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Posted: 28-10-2011 08:16 Post subject:

The Genette Tate case has always stuck in my mind - I almost felt personally involved. I was newly married at the time and living in Devon. Only two weeks after Genette disappeared my own daughter was born.

The papers continued to cover the ongoing police investigations of Genette's disappearance for quite some time afterwards. Her father was under suspicion for a while, which probably led to the breakup of his marriage. Every death of a child has unwanted results in the family and the wider world.

Posted: 28-10-2011 08:56 Post subject:

Posted: 28-10-2011 09:01 Post subject:

Posted: 10-11-2011 14:18 Post subject:

A (perhaps) tantalizing clue to the still-mysterious-as-hell disappearance of Pennsylvania District Attorney Ray Gricar (he was declared legally dead earlier this year) has emerged this week amidst the sex abuse scandal that has erupted at Penn St. University and their gridiron football program.

(Coverage of this is everywhere, even the BBC, but as a bit of explanatory background to UK folk, it's almost impossible to overstate how much, in central Pennsylvania, the real power, far more than any elected official, law enforcement agency, business group, is Penn State University and the now disgraced football program, personified by the now-sacked coach-for-four-decades Joe Paterno.)

It turns out that when the child rape allegations were first reported in '98, it was Mr. Gricar who declined to bring charges against Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky, and of course he continued to be prosecutor up until his 2005 disappearance, a time period when more allegations, though not (apparently) reported to the police, were being brought forward.

How this might be connected to his disappearance isn't clear or obvious, and perhaps it's all a curious coincidence, but Deadspin has a pretty good overview: here.

Posted: 16-11-2011 14:50 Post subject:

With regard to the disappearance of DA Ray Gricar and the Jerry Sandusky case is it a case of follow the money?

Posted: 16-11-2011 16:42 Post subject:

I don't know the culture, but it's also quite possible the assistant could have had his career f**ked for calling the cops on Sandusky - which isn;t a defense or anything, but people do have very unrealistic ideas about the police and how and what they'll investigate in a manner likely to lead to a conviction - perhaps he believed that he could get the guy busted with less risk to himself by getting a third party to report it?

Posted: 12-01-2012 15:00 Post subject: Greatest book ever reveals truth

Have you dudes not read "The Illuminatus Trilogy", all the missing people are being fed to a demon trapped in the Pentagon (hence its shape) that supplies America with power and wealth in return!!!

Posted: 13-01-2012 02:14 Post subject:

Posted: 14-01-2012 11:34 Post subject: Re: Greatest book ever reveals truth

Posted: 02-07-2013 17:42 Post subject: The children who went up in smoke

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/12/the-children-who-went-up-in-smoke/

"For nearly four decades, anyone driving down Route 16 near Fayetteville, West Virginia, could see a billboard bearing the grainy images of five children, all dark-haired and solemn-eyed, their names and ages—Maurice, 14; Martha 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; Betty, 5—stenciled beneath, along with speculation about what happened to them. Fayetteville was and is a small town, with a main street that doesn’t run longer than a hundred yards, and rumors always played a larger role in the case than evidence; no one even agreed on whether the children were dead or alive. What everyone knew for certain was this: On the night before Christmas 1945, George and Jennie Sodder and nine of their 10 children went to sleep (one son was away in the Army). Around 1 a.m., a fire broke out. George and Jennie and four of their children escaped, but the other five were never seen again...."

Posted: 02-07-2013 21:40 Post subject:

Fascinating story - the Smithsonian site is always good value.

If the father had argued with pro-Mussolini elements those elements were very unlikely to have also had anything to do with the Mafia. (Although the story doesn't actually suggest a direct connection between the two, both are mentioned individually as potential factors).

One thing that did come to mind was the use of child appropriation as punishment, practiced by some right-wing regimes (Fascist Spain, Argentina under the Junta, Hitler's Germany, for example). This was often after the execution or imprisonment of parents - in both cases the knowledge that their children were to be stolen and resettled appears to have been applied to the victim as a kind of additional torture.

Too far fetched to be applied here, I would have thought - but some elements of the story brought it to mind.

On a different subject:

I recently read Tobias Jones book Blood on the Altar. I'd heard of the murder of Heather Barnett in Bournemouth, but somehow completely missed the connection to a long running missing persons case in Italy. The denouement of the latter, and the implications in regard to the local authorities - state and church - is really quite shocking.

Posted: 04-07-2013 18:33 Post subject:

I just received the Missing411 trilogy for my birthday (*ahem* June 17th, if anyone wants to celebrate late) and it's a quite fascinating read.

The focus is largely on parks and recreational areas where people just vanish without a trace. Some show up later and can't remember what happened. Others' bodies show up years later in areas that were thoroughly searched before.

I've only just started reading it, but it is gripping. So much so that I can only read a little bit at a time so it can sink in without pre-judgement.

Posted: 05-07-2013 12:16 Post subject:

Posted: 05-07-2013 12:37 Post subject:

Posted: 10-07-2013 09:09 Post subject:

I have been watching some of the YouTube vids featuring the author of Missing 411. The books seemed a bit dear when I looked, but they're exactly the kind of thing I love to read, so maybe for Christmas Smile

Would you mind posting when you've read it/them? I'd love to know your thoughts.