It does make me wonder about this guy’s allegedly blissful marriage

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So I was putting up a case the other day of an elderly man who went missing; it’s believed to be possibly a medical issue and foul play is not suspected.

I read this article where they interviewed the missing man’s wife. She said they were childhood sweethearts and had been together since forever and had always been very happy together. She also said something that struck me as strange: she mentioned that her husband had once had a certain specific job which is prestigious and high paying, and after he “lost” this job he worked a much lower paying position, in the same field but basically menial. In fact he was having to cobble multiple of the same low paying menial job together to try to support them and he was failing at that: their house was in foreclosure.

It seemed like a remarkable downward career trajectory to me, and not something that would happen for no reason.

I looked into this and discovered the reason I sought: back in the 1990s, while working his prestigious job, this man had sexually harassed a bunch of female employees. They sued and won. As a result his career went off a cliff.

This was like 25 or 30 years before his disappearance and I highly doubt it was related, so I didn’t put it in the casefile. But it made me wonder just how terrific the couple’s marriage actually was.

Of course the sexual harasser needs to be found anyway, for the sake of his suffering family.

MP of the week: LePerry Williams Jr.

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This week’s featured missing person is LePerry Dushawn Williams Jr., a 27-year-old man who disappeared from Houston, Texas on November 1, 2019.

Williams told his dad people were angry at him and knew where he lived, but wouldn’t say who or why. They argued, Williams walked away and never came back. His dad didn’t report him missing till the following March cause he thought Williams was hiding from those people and not in touch cause he was still mad about the argument.

There are indications that he may have been in Tampa, Florida in 2021 but if he was, he apparently isn’t anymore. Strange case.

If still alive, Williams would have turned 32 last week. He’s black, 5’7, and when he went missing he was very thin, just 120 pounds.

Madalina Cojocari’s mom may be deported

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Diana, the mother of missing 11-year-old Madalina Cojocari, has just pleaded guilty to one count of failure to report a missing child and got sentenced to time served. The felony conviction means it’s likely she will be deported to her native country, Moldova in eastern Europe.

It’s a very strange case. Madalina’s stepfather is still awaiting trial on the same charge as Diana. Both of them have accused the other of hiding her and they were involved in some really sketchy stuff. It’s theorized that Madalina was trafficked, in which case she could be anywhere.

I don’t think I ever said this but

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I got my Reddit account back awhile ago, after being permabanned in January.

How did that happen? Basically I knew a guy who knew a guy at Reddit, and after 72 days in Jailddit an actual human looked at my content, realized it was all educational in nature and didn’t actually violate TOS, and rescinded by ban.

I have no idea whether this would have ever occurred if my friend hadn’t contacted his friend. As it was, it’s ridiculous that it took 72 days and connections to get this done.

So it’s not about missing persons but if you want to check out my Reddit account, here it is. I feel obliged to include a trigger warning cause there’s lots of really awful medical photos. Mostly I post medical case reports, historical photos and historical death certificates. I’ve got over 3,000 Reddit followers now. Most accounts have zero.

Missing Algerian man found after 26 years, living in the house next door

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So there are a bunch of articles on this and I read them and can summarize thus:

One Omar bin Omran disappeared from Djelfa, Algeria in 1998. He was 19 years old at the time. The Algerian Civil War (Algerian government vs. a bunch of Islamist insurgent groups) was raging at the time and wouldn’t end until 2002. His family assumed he’d been killed or kidnapped by the Army or one of the Islamists. At least 20,000 people were kidnapped over the course of the war, which is sometimes referred to by Algerians as the Black Decade, and 200,000 or so were killed.

Such disappearances from war zones are common. They’re happening in Ukraine right now, as I blogged about months ago. They’re happening in Gaza too, more than 7,000 as of last month. They happen whenever society falls to pieces.

That’s not, apparently, what happened to Omar bin Omran, though, because he resurfaced the other day hiding under some hay in sheepfold in a neighbor’s basement. The National Post says he was found “just 10 metres from his home” but quote-tweets an account called Morbid Knowledge which says the distance was 200 meters. He is now 45 and, per Al Jazeera, claims he was held captive by a 61-year-old doorman (identified as “BA”).

Omar says he actually saw his family occasionally from afar but was unable to call out to them due to a “spell” his captor cast on him. Al Jazeera says the crime was discovered “after the suspect’s brother posted revealing information on social media, amid an alleged inheritance dispute between the siblings.” Which I think means BA’s brother knew he was hiding a man in his basement and decided to denounce him because he was mad at him over the inheritance thing.

BA has been arrested. He’s accused of killing Omar’s dog as well as kidnapping Omar. Photos of Omar with the dog were distributed by his family searching for him the year he went missing. I don’t know why BA (allegedly) killed the dog.

Omar is now being given medical and psychological care. Unfortunately he was found too late for his mom, who died in 2013. I don’t really know enough about Algerian culture to comment on the “he cast a spell on me” thing; it sounds really weird from an American perspective but perhaps beliefs in magic are common in Algeria? He could even have been speaking metaphorically, basically saying he was too scared of his captor to call out to his family.

This is a very peculiar story and I think there’s probably a lot more to it, but I don’t know if more will be reported in English language media. Check out the aforementioned Morbid Knowledge tweet for pics of Omar, and his dog.

MP of the week: Rebecca Ferguson

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This week’s featured missing person is Rebecca Ferguson, a 32-year-old woman who disappeared from Jasper, Alabama on September 16, 1988.

She was supposed to go visit her cousin in Birmingham, but never arrived there. Two days later her car was found abandoned on the roadside; it had been shot at but there was no blood.

If she is still alive, Rebecca would be more than twice the age when she disappeared, 68. I think it’s unlikely she’s still alive but can’t find out all that much about her disappearance. She left two little boys behind.

MP of the week: Derrick Engebretson

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This week’s featured missing person is Derrick James Engebretson, missing since December 5, 1998. This was around the time when I was getting interested in missing persons. I remember reading articles about the search for Derrick. I wouldn’t have thought they’d still be looking, 26 years later.

Derrick and his dad and grandfather were looking for a Christmas tree in the Winema National Forest in Klamath County, Oregon when he disappeared. If he simply got lost, the searchers didn’t find him and no one has found him since.

The police think foul play is a possibility, though. A convicted child rapist, Frank Milligan, confessed to Derrick’s murder and offered to lead the cops to the body, but nothing was found and Milligan later recanted.

If he’s still alive, Derrick Engebretson would be 33 today.

MP of the week: Kimberly Riley

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This week’s featured missing person is Kimberly Ann Riley, missing since December 23, 1998 from Lorain, Ohio. She was 19, 5’2 and 122 pounds. She’s white, with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Kimberly was originally listed as missing with her boyfriend, Omar Seymore, who is also the father of her two kids. Seymore turned up in California in 2004. As for Kimberly, the details are at the casefile but the circumstances look very bad and it’s likely Seymore killed her. He was found liable in a wrongful death suit (basically by default, since he didn’t defend himself) but has never been charged in her disappearance.

If she’s still alive, Kimberly would be 44 today. She’s probably a grandmother by now.

Between the family death and my recent travels I’ve been absent

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So my father-in-law’s funeral is over and this past weekend I went to the Wisconsin Missing Persons Awareness Event, where I gave the keynote speech and the Charley Project was awarded a plaque from the organization. It was a really awesome event; they get bigger every year and every year more people show up.

Now I’m home again. And have a bunch of cases to resolve.