Leaving The Light On
Carole Moore
Missing Persons Contributor
Officer.com
For those who’ve lost their ways home.
Ellen Leach is one of many volunteers who work with the Internet, law enforcement and families to match found and unidentified bodies to persons who have been reported missing. Her organization is called Porchlight Missing and Unidentified. The Gulfport, Mississippi, resident claims three “solves” – not a bad record for someone who has no official connection to law enforcement.
In a case spotlighted on the CBS news program, 48 Hours , Leach played a critical role in linking two cases: a skull found in a bucket of cement in Missouri and the disappearance of a missing father of two, Gregory May.
An avid Civil War collector and antiquities dealer, May vanished from his Iowa home without telling anyone he was leaving. After one of May’s friends was spotted selling off May’s collection, investigators made a case against the man, Doug DeBruin, for May’s murder. As DeBruin’s trial approached, police continued their efforts to find May’s body. Then, days before the case was to go to trial, Leach – who at the time was a cashier at Home Depot – connected the dots. She contacted investigators and, as she surmised, the skull turned out to be that of the missing man.
This isn’t the only time Leach’s dedication to looking for a link between recovered, unidentified remains and missing persons has paid off for law enforcement. And Leach’s match isn’t the only one made by cops, families or interested third parties.
More about this is in future posts. Here’s another missing person who needs to be brought home. Let’s bring this missing child home:
http://www.pollyklaas.org/missing/kids/chioma-ezronesha-gray.html
Thanks, Carole! Life is a puzzle and we need ALL the pieces. Thanks for helping us keep the porchlight on until they all come home.
Ms. Moore, I am a shift supervisor for a police department in a larger city in CT. We have a new policy regarding missing persons that requires notification of everyone up the chain of command to Captain and includes the Detective Division. I have had many searches and only one has ended in finding an elderly woman who had drowned. The majority of our searches involves younger kids who have gone out and have not been seen for several hours. My concern is that the kids will go out with their friends and their parents wont call us until they have been missing for several hours and it is now early morning. When you interview the parent(s) they usually say he/she went out with their friend. My next question is, who are their friends? The response is always astounding, “I don’t know”. Where does their friend live? “I don’t know”. Do you have a telephone number for their friend? “No”.
Is it me or are parents less concerned with their children these days? My kids go absolutely nowhere unless I have all the above information and have spoken with the parents of their friends. What is the world coming to?
that really seems to be the case with parents from what i see,my kids dont leave home without me knowing their where abouts and being introduced to their friends as I had to growing up,its seems to me that its too much of a chore for some parents to get more involved with their kids and there is that lost generation(that dont have fathers and for the mothers that just keep having children when they cant take care of them,god forbid they may just be gone one day like these poor kids that are missings! keep up the good work,even though law enforcement trys every lead theres always something someone else may see too !