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Saturday, January 02, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Foul play rarely cause of disappearances
Associated Press
TUCSON, Ariz. -- A woman reports her adult son missing when he fails to return from a trip to Texas.
Is he missing? Or does he not want to be found?
A relative doesn't call at Thanksgiving and never sends a Christmas card.
Has he met with foul play?
"Anyone who hasn't heard from their loved ones for the past year and doesn't get a Christmas card or a call on Thanksgiving thinks their loved one must be missing," said Tucson police officer Bridget McEwen, who handles the department's missing persons and runaway reports.
The Tucson Police Department each year handles about 8,000 reports of missing people and runaways.
In most cases, people are missing because they want to be, authorities say. Tucson police Sgt. Tom Thompson, who supervises the homicide unit, said his detectives handle fewer than 10 missing persons cases each year out of about 1,500 adults reported missing and 6,500 missing juveniles classified as runaways.
"We get some referred to us because circumstances surrounding the disappearance are suspicious," Thompson said.
Thompson said the unit has two unsolved missing persons cases. The most recent one involved a young man involved in gang activity who was seen with other gang members just before he disappeared.
"Then, several days later, his car was seen with those same gang members but without him," Thompson said. "That's just enough information to make us go in a different direction. ... It's enough to take it from a routine case to something more."
The other case started out as a missing person report and turned into a slaying.
Thomas Stephenson, 58, was reported missing in August. His wife told police she suspected foul play because she found things amiss in their otherwise organized home, including her husband's pocket change lying on a dresser and a comforter taken from the bedroom.
A week later, Stephenson's body was found wrapped in a blanket in the trunk of his car.
Police have not made any arrests in the case.
"The rest of the cases were resolved in one manner or another," Thompson said.
Tom McCormick, 37, believes his high school buddy is alive and well and living on the lam, even though he was reported missing in June 1994.
William Sisco Jr. was with two other friends in the Greaterville and Happy Valley area panning for gold when he walked away. He wanted to leave and his friends didn't -- so Sisco took off walking.
He was never seen again.
"Bill and I were good friends," said McCormick, who hasn't seen his friend since high school. "I don't like unsolved mysteries, and if the guy needs help, I want to help him."
Sisco had two pending arrest warrants -- one civil and the other criminal misdemeanor -- when he disappeared.
"If he's under the misconception that he's going to do a 10-year stretch for misdemeanors, I want to clear that up," he said.
"He has a daughter that he hasn't seen since he's been out there. ... She's 12 or 13."
Pima County sheriff's Sgt. Michael O'Connor doesn't recall the Sisco case with the same optimism.
"From what I recall about that situation, I think tragedy befell him," O'Connor said. "I don't know if it was suspicious circumstance he died under, or if he simply was lost out there and died from exposure."
So far this year, 299 adults have been reported missing in the county, O'Connor said. Of those, 72 cases remain open.
"The vast majority of them are situations where people just stepped away and there's no real suspicious circumstances about them," he said.
If the person hasn't returned in a few days, investigators begin to check credit card records and interview family members and neighbors, he said.
"Most times people will call us back and tell us the person has returned," O'Connor said. "Ninety percent of cases will be that type of situation."
Another 5 percent of missing people return a few weeks later, he said, and the majority of the remaining 5 percent are people who decide to leave their lives, O'Connor said.
"It's not against the law; it's just very rude and inconsiderate," McEwen said. "Their loved ones think that something terrible has happened."
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