Missing or Murdered in Missouri: Unsolved and Solved Cases

Book excerpt: Like most other states, Missouri has a growing list of cold cases. Three women vanish from a home in Springfield in 1992 on high school graduation night. A young woman is abducted in Ava and murdered after mowing a church cemetery. A 9 year-old disappears and her body is found in 1975. A nurse and her children are killed in their home in a quiet new subdivision, and two mothers have vanished without a trace. An elderly woman who has been featured on the album cover of a popular band is murdered in her Aldrich home. Just as solved cold cases have become popularized in a variety of television documentaries, Missouri cases are also becoming closed. DNA has been the smoking gun in one 25 year-old homicide and has sent a prominent businessman to prison. People are talking and in the case of a 15 year-old murdered in 1982, there have been convictions. Surveillance tapes and cell phones have been added to the arsenal of evidence. Files are being revised and the media is featuring their stories again. These are some of the victims cases and their families who press on and the organizations, detectives, and experts who support them.