The Last Place You'd Look (24 page)

For Susan Burg, the passage of time has left her standing in the same spot for more than eight years. That is when the search for her daughter, Sabrina Kahler, began. Sabrina disappeared from Erie, Pennsylvania, under suspicious circumstances after swimming at a local pool. Although she had just celebrated her twentieth birthday, Sabrina was little more than a child—she still had braces on her teeth and was mentally challenged. Her mother misses her sweet girl and never stops pushing for answers to her disappearance.

Neither do Joy Little or Janey Caravallo, who seek missing siblings on opposite sides of the country. Joy’s sister, Linda Lois Little, vanished from Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1991 and hasn’t been seen since. Linda disappeared while biking home from her job in the early morning hours. A tall woman with long, wavy brown hair, Linda’s family says she would never leave on her own. They’ve hung posters, distributed flyers, and taken advantage of every opportunity to bring her story to the media. Still, Linda Little’s case remains unresolved.

Janey also uses print media to search for her brother, Gilbert Caravallo, who disappeared from the home he shared with their mother in Pearl City, Hawaii. The thirty-five-year-old Gilbert vanished in 2004 while hanging out with some friends. He has not been seen since despite the efforts of his family to find him. Janey says losing a child this way has been tough on their mother. In addition to getting the word out on the Internet, dealing with the press, and putting up posters, Janey also wrote and published an account of her brother’s disappearance. She hopes the book she wrote will focus media attention on Gilbert, but thus far no sign of the missing man has surfaced, and the Caravallo family keeps looking.

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When children disappear, they fall under the auspices of the National Child Search Assistance Act, which was passed in 1990. It prohibits law enforcement agencies from requiring a waiting period before taking a missing persons report and provides that certain information be entered into the national database known as the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). It also directs that this information be made available to the various state clearinghouses, which are designed to follow up on missing persons. A list of state clearinghouses can be found on the Klaas Foundation’s Web site at www
.klaaskids.org/pg-mc-stmisschildclearing.htm. The foundation was founded in memory of Polly Klaas, who was abducted from the bedroom of her home by a stranger and then murdered. The KlaasKids Foundation, which is a member of AMECO, works to further the cause of child safety and offers aid and support to parents of missing children.

In addition to federal law, each state may have its own set of laws on missing children. In Massachusetts, for example, police agencies are required by statute to enter the child without delay into state and federal databases, even if the report is incomplete.

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“The only thing that gets to me is the body of a three-, four-year-old wearing Winnie the Pooh pajamas. I have flashbacks to my granddaughter,” says Jerry Nance.

Nance is sitting at his desk in the crowded office space he shares with other case managers at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Long legs stretched in front of him, Nance’s hangdog expression makes him appear sad. In view of the things he has seen during his four decades as a criminal investigator, Nance is entitled to a touch of gloominess. But he’s a gentle soul, an introspective man who believes in what he is doing and never stops hoping for those random miracles like the recovery of Jaycee Dugard, found alive eighteen years after she was abducted by a stranger.

Nance is a realist, though. He understands that cases like Jaycee’s are rare. But like the rest of the crew at NCMEC, he is dedicated to fighting that uphill battle. He and his coworkers are often a missing child’s best hope of being found.

Nance worked as a certified death investigator with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and established their cold case program. He retired on a Thursday in 1998 and began work at NCMEC’s Arlington, Virginia, office on the following Monday.

Back in 1998 when Nance first arrived, NCMEC had about 175 employees and volunteers. That number has shot up to 500, with about 300 in the Alexandria, Virginia, area. The rest are in Florida, Texas, and New York.

NCMEC (referred to as “Nick-Mick” by cops) was founded at the urging of individuals like Reve and John Walsh, host of
America’s Most Wanted
, both tireless advocates for missing children. The Walshes’ activism grew out of the tragic 1981 kidnapping and slaying of their son, Adam.

The Virginia-based organization offers a wide range of assistance to law enforcement and the families of the missing, from counseling to following complicated leads. Nance’s job is to work with law enforcement. He handles the kinds of things that would guarantee most individuals years of nightmares.

Earlier, he received a call from a police department that had hosted a motorcycle rally. “It was a pretty calm event, and on Sunday [the participants] all started taking off. On the way out of town, one of them passed a vet’s office. On Monday morning, the assistant goes to open up the door and finds a Walmart bag on the doorknob. Inside she finds a human skull of a child about four to six years of age. It’s too young to tell if it’s a boy or a girl. The mandible [jawbone] was separated from the rest of the skull and some of the teeth were glued in. Makes me think it was some kind of trophy,” he says.

It was a horrific find, Nance agrees, but not the cut-and-dried criminal case it seems at first blush. He points out that there are professional skeletons—the kind used in medical schools—out there, too.

“Our job will be to tie all of the information together. We’ll search through the databases and give the police suggestions,” he says. Facial reconstruction is another method by which NCMEC might try to identify the child.

What happened to bring this nameless youngster to such a disturbing denouement? Nance’s job is to help authorities working the case to maximize the reach of their investigation. Since he stays on top of cutting-edge forensic techniques and has access to multiple databases, he can connect the dots that others can’t.

But when it comes to missing children or unidentified recovered remains, Nance finds it hard to take satisfaction in resolving his cases. “You can have DNA, do skull reconstruction, help make a case, but at the end of the day, there is a dead child out there,” says Nance.

He empathizes with those parents who are resigned to a bad outcome. “One mother said it drives her crazy to think of her daughter out in the cold. She wants to put a blanket on her,” Nance says.

Although police now have better and more sophisticated tools with which to work, the tide of missing children continues, fueled by the Internet. Nance and other law enforcement officers share a growing concern about the sheer number of victims that can be reached over the information superhighway.

The case manager says he once attended a conference where an FBI cybercrimes expert gave a talk about chat rooms. He went online in front of the conference attendees, entered a chat room, and typed in, “Hi, my name is Heather and I like puppies.”

“There were eighty replies within one minute. This is 10:00 in the morning. It shook me,” Nance admits.

Although nonfamily abductions are the least common reason behind a child’s disappearance, it’s still too much of a factor for Nance. “Most abductions lead to death—what happens, happens fast,” he says.

Nance says his wife has learned not to ask about his day and he has learned not to share it. It’s how he keeps his head on straight, how he sleeps at night. But he’s proud of what NCMEC and his forensics unit accomplish.

“We’re the only unit in the U.S. who does what we are doing. Sometimes we’re their only chance. And even though we look for the dead, we put most of our resources into the living,” he says.

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Adult males. As Barbara Sullivan says, their disappearances draw the least amount of press attention. Sometimes their families feel like they are the only ones looking for them, the only ones who give a damn.

Trevor Morse. Anthony Holland. Justin Burkhart. Three adult men, missing from three different states, all leaving behind three desperate, devastated families.

Trevor’s father, Rick Morse, says that his son disappeared from Las Vegas, where he lived and worked as an electrician, on May 6, 2007. Trevor is a transplant from El Paso, Texas. Rick says police in Las Vegas have tried to convince the family that Trevor committed suicide, but he denies his son was suicidal and says there was every indication that things were going well for Trevor. In fact, says Rick, Trevor was planning on moving back home to El Paso to be closer to his family.

“Dealing with the [Las Vegas Police] was a nightmare. They showed very little understanding . . . and absolutely no compassion,” says Rick. “On the other hand, [the] El Paso Police, though they had no responsibility in the case, were compassionate.”

Trevor Morse, left, with his mother, Linda, and brother Dan. Courtesy of Rick and
Linda Morse.

A handsome young man with defined cheekbones beneath cornflower blue eyes, Trevor was twenty-six when he vanished. Rick says he spends part of every day looking for his son—he searches the Internet and tries to keep press interest from flagging.

“We do not have the financial resources to post billboards and rewards,” says Rick.

On June 21, 2009, Anthony Holland walked out of the door of his Cordell, Oklahoma, home to run a business errand. He never returned. His family, including his cousin, Teresa Goughan, continues to look for him, but all of their efforts have thus far turned up little to indicate what happened to the successful businessman.

Anthony was fifty-one when he disappeared. With his white hair and charming smile, he resembles a favorite college professor. Teresa says Anthony is bighearted and generous. He comes from a large, close-knit family.

“We all have faith that we will find Anthony one day and this faith keeps us going,” says Teresa.

Searchers found Anthony’s abandoned truck, but no sign of Anthony, nor any indication of his whereabouts. His personal effects—wallet, checkbook, cash, and identification—remained undisturbed in his home.

Teresa says the family is pleased for the most part with the way local authorities have handled the search for her cousin. They’ve called in air and ground searchers and worked with cadaver dogs on the assumption that Anthony has fallen victim to an accident and perished. She says the Washita County Sheriff’s Office stays in touch with them, and “appear[s] to be actively working the case. They have not ruled it as foul play, but I don’t think they have ruled that out, either,” she says.

Teresa says she isn’t certain the officers conducting the investigation are trained for the task, and when family members ask questions, they are stonewalled. “In general, we are typically told that our questions cannot be answered as it is part of the investigation,” she says.

“Each day that goes by is another day without Anthony. We hope and pray that he is safe,” she says.

When the searches lead to nothing and leads dwindle, all that is left for some families is hope and prayer. Eloisa Chavez finds herself praying a lot these days. Most of those prayers are for her missing son, Justin Drew Burkhart.

Justin, a young Hispanic man who had been working hard to leave his troubled youth behind, left his Bend, Oregon, apartment in the early morning hours of August 1, 2009, to pick up something to eat and never came back. His mom says there was no reason for Justin to vanish on purpose, and when he left, it was obvious he intended to return: the lights were on in his apartment and music was playing.

Justin had a promising social life. Engaged and planning to move to Alaska to follow his fiancée, he had overcome drug addiction, although his family says he still drank—sometimes to excess.

They continue to search for him and celebrate his life, but investigators have little to go on in this case. There are no clues, no smoking gun, nothing that gives any indication of where Justin could have landed when he left his place. Did he have an accident? Was he kidnapped or injured and left somewhere to die? Those are questions they are beginning to believe they will never answer.

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When answers are few and the trail grows cold, some resort to private investigators like Harold Copus to keep the search going when things look their dimmest.

Reflecting on his long career in private investigation, Copus estimates his success rate in finding missing persons is about 90 percent, which is a pretty good clearance rate. He’s proud of those numbers, but it’s the 10 percent he doesn’t find that haunts him.

Middle-aged, with glasses perched on his nose, Copus speaks of those cases in vowels that wind as long and endless as a country dirt road. A product of Alabama, he resides in Athens, Georgia, a college town not far from Atlanta. After his own graduation from college, Copus made his way to the FBI, where he worked as a special agent for almost a decade, leaving, he says, when the constant transfers proved too hard on his home life. He settled into a job directing private investigations for a large law firm, but after a decade of telling other people what to do, he decided to parlay his experience into a private investigations agency of his own.