MOTHER, DAUGHTER VANISH WITH FRIEND; POLICE BAFFLED

Newspaper
June 13, 1992 | Orlando Sentinel, The (FL)
Author: Associated Press | Page: A12 | Section: A SECTION | Column: OTHER NEWS
TO NOTETHE NATION
322 Words
Police are baffled by the apparent abduction six days ago of a woman, her daughter and
the daughter's friend on the night the teen-agers celebrated their high school
graduation.

''This case has gone beyond a missing-persons case,'' said Police Chief Terry Knowles. ''I
think there has been some form of abduction.''

Stacy McCall, 18, and Suzie Streeter, 19, left a party about 2 a.m. Sunday in separate cars
bound for the home of Streeter's mother, Sherrill E. Levitt, 47.

By dawn, all three women had disappeared.

Their cars, keys, purses, cash, identification and medication were left at the unlocked
house, police said.

The beds were unmade, the TV was on, and the dog was inside the neat, one-story home.
The women left no word with friends or relatives, no indication they had packed
anything and no sign of a struggle, police said.

Levitt, a hair stylist, was last seen at her daughter's graduation Saturday evening.

Police are assuming the women were abducted by someone they knew or had met
recently, the chief said. However he wouldn't rule out the possibility that a stranger
followed them home.

Witnesses told police that nothing unusual happened at two parties the teen-agers
attended after graduation, said Capt. Tony Glenn, investigation division commander.

Family and friends have distributed more than 20,000 posters of the women in the
Midwest. Detectives have interviewed hundreds of people.

''We are trying to reconstruct their lives, their social activities, their normal manners of
doing things, anything that might help us,'' Glenn said.

Stuart McCall, McCall's father, said his wife and other two daughters were distraught.

''There's no way anyone who hasn't been through it could know what we're going
through,'' he said. ''At least with homicide you know what you're dealing with. But with
this, there are so many unknowns.''
MAN SAYS HE SAW MISSING WOMAN POLICE STUDY POSSIBLE ABDUCTION OF
THREE
Newspaper
June 18, 1992 | Wichita Eagle, The (KS)
Author: Eagle staff and wire reports Contributing: Hurst Laviana and Robert Short of
The Eagle | Page: 3D | Section: CITY AND STATE
398 Words
Investigators in Missouri who have been searching for three women, including one who
used to live in Wichita, said Wednesday they have their first leads in the 11-day-old case.

A Springfield gas station attendant has told police he remembers the oldest of the
missing women coming by his gas station at 2 a.m. looking for the two others, both
teenagers.

And, a beat-up, rusted van seen near the Springfield home where the oldest woman lives
has no connection to the neighborhood, and that makes it suspicious, police said.

''We have been unable to account for the vehicle; therefore we are classifying the vehicle
as suspicious in nature," said Capt. Tony Glenn, head of the city police investigations
unit.

Police say Sherrill Levitt, 47, her daughter, Suzie Streeter, 19, and Streeter's friend Stacy
McCall, 18, disappeared sometime in the early hours of June 7. Levitt lives in central
Springfield.

A witness saw the brown van, with a rusted bottom and no side or back windows, parked
within about a block of the older woman's home about 4:30 a.m. June 7.

The van was described as possibly a Dodge make between 1967 to 1970.

Glenn said no one was noticed in the van, and he asked anyone who has seen a vehicle
matching its description to call Springfield police.

Last weekend, Springfield police searched by air and ground for the women. The two
teenagers were last seen at a graduation party. Levitt was last seen driving around
Springfield looking for them.

Police said they are investigating the case as a possible abduction.

Wichita school officials said McCall had attended Peterson Elementary School and
Wilbur Junior High in Wichita before moving to Springfield in 1987.

On Saturday, about 60 searchers combed lakes, ditches, woods and deserted areas in
southeastern Springfield. About 70 people searched areas of southwestern Springfield
on Sunday.
Southwest Missouri landowners have been asked to check their property for any signs of
the missing women.

Police Capt. Tony Glenn said pieces of rope, clothing and gloves from the women's
homes had been taken to police headquarters to be checked for any possible connection
to the case.

Streeter and McCall are recent graduates of Kickapoo High School.

Police said rewards totaling $15,000 have been offered for information to help find the
women.

''I still wouldn't label it an abduction," Glenn said. "But there's a strong indication a
crime was committed. At this time we still don't know what that is."

Waitress recalls seeing women on morning of disappearances Three missing since

June 7 in Springfield.
Newspaper
June 24, 1992 | Kansas City Star, The (MO)
Page: C1 | Section: MID-AMERICA
264 Words
SPRINGFIELD - A waitress says she saw a mother and her daughter at a late-night
restaurant shortly before they disappeared more than two weeks ago, police said
Tuesday.

Sgt. Mark Webb said the waitress told investigators that Sherrill Levitt, 47, and Suzie
Streeter, 19, were accompanied by a third female with long, brown hair.

That description matches Stacy McCall, an 18-year-old friend of Streeter's who also
vanished in the early hours of June 7. Investigators think the women were abducted.
Their cars, purses, keys, cash and other items were found at Levitt's unlocked home in
central Springfield.

The waitress at George's Steak House, a few blocks from the home, first spoke with
investigators Sunday night, authorities said.

The waitress identified Levitt and Streeter as regular customers. She said the two were
at the restaurant sometime between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., and possibly as late as 4 a.m. on
June 7. The waitress saw men she did not recognize talking to the three women, she told
police.

George's Steak House usually is packed with an after-hours crowd on weekend nights.
The waitress is the only one who has reported that Levitt and her daughter were there
on June 7, police said.

"If somebody else was there and saw them, we'd like to talk to them," Webb said.
Police have established that Streeter and McCall left a party in nearby Battlefield around
2:30 a.m., driving separate cars to Levitt's home.

The teen-agers had graduated from high school the night before they vanished.

About 30 Springfield police officers and the FBI say they haven't found a trace of the
three women after early June 7.

Springfield on mission to find missing women

Newspaper
June 28, 1992 | Kansas City Star, The (MO)
Author: LANE BEAUCHAMP | Page: B1 | Section: METROPOLITAN
1623 Words | Readability: Lexile: 830, grade level(s): 4 5
SPRINGFIELD - They walk through the house looking for an answer.

Maybe it's in Stacy's pile of clothes in the bedroom. Or in Suzie's purse, dropped nearby.
Or maybe the answer is back in one of the filing cabinets by Sherrill's desk.

Veteran police officers, longtime friends turned amateur detectives, and frustrated
relatives have combed through the well-kept three-bedroom house at 1717 E. Delmar St.
hoping to find some sign, anything at all, that can give them an answer.

But the searches have yielded few clues as to the whereabouts of Sherrill Levitt; her
daughter, Suzie Streeter; and Streeter's friend, Stacy McCall.

Three weeks ago this morning, the three women vanished from Levitt's east Springfield
home.

Police are convinced they were abducted. Their families think they are still alive.

"I really feel they're being held somewhere against their will," said McCall's mother,
Janis McCall. "We have to hope that they're alive. We think about all the worst, but we
have to hope.

Without hope, you don't have anything. " Police say there is no reason the three would
have left on their own. They are stable, responsible persons. Levitt, 47, has long been a
hairdresser at a Springfield salon. Streeter, 19, works at a movie theater and is thinking
about becoming a cosmetologist.

McCall, 18, has been looking forward to starting college and a pledging a sorority in the
fall.

They aren't into drugs or cults, police say. To be gone for a day without calling someone
would be unusual for them. To go three weeks without contact would be impossible.

"This is a tough case," Springfield Police Chief Terry Knowles said. "Everyone in the
department, everyone in the community feels this case. We all just want to find them. "
No signs of trouble The unlocked front door of the house on Delmar Street opens to a
home filled with mystery.

Everything seems in its place. Clothes, purses, keys. No signs of trouble.

Springfield police investigator Dana Carrington slowly walks from room to room, taking
what is probably his 1,000th trip through the house in the last three weeks. He's looking
for something, anything.

"We've unfolded every piece of paper in every pocket in the house," Carrington said.
"We've checked every page of every book, gone through every drawer trying to find a
clue. " The scene doesn't make sense to anyone.

Levitt and Streeter are chain-smokers, so why would their packs of Marlboros and
Virginia Slims be left behind?

McCall suffers recurring migraine headaches and took nightly medication to keep them
under control, so why would her pills be left behind?

"I think Stacy had gotten ready for bed," Janis McCall theorized. "She had taken off her
shorts, her shoes, her jewelry, her bra. All she would have had on was her shirt and
underwear. " Streeter also had changed clothes. The outfit she had on earlier that night
was tossed in a dirty-clothes basket.

Levitt and Streeter always made their beds in the morning, friends said. Yet their
bedsheets were rumpled, indicating they may have gone to sleep.

There is virtually no trail for police to follow. No cash missing. No credit cards used.
Technically, investigators don't even have proof a crime has been committed.

One friend of the teen-agers said it was as if someone walked through the walls and
zapped the women with a gun that made them vanish.

Graduation parties The evening before they disappeared was filled with frivolity.

Streeter and McCall, longtime friends but not particularly close ones, had graduated
from Kickapoo High School. The night would be spent celebrating.

It was about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 6. Classmate Janelle Kirby remembers
Streeter arriving at her house first. McCall came a few minutes later in her own car.

The first party of the night was at the home of Kirby's next-door neighbors.

"Suzie had a little stomach ache, but nothing else was bothering her," friend Shane
Appleby remembered. "She was excited about finally graduating. Everything was kind of
open for us.
Anything we wanted to do was out there now, and we could just reach for it. " Appleby,
18, said Streeter always called him her big brother, even though she is a few months
older.

"Her license plate says it all: SWEETR," Appleby said. "She's a sweet girl.She's a person
you can always depend on. Anytime I was down or troubled, she would give me good
advice. She'd tell me to stand up on my own and be my own person. " Appleby said he
and Streeter spent much of graduation night reminiscing about their high school days -
the people they had met, the things they had done.

Streeter is friendly but shy, friends said. She is more likely to stick closer to people she
knows. McCall, on the other hand, bounces about a party and immediately brings life to
everyone around her.

"You can be as down as down can go, and Stacy will come up and make you laugh and
smile," said Kirby, McCall's best friend.

By about 2 a.m. Sunday, the parties were winding down. McCall decided she would
spend the night with Streeter and the group would meet later that morning to head for a
water amusement park in Branson, Mo.

"I saw Suzie and Stacy walk down to their cars," Appleby said.

"Everything was normal. That was the last time I saw them. " Plans to go to Branson
Levitt, as much a friend to her daughter as a mother, apparently spent the evening at
home. A private person who had been divorced twice, Levitt seems to prefer
redecorating her house, which she bought this spring, to going out.

Her daughter's friends marvel at the relationship between Levitt and Streeter. The two
can talk about anything. Levitt is very protective of her daughter, yet gives her the room
to make her own decisions, friends said.

Levitt spoke by telephone with a friend about 9:30 p.m. She gave no indication of any
trouble or concerns. There has been no confirmed contact with Levitt since.

Streeter was not supposed to be home that evening. Initial plans had her staying with
McCall and their other friends at a hotel room in Branson. That shifted over the night to
their sleeping at one of the friends' homes in Battlefield, Mo. But in the end there were
too many people there, so Streeter invited McCall over to her home. The two are thought
to have arrived about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, June 7. When friends didn't hear from the pair
Sunday morning about the day trip to Branson, they tried calling, then went to the
house.

They found all three women's cars in the driveway, locked. They found the house
unoccupied but left unlocked - something Levitt wouldn't do. The globe from a porch
light was shattered on the ground.
"We cleaned it up because we knew Sherrill wouldn't want it that way," Kirby said.
"Normally, the second it broke she would have cleaned it up. " Still not suspecting
anything was wrong, as many as 18 friends that day walked through the house, looking
for some indication of where Levitt, Streeter and McCall may have been.

As the day wore on with no signs of the three, police eventually were called in, and the
search began.

A motive continues to baffle police. They looked into the three women's backgrounds,
hoping to find some spark that could ignite the investigation. So far there has been
nothing solid. They have given polygraph tests to a few people who knew the women,
but the police chief said no strong suspects had developed.

In three weeks, 30 Springfield police officers and a handful of state and federal
authorities have received more than 1,200 tips and followed nearly 500 leads.

$40,000 reward The case has captivated this southwest Missouri city of 140,000.

There are billboards, posters or yellow ribbons everywhere you look.

Volunteers have showed up by the truckload to lend a hand in searches. A reward fund
offers $40,000. Television and radio update the case each newscast, and a newspaper
keeps a front-page tally of how many days the women have been missing.

The case has even received national attention.

Fox Television's "America's Most Wanted" series has featured the women for the last
three weeks. A crew from the CBS News show "48 Hours" is documenting the
investigation for an hourlong segment not yet scheduled.

"The community has been absolutely phenomenal," Janis McCall said. "It's
overwhelming. They've helped with food and love and prayers and cards. It keeps you
going. " But all the help and support and interest hasn't brought back the three women.
And police admit they are not much closer to solving the case today than they were three
weeks ago.

"There's nothing to get your teeth into," Police Lt. Mike Brazeal said. "It's hampered by a
lack of knowledge. The hard facts are very few. " Police now are focusing on what the
women did between about 2 and 7:30 a.m. Sunday, June 7. Streeter and McCall
obviously made it to the house, and the three had at least gotten ready for bed. But they
don't know when that happened or whether anyone else was in the house.

A plea for the public's help has turned up two possible sightings in that period. A
convenience store clerk thinks Levitt came into his store searching for her daughter. A
waitress at a crowded all-night restaurant thinks she served Levitt, Streeter and another
woman, possibly McCall. No other witnesses have corroborated those stories, though.
The investigation, then, often leads to unanswered questions.

"We look at the reports and wonder if the answer is in there," said Knowles, the police
chief. "Or is the answer at the graduation party? Or is the answer in the residence?

"There is a genuine desire in this department, in this community, to get this case
resolved," he said. "All we're looking for is that something to point us in a direction. "

Inquiry goes on in missing-women case Police to question man, but they doubt that he
is involved.
Newspaper
July 2, 1992 | Kansas City Star, The (MO)
Page: C2 | Section: MID-AMERICA
259 Words
SPRINGFIELD - A man accused of vandalizing a tomb will be questioned in the
disappearance of three women, but police said Wednesday that they expect to eliminate
him as a suspect in the missing-persons case.

The 21-year-old man was arrested Monday in Mundelein, Ill., and was being held
Wednesday in the Lake County Jail. Authorities haven't said when he'll be returned to
Springfield.

Capt. Tony Glenn said detectives needed to confirm the man wasn't involved in the
disappearance of Sherrill Levitt, 47; Suzie Streeter, 19; and Stacy McCall, 18.

Investigators became interested in the man shortly after the women vanished from
Levitt's home early June 7. The man and two others were charged last week with felony
institutional vandalism. They are accused of breaking into a mausoleum at Springfield's
Maple Park Cemetery on Feb. 21 and stealing a skull and some bones.

One of the other accused vandals is a former boyfriend of Streeter, who gave a statement
to officers investigating the vandalism.

"We interviewed a ton of people in that case. She was one of them," Glenn said.

Streeter's statement was insignificant in the vandalism case, and it "has nothing to do
with her missing now," Glenn said.

Police have said her former boyfriend, 20, sold 26 grams of gold teeth fillings from the
skull at a Springfield pawn shop for $30.

The ex-boyfriend and the third alleged vandal, 19, were questioned extensively in the
disappearances, and both are cleared as suspects, Glenn said.

Investigators say the 21-year-old arrested in Illinois isn't a Springfield resident, but he is
thought to have been in Springfield on June 7.
Police find no link to van, missing women Vehicle recovered in Indiana was stolen same
time as abduction in Springfield.
Newspaper
November 1, 1993 | Kansas City Star, The (MO)
Page: B2 | Section: METROPOLITAN
303 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1150, grade level(s): 9 10 11-12
SPRINGFIELD - Authorities in Indiana have recovered a van that disappeared about the
same time last year as three Springfield women.

But police say they don't believe it is linked to the unsolved abduction case.

"It's important because it was stolen around the same time as the women disappeared,
and criminals sometimes like to use stolen vehicles," Capt. Todd Whitson said Saturday.

"But that's the only connection to this case. It is not a major break. " Sherrill Levitt, her
daughter, Suzanne Streeter, and Streeter's high school classmate, Stacy McCall,
disappeared from Levitt's home on June 7, 1992.

The dark blue 1985 Dodge conversion van was stolen from a home more than 20 blocks
from Levitt's home sometime between June 4 and 9 of last year.

The van was found Thursday in a recreational vehicle park in Ripley County in southeast
Indiana, Whitson said. The driver of the van was not located, another official said.

Indianapolis police will check the van for evidence and forward their findings to
Springfield police.

Though Whitson does not fully discount the importance of the van's discovery, police
remain more interested in locating an early 1960s metallic green Dodge van believed
used in the abduction.

Meanwhile, no word has been given on an apparently more promising lead that resulted
in three Webster County search warrants in late August. Investigators are awaiting lab
test results from evidence apparently found during the searches.

An informant told police the women's bodies and the green van could be found in
separate rural locations of southwest Webster County. But a daylong search of those
properties failed to locate them, it appeared.

Citing a potential to jeopardize the case, a Webster County judge slapped a gag order on
evidence and search warrant affidavits. Police will not say how promising that lead now
appears, but it continues to be the focus of their investigation.

Mid-America roundup
Newspaper
August 27, 1994 | Kansas City Star, The (MO)
Page: C2 | Section: MID-AMERICA | Column: MID-AMERICA ROUNDUP
472 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1340, grade level(s): >12
SPRINGFIELD Jury probing disappearances?

A Greene County grand jury apparently heard testimony Friday in the baffling case of
three women who disappeared two years ago and are believed to have been killed.

Police Detective Doug Thomas, the only officer assigned full time to the case, and
County Prosecutor Tom Mountjoy carried boxes of documents into the federal
courthouse, where the county grand jury meets. Neither would confirm or deny the
grand jury was investigating the case or comment further.

One year ago Saturday, a county jail inmate led investigators to a Webster County farm
where he claimed the women's remains would be found. But an extensive search turned
up nothing.

However, that prisoner and two associates appear to be the focus of the grand jury
investigation, television station KYTV reported Friday.

All three have long criminal records ranging from theft to rape and are in jail, KYTV
said. But each was free when Sherrill Levitt, her daughter Suzie Streeter and Suzie's
friend Stacy McCall apparently were kidnapped June 7, 1992.

Family refuses to let suspect fade into shadows

Newspaper
December 30, 1995 | Tampa Tribune, The (FL)
Author: PATTY RYAN | Page: 1 | Section: FLORIDA/METRO
981 Words | Readability: Lexile: 1130, grade level(s): 9 10 11-12
TAMPA -- On a New Year's weekend in 1978, Sharon Zellers, a fresh-faced Walt Disney
World clerk, met a murderer on her way home.

That night, somebody bit the tip off Robert Craig Cox's tongue.

Police later found Zellers' body at a sewage pumping station.

Cox wasn't charged for a decade. By 1988, he was a dishonorably discharged Army
Ranger serving time for terrorizing two California women with a knife and gun and
abducting one of them. An Orlando jury added a Zellers murder conviction to the ex-
soldier's rap sheet.

In 1989, the state Supreme Court, citing a lack of evidence, overruled the jury and freed
Cox from death row.

"Robert Cox will kill again because you have provided him the opportunity," wrote an
enraged juror, Nancy D'Aurora, in a letter to the Supreme Court.

Sharon Zellers' family joined the outcry.

Wherever Robert Cox went, they watched and alerted police.

Now, on the anniversary of Zellers' murder, Cox is back in prison, with trouble all
around him.

He drew a life sentence earlier this year for an armed robbery in which he held a gun on
a 12-year-old girl in a tanning salon in Decatur, Texas, 45 miles northwest of Fort
Worth.

Police continue to investigate a similar case in another small Texas town.

Cox was questioned by police in the Dallas suburb of Plano after a young woman
reported that he followed her home and tried her door knob, Decatur District Attorney
Barry Green said. No charges were filed.

And, most chilling to the family of Sharon Zellers, Cox is under investigation in the June
1992 disappearance of a mother and two teenage girls in Springfield, Mo., according to
police.

"We've been looking at him," detective Doug Thomas of the Springfield Police
Department said this week.

"The only thing we see so far is this guy's history and the fact that we haven't discovered
who took our girls or where they are."

Zellers' family -- brother Steve of Orlando, parents Charles and Dorothy of Dunnellon,
and Aunt Jessie Hill of Tampa -- accuse Florida's Supreme Court of releasing a
dangerous man.

The justices, in a rare action, never ordered a new trial for Cox but instead ruled there
wasn't evidence to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt.

Former Justice Raymond Ehrlich, who wrote the 1989 opinion, defended the decision to
release Cox to California, where he would serve the final months of a sentence for
kidnapping and assault.

"I read every page of that record," Ehrlich said Thursday. "I can go to my grave with a
good clean conscience that the record was not sufficient to convict him. It may well be
that he did it, but they never proved it.

"There wasn't enough evidence. There wasn't anything, anything, to directly tie him to
it."

Steve Zellers remembers his sister as a shy, pretty 19-year-old with auburn hair, excited
about her first full-time job, working as a clerk in Disney's Frontierland Trading Post.
Sharon Zellers was scheduled to be off Dec. 30, but someone else had called in sick, and
so she worked until 10 p.m. on a busy New Year's weekend.

She never made it home.

Cox, also 19, vacationing in Florida with his parents, was on leave from Hunter Army
Base in Savannah, Ga.

On the night of the murder, he stumbled into his parents' hotel room, bleeding from the
mouth, testimony would show. He told police he got into a fight at a skating rink parking
lot and bit his own tongue. A surgical technician would later testify that the bite could
not have been self-inflicted.

The motel was 340 feet from the manhole where Zellers was later discovered.

The skating rink was next to an all-night Albertson's where Zellers sometimes bought
cigarettes.

Police found a boot print in Zellers' car that matched Cox's shoes, blood that matched
his common blood type, and hairs that could have been his.

"When you put it all together, it fit just like a puzzle," said Charles Zellers.

But with only circumstantial evidence, police did not charge Cox right away.

In the year that followed, as the Zellers family mourned, Cox went on to become a
decorated Army Ranger. He took part in the Grenada invasion and achieved the rank of
second lieutenant.

Then, in August 1985, while stationed in Monterey, Calif., he abducted a young woman
after putting a 7-inch knife to her throat, court records show. And in December 1985,
near the Monterey airport, he drew a pistol on a woman soldier and told her they were
going to the mountains.

Both women escaped.

Cox pleaded guilty to kidnapping and assault charges and was sentenced to nine years in
prison.

Learning of his convictions, Orlando prosecutors dusted off the Zellers case and
convinced a jury Cox was guilty.

He went to death row but was soon a free man.

"There was a lot of suspicion, and I can see why," said former Justice Ehrlich.

"But it takes more than that to take a man's life."

By 1992, Robert Cox was out of California prison and living in his hometown of
Springfield, Mo.

That June 7, three women -- Sherrill Levitt, 49, daughter Suzanne Streeter, 19, and
Suzanne's friend Stacy McCall, 18 -- disappeared after returning home from a high
school graduation party.

Their purses were left in the house.

"We strongly believe foul play," says detective Thomas.

Their bodies have not been found in the community on the edge of the Ozarks, despite
25,000 hours of investigation by local police, help from the FBI -- and help from the
Zellers family.

In Florida, Charles Zellers heard on television that three Springfield women were
missing.

Springfield police heard from Steve Zellers almost right away.

Zellers, who has taken his family's story to police across the country, told police in
Missouri and Texas that Cox was in their area.

"It's probably his tenacity that has got this guy Cox jammed up the way he is now," said
Thomas.

No one was injured and no shots were fired when Cox committed the Texas robbery that
would eventually send him back to prison.

A decade later, three women still missing

Newspaper
June 7, 2002 | Kansas City Star, The (MO)
Author: SHASHANK BENGALI | Page: A1 | Section: NATIONAL
1876 Words
SPRINGFIELD - Hours after their high school graduation, in the dark early morning of
June 7, 1992, Stacy McCall and Suzie Streeter pulled their cars into the circle drive
outside Streeter's home and went inside.

What happened then is still a mystery.

All investigators know is this: McCall, Streeter and Streeter's mother, Sherrill Levitt,
vanished from the house between 2:30 and 7:30 a.m. They left their cars, purses,
prescription medicines, a Yorkshire terrier - but no clues to their disappearance. No
witnesses. Other than a shattered porch light, no signs of violence or a struggle with an
intruder.
Ten years later, there are no answers and no trace of the women.

In Springfield's widest investigation in memory, police have cataloged 5,200 leads, gone
into 21 states, combed the woods and fields of the surrounding Ozarks, and compiled a
short list of potential suspects. The case was featured on television on "America's Most
Wanted," "48 Hours," and Oprah Winfrey's show. Even The National Enquirer ran an
article.

But, investigators acknowledge, they are not much closer to solving the case than they
were at its start.

Last year, after letting the case go cold for several years, police decided to start over,
assigning a bulldog young investigator to revisit it with a pair of fresh eyes.

Meanwhile, a decade has gone by, the women still frozen in time. Their relatives and
friends are left only with memories - and the faintest hope that the anniversary of the
disappearance stirs someone, somewhere, to speak up and bring resolution.

"It's still impossible to believe that 10 years have passed," Levitt's sister, Debbie
Schwartz, said from her home in Arizona.

"My belief now is the only way we're going to get answers is if someone comes forward
with information. Right now, we have no answers to anything."

McCall, 18, and Streeter, 19, weren't supposed to come back to the cottagelike, single-
story house at 1717 E. Delmar St. that night.

After the Kickapoo High School graduation ended around 6 p.m. on Saturday, June 6,
McCall and Streeter - close friends in elementary school who had just recently rekindled
their friendship - planned to party-hop with classmates until late.

McCall, the youngest of three look-alike sisters, was the prom-queen type. She had
blond hair that fell all the way down her back, and she modeled wedding gowns for a
boutique. She was planning to attend Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield
and pledge a sorority.

Streeter was quieter, more sensitive, but a funky dresser whose creativity showed in her
choice of ripped jeans, hats and dangly earrings. She was going to cosmetology school to
become a beautician, like her mother, whom she often called her best friend.

Both were responsible, relatives said. McCall phoned her mother around 10:30 p.m. to
say she and Streeter would spend the night at classmate Janelle Kirby's house in nearby
Battlefield before heading to Branson with friends in the morning.

But about 2 a.m., they decided too many others were sleeping over at Kirby's. Streeter
had an idea: They could go back to her house and sleep on her new waterbed, a
graduation gift from her mom.
Minutes later, they were saying goodbyes to friends and making plans to meet the next
morning to drive to the Whitewater amusement park in Branson.

They walked down the street to their cars - McCall's, a Toyota Corolla, and Streeter's, a
red Ford Escort with the license plate "SWEETR" - and started the 20-minute drive to
Streeter's house.

That was the last the young women were known alive.

Levitt, 47, had just bought the house on Delmar and spent that evening at home,
refinishing a chair and hanging wallpaper. That was typical, relatives said. She was a
private person and careful housekeeper who didn't go out much.

Mother and daughter were close from the start. Born in 1973 in Seattle, Suzie, Levitt's
second child, had a tumor on her mouth that turned out not to be cancerous. Still, Levitt
stayed home from work for six months to care for her baby.

They moved to Springfield in 1980. Nine years later, Levitt's second divorce cut deep
into her finances, relatives said. She sold their house and moved into the smaller
property on Delmar in April 1992.

Kirby, the young women's classmate, called the house around 7:30 a.m. Sunday. She got
the answering machine. She called several times afterward. Each time, the machine.

About 12:30 p.m., according to the police report, Kirby and a friend went to the house
and found shards of glass on the front steps. The globe around the porch light was
broken, and the light was on.

They turned the knob on the front door. It was unlocked.

Inside, it was as if time had stopped while the women were getting ready for bed. A TV
was on, clothes were folded, jewelry had been removed and set on the bathroom sink.

They left the house, then returned around 7:30 p.m. and found that nothing had
changed. Still no sign of the women. Kirby called McCall's mother, who called police.

By the time officers arrived at the house, nearly 24 hours had passed since friends last
saw McCall and Streeter.

Terry Knowles, then the chief of police, said in a recent interview that it was apparent
immediately that this would be no ordinary case. Investigators found no hair samples,
DNA or fingerprints from outsiders in the house. Technically, Knowles said, there was
no proof a crime had been committed.

Except that three women were missing.

"From the very beginning," Knowles said, "there was kind of an unspoken
understanding that this was going to be most difficult because of a lack of evidence and
a lack of information.

"It was like conducting an investigation without a crime scene."

For Janis and Stu McCall, the days after their youngest daughter's disappearance
washed into one another. They couldn't sleep. Janis couldn't eat. They and friends
printed tens of thousands of fliers that screamed "Missing" and posted them all over
town. TV and radio stations were fixated on the mystery, and the local newspaper
tracked developments daily under banner headlines.

The McCalls became Springfield's portrait of grief.

"We did anything we could think of to get their pictures out," Janis McCall said. "But we
tried to keep our dignity. We tried not to show any emotion on TV. We thought, 'If Stacy
is being made to watch any of this, they could use it against her.'

"But we were falling apart and breaking apart inside."

Investigators feared that a kidnapper (or kidnappers) had a huge head start. Springfield
police called in the FBI and began scouring woods and waterways on horseback and
from the air. They followed up on reports of a transient lurking on Delmar that night.
They painted a Dodge van to resemble one that neighbors said they saw near the house
that night, and parked the van in the Police Department lot for weeks, hoping it would
jog memories.

They were stumped.

Two years passed with scant progress. In 1994, Stu and Janis McCall founded One
Missing Link, a nonprofit organization to help families when their loved ones go
missing. It was a way to channel their pain, but it also brought memories rushing back.

"Each time we would get a call that they found a body," Janis said, "my heart would
stop."

The families marked the five-year anniversary of the disappearance by dedicating a

marble bench in a Springfield memorial garden. The McCalls continue to make regular
visits, bringing three yellow roses each time.

Stu McCall quit his management job at a car dealership in 1997 and became a
truckdriver for a cement company.

"I thought maybe I'd get out on the road and look for Stacy," he said.

Not a terribly practical idea, he said. But he thought the open road might clear his head.
It hasn't much.

"Honestly, I don't know what's got us through the last 10 years," said Stu, 59, shaking
his head. "I've asked God for answers, but he hasn't told me.

"I'm just living one day after the other, spinning my wheels."

Also about the time of the five-year anniversary of the women's disappearance, Levitt's
family went to court to have her and Streeter declared legally deceased. The McCalls
have refused to do any such thing, clinging instead to possibility.

"We don't have any proof she's dead," Janis McCall, 54, explained. "Until they find her
body or find her, we won't do anything like that.

"How would you feel if you were gone and then you came back, and your parents had
given up?"

Even now, there is no consensus among police about what happened.

"There's still a variety of opinions among our own people," said Sgt. Mike Owen, a 20-
year department veteran now with the criminal investigations unit. "But one thing that
no one disagrees on is that these women didn't leave of their own free will. They were
abducted."

A $100,000 reward - much of it from community contributions - is still available for

information leading to a conviction.

Over the years investigators have whittled the list of potential suspects to about 10
names, which they declined to reveal.

Some people with knowledge of the case said investigators were most interested in one
man: Robert Craig Cox, a Texas prison inmate serving 30 years for a 1994 robbery
during which he held a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint.

Cox has taunted investigators, at first denying he was in Springfield on the day of the
disappearance, then saying he was. He later told a Springfield reporter that he knew the
women were killed and buried near town - and said they'd never be found.

The McCalls don't know whether to believe Cox. Police have cast doubt on his story,
calling him a manipulator out for attention.

Last year, bolstered by the addition of several new officers, police began to look again at
some cold cases. Cpl. Greg Higdon, 28, an investigator with a reputation for tenacity, got
the missing-women case, which was at the top of the list.
Higdon, a college freshman in 1992, knew little about the case before he took it on. Now
he spends about half his work week re-examining old leads and evaluating the new ones
that still trickle in.

"Greg has no preconceived notions of what did or didn't happen," said his supervisor, Lt.
Rick Headlee. "We're hoping he'll see something that his predecessors overlooked."

Higdon acknowledged that the odds of cracking the case grow longer as each day passed
but said he and other investigators had made progress. He said he thought that the
missing piece was out there and that they would find it.

"There's always a hope for that - first and foremost, for the families," Higdon said. "We
hope that something comes along and it's broken wide open.

"But then, we've wished for that for the last 10 years."

CITY REMEMBERS THREE WOMEN WHO VANISHED 10 YEARS AGO - NO TRACE

FOUND OF SPRINGFIELD, MO., TRIO
Newspaper
June 9, 2002 | Belleville News-Democrat (IL)
Author: Connie Farrow Associated Press | Page: 10A | Section: Local/National
1095 Words | Readability: Lexile: 960, grade level(s): 6 7
-

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. --- It was graduation night, a night of anticipation and excitement.
Friends gathered later for parties, making plans to continue the celebration the next
day.

But somewhere between the parties and the next day, things fell apart for two high
school classmates and one of their mothers. They vanished without a trace --- and the
mystery is no closer to solution today than it was a decade ago.

There are no solid clues and no suspects in the disappearance of Sherrill Levitt, her 19-
year-old daughter Suzanne "Suzie" Streeter and her daughter's friend, Stacy McCall.
Investigators and those who track missing adults recall no similar case.

"In my 10 years, the case of the three women missing from Springfield is very
uncommon," said Kym Pasqualini, president of the Nation's Missing Children
Organization and Center for Missing Adults in Phoenix. "It's very unique to have
multiple adults disappear together, especially under those circumstances."

Streeter and McCall graduated from Kickapoo High School on June 6, 1992. After
attending two parties, the girls decided to get a few hours of sleep before heading to a
Branson amusement park with friends. They arrived in the early morning of June 7 at
Levitt's home and prepared for bed.

When friends arrived later that morning, the three women were gone.
Their purses, containing cigarettes, money and medication, were left behind. Their cars
were still in the driveway.

Except for a broken porch light, nothing seemed askew, although a neighbor reported
having seen a nervous woman matching Streeter's description pull a van into her
driveway early that morning and turn around. Investigators found no fingerprints, fibers
or DNA in the tidy one-story home that sits a few hundred feet from a busy
thoroughfare.

Soon after the apparent abductions, more than 100,000 fliers with the women's pictures
were hung on trees, utility poles and in storefront windows. There were prayer vigils and
yellow ribbons.

Searches were conducted by horseback, on foot and by all-terrain vehicles. Divers went
into murky lakes. Fields were dug. Woods canvassed.

"America's Most Wanted" aired the story. So did "48 Hours," Maury Povich and Oprah
Winfrey.

Springfield Police have followed more than 5,200 leads that have taken them to more
than 20 states, Sgt. Mike Owen says. They have listened to numerous psychics --- one
even attempted to elicit clues from Levitt's dog --- and called in a team of retired
investigators to review the case. There are no suspects, but about a half-dozen
individuals are under suspicion.

Local speculation focused on Robert Cox, a former Army Ranger serving 30 years for
robbery in Texas who lived in Springfield when the women disappeared. He was
convicted in the 1978 murder of a young Walt Disney World worker, but the Florida
Supreme Court later acquitted him of all charges. Cox also has not been cleared in a
series of 1992 killings along Interstate 70.

Police admit they're interested in Cox. But they also call him a "manipulator" and an
"opportunist" who loves media attention.

Police speculate sexual assault may have been the motive, with Levitt the intended
victim.

Most agree the best chance for the case to be solved is for an informant to come forward.
The reward stands at $100,000.

A new detective has been assigned to the case, and police hope the fresh attention
surrounding the anniversary will bring new leads.

The family did not plan to mark the somber milestone.

It was hard enough when they disappeared. As day 3,650 approached, it was clear the
grieving had not stopped.

"I guess I'm surprised people still remember after 10 years," Janis McCall said as she
recalled the last time she saw her daughter, Stacy. "For me, it's been 10 years of hell." A
stubborn instinct kindles the faint hope Stacy is still alive.

"I'll never give up --- I can't," she said. "I have two choices. I can completely disappear
and become a vegetable, or I can go out and try to help."

Questions from reporters are painful for McCall. She tells endearing stories. She laughs
about the teen-ager her sisters teasingly nicknamed "Spacey Stacy" after she locked her
keys in her car --- and how she loved to transform her appearance with hats, makeup or
a hair braid.

McCall has blocked out some events surrounding her daughter's disappearance. But she
shares what she does remember on the chance it will move someone to report the tip
that brings Stacy home.

McCall admits she was angry at first --- convinced her 18-year-old daughter was
invoking a new independence by not telling her parents of her plans. She recalls arriving
at Levitt's house and seeing Stacy's shorts and shirt in Streeter's room. Also there was
her purse with the migraine medication needed to control painful headaches.

"That first night after she disappeared, I remember thinking that she doesn't have her
toothbrush. She doesn't have any clothes," McCall says.

As time passed, regrets mounted: if only she hadn't begged her daughter to wait until
morning to make the 35-mile drive south to Branson.

"I have to remind myself that I did not do this," she says. "I am not to blame. Some
horrible person is to blame."

The case continues to trouble David Asher, who retired from the Springfield Police
Department in 1995.

Everyone was puzzled by the pristine crime scene, said Asher, who led the investigation
in the early days. "Mom's glasses were next to the bed. There was a book turned over, as
if she had been reading. It just did not look like a crime scene."

He has his theory: Someone plucked Levitt's small dog from her backyard, then knocked
on the door, using the ruse of wanting to return it.

"I wish more than anything that this case would be solved," he said. "I personally think
they have the information, but it just hasn't been all put together yet. They need the
piece that makes it all make sense."
Restaurant manager Matt Marquart insists he is not on a crusade, but he refuses to
remove the poster of the three missing women from the window of Coyote's Adobe Cafe
and Bar.

"After 10 years, I just can't take it down," he says. "I won't until this thing is over."

Marquart remembered when the women's faces were everywhere he looked.

What Marquart remembers most is how it changed Springfield. Suddenly people started
locking their doors, scrutinizing strangers, trying to jar their memory of the tiniest detail
that might help police, he says.

"That poster is tattered and torn --- it has a lot of tape on it," Marquart says. "But it
stands for something. It's a reminder that those women are still missing. Who knows?
Maybe someone will see it and think of something that will help."

Springfield’s new police chief brings new emphasis to case of women missing since
1992
Newspaper
February 20, 2011 | Kansas City Star, The (MO)
Author: LAURA BAUER, The Kansas City Star | Page: A1 | Section: News
2596 Words | Readability: Lexile: 910, grade level(s): 5 6
SPRINGFIELD | Before this city’s new police chief took the job last summer, he pulled
up the department’s website to find out more about the place.

Paul Williams could see where officers had busted meth labs and which businesses had
been robbed. Next, he clicked on “Unsolved Cases.” You can learn a lot about a town by
its unsolved crime.

Just one case popped up. Grainy photos of three women filled his screen, and his eyes
fell on three words that have echoed through this community and region for 18 years.

Three Missing Women.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s unusual to have just this one thing on the website, just one
unsolved case,’ ” says Williams, who spent nearly 29 years with the Tulsa (Okla.) Police
Department before landing in Springfield in July. “ ‘It must be a big deal.’ ”

Since then, and since he announced the department would put more focus and energy
into the mystery that has haunted this city, he has learned just how big.

Stacy McCall and Suzie Streeter had just graduated from Kickapoo High School on June
6, 1992. Stacy was 18, Suzie 19. In their gold graduation gowns they smiled for cameras,
wrapping arms around friends and family.

That night they partied with classmates and planned to go to a Branson water park the
next morning.
But by that morning, they — along with Suzie’s mom, Sherrill Levitt — were gone. The
three vanished from Levitt’s home, where the two girls had decided to spend the night.

Family and friends who went to the house looking for them found no obvious signs of
foul play. Nothing more than a broken globe on the front porch light and a Yorkie
named Cinnamon left alone inside.

The women’s cars? Parked out front. Their purses? Inside the house, with money and
keys, Stacy’s migraine medicine and Levitt’s cigarettes and lighter. Friends say the
chain-smoker didn’t go anywhere without her cigarettes.

Within days, family, friends and volunteers — led by Stacy’s parents, Janis and Stu
McCall — posted fliers across the region. Many hung tattered and torn for much of the
’90s, a constant reminder of the mystery.

“How can you have three women disappear from the face of the earth?” says former
Greene County prosecutor Darrell Moore. “That’s what was on everyone’s mind.”

It still is.

At least one detective has always been assigned to run down leads and tips. Investigators
have interviewed people of interest and possible suspects over the years. They’ve ruled
out some, but not others.

Yet in the last three months, a new set of eyes — Williams’s — has amped things up for
the first time in years.

Three detectives and one sergeant work on the case, following new information and
revisiting some leads from the past. The new chief announced the department could dig
beneath a Springfield hospital parking garage, where some think the three are buried.

And, on March 7, the 1992 mystery will be the subject of a national television show on
Investigation Discovery. The Springfield police will bring in extra staff to handle calls
after the show.

“I do feel a surge in energy, momentum that hasn’t been there in the last 10 years,” says
Janis McCall, who has become a national advocate for the missing since the youngest of
her three daughters disappeared. “This is something that everybody in the community
wants an answer to … not just me, not just the police.

“So many thought this case couldn’t be solved, and that doesn’t help the families,” she
says. “I think if they put a new outlook and new perspective on it, they will find it is
solvable.”

A change of plans
Suzie and Stacy weren’t supposed to stay at Suzie’s that night. Levitt would have the
time to do home projects, like refinishing a chest of drawers.

The two new graduates and others — including close friend Janelle Kirby, who was the
glue between Suzie and Stacy — initially thought they’d attend parties in town and then
go to Branson and stay at a hotel there.

But they decided that wasn’t a good idea. It was getting late. Stacy called her mom at
10:30 and said they’d go to Branson in the morning. She’d spend the night at Janelle’s.

The girls went to another party and left before 2 a.m. when police showed up to shoo
partiers home. Instead of staying at Janelle’s and sleeping on a pallet her mom had
made on the floor, the two decided to go to Suzie’s house and sleep on her new
waterbed.

“I did stuff with Suzie, I did stuff with Stacy and we did things together,” Janelle says
now. “It was the very first time the two had done something together, without me or
other without other friends.”

Stacy followed in her car and Suzie led the way to Delmar Street.

Where they vanished.

By the next afternoon, when Janelle came looking for her friends, no one was home. The
door was unlocked, so she walked inside. Cinnamon the Yorkie yapped at her ankles.

“She was just so happy to see me,” Janelle says. “It was like she was glad to see someone
she knew.”

Janelle remembers when she first walked to the front door in her bare feet, she saw
broken glass on the small porch. Her boyfriend grabbed a broom and dustpan from the
carport and swept it up as a favor to Levitt.

The two started driving, looking along the street, inside storefronts and at a nearby mall.
No sign of the three.

Stacy’s mom showed up at the Levitt home around 9 that night.

“We didn’t think anything had happened,” Janis says. “We were just wondering where
the heck they’d gone. I didn’t expect anything bad.”

Before long, more than a dozen people had been inside the house, worried and
wondering.

At the bottom of steps leading down to Suzie’s bedroom sat the women’s purses. Levitt’s,
then Suzie’s, then Stacy’s, a red clutch sitting on top of Suzie’s overnight bag.
“Things were rolling out of the purses,” McCall says.

Levitt, 47, a popular hairdresser, had a large sum of money in her purse.

In Suzie’s room, the TV was on. Clothes were scattered about — it looked like a typical
teenager’s room — and the covers on her king-sized waterbed were disheveled.

Stacy’s sandals were on the floor, under her folded flowered shorts. Her jewelry was
tucked into the pocket.

It was then McCall realized, “This isn’t really fitting in here.”

Two slats of the window blinds in Suzie’s room were pushed apart as if someone had
been looking out.

“I figured, headlights pulled in and Suzie looked out of the blinds to see who was there,”
Janelle says.

In Levitt’s room, one side of the covers was pulled back, as if she’d been in bed.

In the bathroom were signs the two friends had gotten ready for bed. Suzie’s jewelry lay
on a washcloth, and makeup-smeared washcloths were in the hamper.

Janis didn’t call 911. That’s for emergencies, she thought. She instead dialed 411 to get
the number for the Police Department’s front desk.

“This wasn’t an emergency. Not then,” Janis says. “I was expecting them to walk in at
any time. Just within seconds.”

More than 5,000 leads

Springfield Police Sgt. Allen Neal keeps a large version of the old flier hanging in his
small office, a reminder of work left to be done.

When the women disappeared, he had been on the department only a year. He was one
of dozens of patrol officers who helped in the investigation. They searched parks and
lakes, woods and subdivisions.

Officers were told to watch for circling buzzards and to check foul-smelling trash cans.
They followed up when people swore they’d seen the women at a restaurant or the
airport.

From day one, there wasn’t much to go on.

“It’s a very frustrating case,” says Neal, now the sergeant over the investigation.
For starters, officers didn’t really have a crime scene to work. Most criminal
investigations have something to go on. A body. Signs of a struggle. Blood. Something.

Not here.

“It wasn’t like you could go there and say here’s the fingernails or button left from the
shirt,” says Mark Webb, sergeant in investigations in 1992 and now police chief in
Marionville, Mo. “It was pretty much an empty house with a dog in it.”

The glass from the globe may have held clues, but the shards were tossed a good nine
hours before the first two officers arrived. More than a dozen people had been in the
house, walking on the carpet, sitting on chairs and couches.

“You always want a pristine, uncompromised crime scene when you get there,” Neal
says. “In this case you wonder. … It would have been nice for nobody to have been in
there.”

But Neal is quick to say no one is to blame. No one had a clue what this case would
become.

Since the summer of 1992, more than 5,000 leads have come in, creating more than
10,000 police reports and documents. Officers have received tips from just about every
state and several countries. They’ve analyzed similar cases and reached out to
departments investigating serial killers.

In the first days, information surfaced about an old Dodge van. One woman said she saw
a young woman driving the van who looked like Suzie, her face frightened, and heard a
man’s voice saying, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

At one point, police parked a similar van outside headquarters, asking for help.

Then-Police Chief Terry Knowles has been criticized in the past for micromanaging the
case and not allowing detectives to do their jobs.

Commanders and detectives from the early days have told the new chief about the early
investigation and how it can affect follow-up today.

“The investigation was way too top-driven,” Williams says. “I think that hindered the
investigation in the onset. I don’t know to what extent.

“It’s disheartening to me as someone trying to come in and do something, that we may

not be able to do anything based on everything that happened in that first year.”

Knowles, who teaches at Washburn University, stands behind his leadership style in
such a massive case and disagrees with detectives who said it undermined the
investigation.
“This was a major case, not a case you assign and wait for briefings and updates,” he
said Saturday. “This is a case that demanded attention. Any decision I made was to help
solve this case. … I would never offer a critical opinion on something that happened 18
years ago if I wasn’t a part of it. I don’t know where that comes from.”

In the past two years, new tips have come in mentioning names that never surfaced
before, Neal says. The tips are about people who have a track record of violent crime.

The fact that leads still come in, sometimes once a week, encourages police.

“No, we don’t know for sure what happened,” Neal says. “But I do think we’re farther
along by identifying potential suspects. How close we are is hard to tell at this point.”

Some point to parking garage

When the women disappeared, the Internet hadn’t exploded yet. Now that it has, the
case has taken on a life of its own.

For years now, a large group of bloggers and sleuthers have dedicated hours and hours
to trying to solve the case. Among their convictions: The women are buried under a
hospital parking garage.

Kathee Baird, a Springfield area reporter and crime blogger, has repeatedly asked the
department to dig at the site and doesn’t understand why they haven’t. She has spent six
years investigating the case on her own, tracking down retired detectives, known people
of interest and suspects, and family members of the three.

“There are three women who can’t tell us what happened to them,” says Baird, who
often refers to the three as “my girls” or “our girls.” “This community as well as friends
and family members deserve to know what happened to them and why.”

Several times, she says, people led her to the Cox South hospital site. A psychic also
pointed at the parking garage.

Baird arranged for underground radar technicians to peer through the garage surface.
Rick Norland of Paola, Kan., used ground penetrating radar at the site years ago.

“At that time, she didn’t give us much information,” Norland says. “She wanted us to
come in blind. … I think she implied it was a cold case.”

He hit on three “anomalies” inside a 10-by-10-foot space. Anomalies are what he calls
disruptions under the ground and these were similar to what he has seen when trying to
find buried graves. But he doesn’t know what the anomalies are.

Two were close together and the third was at an angle not far away.
“When we tell you something is down there, something is down there,” Norland said.
“We just can’t identify what that target is.”

Police aren’t sure if that location is even a possibility. Some timelines for the garage’s
construction say crews weren’t working there until September 1993, 15 months after the
women vanished.

“We’re going to put it to rest one way or another,” Chief Williams says. “No, I’m not
dedicated to digging in the garage at this point. … It’s a possibility.”

Family and friends of the family, though, want police to dig, just to squelch the rumors
and some of the rhetoric on the Internet.

Bartt Streeter, Levitt’s son and Suzie’s brother, said he thinks of his mother and sister
every day. He wants to know that police are doing everything they can to find answers to
so many lingering questions.

“The Cox hospital site may not be probable, but it’s possible,” he said. “Until they look at
these locations that are possible, law enforcement will never be able to say they left no
stone unturned.

“And where does that leave the families?”

Not giving up

In the last year, the Springfield department cleared three cold-case homicides, two from
more than 20 years ago and a third from 2004. Two were solved through police work
and confessions, the third through DNA.

That gives Janis McCall hope.

Every night she goes to bed saying the Lord’s Prayer first and then something more for
her youngest daughter.

“Watch over Stacy, wherever she may be.”

One day last week, Janis sat inside the Victim’s Memorial Garden in Springfield’s Phelps
Grove Park. Years ago, family members dedicated a dark gray stone bench to the three
women.

“Do you believe she’s been missing longer than I had her?” Janis says, softly, glancing
over at the bench. “That’s hard.”

Janelle also comes to the bench. She brings her children and talks about her two
childhood friends. She keeps a picture near her kitchen sink of the three of them on
graduation day.
“I always think, ‘What if I had done things differently?’ ” Janelle says. “What if they had
just stayed at my house? What if we had gone to Branson that night?”

Levitt and Suzie’s family had the two declared dead several years ago. Stacy’s family
didn’t and Janis McCall says they never will.

She knows the three are most likely dead, but even if there’s 1 percent chance they’re
not, she’ll keep hold of that.

“Until they find their remains or find my daughter,” McCall says, “they better keep
looking.”

The new chief plans to continue. Williams is considering bringing in national cold-case
investigators.

In his eight months as chief, he says, he has come to understand how important the
three missing women are to the city.

“It bothers people inside the department, people in the community,” Williams says. “If
we can do something as an agency to reconcile that, we’re going to try to do that.

“Or at one point say we’ve done everything we can.”

25 years and no trace of 3 Missouri women: ‘People aren’t supposed to just disappear’
Newspaper
June 7, 2017 | Kansas City Star, The (MO)
Author: Max Londberg, The Kansas City Star | Section: crime
2130 Words | Readability: Lexile: 980, grade level(s): 6 7
In the entryway of a southside bar hangs a tattered missing persons flyer, preserved in
its torn and yellowed state by laminate.

Back in the summer of 1992, this flyer was one of thousands that blanketed the Ozarks.
They hung in barbershops and grocery stores, gas stations and rest areas, any place
where people could see them. Many were a bright yellow then with the word “Missing,”
and they implored everyone to help bring home Sherrill Levitt, her daughter Suzie
Streeter and friend Stacy McCall.

Today, on what marks a quarter century since the Springfield women disappeared, this
flyer inside Coyote’s Adobe Cafe & Bar is one of the few that remain, its faded print
proof that this southwest Missouri city hasn’t forgotten.

And Stacy’s mother says she can feel it.

“There are still so many people who know about it,” Janis McCall told The Star. “They
come up to me, they talk about them. And it makes me feel good when I know people are
still caring.”
It was June 7, 1992, when the three women vanished. The three haven’t been heard from
since that day when friends showed up at Levitt’s home on East Delmar Street and
found a broken porch light. Little else seemed out of place.

All three of the women’s cars were parked out front. Their purses and keys were inside
the small white home. A smoker, Sherrill, 47, had left her cigarettes behind. And Stacy,
18, who battled migraines, hadn’t taken along her medication.

The young women, friends who had graduated from Kickapoo High School the day
before, had already gotten ready for bed. Then they, along with Levitt, just disappeared.

A lack of evidence or any real sign of foul play has frustrated a long line of detectives
who have taken their turn at trying to solve the mystery.

“How do you wrap your head around three people literally disappearing? With no idea
where they went?” said Sgt. Todd King, who started at the police department in 1994
and remembers as a rookie taking reports from people who had information they
thought would be helpful. “In a lot of cold cases, you can look back and say this is
probably what occurred, you just can’t prove it. With this case, it’s anything goes.
Anything could have happened.

“You don’t have anything that says they were abducted, they were harmed. … It’s this big
mystery.”

benchA bench in the Victims Memorial Garden at Phelps Grove Park is dedicated to the
three missing women. The women’s names and the date of their disappearance are
etched in its surface.

The sergeant now oversees the open investigation, which is assigned to Detective Scott
Hill. Hill works the case and follows up on leads as they come in. And they still do, about
one or two a month. But anymore, many of them are just rehashes of what came in years
ago.

The mystery, too, has worn on the community and residents who back in the 1990s lived
through the anxiety and months of constant headlines and newscasts about the case.

Nigel Holderby, now a 44-year-old mother living in Colorado, was Suzie’s best friend at
the time of her disappearance.

“We all who love them would love to have answers, would love to know what happened,
would love to have them here with us today,” Holderby said. “All over this period of time
we have wondered every day and every year. It is mind-blowing to think about,
something like that happening.

“People aren’t supposed to just disappear.”

That’s how David Bauer feels. He had owned Coyote’s Adobe Cafe just six months when
he promised Janis McCall he wouldn’t take down the missing poster until her daughter
came home.

His own daughter was just 3 years old that summer. And he couldn’t help but think then
what would happen if he had lost her like McCall had lost Stacy.

“She was in such anguish,” Bauer said. “I kind of felt how she was feeling in her eyes. …
It’s burnt into my soul.”

Purses left behind

Stacy’s mother can still see the image of the women’s purses in her mind. They were at
the bottom of the steps leading down to Suzie’s room.

So many who lived this case, who have been haunted by it since, have something about
the home or that day that replays in their mind. For some it’s the busted porch globe or
the fact that the two friends had already gotten ready for bed with their makeup-
smeared washcloths in the hamper.

For McCall, it’s the purses.

They were all lined up: First there was Sherrill’s, then Suzie’s and Stacy’s was next,
sitting on top of Suzie’s overnight bag.

McCall remembers how things were rolling out of the purses. And inside Suzie’s room —
where the TV was left on — Stacy’s flowered shorts were folded and put on top of her
sandals. Stacy’s jewelry had been tucked inside the pocket of her shorts.

Looking around the house in the night hours of June 7, McCall and her husband, Stu,
knew something wasn’t adding up.

The recent graduates weren’t supposed to spend the night there. They had planned to go
to parties that June 6 evening and then, with others, head to Branson and stay in a
hotel. The next morning they’d go to a water park.

On graduation night, Stacy called her mom at 10:30 and said she planned to stay with
another friend and the group would go to Branson in the morning. But plans changed
again, and Stacy decided to go home with Suzie and sleep on her new, king-sized
waterbed.

Suzie led the way to Delmar Street and Stacy followed in her car.

When a friend of the two came looking for them the next afternoon to go to Branson, no
one was home. The door was unlocked, and Cinnamon the family’s Yorkie yapped at the
friend’s ankles.
homeThe last known location of Stacy McCall, Suzie Streeter and Sherrill Levitt is this
home on East Delmar Street.

Initially, no one thought anything bad had happened, they just wondered where in the
world the women had gone.

Officers weren’t called to the home until some 10 hours after friends had discovered the
three were gone, King said. By then, a friend of the girls had swept up the broken glass
on the porch as a favor to Levitt. And nearly a dozen people had been in the home, all
walking on carpet and sitting on chairs and couches.

All of that hindered police as they began to investigate.

For months, officers searched parks and lakes, woods and subdivisions. They were told
to watch for circling buzzards and to check foul-smelling trash cans. They followed up
when people swore they’d seen the women at a restaurant or the airport.

“We followed leads, we followed tips — some of them that were a little extreme,” said
Terry Knowles, the Springfield police chief when the women disappeared. “But we did
everything we felt was needed to be done. We committed untold resources to this case.”

But many through the years have criticized Knowles for what they called his
micromanaging of the case. They said he ran the investigation out of his office rather
than allowing his detectives to do their jobs.

Knowles, now living out retirement in Kansas, defended his leadership and the early
investigation.

“We worked as a unit, as a team at the time,” he said. “Everyone was committed to this
case and we did the best we could.”

In the first days, information surfaced about an old Dodge van. One woman said she saw
a young woman driving the van who looked like Suzie, her face frightened, and heard a
man’s voice saying, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

At one point, police parked a similar van outside headquarters, asking for help.

Today, investigators aren’t sure if the van was actually a true clue or a distraction that
was never part of the case.

“I want to say we’re kind of in the same place we were 10 years ago,” King said. “We have
those persons of interest, people we can’t rule out. We’re still looking for those handful
of pieces to put in the puzzle that will help us solve the case.

“It may not be while I’m here, but I do think it will be solved.”

‘It changes how you view the world’

After Suzie disappeared, Holderby, then 19, had recurring nightmares where she
frantically searched for her best friend.

The two had met while working at the Town & Country movie theater in town. Holderby
said their bond was immediate, the pair connecting during their very first shift together
in the box office.

“You know those people you just meet and it’s like you’ve known them forever? This is
how it was,” she said.

For months after the disappearance, some memory would surface from their time
together, some detail Holderby hadn’t yet shared with investigators. She’d contact them,
desperate to provide the clue that led to more clues, to a resolution.

“As human beings, I feel like we look at all these things and think, ‘That is the one weird
thing, that’s the clue.’ We want to be helpful and share every little thing,” Holderby said.

But clues never materialized. Suzie never returned. Two years passed, and Holderby had
her first child — a daughter that she named Elizabeth, Suzie’s middle name.

Another two years went by, and Holderby had a second daughter and named her
Suzann, again in memory of her friend.

She later had a third daughter and raised her children in Springfield before moving to
Colorado nine months ago. The vigilance with which she parented is because of Suzie,
and Stacy, and Sherrill, and how they all simply vanished.

“My kids will probably say I’m crazy overprotective and overbearing. I never let them
have any fun. But when you lose something like that, it changes how you view the
world,” she said.

Holderby keeps two photos of Suzie, placed on a bookshelf in her dining room. One is
Suzie’s senior photo, placed in front of another picture of Holderby’s three children.

The other was taken June 6, 1992, hours before the women disappeared and the last
time Holderby saw Suzie and Sherrill.
V
“I took her a (graduation) cake, and her mom took a picture of us together,” she said.

IMG_9118Suzie Streeter (left) and Nigel Holderby (right) celebrated Suzie’s graduation
with James Cornelison on June 6, 1972, hours before Suzie disappeared.

Others in the community may be less familiar with the case, but still it creeps into their
minds on occasion.

“It kind of looms over,” said Kaitlin Baker, 24, a mother of two young children.
“I wish they would solve it. … You think about it sometimes. You’re like, ‘Wow, there
were three girls — three of them and they still got taken.’”

‘They deserve to be remembered’

Before students at Springfield’s Kickapoo High headed into summer this year, their
school’s magazine, KHQ Today, ran a lengthy piece about those who have simply
become known as The Three Missing Women.

Student Tony Madden, who wrote the article with Magdelaine Mueller, grew up
knowing about the case.

But too many students and teachers, he discovered, didn’t know what had happened in
the summer of 1992. It’s why he wanted to write the story, which has been shared on
social media 2,000 times.

“As so many years go by we kind of forget it’s a big deal,” said Madden, whose
journalism adviser graduated with Stacy and Suzie. “I wanted the students at Kickapoo
High School to know we hadn’t forgotten. … I think we forget that each is a person not
just a missing person.”

It’s one reason McCall wants people to gather Wednesday night inside Springfield’s
Victims Memorial Garden. She plans to have people share stories about each of the
women and talk about who they were not what happened to them.

“They deserve to be remembered,” McCall said. “But let’s remember the fun things, not
the dark and dreary. Let’s not remember how I felt back then, not remember that I used
to get in the shower and cry.”

She plans to share a few stories about her daughter. Maybe the one where the family
went out to eat the night before her graduation and instead of filling a bowl full of ice
cream, she loaded it with gummy bears. Or maybe the one when she was a toddler and
continued to say she was sick so she could go see the doctor she liked so much.

For years, McCall insisted she had hope that her daughter would come home. She’d be
different, but she’d be home.

This year, a quarter century after she last saw her daughter, she admits that “facing
reality has become more prominent.”

“It’s been 25 years and I know the chances of finding her are slim to none,” McCall said.
“It’s not good to keep going on, thinking she’s going to come home every day.”