. That move brought a thunderstorm of criticism both from the media and others who pointed out that the possible advantages of issuing an alert far outweigh the small amount of time it takes to issue one.

Detractors also said that the department’s initial focus on the girl’s stepfather led them to ignore other possible scenarios, including stranger abduction. But in following the girl’s trail—she was walking home from a sleepover—officers spotted a motion-activated security camera along her most probable route and contacted the building’s owner to view the video. They didn’t look at the film until eighteen hours after Carlie vanished, by which time she had already been raped and strangled.

They found footage of the missing girl being approached by a strange man who grabbed her by the arm and led her offscreen. The Manatee County Sheriff’s Department issued an Amber Alert.

Smith would be apprehended based on tips that came into the department following the release of the video to the media. He directed authorities to a church parking lot near the site where he had hidden Carlie’s body. Smith is awaiting execution on Florida’s death row.

NCMEC’s Sheppard says police responses to incidents like Carlie’s must be timely, organized, and systematic. He recommends that departments train dispatchers to ask the right questions, including, “Where was the last known location of your child?” By asking the correct questions, police can jump-start an investigation.

Police need to have a written protocol on handling cases involving missing children and that protocol should involve the police command system.

“Supervisors need to be on the scene,” says Sheppard.

But the two most important factors in working a case involving a missing child—or any missing person—says Sheppard, are a combination of strong policy and procedures within the department combined with excellent training and education for the officers.

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On March 2, 2007, a woman named Jessica Lenahan, formerly Gonzales, addressed the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This is the story she told them.

Jessica, a former resident of Castle Rock, Colorado, was separated from her husband, Simon Gonzales. The couple had three little girls together—Rebecca who was nine, Katheryn who was eight, and six-year-old Leslie.

Simon had in the past exhibited “erratic and abusive” behavior toward Jessica and their daughters. Jessica described a time when she had to call for help; she found Simon trying to hang himself in front of the girls. He broke the kids’ toys, threatened to kidnap and hurt them, and also threatened Jessica with both physical harm and sexual abuse. She says Simon took drugs and his behavior escalated until she separated from him.

In May 1999, Jessica obtained a temporary restraining order, or TRO, forbidding Simon from going near Jessica, the girls, or their home. During that time, Simon violated the order on multiple occasions. On June 4, 1999, a judge declared the TRO permanent and outlined specific visitation for Simon.

In the early evening hours of June 22, Simon abducted the three girls as they played in their front yard. That started the following chain of events:

• As soon as she discovered the girls were missing, Jessica called the Castle Rock Police. A dispatcher told her she would send an officer to her home. No one came.

• After two hours, Jessica contacted the police department again. This time two officers were dispatched. She shared the restraining order with them and told them that she believed Simon had the girls. Jessica says one of the officers told her, “Well, he’s their father. It’s okay for them to be with him.” The officers left and told her to call them back if her daughters weren’t home by 10 p.m.

• Simon’s girlfriend contacted Jessica and told her Simon was threatening to harm himself.

• At 8:30 p.m. Simon answered his cell phone in response to a call from Jessica and said that he had the girls at a Denver amusement park. Jessica asked the Castle Rock Police to contact the Denver Police but says they refused and advised her to take the matter to divorce court.

• Jessica continued to call the police. At 10 p.m. she says, the dispatcher told her she was being “a little ridiculous, making us freak out and thinking the kids are gone.”

• At midnight Jessica went to Simon’s apartment. Jessica again called police. It had been seven hours since her children disappeared. The dispatcher agreed to send an officer. No officer ever showed up.

• Jessica went to the police station and spoke to an officer. She says the officer left and went to dinner after their conversation.

• At 3:25 in the morning Jessica received another call from Simon’s girlfriend who said that she’d heard the sounds of shots being fired while she was on the phone talking with Simon. Jessica drove to the police department where she discovered that Simon had opened fire on the police with a semi-automatic handgun he had bought the day before. Police killed him. In the back of his truck they found the bodies of Jessica’s three daughters, murdered by Simon earlier in the day.

• Jessica was held and questioned about the incident for more than twelve hours. She was not informed that her girls were dead until 8:00 that morning.

• Jessica filed suit against the Castle Rock Police Department, charging that they failed to enforce the court’s restraining order. The case made its way through the state court system and was considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court determined that enforcement of a restraining order is not mandatory under Colorado law, and the case was dismissed. Jessica now speaks as a voice for women and children victimized by domestic violence.

The Honorable Mark McGinnis, a circuit court judge in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, uses Jessica’s case to demonstrate the sobering consequences of the police’s failure to act. But he also uses the case to illustrate how one of the greatest fears of police—that of civil liability—should be secondary in these instances. Police fear being dragged into court in a civil case, so they often choose the path they perceive as the least litigious. McGinnis says officers shouldn’t worry about the possibility of being sued.

“You can err on the side of finding the kid,” he tells a room full of police officers from around the country at Fox Valley Technical College’s annual missing persons conference.

McGinnis ticks off various scenarios for the officers. The first: a young child is missing and the guy across the street is a known sex offender who refuses the police entry into his home. McGinnis asks them, “What do you do?”

“Get a search warrant!” say several officers.

“Watch the house and call for a supervisor!” says another.

A few say they would go into the home anyway. “Bingo,” says the judge. Right answer.

“You don’t have to establish exigent circumstances,” says McGinnis. He says officers should tell kidnapping suspects, “‘If you don’t let me in, I’m coming in.’ This is different than a drug case, different than a forgery case,” he asserts.

Although the judge says the age of the missing person is a factor officers must take into consideration when conducting a search, an officer’s actions should be dictated by the totality of the circumstances. And, he says, missing adults should not be treated as afterthoughts by departments.

An Illinois-based officer says, “People want to report adult children missing and we take the stance that because they’re adults—they can get up and walk away.”

A New Berlin, Wisconsin, officer answers him, “If someone’s reporting that person missing, then there is reason to put some time into [the case]. Just because your child’s twenty-five doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a report. I don’t think you can operate like that anymore.”

Judge McGinnis agrees with the second officer. “There are missing adults who need help,” he says.

A police chief comments, “You take a report for a missing car right away. Why not take a report for a missing person?”

McGinnis says officers who shrug off missing persons reports show a “lack of interest, lack of honesty, and lack of professionalism.” According to McGinnis, “It gives the perception the officer doesn’t know what he is doing. If your kid was missing, would you want someone to be dishonest with you?”

And, says McGinnis, officers should stop returning to the liability issue. “If you act aboveboard, you can win.”

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Mary Wegner’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, Laurie Depies, vanished on August 19, 1992. She has neither been seen nor heard from since. An employee of a shop at the local mall, Laurie lived in the town of Menasha, Wisconsin. Menasha, a small slice of Americana with a population of more than seventeen thousand, sits about one hundred miles north of Milwaukee, and south of Green Bay, on the northwest shore of Lake Winnebago.

The Town of Menasha Police Department has worked Laurie’s case since she was discovered missing. As time passes and officers retire, are promoted, or move on, the investigators change, but the central mission remains: find Laurie.

Detective Lieutenant Michael Krueger and Special Agent Kimberly Skorlinski, Division of Criminal Investigation, Wisconsin Department of Justice, want Laurie’s family to know one thing: their child has not been forgotten.

Laurie was last seen leaving the Fox River Valley Mall in Appleton. Wearing a black sleeveless T-shirt, shorts, and black shoes, Laurie drove to the apartment complex where her boyfriend lived. It was sometime after 10:00 at night. Her boyfriend and two other people were waiting for her at his apartment complex. He told police that they heard her car pull up because the car had a loud muffler. They waited for Laurie to arrive at the apartment, and when she didn’t, the boyfriend went to check on her.

He found her older gray Volkswagen Rabbit parked in the lot with a cup sitting on top containing a drink she purchased earlier in the day. Laurie’s purse and bag remained untouched in the car.

There were no signs of force, no signs of a struggle. No one heard anything out of the ordinary. Police theorize that someone she knew approached Laurie and she voluntarily walked away.

Police did most things right. Although they initially didn’t take the complaint as seriously as they should have, they launched a search. In order to preserve any evidence that might have been on or in Laurie’s car, they transported it to the agency on a flatbed and processed it in an open bay of a fire engine stall—the most secure place available at the time.

They dusted for prints and checked the position of the seat, concluding that it was consistent with a driver of Laurie’s size. Additional officers were called in and they checked the parties that had taken place in the neighborhood and began interviewing everyone they could find who either knew Laurie or had seen her.

They canvassed the neighborhood, then went back and canvassed parts of it again. They gave her mother a packet of information and when the time was right brought in the media. The chief provided regular updates.

It seemed that everyone wanted to help: the department was flooded with calls, about five hundred tips a week in the beginning. Detectives sifted through leads and everyone worked overtime.

They drew blood from the family in case it was needed for comparison. The investigators looked at the clientele of the store where Laurie worked, then checked into her finances and personal life. She had money problems—her father was paying off her credit card as a birthday gift and she had asked her landlady about rent payment options. Detectives also read her journals and diaries.

“We learned a lot about her,” Krueger says.

Police don’t believe that Laurie planned to disappear. She had made a down payment on a ring for her boyfriend. She showed no inclination toward suicide or a desire to escape from her circumstances.

Krueger and Skorlinski have looked at suspected serial killers and other criminals who were believed to be in the area at the time Laurie disappeared. Says Skorlinski, “We don’t have that home run, that DNA, that sample yet.”

They compared her disappearance with that of Josie Huisentruit (see chapter 10), who vanished from the parking lot of her Iowa apartment while leaving for work one morning. Huisentruit also has never been found.