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| 1996 Crocker, Jeremy F. December 9,1996; Los Angeles 62 YO | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 7 2006, 11:46 AM (370 Views) | |
| PorchlightUSA | Dec 7 2006, 11:46 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/c/crocker_jeremy.html Jeremy Freeman Crocker Above Images: Crocker, circa 1996 Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance Missing Since: December 9, 1996 from Los Angeles, California Classification: Endangered Missing Date Of Birth: August 1, 1934 Age: 62 years old Height and Weight: 5'11 - 6'0, 170 - 178 pounds Distinguishing Characteristics: Gray hair, blue/green eyes. Some agencies spell Crocker's last name "Croker." Clothing/Jewelry Description: A short-sleeved shirt with large pastel-colored squares, black Dockers pants, tan shoes and a wedding band. Details of Disappearance Crocker was last seen during the afternoon hours of December 9, 1996 at the Los Angeles Central Library in Los Angeles, California. He left his home at 1:00 p.m. that day and took a bus and a subway to the library. He was researching the July 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 at the time. Crocker never returned to his residence and has not been seen again. He may have been carrying up to $200 in cash when he disappeared. Crocker took part in a radio talk show on December 4, five days before his disappearance, to discuss the plane crash. He believed a missile had caused the airplane to crash and had spent months researching it and other disasters, interviewing baggage handlers at Los Angeles International Airport and Ontario Airport, and posting his findings on the internet. Peter Ford, a conservative talk show host on KIEV, says he received some mail from Crocker which was dated December 9 and postmarked December 10, the day after Crocker was last seen. Crocker has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in medical science from the California Institute of Technology. He was employed as an engineer at the time of his disappearance. Crocker's family says it is uncharacteristic of him to leave without warning. He resided in Hollywood, California in 1996, but is a native of Palm Springs, California. Investigators believe Crocker may be a patient in a hospital or nursing home. Crocker's case remains unsolved. Some agencies may list his date of disappearance as December 9, 1997. Investigating Agency If you have any information concerning this case, please contact: Los Angeles Police Department 213-485-5381 Source Information The National Center for Missing Adults Los Angeles Police Department California Attorney General's Office NewsLibrary Missing Children International Updated 3 times since October 12, 2004. Last updated February 20, 2005 Charley Project Home |
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| PorchlightUSA | Dec 7 2006, 11:46 AM Post #2 |
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http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/in...pic=10408&st=0& |
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| PorchlightUSA | Dec 7 2006, 11:48 AM Post #3 |
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Jeremy Freeman Crocker |
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| ELL | Dec 9 2006, 09:21 PM Post #4 |
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Hope Vanishing Man said he was on trail of government cover-up 11:07 AM PST on Saturday, December 9, 2006 By STEVE MOORE The Press-Enterprise Related Video: The mysterious disappearance of Jeremy Crocker It's a Hollywood screenwriter's dream. Exactly 10 years ago today, an eccentric but brilliant engineer vanished suddenly while embarking on an obsessive investigation into what he believed was a government cover-up. It's the true-life tale of Palm Springs native Jeremy Freeman Crocker, whose dad is often called the "father of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway" for his pioneering work in developing the mountain cable ride known worldwide. Despite reportedly being spotted once by law enforcement, Crocker remains officially missing and declared legally dead. Crocker belongs to a rare breed of missing person -- the unaccounted. The category includes famous disappearances such as Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa and aviator Amelia Earhart. More than 99 percent of all adult missing-persons cases get solved, according to Detective Bruce Kuehl, with the Missing Persons Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. Less than 1 percent of those are listed as unaccounted. Story continues below William Vasta / Special to The Press-Enterprise Diane Crocker, of Palm Springs, still scans strangers' faces hoping one of them is her husband, Jeremy Crocker. He was last seen 10 years ago today, when he went to examine documents in an LA library. With no word from him since, he has been declared dead. About 85 percent return or get located. Only about 4 percent of adults skip out voluntarily and about 1 percent turn up dead, according to annual figures kept by the California Department of Justice. The rest are categorized such as withdrawn, invalid or simply "other." Last year, 37,572 adults were reported missing in California. At year's end, only 66 remained unaccounted for, including seven from the Inland area, based on figures from the state Department of Justice. In 1996, the year Crocker disappeared, California showed 35,339 adults were reported missing -- 145 under unknown circumstances. Not knowing tears apart families, experts say. Sharlene Zwieg's grandson, 3-year-old Travis, vanished in 1991 in the hills above Palm Desert on a family weekend. His grandmother still scans the faces of teenagers and stops in at the Palm Desert sheriff's station asking about the case whenever she's in California. "I hope and pray that he's alive, but I would like to know one way or the other," she said from Washington state on Friday. "It's never-ending because you don't know." When a family member vanishes, those left behind suffer "trauma limbo," said Kym Pasqualini, chief executive officer for the National Center For Missing Adults in Phoenix. In Crocker's case, he is reported to have left his summer home in Hollywood on Dec. 9, 1996, a rainy afternoon. With no raincoat, he hopped on a bus, took a subway and headed for bustling downtown Los Angeles. Crocker, then 62, prowled the cavernous Central Library searching for clues about the crash of TWA Flight 800, which killed all 230 people on board on the night of July 17, 1996. He was one of many across the country who believed a missile downed the airliner -- not a spark in the central fuel tank, as National Transportation Safety Board officials said. In the study in his Hollywood home, Crocker kept a blizzard of paperwork on Flight 800, including drawings calculating missile trajectory. Crocker and critics cried cover-up when the NTSB announced the probable cause. Lost but Found? Today, Crocker's face still stares at people from the Los Angeles Police Department's Missing Persons Web site as case number 96-0241219. Behind the picture of a gray-haired man in a collar shirt lies a mystery. Some believe his disappearance might have been solved years ago. In 2000, then-Palm Springs Police Chief Lee Weigel told the City Council publicly that Crocker's missing-persons case had been closed. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department contacted Crocker and found he left voluntarily, Weigel said. But the LA County Sheriff's Department has no record of contact with Crocker, said Detective Diane Harris of the Homicide/Missing Person Bureau. She confirmed that the case is still open. Under sheriff's department policy, deputies would have notified the LAPD if they contacted Crocker because his name appears as a missing person on a national law-enforcement database, she said. But if deputies got called away from the scene or just told Crocker to get in touch with his family, maybe there was no contact with LAPD about the case, Harris said. "Anything's possible," she said. But his wife and sons say Crocker wouldn't just walk out. When he disappeared, Crocker served as co-trustee of a family trust now worth about $2 million, according to Indio court documents. Beneficiaries are largely more than a dozen grandchildren of his parents, Francis and Rosalie Crocker. Crocker's sons say they received no life insurance after their dad's death report. His wife said she received a life insurance payment of less than $10,000 after Crocker was declared legally dead. If Crocker were suddenly found alive, it would trigger a complex legal situation, said Bob Schlesinger, a Palm Springs probate attorney who has been practicing for 53 years. Crocker would need to file a petition with the court aimed at overturning the ruling presuming he was dead. Crocker would also have to establish his identity to a judge, the attorney said. "I've never had it happen," Schlesinger said. Full, Quirky Life Crocker had two sons by his first wife and lived with a woman for about a decade before marrying his second wife, Diane Crocker. Sally McManus, director-curator of the Palm Springs Historical Society's museum, became Crocker's girlfriend in 1978. Their romance ended when McManus' friends read about Crocker's nuptials while she was out of town. McManus and Crocker grew up together in Palm Springs, each married someone else, got divorced and then pursued a lengthy love affair when they both ended up in Santa Monica. Life together became a cross-country adventure that took the couple from a beach town in Southern California to Vermont and then back to Palm Springs. McManus says Crockett was "one of the oddest people I've known." But she quickly adds that he had a "soft side" that women -- including her -- found appealing. Story continues below In his 40s, the brainy engineer -- who could explain every detail of an airplane drawing -- spent Vermont winters building houses alongside workers 20 years younger because he wanted to be near his sons. But Crocker could be absentminded and cared little for money or possessions, McManus said. She remembers him leaving a prized Mustang in a Vermont cow field and then digging it out three years later. They towed it cross-country behind her tiny Corolla, which had a leaky radiator. Crocker constantly filled up water cans -- even hiking to the Pecos River in Texas. McManus recalls him driving off after visiting friends and leaving $3,000 in "cold" cash behind in a freezer. Crocker once got fired even though he worked long hours at a Santa Monica engineering firm. He insisted on taking a nap beneath his drafting table on a makeshift bed he designed, she said. He ate frozen, raw liver for pernicious anemia. And got taken into custody in the early 1980s by U.S. Secret Service and local police for a draft protest near the Palm Springs airport during a visit by President Ronald Reagan. Authorities feared he might be a threat, McManus said. On the day he disappeared, Crocker wrote a 2 ½-page letter, alternately serious and light-hearted, to Los Angeles radio show host Peter Ford. Crocker enclosed a magazine article about the 1983 downing by the Soviets of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. He believed the story in The New American cast light on Flight 800's crash. "Building on this newer view of the government's ability to silence multitudes for decades, we turn to what-on-earth might have been the mission of the projectile (we'll call it) that brought down TWA's 747," Crocker wrote. "If to create a terrorism pretext ... far smarter to do it out in mid ocean with no witnesses to contradict a bomb theory. "As this isn't urgent, I have unburdened your fax in favor of the postman." Travel Plans? A clue hinting that he might have planned on going somewhere -- something disputed by his wife -- lingered in a courthouse in Los Angeles. On temporary-conservator papers filed about a month after her husband vanished, Diane Crocker's petition said, "Just before he disappeared, he made large withdrawals from accounts which is unlike his nature." She says the statement might refer to her husband typically withdrawing about $300 a week for various living expenses. Diane Crocker still lists her husband's name -- along with hers -- in the phone book. And she still scans for his face in a crowd. Family members and Crocker's longtime attorney, Raul Montes, say they have heard nothing. There's been no recorded activity on Crocker's bank account or Social Security card, and he has no current passport, according to LAPD detectives handling his case. Enigmatic Man Crocker's life was a complex mosaic. He excelled as an Eagle Scout, skipped a grade at Palm Springs High School and "willed" his "sure-fire" gunpowder formula to classmate Eddie Knup in a 1951 school annual. As a teenager, he attended Caltech, earning a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and later a master's in medical science at UCLA. At 32, Crocker held a patent on a liquid-cooled spacesuit with tubes running everywhere. But nearing 50 years old, one issue galvanized Crocker -- turning him into one of Palm Springs' most famous civic watchdogs. He couldn't abide turning his boyhood library on Palm Canyon Drive into shopping boutiques. Crocker led a drive that saved the Welwood Murray Memorial Library, where he volunteered until his disappearance. Before he vanished, Crocker engaged in an on-and-off struggle for nearly 15 years over civic issues in Palm Springs -- cherishing fond memories of growing up in the desert village during the 1940s and 1950s. He railed against developers getting financial help for hotels, shopping centers and a golf course -- calling it a raid on the city treasury and taxpayers. Crocker lobbied for and got red curbs preventing drivers from stopping for prostitutes along a stretch of North Palm Canyon Drive. His handwritten will in 1991 starts off talking about a redevelopment lawsuit he was pursuing against Palm Springs. It was eventually settled. Vanished Fighter In many ways, Crocker -- married, well-educated, involved in lots of causes and a civic figure with deep roots in Palm Springs -- defies traditional missing-person stereotypes, said Pasqualini, the Center For Missing Adults CEO. She took her agency's report on Crocker. She ticks off factors causing people to go missing, including drug and alcohol abuse, money problems, homelessness, Alzheimer's and gambling difficulties. A decade later, Crocker's disappearance still tugs at her. "The rule here is we don't speculate," Pasqualini said. "But somebody out there knows something about Jeremy's disappearance." But for those still waiting, it's a baffling, never-ending struggle for answers. His sons Scott, 44, of Vermont, and Jonathan, 47, of Norway, say their father would contact them -- if he were alive or not incapacitated. "At this point, I really feel like he's dead," said Scott Crocker. "But it will haunt me forever until there is an answer." Jonathan Crocker scoured his father's study in Hollywood and his computer immediately after his disappearance for clues. But he found nothing. He still carries with him his father's fighting mentality, remembering Crocker often told him that winning the battles was never that likely. "All you can do is cost the bastards time," he'd say. Reach Steve Moore at 760-837-4417 or stevemoore@PE.com Print this story Add RSS Feeds Email this story Advertisement Mobile news, boards, & newsletters Message boards http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories...09.99e865.html# |
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| PorchlightUSA | Mar 12 2010, 03:37 PM Post #5 |
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Los Angeles Police Department Missing Persons Unit 213-485-5381 Agency Case Number: 96-0241219 NCIC Number: M-984654939 |
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| PorchlightUSA | Mar 12 2010, 03:39 PM Post #6 |
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MISSING PERSON Jeremy Freeman Crocker * Report Type: Voluntary Missing Adult * Sex: Male * Race: White * Hair: White * Eye Color: Green * Height: 6 ft. 00 in. * Weight: 170 lbs. * Date of Birth: 8/1/1935 * Clothing: Black Dockers, Pastel colored shirt, and Tan Shoes. * Last Seen: 12/9/1996 * Other Identifiers: Jeremy went to the library and has never returned. * Dental X-rays Available: Yes Jeremy was last seen December 9, 1996 in Los Angeles, CA. CONTACT Agency: Los Angeles Police Department Phone Number: (213) 996-1800 Case Number: 96-0241219 http://dojapp.doj.ca.gov/missing/detail.as...N=2749634500400 |
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