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1988 Richerson,Suzanne Rene 10/07/88; Galveston 22 YO
Topic Started: Jul 19 2006, 10:08 AM (1,053 Views)
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http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/r/richerson_suzanne.html
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Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: FRI 07/16/2004
Section: A
Page: 1
Edition: 3 STAR

UNRAVELING A MYSTERY / New clues emerge 16 years after student disappeared / After getting tip, Galveston police scour vacant home for woman's bones

By KEVIN MORAN
Staff

GALVESTON - Police found pieces of bone under a home where a witness claims the body of Rene Richerson was hidden after she was kidnapped from her hotel desk job nearly 16 years ago.

The discovery on Thursday at the former home of a man long suspected by police of being involved in Richerson's disappearance is the strongest lead yet in what investigators have said is one of the most frustrating murder cases in Galveston County history.

Richerson, 22, disappeared from the Casa del Mar hotel-condominiums on Galveston's Seawall at about 6 a.m. on Oct. 7, 1988. The Texas A&M University-Galveston student was snatched from the tiny lobby during a few minutes in which no security guards were on the property. Left behind were her purse, school books and a car she borrowed the night before to get to work.

A&M officials and students helped Richerson's parents, Clyde and Kathy Richerson, plaster the Houston area with fliers bearing Rene's picture. The family and A&M students and faculty helped search for the missing woman, but they and police were unable to turn up any solid leads in the case.

Just weeks after her disappearance, an unidentified man who claimed to have been one of Richerson's abductors made several telephone calls to the Austin Crime Stoppers line, which led to fruitless searches for her body in isolated fields along FM 2004 in Brazoria County.

In the ensuing years, police developed three suspects - two of whom were Galveston residents police said died of drug overdoses - but did not have enough evidence to arrest the men.

Witness tells her story

Thursday's archaeological-style dig under a vacant home on an alley in central Galveston resulted when a new witness came forward last month. She told police she was with two men who dug up Richerson's remains from under the home, moved the bones to another location in an old bathtub and distributed broken pieces of Richerson's skeleton in another part of the city.

The witness also told her story to the Houston Chronicle on condition that her name not be used.

Members of the Galveston Police Department and Galveston County Sheriff's Department, who have pursued the case over the years, refused to speculate on whether the bone pieces found Thursday are human.

"We're not counting our chickens before they hatch," said sheriff's Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo.

Police were at the home about two hours before they found the pieces of bone. As the search progressed, Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk, two of his top assistants and Dr. Stephen Pustilnik, the county's chief deputy medical examiner, arrived.

Pustilnik took the bone pieces to his laboratory, and police said a forensic anthropologist will examine them to determine whether they are human.

Richerson's parents provided police with samples of their DNA weeks ago, as soon as they learned that a search for their daughter's remains might be launched.

A fourth suspect

Clyde Richerson said Thursday that he met recently with the witness whose calls to police prompted Thursday's search. He said the witness knew things about the case she could not have learned from news reports over the years. He declined further comment, except to say that his family was being kept informed Thursday of developments by Galveston police and sheriff's deputies.

The witness, who told the Chronicle and police about the alleged exhumation and destruction of Richerson's remains four years after she disappeared, was the girlfriend of one of the men alleged to have exhumed Richerson's body.

One of the men who police suspected of abducting Richerson but who has since died had lived in the home where Thursday's search took place. One of the three original suspects in the case has lived in Galveston off and on for years.

The statements by the witness who prompted Thursday's search gave police a fourth suspect in the case. He, too, is a Galveston resident, the woman said.

The woman said she witnessed the 1992 exhumation and relocation of Richerson's remains. She said that same night, she overheard a conversation between one of the now-deceased suspects and the fourth suspect in which the pair talked in graphic detail about Richerson's abduction and death.

A life full of promise

Richerson was described at the time of her disappearance by people who knew her at Texas A&M-Galveston as a good student with an outgoing personality.

Richerson spent her freshman and sophomore years of college at the Galveston campus, moved to the College Station A&M campus for her junior year, then returned to Galveston to finish a degree in maritime administration. She planned to start a career in seaport management and possibly pursue a degree in maritime law, friends said.

Richerson and her younger brother, Sean, had moved into a Galveston apartment just three weeks before she disappeared. Richerson also had started a new romance with a former College Station student just before she disappeared, her family said at the time.

Over the years, police and prosecutors repeatedly have expressed frustration over the Richerson case, particularly when periodic searches sparked by sometimes vague telephone tips turned up no remains.

Clyde Richerson repeatedly has expressed exasperation over police and prosecutors refusing to take the original suspects before a grand jury to try to get an indictment against at least one. Just as frequently, police and prosecutors have insisted that not enough evidence existed to take the case to a grand jury.

Police have not yet scheduled a search of the location in which the new witness said Richerson's bones ended up.

kevin.moran@chron.com
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Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SAT 10/08/1988
Section: A
Page: 21
Edition: 2 STAR

Woman, 22, missing in Galveston/Student disappears from night job at beach condo

By KEVIN MORAN
Staff

GALVESTON - Galveston police Friday mounted a massive search for a 22-year-old Texas A&M University-Galveston student who disappeared without a trace from the front desk of a beachfront condominium where she started work just three weeks ago.

A brown leather shoe believed to belong to Suzanne Rene Richerson was found outside the lobby door, and the counter behind which she worked appeared to be scuffed as if marred during a struggle, police said. But the woman's purse, school books and the hotel cash register were undisturbed, and her car remained in the parking lot.

"We don't have any leads at this time," said Galveston Police Capt. Ernest Galvan as about 40 volunteer Texas Department of Corrections officers and mounted police gathered to search fields near the Casa del Mar Condominium-Hotel at 61st Street and Seawall Boulevard late Friday. "We have no clues whatsoever."

"We're treating it as foul play," Galvan said. "We're treating it as an abduction. However, we don't know at this time."

Galvan said a hotel security guard last saw Richerson at the desk at 6 a.m. Friday, as the missing woman began the last hour of her overnight shift. A day-shift clerk arrived at 6:50 a.m. to find the desk and small lobby vacant, he said.

Richerson's brother Sean, an A&M freshman with whom she shared an apartment near downtown Galveston, told police he had no idea where his sister might be but that he knew of no reason she would have left work without notifying someone, Galvan said.

"We talked with her brother and her boyfriend, and they had no information to give us," Galvan said. He refused to identify Richerson's boyfriend.

Police searched all of the hotel's 276 rooms and found no trace of the desk clerk.

Casa del Mar officials refused to answer any questions regarding Richerson's disappearance.

A team of detectives was interviewing A&M officials and students late Friday, trying to get information about Richerson's friends and habits, Galvan said.

TDC officers spent about two hours scouring a large, brush- and tree-filled field that runs from Seawall Boulevard along the west side of the Casa del Mar to the back fence of a strip shopping center nearby but found only a campsite that a pair of transients have been using. Police talked to the camp's occupants but made no arrests.

Three officers on horses made another sweep of the area later. They were to be followed by TDC officers with tracking dogs, police said.

Police said Richerson's father, Clyde Richerson of Florence, near Killeen, arrived in Galveston along with other relatives Friday after noon as police distributed the woman's photograph to area media.

"We were told that she was a very nice girl, that she was very active in her studies at Texas A&M in Galveston," Galvan. "She was always on time, and this has never happened before that we're aware of at this time.

Galvan said Richerson's relief clerk called a Galveston County sheriff's deputy who lives at the condominium-hotel, and the deputy reported Richerson's disappearance to police.

"We're asking the public if they can give us a hand," Galvan said. "If anyone's seen anything at all, it sure would help."

Police said Richerson was wearing a dark-colored blouse and denim skirt when last seen. Richard is 5-feet, 8-inches tall, weighs about 140 pounds and has short, brownish-blond hair.



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Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: TUE 10/11/1988
Section: A
Page: 18
Edition: 2 STAR

Isle begins probe of missing woman

By MARY ANN KREPS
Staff

GALVESTON - Galveston police asked several people to submit to polygraph tests and asked for FBI and county help in the search for a 22-year-old student who disappeared Friday from a Galveston condominium complex.

Suzanne Rene Richerson, a senior at Texas A&M University-Galveston, disappeared from the front desk of the Casa del Mar Condominium-Hotel where she worked at 61st Street and Seawall Boulevard early Friday.

One person who police declined to identify voluntarily took a polygraph test Monday and others - including an ex-boyfriend, acquaintances and some guests at the complex - will be asked to take polygraphs, said Galveston police Capt. Ernest Galvan. However, police have no suspects, he said. "It's merely a process of elimination," he said.

Police called in the FBI, Galveston County Sheriff's Department and district attorney's office for a brainstorming session Monday morning, said Police Chief Robert Steen.

"The FBI can help us greatly," Galvan said. "Some of the people we want to question are from out of state," he said, explaining that police want to question some condominium guests who were visiting Galveston on business at the time Richerson disappeared.

A hotel security guard last saw Richerson at the desk at 6 a.m. Friday, an hour before her shift was to end. A day-shift clerk arrived at 6:50 a.m. to find the desk and small lobby empty.

A brown leather shoe which may belong to the missing woman was found outside the lobby door and the counter behind which she worked appeared to be scuffed as if marred during a struggle, police said.

Galvan said the woman's brother, Sean Richerson, a freshman at Texas A&M in Galveston with whom she lived, could not say positively that the shoe belonged to her.

The car in which she drove to work - borrowed from an ex-boyfriend, whom police have refused to name - was parked at the hotel and her purse and school books had not been disturbed, police said.

Officials at Texas A&M in Galveston Monday were preparing posters describing the missing woman and were planning to coordinate a reward fund through the Crimestoppers program, said Texas A&M spokesman John Merritt.

Relatives, co-workers and fellow students described Richerson as a smart, reliable woman who was working two jobs to put herself through college, where she studies maritime administration.

"Everybody is pretty well devastated," said Christine Duncan, 35, Richerson's aunt, contacted at the home of Richerson's parents in the central Texas town of Florence. "Things like this just don't happen to people like her.

"She would never have left without somebody knowing," Duncan said, describing her niece as responsible. "She's a pretty independent person - she didn't sit around being afraid."

An employee at the Flagship Hotel in Galveston where the missing woman worked on and off until recently as a night auditor, said she was shocked by Richerson's disappearance.

"She's so smart," said Jessica Price, assistant controller at the hotel. "Her mind would race between school and her job. She's smart enough to know who to have for friends and who not to," Price said. "She just seems too smart to disappear like that. You've got to have faith that she'll come back."

Flagship manager Peter Garcia described Richerson as a "hardworking, nice kid. She's extremely naive - a young girl who hasn't been out and about in the business world.

Richerson also worked at Casey's restaurant on Seawall Boulevard, family members said.

An employee at Casa del Mar who asked not to be named said the condominium had extended the hours that a security guard is on duty from 6 a.m until 8 a.m. "We've all worked that shift and we've never had a fear about it," she said. "I'm still not worried about it. It's just something that happened."

Galvan said police have received hundreds of calls about the woman but so far none have developed into solid leads.

Richerson is described as 5-feet, 8 inches tall, weighs about 140 pounds, has short light brown hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a dark-colored blouse and denim skirt when last seen, police said.



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Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SUN 12/25/1988
Section: C
Page: 2
Edition: 2 STAR

Missing daughter consumes family's joy

By KEVIN MORAN
Staff

GALVESTON - If Clyde and Kathy Richerson could have whatever they wanted for Christmas, it would be the return of their daughter, Rene, or final word of her fate following her abduction Oct. 7 from a beachfront condominium hotel where she worked as a desk clerk.

"I think it would be better for all of us if we knew, if we had a definite answer," said Kathy Richerson.

The Richersons recently removed Rene's possessions from the Galveston apartment she had shared with her brother Sean, 20, while the two attended classes at Texas A&M University's branch campus on Pelican Island.

The family, whose home is in Florence, north of Austin, has tried just about everything possible to find Rene, whose 23rd birthday passed early this month.

With help from hundreds of A&M students, staff and others, the family has plastered the state with posters offering a reward for information leading to her safe return. A billboard bearing Rene's photograph and the reward offer confronts every motorist leaving Galveston on Interstate 45.

Like many others whose loved ones have disappeared, the Richersons have turned to psychics but have received no solid leads on their daughter's whereabouts.

"The problem is you get so desperate, you'll talk to anybody," said Kathy Richerson, 41, during a pre-Christmas visit with family and friends in the Clear Lake area. "It's not enough to help you and it just makes you crazy."

While police, the FBI and a private investigator have chased lead after fruitless lead and turned up no trace of Rene, the Richersons still have a glimmer of hope that their daughter is alive.

"I think as long as you don't know what's happened, you still keep hoping that they're going to find her and she'll be all right," said her mother.

The approach of Christmas has not dispelled the gloom that has settled over the family since Rene's disappearance.

Besides son Sean, the Richerson have another daughter, Laura, 17. Except for one day with her husband's parents and family, Mrs. Richerson said, there won't be much celebration this Christmas.

"It really puts you in a position where you really can't do anything," her mother said of the nearly three months of waiting and hoping for a break in the case. "We don't go anywhere. We don't make any kind of plans to do anything except what we're going to do today, or maybe tomorrow."

"We've pretty much accepted what our position is," said Clyde Richerson, 43. "We put up a tree and we're hanging up the Christmas cards as they come in, just trying to stay on the light side as much as we can."

Meanwhile, the parents seek continued publicity of their daughter's case, hoping that eventually someone who knows what happened to Rene will respond to their pleas for information.

Rene disappeared from her desk clerk's job at Galveston's Casa del Mar Condominiums at 61st Street and Seawall Boulevard sometime between 6:05 a.m. and 6:20 a.m. Oct. 7, during the only hour of her work shift when a security guard was not on duty and just minutes before her daytime replacement arrived.

Her purse, books and notebooks were behind the front desk and the borrowed car she drove to work was parked outside.

She is 5-feet 8-inches tall, 140 pounds, with light brown hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a dark-colored blouse and a denim skirt.

Mrs. Richerson said she thinks police and FBI have done a good job on the case.

"It's so slow," she said. "That's part of what's really hard about it. You watch it on television and they catch the people in an hour and it's all over."

She said she believes more than one person knows what happened to Rene and that the silence will be broken, perhaps in a joking fashion.

"I really think the kind of people who do this sort of thing will say jokingly that they did it," she said. "I think it's real important if somebody says something like that, in a bar or where ever, that somebody calls the police and tells on them."



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Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SUN 02/05/1989
Section: C
Page: 1
Edition: 2 STAR

122 days and counting/Search for student defies full-time effort

By KEVIN MORAN
Staff

GALVESTON - Police detective Harry Millo has spent 122 days trying to find out what happened in just 10 minutes in a hotel lobby as the sun crept across the Gulf of Mexico toward Galveston's beachfront early last Oct. 7.

For a full third of a year, Millo has tried to penetrate the shroud of mystery surrounding the predawn disappearance of Texas A&M-Galveston student Rene Richerson from her job as a desk clerk at Galveston's Casa del Mar Condominium Hotel.

Millo, 46, was a rookie patrolman in the Galveston Police Department when Richerson was born. The two never met. But Millo probably knows more about Richerson after months of tedious, frustrating investigation of her disappearance than he would have if he had known her all her life.

The one thing he doesn't know is what happened to her.

"We've really had no good, solid leads of any kind," he said last week. "We have not developed any kind of motive in this case at all."

Because the hotel cash register was undisturbed, robbery has been ruled out. Except for a scuff mark that may - or may not - have been on the hotel desk before, there was no sign of a struggle. The car Richerson drove to work sat in the parking lot.

In the police property room, the only physical evidence in the Richerson case is a gray loafer found outside the empty hotel office. But even the shoe has not been positively identified as Richerson's.

Richerson's backpack, schoolbooks and purse have been returned to her parents, Clyde and Kathy Richerson, who live in Florence in central Texas.

Just hours after a relief clerk discovered Richerson was missing from work, police mounted a massive search of nearby fields and called in all Houston-Galveston area news media to make a plea for information on her.

Richerson disappeared on a Friday. By Monday, administrators and fellow students at the close-knit A&M-Galveston campus were preparing to plaster the area with posters bearing her picture and a reward offer.

Desperate, Richerson's parents made pleas on television and radio and in newspapers for their daughter's safe return.

In those early days, Millo recalled, telephone calls from people who thought they had seen Richerson or knew something about the disappearance came in at the rate of two or three a day. Coupled with routine interviews with possible witnesses and suspects, Millo and other officers assigned to the case had their hands full.

"We've checked family, friends, acquaintances, anyone and everyone who's worked with her, people she's known to have been close to," said Millo. "We've had people checked out throughout the country. They've been checked real thoroughly, and they're clean."

From talking with family and friends, Millo said he's convinced Rene had no reason to simply disappear on her own.

The attractive student had just renewed a romance with a former fellow student. She had talked happily of the relationship by telephone with a friend in College Station just hours before she disappeared.

The boyfriend and others submitted to polygraph tests and appeared to be hiding nothing, Millo sid.

A most likely suspect, a hotel security guard who ended a shift at 6 a.m. and left the Casa del Mar just minutes later after changing clothes, got on a city bus at his regular time and rode home, a driver confirmed.

At 6:20 a.m., perhaps 10 or 12 minutes after the guard left, a couple who were repeat visitors to the hotel found the desk unattended when they arrived to check out.

Their bill was prepaid, and they dropped the keys on the desk after a short wait and left, Millo said.

"They didn't really call out," he said. "They didn't see anyone. They didn't hear anything."

Those guests and several others in their party filled the gasoline tanks of three cars at a station across the street minutes later but saw nothing unusual before they drove away.

The high point in the investigation came in mid-December when an unidentified man called the A&M campus and an undisclosed location in Austin and said he'd been with other men who abducted and killed Richerson. He gave vague directions to a burial site near the intersection of FM 2004 and Brazoria County Road 208, Millo said.

Several searches of the area revealed no trace of a grave. On Jan. 25, police dug up a site pinpointed by a bloodhound but police found nothing. Still, he said, he wants the caller to telephone him at the Galveston Police Department and give him some better information.

There is a chance Richerson is still alive, but it's a slim one at best, Millo said.

While anything is possible, the probabilities have narrowed considerably, he said.

"I've kind of gotten to the point that I think it's going to be a total stranger," he said.



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Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: SAT 07/29/1989
Section: A
Page: 25
Edition: 2 STAR

Caller claims role in Isle abduction

By KEVIN MORAN
Staff

GALVESTON - A tearful anonymous caller claimed he was with men named Johnny and Barry when the three kidnapped Rene Richerson, Oct. 7, investigators said.

Richerson, 22, a Texas A&M University-Galveston student disappeared from her desk clerk's job at the Casa Del Mar beachfront condominium hotel here.

Different people, including an A&M employee and an Austin Crime stoppers' program worker, talked to the person, who made six calls last Dec. 5 claiming to have been involved in Richerson's disappearance.

While Rene's parents, Clyde and Kathy Richerson, hope the caller was not carrying out a cruel hoax, police who have checked out every facet of the caller's sketchy information have found nothing to lend credence to it.

Still, Clyde Richerson discussed the calls and the case in general with private investigator Willie Payne and police officers on a local radio talk show Thursday. They said they hope the caller will renew contact, so they can determine if he really was involved in Richerson's disappearance.

"On one of the calls, he was crying, sounded very remorseful and sounded very legitimate," said Payne, hired by the Richersons to investigate the case. "He stated that he and two other individuals came to the Casa Del Mar, abducted Rene, that he drove and did not know the two other individuals were going to murder her.

"He said they took her out there on (FM) 2004 west of Hitchcock and buried her on top of some pipes," Payne said.

Payne said the caller alleged the two men were construction workers who had been working on Pelican Island in Galveston before Richerson disappeared. The men supposedly are ex-convicts who may have been on parole at the time.

Payne said there was some confusion about one of the names the caller provided. One person who talked to the caller thought he mentioned the name Jerry instead of Barry.

"We have checked into the phone calls and the areas we were pointed to and we had no luck," said Acting Police Chief Ernest Boyd.

Police dug in one area near FM 2004 and dogs trained to sniff out human bodies were used in nearby areas earlier this year.

Richerson's father said he just wants to know whether the caller was legitimate.

"The person does not realize how much time and effort has gone into the phone calls," Richerson said. "Nor do they realize how much heartache has gone into it from my wife's and my standpoint."

Richerson urged anyone who has information about his daughter's disappearance to call the Galveston police at 409-766-2153 or contact the FBI or a local Crimestoppers program. He said Payne can be contacted by calling 713-471-3095 or 409-766-4839.




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Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: TUE 10/08/1991
Section: A
Page: 15
Edition: 2 STAR

New reward is posted in death of Isle woman/Student disappeared 3 years ago

Staff

GALVESTON -- Volunteers Monday began plastering the Houston area with notices offering $20,000 in rewards in the search for whoever killed Rene Richerson, a college student who disappeared three years ago.

Her parents, Clyde and Kathy Richerson of Corpus Christi, posted a $10,000 reward Monday for information leading to the conviction of the person or persons who abducted their daughter, said Willie Payne, a La Porte private investigator.

Though the 22-year-old woman's body has never been found, she is presumed dead.

The family reward is in addition to a $10,000 reward set up at Texas A&M University-Galveston immediately after Richerson's disappearance from her night clerk job at the Casa del Mar hotel-condominium on Galveston's Seawall Boulevard early on Oct. 7, 1988. Richerson was a coed at the university.

Her purse, school books and the borrowed car she had driven to work were left undisturbed, as was the hotel's cash register.

"We're hoping, after all this time, we'll get some new leads in this case," said Payne. "We hope someone who knows something and wasn't in a position to do something a year ago will be able to do something now."

Payne and area police have followed hundreds of leads since Richerson disappeared. Some calls led police to scour remote fields in Brazoria County for her remains, but the searches proved fruitless.

Payne said people in Galveston County, south Harris County and parts of Brazoria County can expect to see new reward posters this week.

Anyone with information about the case can call Payne at (713) 471-3095. He said all tips will remain confidential.



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Paper: HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Date: THU 10/07/1993
Section: A
Page: 27
Edition: 2 STAR

Posters seek help in locating Isle student who disappeared

Staff

GALVESTON -- New posters are being circulated in the area seeking help in locating a college student who disappeared here five years ago today.

The posters are being distributed in an effort to get more leads into the disappearance of Rene Richerson, private investigator Willie Payne of La Porte said.

A $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Richerson's disappearance remains unclaimed, Payne said.

Richerson, 22, a Texas A&M University-Galveston student, was last seen early Oct. 7, 1988, while working as a night clerk job at the Casa del Mar hotel-condominium on Galveston's Seawall Boulevard. She had taken the job three weeks earlier in order to pay for her schooling.

Her purse, school books and the borrowed car she drove to work were untouched, as was the hotel's cash register.

Prior leads, including tips that Richerson's remains were in a remote Brazoria County field, have been fruitless.

Anyone with information can call Payne at (713) 471-3095.



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Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: FRI 10/09/1998
Section: A
Page: 37MetFront
Edition: 3 STAR

Scenic Isle stirs poignant thoughts

By THOM MARSHALL
Staff

APPROACHING the causeway over Galveston Bay and looking down on the pleasure boats creasing the water on a fair Friday afternoon should kindle feelings of tranquility.

Likewise, the initial glimpse of the Gulf of Mexico lapping at the beach as you top the rise at the Seawall end of 61st Street should summon some serenity.

But these two scenic spots in recent years have come to represent more than symbolic starting points for weekends of recreation on Galveston Island.

Some of us find it difficult to pass these places now without some uneasiness. They remind us of the unsolved disappearances of two young women, and we wonder whether these two are connected or linked to the many other unsolved deaths and disappearances in the area in recent years.

The home that Jessica Cain did not return to on Aug. 17, 1997, is on Tiki Island. Willie Payne said you can see the house from Interstate 45, just before driving onto the causeway. Willie is a private investigator who has his office and residence in La Porte. He said Jessica's parents hired him to find her.

She disappeared after a cast party that followed a musical production. When she hadn't returned home by 2 a.m., her father went looking and found the pickup Jessica had been driving on the shoulder of I-45.

Richerson's disappearance

The Casa del Mar condo-hotel at the corner of 61st and Seawall Boulevard is where Rene Richerson worked as a night clerk while attending Texas A&M-Galveston. She was last seen there on the morning of Oct. 7, 1988.

Willie said that, while he no longer is being paid to work on that case, he can't stop thinking about it and will continue to ask questions and pursue leads. His frustration is obvious when he talks about how the answers sometimes seemed so close.

He said he talked with people who saw Rene at the front desk at 6:05 a.m. and people who were in the office at 6:15 a.m., after she was gone. He has talked with people who heard screams. But he has yet to find anyone who saw Rene being taken.

Willie said that at one point in the investigation there was a phone call from a man who said he drove a car for two companions who abducted Rene. The caller told where her body could be found.

Searches of the area produced nothing, but Willie said he believes the tipster was genuine because of his detailed knowledge of the crime. The caller also said he was afraid that one of the other two men would kill him.

"Probably there were three people involved," Willie said, "and probably two of them are still around."

He said he doesn't believe the same men are behind the Jessica Cain disappearance. She likely would not have gotten into a vehicle with someone she didn't know.

But then, Willie wonders, why did she pull over on the freeway? There were no apparent problems with the pickup she was driving, so could it have been someone using a flashing light, like on a police car, who pulled her over?

Many questions, few clues

So many questions, so many elusive answers, so many leads down so many paths with nothing at the end.

Someone reported seeing a red utility vehicle that might have been involved so, after that story got out, Willie started canvassing area body shops to find out whether anyone brought in a red utility vehicle to be repainted a different color. Nothing on that, so far.

Something that Willie emphasized repeatedly in our conversation was that he advises official law enforcement investigators when he learns anything potentially useful about a case.

And he said a private eye sometimes has an advantage because some people are more at ease talking with him than with a cop. Also, police investigators often have heavy work loads that can limit their time for pursuing leads.

There are many other unsolved cases of missing or murdered girls and young women in Galveston County and in Houston. A Chronicle story last year listed 27, dating back to 1971.

Some appear to be the crimes of serial killers, Willie said. Others seem to be unrelated. Many of the cases will be highlighted at 8 p.m. Saturday on the Fox TV show ``America's Most Wanted'' on Channel 26.

Police are hoping that increased media coverage will convince anyone with information about any of the crimes to come forward, even after years of remaining silent.

Willie hopes so, too.

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Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: FRI 12/04/1998
Section: A
Page: 37MetFront
Edition: 3 STAR

Divers search pond on tip in Richerson case

Staff

GALVESTON - Divers have been searching a west Galveston County farm pond this week for the remains of Texas A&M University-Galveston student Rene Richerson, who disappeared in October 1988.

Investigators had received an anonymous tip that evidence might be found in the pond, located on private property near Hall's Bayou at its intersection with FM 2004, sheriff's Maj. Freddie Poor said Thursday.

He declined comment on what, if any, evidence has been found.

Richerson was 22 when she disappeared from her night clerk job at the Casa del Mar hotel-condominium at 61st Street and Seawall Boulevard.




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Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: SAT 12/05/1998
Section: A
Page: 33MetFront
Edition: 3 STAR

Searchers find bone fragments / Tip in '88 case leads to Galveston bayou

By KEVIN MORAN
Staff

GALVESTON - Ten years after a college student vanished, police hope that bone fragments found as the result of an anonymous phone tip - considered the best information on the case yet - will reveal her fate.

The November call is similar to tips to an Austin Crimestoppers line just two months after Texas A&M University-Galveston student Rene Richerson disappeared from her job as a beachfront hotel desk clerk in October 1988. It sparked an exhaustive search this week of a small stretch of Cloud Bayou, just off FM 2004 in Brazoria County across the line from Galveston County.

"I think this is probably the best information that's come forward in the Rene Richerson case since it occurred," Galveston County sheriff's Maj. Freddie Poor said Friday. "I feel it's reliable information - gut feeling."

Poor was with the Galveston Police Department when Richerson disappeared. He was chief when the department pursued the investigation along with other law enforcement agencies.

The person who made the latest Crime Stoppers call used landmarks to direct searchers to a very specific area of the bayou where Richerson's remains might be found, Poor said.

After five days of careful sifting of bottom material along a 100-yard stretch of the bayou, Galveston city and county police divers had found about 30 pieces of bone. Many came from animals, however.

Asked if investigators in the search believe some bone fragments are human, Poor responded:

"There are some bones, to the best of my understanding, that are unidentified and that could be human in origin."

A laboratory working with the Galveston County medical examiner's office will analyze the bone fragments to confirm whether they are human, Poor said.

In December 1988, a man made several calls to the Austin Crime Stoppers line and other locations, telling authorities he was with two other men who snatched Richerson from the lobby of the Casa del Mar hotel-condominiums on Galveston's Seawall Boulevard.

Those calls led to searches of other areas along FM 2004, which runs through a huge, sparsely populated area of coastal plain crisscrossed by bayous and pipelines and dotted with small communities.

The area searched this week is a good distance from FM 2004. Poor said if Richerson's body was there, it was probably transported by boat.

Because cattle have trampled through the bayou and surrounding area for 10 years and there have been floods, Poor said investigators do not necessarily expect to find intact skeletal remains.

Richerson was 22 when she disappeared from the hotel early on Oct. 7, 1988. Investigators determined that whoever took her did so in a span of just minutes when she was alone in the hotel office after a night security guard had gone off duty.

Richerson's parents, Clyde and Kathy, live in South Texas now.

Kathy Richerson said Friday that her family is praying that the search reveals Rene's fate.

"I'm just hopeful they'll find something," Richerson said. "Maybe it will settle some things and give us some answers."

She said investigators have been working hard on her daughter's case for the last year, trying to get a break.

Sheriff's Sgt. Tommy Hansen said investigators will continue to respond to tips.

"We feel we owe it to the family to respond to everything," he said. "You never know but what might seem the most prank call you get turns out to be the one that solves the case."

"We're still out there and we will continue to be out there until we exhaust all means and avenues," Poor said of the search. "We're going to have to go back. We're going to search the bank areas and surrounding areas as well."

Poor said he does not know how long the bone analysis will take or how many days the search will continue.



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Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: TUE 05/29/2001
Section: A
Page: 13 Metfront
Edition: 3 STAR

Galveston cousins eyed in '88 killing case / Evidence mounts; no charges filed

By KEVIN MORAN
Staff

GALVESTON - Two men still living in Galveston are believed by investigators to have abducted and killed college student Rene Richerson in 1988, the Chronicle has learned.

Circumstantial evidence that the two are responsible for abducting the 22-year-old Texas A&M University-Galveston student has been building since 1997, said sources who have been involved in the investigation.

Richerson disappeared about 6 a.m. on Oct. 7, 1988, from the small lobby of the Casa del Mar hotel-condominiums on Seawall Boulevard, where she worked as a night clerk. The abduction took place during a period of just a few minutes in which no security guards were present.

Her purse and schoolbooks remained at the desk. Her body was never recovered.

The two suspects, who are cousins, have been questioned by police but refused to admit involvement in the crime.

However, at least a dozen of their relatives, friends or acquaintances have told investigators that the men either admitted taking part in the woman's abduction and death or made self-incriminating statements about her death, sources said.

One of the men told close associates that Richerson was hacked to death and dismembered with a machete and that parts of her body were dumped in different areas of Galveston County, sources said.

As recently as last year, one of the men submitted to a polygraph test that strongly indicated he had lied when he denied taking part in the crime, the sources said. Such tests are inadmissible as evidence in court, however.

Even more recently, a girlfriend of that man reported to police that he had told her he was, indeed, involved in the abduction but did not help kill Richerson.

A third Galveston man believed to have participated in the crime died from a drug overdose in the mid-1990s, sources said.

Prosecutors and investigators maintain that evidence remains insufficient to file charges.

Richerson's parents, Clyde and Kathy Richerson, confirmed that Galveston city and county investigators have been convinced for more than two years that the two men killed their daughter.

"There have been numerous family members that have come forward with some information," Clyde Richerson said, referring to the men's extended family.

One of the men's relatives told police three years ago that she recalled seeing him take carpet and other materials out of his van and thoroughly clean the vehicle shortly after the abduction, Richerson said.

The man told the relative a bloody murder had occurred in the van, but the relative told police years later that she had not taken him seriously at the time, Richerson said.

An unidentified van was reported seen near the hotel on the day Rene Richerson disappeared. Investigators theorize that the van owner was one of the current suspects and that he had come into contact with Richerson at a party or some other gathering, her father said.

The van was untraceable by the time it was linked to a suspect.

"They have been able to place him at Casa del Mar prior to the abduction of Rene," Richerson said. "Basically, I guess, he was stalking her."

Richerson said his daughter, who had moved to Galveston with a younger brother just weeks earlier to attend A&M, did not mention anyone bothering her.

The van owner has been said by one relative to have expressed rage about seeing Richerson hugging or showing some other overt sign of friendship to a black security guard at the hotel, Clyde Richerson said.

Independent sources confirmed that story, saying racism may have played a role in the woman's fate.

Freddie Poor, chief deputy of the Galveston County Sheriff's Department, declined to comment except to say that his department and Galveston police are still investigating the abduction.

Clyde Richerson declined to reveal other details that police have shared with him and his wife about the two suspects but said he believes police have pursued the case vigorously.

"I really think they're trying to do things correctly," he said.

But the Richersons said they don't understand why the case has not at least been presented to a grand jury.

Indeed, Richerson said a sheriff's investigator told him within months after the two suspects' names surfaced that he could expect arrests and indictments by mid-1998. Richerson said he made a written note of the statement by Detective Tommy Hansen on April 16, 1998.

"I was told it was going to the next grand jury, within 60 to 90 days, for almost three years," he said. "It's been a slow, time-consuming endeavor that appears to have no end.

"If I've been told once, I've been told 10 times - by the people that are gathering this information - that they've gotten convictions with much less," Richerson said.

"I would differ with that," District Attorney Mike Guarino said. "I don't think anyone has said that.

"There is insufficient evidence at this time to seek any charges against anyone. But I'm hopeful that that will change. I can tell you that it's an active investigation. We're in contact constantly with the investigators."

Guarino would not comment on specifics of the case but said investigators agree with his position. He also would not comment on whether discovery of some physical evidence will be necessary to move the case forward.

"We feel very strongly about solving the case and bringing some closure to the case," he said.

Richerson acknowledged that the backgrounds of some who might be called as witnesses would make it easy for defense attorneys to attack their credibility or motives for talking.

The fact that at least one of the suspects had been drinking or using drugs when he is said to have made incriminating statements also has figured into prosecutors' decision so far not to take the case to a grand jury, sources said.

But Richerson said police do not believe family members of the two suspects have told all they know.

"We feel like there are family members of these three who probably know enough to lead us to some of Rene's remains, but they won't," he said.

The Richersons have been on an emotional roller coaster ever since their daughter disappeared, largely because anonymous telephone calls - believed to have come from one of the killers or someone who knows details of the crime - periodically have raised hopes of recovering Rene's remains.

In December 1988, a man made several calls to the Austin Crimestoppers line and other locations, telling authorities he was with two other men who snatched Richerson from the lobby of the beachfront hotel.

Those calls led to searches of fields along FM 2004 in mainland Galveston County. The road runs through a large, sparsely populated area of coastal plain crisscrossed by bayous and pipelines and dotted with small communities.

Information developed by police or private investigators led to later searches.

A November 1998 tip led to a five-day search of a remote bayou where someone told authorities that part of Richerson's torso had been dumped from a boat. By that time, cattle had tramped through the area regularly and the area had been hit by two weak hurricanes and experienced severe flooding.

Bone fragments sifted from the silt turned out to be from animals.

A year before Richerson's abduction, one of the two suspects currently living in Galveston was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in what was described as a gang-related killing. He is 38 years old now.

The suspect believed to have led the abduction was convicted in 1997 of misdemeanor indecent exposure and possession of less than two ounces of marijuana in a Galveston court.

He was born Oct. 7, 1964, and began his 24th birthday by abducting Richerson, investigators believe.

Anyone with information in the case is asked to call Galveston police at 409-766-2100 or Chief Deputy Poor's office at 409-766-2333.



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Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: TUE 08/03/2004
Section: B
Page: 3
Edition: 3 STAR

Bones hold no trace of Richerson / New lead offers few clues on fate of missing woman

By KEVIN MORAN
Staff

GALVESTON - Bone pieces investigators had hoped might be the remains of long-missing college student Rene Richerson turned out to be of animal origin, police said Monday.

A pathologist found no trace of Richerson's remains among scores of bone fragments dug from under a Galveston home in July. That word from police left Richerson's parents, Clyde and Kathy Richerson, again wondering whether they ever will find out what happened to Rene.

"We're very disappointed," Clyde Richerson said Monday after he learned of the test result. The bones were taken from beneath the former home of a longtime suspect in his daughter's disappearance. "We were hoping we would find something real this time."

Prompted by anonymous phone calls, investigators have searched several areas in Galveston County over the years for Richerson's remains. Each time, they turned up nothing.

Police dug under the home here after a Galveston woman told them she witnessed two men move Richerson's remains from a grave under the home to another location in the city in 1992.

Richerson, 22, disappeared Oct. 7, 1988, from her job as a desk clerk at a beachfront hotel. She was a senior at Texas A&M University-Galveston.

Galveston police spokesman Lt. Walter Braun said the department received results of tests on the bone Monday.

Braun declined comment on whether police plan to search in another place in the city where the woman said Richerson's remains were taken, as well as on whether police have lost confidence in the woman's story.


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http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/aol...xhumed.2-0.html

9:01 PM 6/19/1997

Parents to open grave to see if it is daughter
Questions exist about remains of slain girl
By RUTH RENDON
Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle

DICKINSON -- The grave of a teen-age murder victim is to be opened today so her parents can determine whether the remains they buried eight years ago are those of their daughter.

Tim Miller said Thursday he is paying for the exhumation at the Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery so a private pathologist from Austin can examine the remains presumed to be those of Laura Miller.

The 16-year-old girl was reported missing in September 1984. The family had just moved to League City and her mother, Janet, had dropped her off at a convenience store because they did not yet have a telephone.

The girl's body was found in February 1986 in a field off Calder Road in League City. The cause of death has not been determined, although it is considered a murder.

As police investigated, they found another body now listed as Jane Doe. In September 1991, horseback riders found the skeletal remains of another woman now listed as Janet Doe.

Those bodies were found near where another murder victim had been found in April 1984. Heidi Fye, a 25-year-old waitress, was last seen alive in October 1983.

Miller, 50, who now lives in Houston and is divorced from Laura's mother, said the abduction and murder of Laura Kate Smither in neighboring Friendswood in April rekindled his and his ex-wife's desire to solve their daughter's murder.

A month ago, he said, he discovered discrepancies in the handling of his daughter's remains.

Miller said a representative of a local funeral home signed a receipt for the remains in November 1989 and they were buried. He was told two bones would be kept by the Galveston County Medical Examiner's Office for further tests.

The medical examiner, Dr. William Korndorffer, said he has no doubt that the remains buried by the Miller family are those of Laura.

But records indicate that in 1992, the medical examiner's office turned over a number of bones to League City police. Miller believes some of his daughter's remains may be among them, noting that a bag of hair submitted to police in 1986 listed Jane Doe's name but had Laura's medical identification number.

Assistant Police Chief Pat Bittner said the bones received by his department in 1992 were of Jane Doe and Janet Doe and were sent to a North Texas specialist, then returned to the medical examiner's office.

"Basically, all we want to know is, where is our daughter?" Miller said. "We thought we buried her."


http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/pag...urders.3-0.html

11:51 PM 9/20/1997

ELUSIVE ANSWERS

Recent searches for missing girls serve as reminder that many cases still unsolved
By CINDY HORSWELL
Copyright 1997 Houston Chronicle

Since the mid-1980s, a scrubby pasture crisscrossed with horse trails in Galveston County has been called the "killing fields."

Four bodies were found there from 1984 to 1991. Today, the person using the "killing fields" as his personal graveyard remains unidentified.

In the 1970s, a $10,000 reward was offered for the killer of a 13-year-old girl in Brazoria County. Today, unclaimed, it is being used to fund scholarships in her name.

Meanwhile, her murder is listed among at least eight unsolved cases believed to be linked.

More recently, in Harris County, an anonymous man telephoned a TV tip line in 1995 to report a "serial killer on the loose." Implying he was that killer, he gave directions to the body of a 16-year-old girl who had been strangled. He never called again. He is considered a suspect not only in her death but also in several others.

Memories of these and similar cases -- all involving young women and girls and all unsolved, some for decades -- resurfaced recently as news stories focused on massive searches for two girls who disappeared in Galveston County.

Various authorities have indicated at least three serial killers are responsible for some of the deaths.

The cases of Laura Smither, a 12-year-old who was snatched in April from a jogging trail in Friendswood, and Jessica Cain, a 17-year-old Tiki Island girl who disappeared from her pickup in La Marque last month, have been added to a long list of unsolved crimes.

The exact count is unknown. While the Texas Department of Public Safety tallies the number of murders that occur each year and figures a clearance rate, it does not keep a running list of unsolved cases.

Also making an accurate count difficult is the fact that some bodies are so decomposed that identities and causes of death cannot be determined.

The Harris County morgue has recorded 75 unidentified female bodies since 1962, and the cause of death is listed as "unknown" for a majority of them. Only 28 have been ruled as definite homicides.

The count grows more difficult when considering the many young girls and women who are officially listed as missing but believed to be victims of foul play.

Rene Richerson is one of those. Clyde and Kathy Richerson of Corpus Christi have never given up the search for their daughter, who vanished from a beachfront condominium-hotel in Galveston on Oct. 7, 1988.

The Texas A&M-Galveston student, then 22, was working there as a night clerk to put herself through school.

She left behind her purse, school books, car -- but not a clue to her whereabouts.

Willie Payne of La Porte, a private investigator hired by the family, has been working the case for nearly nine years.

He is planning another search of a remote portion of Brazoria County, hoping to find the spot where she might be buried.

Past searches of that area -- pinpointed by an anonymous tipster -- have been fruitless, but Payne thinks he knows where to look this time. But he wouldn't elaborate.

The tipster said he had driven the car used by two companions to abduct, rape and murder the college student.

Similarly, no sign has been found of Sandra Ramber, whose disappearance from her Santa Fe home in 1983 is considered foul play.

Sandra, 14, left behind not only her purse, but also a new coat that her father bought her.

Her father, Alton Ramber, 56, who now lives in Hitchcock, said not having even a body to mourn has made the loss especially hard.

A disabled carpenter, he describes her as a "daddy's girl," with striking good looks. She had just completed modeling school and dreamed of one day becoming a model.

"I last saw her before I went to work. I remember teasing her for picking at some food on my plate at breakfast. She was happy," he said. "But when I got home, the door was open, biscuits were cooking and she was gone. It's only now that I can even talk about it. I've had to try to put it behind me or else I would have gone crazy."

Empathy for such parents drove hundreds of volunteers who recently gave their hearts and time to search for Laura Smither and Jessica Cain.

Laura, an aspiring dancer, was abducted April 3 while jogging in her quiet Friendswood neighborhood. Her body, nude except for a pair of socks, was discovered more than two weeks later in a retention pond in Pasadena.

Then on Aug. 18, some of the same people who had helped look for Laura began another prayerful vigil and search for Jessica, a recent graduate of Galveston's O'Connell High School. She disappeared on her way home from a cast party after performing in a musical.

Her parents, who had attended the production, grew worried when she hadn't arrived by 2 a.m. Her father went to look for her and found the family's 1992 pickup abandoned on the shoulder of Interstate 45. Her wallet was inside, but the keys were gone.

Laura's father, Bob Smither, joined in the search for Jessica, as did Tim Miller -- whose 16-year-old daughter, also named Laura, was found dead in the "killing fields" in League City on Feb. 3, 1986.

"The main thing we have to do is make people aware of the danger," said Bob Smither, an electrical engineering consultant. "It's a h**l of a note that we should have to bring kids up to be almost paranoid, but I don't know any other alternative."

No concrete evidence has been found so far to link the Jessica Cain case to that of either Laura Smither or Laura Miller.

"But I do know that these girls weren't stupid," Bob Smither said. "Not just any stranger could beckon them into a car."

The grieving families come from different backgrounds, but they share their loss. Miller, 50, a construction contractor from Houston, said: "What we do have in common is losing our daughters. Nobody else can relate to it.

"I used to go out to that field at 3 a.m. where my baby's body was found and scream at the top of my lungs, `You chicken (expletive), I'm out here ... come and get me.' That first Christmas I put a cross on the property and planted a fir tree to decorate. You just can't forget something like that."

He became so distraught after the discovery of the body of Laura Smither that he had his daughter's body exhumed in June in hopes a new autopsy, still pending, may shed light on the case. He also thinks some of her remains were misplaced and mishandled by authorities.

"She deserved better than that," he said.

His daughter had been robbed of some of the joy of childhood before she vanished, he added. She had begun suffering seizures at age 12, believed to have been triggered by a high fever and measles when she was an infant.

Depressed after seizures forced her into special education classes, he said, she attempted suicide several times.

"She had gone from being a straight `A' student, who loved music and had lots of friends, to thinking that she was retarded and losing all her friends," her father recalled.

The family had hoped to make a fresh start when they moved to League City in September 1984.

Instead, just after moving into their new home, Laura Miller disappeared from a neighborhood convenience store. She had gone there with her mother to use the telephone because theirs was not yet connected.

Laura Miller, a Clear Creek High School sophomore, had insisted that she was old enough to walk home alone when she was done, her father said, but she never arrived.

Her skeletal remains were not discovered in the "killing fields" on Calder Road until two years later. The cause of her death could not be determined, but she and the three other victims found there were all nude, leading investigators to suspect sexual assaults.

A dog discovered the first victim, Heidi Villareal Fye, 23, a cocktail waitress, carrying her skull to a nearby house April 4, 1984. She had vanished six months earlier after walking from her parents' home to use the telephone at the same convenience store where Laura Miller was last seen.

The medical examiner noted she had broken ribs and might have been beaten to death.

Two years later, on Feb. 3, 1986, children riding dirt bikes in the vicinity of the field smelled an odor and found the body of an unidentified female, who was given the name Jane Doe. She had been shot in the back. Laura Miller's nearby body was found the same day.

On Sept. 8, 1991, the latest skeletal remains were retrieved from the field. Robert Abel, a retired aerospace engineer who had been leasing the property and eventually bought a portion for a horse stable, said his stepdaughter stumbled upon the corpse while riding.

The still-unidentified female victim is called Janet Doe. She appeared to have been beaten and possibly strangled.

"I'm a father. So I identify with those losing a child," Abel said. "I'd like to see these cases solved not just to clear my own name, but so the families can have some closure."

He said investigators have wrongly targeted him as a suspect because of his connection to the property: "But who would be dumb enough to put a body on their own land?" Abel asked.

He tried to sue police, alleging harassment, but the case was rejected because the court said a city has immunity to conduct investigations.

Although a search of Abel's property turned up no evidence, League City Assistant Police Chief Pat Bittner said the engineer remains among a small group of suspects.

In the search warrant, Bittner noted Abel's home lies within three miles of where the victims were found and that he later built his Star Dust Trail Rides on that property.

Abel, the search warrant said, continued to inject himself into the investigation, action which an FBI profile said could be expected from the killer. The search warrant also included statements from two ex-wives, accusing Abel of viciously beating horses into submission and refusing to bury dead animals.

Abel called the allegations preposterous and said investigators even went so far as to conduct a fruitless search of his family's large ranch in Austin County.

"There was a body found somewhere around there, too. But I think that's been cleared," he added.

The body actually was found a few miles away in Waller County. Sheriff Randy Smith confirmed that an unidentified female, in her 20s or early 30s, was found on March 10 of this year.

Wrapped in a mattress cover and estimated to have been dumped there two or three years ago, it was discovered by a property owner clearing brush. Smith said he has no leads in the case, however, and it remains open.

In the early 1970s, a rash of unsolved murders of young females plagued area law enforcement officers.

Alice Wilson Killough, 33, an airline reservationist from Alvin, remembers that she was in the second grade on June 17, 1971, when she accompanied her mother, Claire Wilson, to a bus stop to pick up her oldest sister, Colette.

One of 10 children of an Alvin dentist, Colette, 13, had attended a band practice and had been dropped there by the band director.

"We thought maybe she had gotten a ride with someone else. So we called all her friends that lived nearby," Killough recalled.

Unable to find any sign of Colette, the family knew something must be terribly wrong. Still, authorities initially labeled her a runaway.

That didn't stop the Wilson family from taking a map of Alvin and organizing volunteers who searched the area for the next three weeks.

Killough said he remembers the agony. "The best thing we did was kneel around Colette's bed and pray every day. It held us together during the five long months before we knew what happened," she said.

Colette Wilson's nude body, with a gunshot wound to the skull, was found near the Addicks Reservoir in west Houston.

The body was only 35 yards from where a man looking for buried treasure a few days earlier had stumbled upon the body of 19-year-old Gloria Ann Gonzales, a bookkeeper who lived on Jacquelyn Street in Houston.

Last seen alive near her home, she had been reported missing on Oct. 28, 1971, about three weeks before her body was found. Her death was caused by a blow to her head.

Investigators had returned to the scene to search further because a human molar found there did not belong to the bookkeeper's skeleton.

It turned out to be Colette's tooth. Her father, Thomas Wilson, was able to identify it along with others from a jawbone found there because he had performed her dental work.

"I sometimes wonder what would it be like if Colette had not died. She'd have her own children now," said Killough. "What are we missing out on? Our lives would be very different."

Her mother, Claire Wilson, 65, continues to reside in the area. But Colette's father, Thomas, lived only four years after her death.

Killough said he had become obsessed with solving the case. He died of a heart attack at age 42.

"We always said it was because of a broken heart," Killough said.

Matt Wingo, now an investigator with the Brazoria County district attorney's office, helped look into the possible links between Colette Wilson's death and more than a dozen others after the skeletal remains of two Dickinson girls were recovered from a remote swampland near Alvin on April 3, 1981.

The two, Brooks Bracewell, 12, and Georgia Geer, 14, had last been seen alive at a convenience store in Dickinson after they skipped school. That was Sept. 6, 1974.

"They all looked somewhat alike with the same hairstyle, were close to the same age, were mobile on foot and their bodies were found near water. A lot of them were shot with a .22," Wingo recalled.

"Most who worked on those cases are now dead. There was a lot of ideas in a lot of officers' minds that they thought they knew who did it, but could never prove it."

Brazoria County Sheriff Joe King has not given up hope.

"Many hours have been spent investigating these cases by many agencies, but nothing has ever been developed that gave us anybody that we could charge. I still believe there was a link," he said.

Cases thought to be possibly connected to each other include:

· Maria Johnson and Debbie Ackerman, both 15-year-old Galveston residents, disappeared from a shopping mall Nov. 15, 1971, and were found two days later floating in Turner's Bayou in Texas City. Both were partially clad and had been bound hand and foot and shot in the head.

· Kimberly Ray Pitchford, 16, who lived on Wynlea Street near Hobby Airport, was abducted after attending a driver's education class at Pasadena's Dobie High School on Jan. 3, 1973. Her father, E.L. Pitchford, a longshoreman, said she was supposed to call home when she finished the class. Instead, she vanished. Two days later, her body was found in a ditch near Angleton. She had been strangled. An uncle, Ray Pitchford, a Huffman lawyer, said recent information about a possible serial killer known to have attended the school about the same time is causing the family to seek further information.

· Brenda Jones, 14, of Galveston was reported missing July 1, 1971, after she left home to walk to a hospital to visit an aunt. Her body was found the next day floating in Galveston Bay near Pelican Island with a slip stuffed in her mouth. She died of a wound to the head.

· Alison Craven, 12, who vanished from her apartment in the Almeda Mall area of Harris County on Nov. 9, 1971. Her mother told authorities that she had left her daughter alone while she ran errands. Returning about an hour later, she found the girl had put up groceries and done her homework.

Other youngsters said she had been seen near the pool but said she was returning to her home because she was cold. Instead, she vanished. Three months later a field nearby yielded bones from an arm and two hands, along with some teeth. Then, on Feb. 25, 1972, her skeleton, missing the same bones, was found in a Pearland field.

More recently, law enforcement officers have been investigating whether a serial killer might be taking victims in north Houston.

On July 14, 1995, a man, who made no attempt to disguise his voice, telephoned KPRC television's tip line and talked about a "serial killer being on the loose." The anonymous caller implied that he was the killer and said the body of a girl could be found in a remote field near Interstate 45 and Richey. He said the victim's name was Ruby and gave her birthdate as May 11.

When investigators followed his clue that evening, they found the nude body of a 16-year-old girl who had died of ligature, or tourniquet-style, strangulation. The caller had provided the victim's correct birthday but had given the name of her best friend.

Police identified the victim as Dana Sanchez, who vanished eight days earlier after calling her boyfriend from a pay telephone in the 600 block of Cavalcade and telling him she was going to hitchhike to his house on Greenyard.

Investigators checking for similarities in cases targeted at least two others that might be linked to Dana's homicide:

· Diana Rebollar, 9, who was abducted about 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1994, on her way home after running an errand for her mother at a convenience store at 6600 N. Main. Her nude body was found that afternoon behind a vacant office building on the North Loop. Sexually assaulted, she died by ligature strangulation.

· Maria del Carmen Estrada, 21, abducted while walking from her apartment at 7200 Shadyvilla on the morning of April 16, 1992, to catch a bus to her janitorial job. Her body was found a few hours later about one block north of her apartment in a Dairy Queen drive-through area on Westview. She was partially clad and died of ligature strangulation.

Harris County sheriff's Detective Bert Diaz noted the three victims were young Hispanics who had small statures and were missing clothing. Also, each had been abducted on the county's north side on a public street in daylight and died of ligature strangulation.

"Whoever could do something like this is like a junkie who wants dope. They get started and can't stop," Diaz said. "They like killing girls. These girls are victims of opportunity, who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Another 14-year-old Hispanic girl was discovered strangled on June 7 of this year -- but on the southwest side of the county. The slightly built girl was identified as Erica Ann Garcia, who lived in the 7300 block of Bissonnet. Erica had been at a teen nightclub on Beechnut.

Her partially clad body was found by a security guard on the floor of the vacant Alief General Hospital behind the club.

Investigators declined to say if her strangulation was done tourniquet-style like the others.

"We're following up numerous leads," said Houston police Lt. Greg Neely. "There's nothing to prove it was definitely linked to the other cases, but we're not ruling it out."

Police said another strangulation of a teen-ager in Houston is not believed to be connected to the others because the victim was black rather than Hispanic and was not strangled with a cord.

Trellis Sykes, 16, a straight-"A" student athlete, was killed after apparently taking a shortcut across a field off Redbud in southeast Houston to catch a bus to school on May 13, 1994.

"We also have a suspect in this case -- but not enough evidence to charge him -- who has already been arrested in connection with kidnapping another young female who was sexually assaulted," Neely said.

The victim lived on Elberta with her grandmother, Mae Sykes, and aunt, Pamela Sykes, who began searching for Trellis immediately when she was late coming home after school that day. Her body was found that evening in the field which she had been cutting across.

"She is very sweet, quiet and to herself -- a churchgoing girl who sang in the choir," her aunt said. "My question is: What did she ever do to someone to make him take her innocent life?

"We have continued to put up posters. Until justice is done, we will never have any peace."

During the last few years, the slayings of several other young teen-agers in the Houston area have left law enforcement officers stumped. They include:

· Hillory Farias, 17, of La Porte, who was ruled as possibly the first in the nation to die from an overdose of a "date-rape drug." Gamma y-hydroxybutyrate or "GHB," apparently was slipped into her soft drink at a local nightclub on Aug. 4, 1996. She went to bed with a severe headache that night and never regained consciousness.

· Lynette Bibbs, 14, and Tamara Fisher, 15, both of La Porte, were found shot to death on Feb. 3, 1996, near Cleveland in Liberty County. The two best friends had left two days earlier for a night on the town. They went to a Houston nightclub and then a motel.

Their bodies were found off a dirt road. Bibbs was partially clad and shot twice in the head and once in the thigh, while Fisher, fully clothed, was shot once in the back of the head.

· Krystal Jean Baker, 13, disappeared March 5, 1996. Last seen alive using a telephone at a Texas City convenience store, she was reportedly walking to a friend's home in Bayou Vista but stopped at the store in hopes of finding a ride.

Two fishermen found her body, which had been strangled, beaten and sexually assaulted, a few hours later under the Interstate 10 bridge over the Trinity River in Chambers County. Her purse and identification were missing, and she was not identified for almost two weeks until authorities connected her to a missing-person report.

As days, weeks and even years pass without arrests in such cases, victims' families remain haunted with unanswered questions.

"Someone is doing this when we least expect it and enjoying getting away with it right under our noses," said Krystal Baker's mother, Monetta, 37, a Texas City hairdresser.

Her last contact with her daughter was a message left on her answering machine that Krystal made from a pay telephone at a Texas City convenience store. She was looking for a ride to go to her friend's house.

"This could happen to anybody's child. I keep seeing kids use that same pay phone with no parents around. I want to scream that there's a crazy man out there and he has no heart and doesn't care," the mother said.

She describes her daughter as a loving child who liked to swim and talk on the phone. Krystal, she said, resembled a young Marilyn Monroe -- who happened to be her great-aunt.

"I can't understand why anyone would deliberately hurt my baby," the mother said.

Investigators don't understand either, and relentlessly work to find the killers.

Modern technology is helping solve some cases more quickly. For example, Montgomery County authorities hope DNA testing soon will lead to charges against suspects in the June 8 deaths of two young north Harris County women, whose charred bodies were found in a burned car north of Conroe.

Unlike the other cases, deputies have named suspects in the slayings of the two -- Sarah Cleary, 17, and Misty Morgan, 19.

Friendswood Police Chief Jared Stout, who spent hundreds of hours on the Smither case in Friendswood, compared the murder investigation to "solving a 3,000-piece jigsaw which is 3-D with ill-defined boundaries and all shades of color but no shapes."

For instance, he still is sifting through a list of 2,120 sex offenders registered in portions of Brazoria, Harris and Galveston counties near where the crime occurred. Each one is a potential suspect, he said, but there seems to be an endless number of other possibilities.

Yet he, like most investigators in unsolved cases, remains optimistic that a killer will eventually be caught.

Investigators say they periodically take out the files of cases that are decades old, flip through them and hope to stumble upon a new lead. None admits to burying these cases, closing the books or giving up.

"The world isn't big enough for us not to find such a killer," Stout said. "But at the same time," he said, in reference to the popular Star Trek television and movie series, "it sometimes seems as if Scotty found that crystal and whoever did it was beamed up to the Enterprise."


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Suzanne Rene Richerson


Above Images: Richerson, circa 1988


Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: October 7, 1988 from Galveston, Texas
Classification: Endangered Missing
Date Of Birth: October 8, 1965
Age: 22 years old
Height and Weight: 5'8, 140 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair, blue eyes. Richerson has a scar above her right eyelid. She wears contact lenses. Richerson goes by her middle name, Rene.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A blue blouse, a denim skirt and tan shoes.


Details of Disappearance

Richerson was a student at Texas A & M University in Galveston, Texas in 1988. She was employed as a night clerk at Casa Del Mar Condominiums on Seawall Boulevard in the resort community at the time. Richerson was last seen at work at approximately 6:00 a.m. on October 7, 1988 by resort security guards. Another employee who was sleeping in a room above Richerson's office heard a female scream shortly after the guards left the vicinity. A car door slammed shut, accompnaied by another scream and the sound of a car speeding away from the parking lot ahortly thereafter. A guest arrived at Richerson's office to check out at approximately 6:30 a.m. and discovered the desk was abandoned. There was no sign of a struggle and Richerson's purse, books and car were left at the resort. One of Richerson's shoes was located in the parking lot later in the morning, but she has never been seen again.
Foul play is suspected in Richerson's case. Her disappearance may be connected to a string of over 20 women who have been abducted and/or murdered in the Galveston, Texas area since the 1970's. A task force comprised of local law enforcement officials and Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) agents has been formed to investigate the incidents called Operation HALT (Homicide/Abduction Liason Team).

The disappearances of three other young women from Galveston County may also be connected to Operation HALT's caseload. Sondra Ramber vanished in 1983, Michelle Thomas disappeared in 1985 and Jessica Cain vanished in 1997. It should be emphasized that law enforcement has not determined if these cases are related to one another.

Gabriel Soto was a suspect in Richerson's case. He died as the result of an apparent drug overdose in late July 2002. Authorities stated that they believed Soto was involved in Richerson's abduction, but he was never charged in connection with her disappearance. Soto was arrested sometime before his death after allegedly attempting to run his vehicle over another individual. Investigators said that the victim told Soto to avoid another person who allegedly witnessed Soto and Richerson speaking on the night of her abduction.

Authorities reportedly questioned two cousins about Richerson's case in May 2001. Media sources claimed that officials had located circumstancial evidence that connected the men to her disappearance. The cousins resided in Galveston in 2001 and allegedly denied any involvement in her case. In 2004, a witness claimed she saw two men digging up Richerson's remains in 1992 and moving them to another place. Police investigated the sites the woman specified and found fragments of bone, but they turned out to be from an animal.

Richerson is described as a good student. She spent her first two years of college at the Galveston campus of Texas A & M, moved to the College Station campus for her junior year, and then back to Galveston to complete her senior year. She majored in maritime administration and planned to get a job in seaport management and possibly a degree in maritime law. She had moved to her own apartment in Galveston three weeks before she disappeared, sharing it with her brother.

Richerson's case remains unsolved.



Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Galveston County Sheriff's Department
409-766-2300
OR
Texas Department Of Public Safety
800-346-3243



Source Information
Texas Department Of Public Safety
The National Center for Missing Adults
America's Most Wanted
Crime Search Inc.
The Galveston County Daily News
The Galveston Daily News
KTRK-TV
The Houston Chronicle



Charley Project Home
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/r/richerson_suzanne.html
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http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?...0f8fbf234b2e613
Cops seek leads on mystery torso from 1971
By Scott E. Williams
The Daily News
Published January 28, 2008

GALVESTON — In 1971, the disappearance of two Webster girls last seen on 61st Street in Galveston launched an investigation that ended in an arrest and the discovery of a skeletal torso in a Pasadena bayou.

More than 36 years later, investigators say they believe the wrong man was convicted, and the torso did not belong to the missing kid police had identified.

Sharon Shaw and Rhonda Johnson, both 14, had come from Webster to Galveston in summer 1971 to surf. The pair was last seen alive Aug. 4, 1971, waiting for a friend to pick them up on 61st Street. The friend later told investigators the girls were gone when she arrived.

In early 1972, police found the girls’ skulls in Turner Bayou, a month apart. However, months earlier, in the same area, a torso had turned up. Police ascribed the remains as belonging to Phillip Manning, a 13-year-old boy from Pasadena who had gone missing weeks earlier.

A few months ago, police learned that Manning, now 49, was alive and well. At 13, he had left home with a trucker, who had offered to make him an apprentice, of sorts. However, months later, Manning abandoned the truck driver, who was abusive.

At 14, Manning joined the U.S. Army, even though he was four years below the age requirement. When his true age was discovered more than a year later, he was discharged and sent home, although he ended up in Louisiana. After a lifetime of moves and brushes with the law, Manning now lives in Austin.

Galveston police detective Fred Paige said that Manning’s life prompts the question, “Whose bones were those?”

Paige said he and other investigators with a variety of agencies believed that the torso likely belonged to Sharon Shaw or Rhonda Johnson. However, he also said detectives wanted to be certain. He asked that anyone with information on the remains call the police at 409-765-3702.

Webster resident Michael Self ultimately received a life sentence in the girls’ killings, but police now believe he was innocent. Self died in prison more than 20 years ago.

The Webster investigator in the case that led to Self’s conviction was Tommy Deal, who would later be sentenced to federal prison for bank robbery.

+++

Mysteries along I-45

Anniversaries of disappearances and unsolved killings can be trying times, not only for the families of the victims, but for others who lost loved ones similarly. Among the unsolved cases of missing and murdered girls and women in Galveston County are:

• July 1, 1971 — Brenda Jones, 14, was last seen in Galveston, saying she was on her way to visit a relative in the hospital. She never made it there. Brenda’s body was later found floating in Galveston Bay, about 500 yards west of the Pelican Island Bridge, with a head wound and a piece of cloth stuffed into her mouth.

• Nov. 9, 1971 — Allison Craven, 12, vanished from her Galveston home. About three months later, her dismembered remains were found buried in two separate places — in a field near her family’s home and in another field in Pearland, about 13 miles southeast of Houston.

• Nov. 19, 1971 — The half-nude bodies of Ball High School students Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, both 15, were found in Turner’s Bayou in Texas City four days after they had gone missing. Both had been shot to death.

• Sept. 6, 1974 — Brooks Bracewell, 12, and Georgia Geer, 14, were last seen at a payphone outside a Dickinson convenience store. Their remains were later found in an Alvin marsh.

• Oct. 10, 1983 — Sondra Romber, 14, left her Santa Fe home for school but never arrived there. Her father reported her missing the day after he returned home to find his daughter gone and his house unlocked.

• Oct. 26, 1985 — Michelle Doherty Thomas, 17, disappeared after leaving her Alta Loma home with a group of friends. Investigators believe she may have been kidnapped and killed because she had served as a police informant in a drug bust.

• May 1986 — Shelley Sikes, 19, left her summer job at Gaido’s restaurant for her Texas City home but never made it. Her car was found on Interstate 45’s northbound feeder road about a mile north of the causeway. Her body was never recovered, but Bayview resident John Robert King and El Lago resident Gerald Peter Zwarst were later convicted of aggravated kidnapping, the most severe charge prosecutors could pursue without a body.

• Oct. 1988 — Suzanne Rene Richerson, 22, disappeared from the lobby of the Casa Del Mar Condominiums on Galveston’s Seawall Boulevard. One of her shoes was found, but no one has been able to turn up any other trace of her.

• Sept. 1991 — The remains of an unidentified woman, known as “Janet Doe,” were found in a Calder Road field, just east of Interstate 45. Her body was the fourth found in the field since 1984. Heidi Villareal Fye, 25, disappeared in 1983 and Laura Miller, 16, disappeared in 1984, both from the same convenience store. The bodies of Fye and Miller later turned up in the field, as did another unidentified woman, known only as “Jane Doe.”

• March 5, 1996 — Krystal Jean Baker, 13, was reported missing after being seen last walking in the 4500 block of FM 1765. Her body was later found near Interstate 10 and the Trinity River in Chambers County.

• April 1997 — Laura Kate Smither, 12, disappeared while jogging near her Friendswood home. Her body was found weeks later in a Pasadena retention pond. Friendswood Crime Stoppers, at 281-480-8477, is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of anyone involved in the child’s death.

• Aug. 17 1997 — Jessica Lee Cain, 17, disappeared on her way home from a Bennigan’s restaurant in Webster. Her father found her tan 1992 Ford extended-cab pickup on the shoulder of southbound Interstate 45 between exits 7 and 8 in La Marque. Her wallet and keys were inside. The Cains have established a $50,000 reward for information leading to her whereabouts, or to the arrest and indictment of anyone involved in her disappearance. Anyone with information can call the Laura Recovery Center at 281-482-5723.

• July 12, 2001 — Tot “Totsy” Harriman, 57, was visiting family in League City when she left for a planned trip up state Highway 35 looking for property to buy. Neither she nor her 1995 Lincoln Continental have been seen since.

• July 12, 2002 — Sarah Trusty, 23, was last seen riding her bicycle near Algoa Baptist Church. Fifteen days later, two fishermen found her decomposed body on the Texas City Dike. Her death was ruled a homicide, and doctors determined she had been dead more than a week when her body was found.

• Nov. 3 — A man on a motorcycle found the body of Terresa Vanegas, 16, at the edge of a Dickinson High School practice field. Vanegas had last been seen three days earlier at a Halloween party on California Avenue. Her death was ruled a homicide, with police saying she had suffered various types of injuries.

• Nov. 10 — A passerby found the body of Amanda Nicole Kellum, 27, lying facedown at the eastern edge of Omega Bay, just north of the neighborhood bearing the same name. She had been beaten and stabbed to death.

• July 15 — Beach campers found the body of Bridgette Gearen, 28, on Crystal Beach. Gearen, a single mother who worked at a Beaumont law firm, had been raped, beaten and strangled. Gearen vanished one Saturday night from outside a beach house at the corner of Redfish and Crystal Beach roads that she was renting along with a dozen friends.

+++

How To Help

Anyone with information in any of these cases can call his or her respective law-enforcement agency:

• Dickinson Police Department: 281-337-4700

• Friendswood Police Department: 281-996-3300

• Galveston County Sheriff’s Office tip line: 866-248-8477

• Galveston Police Department: 409-765-3760

• Hitchcock Police Department: 409-986-5559

• Jamaica Beach Police Department: 409-737-1143

• Kemah Police Department: 281-334-5414

• La Marque Police Department: 409-938-9269

• League City Police Department: 281-332-2566

• Santa Fe Police Department: 409-925-2000

• Texas City Police Department: 409-643-5760

• Texas Department of Public Safety, Galveston County office: 409-933-1125
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Vigil set for 15th anniversary of disappearance
By Chris Paschenko
The Daily News
Published August 10, 2012

LA MARQUE — A candlelight vigil next week will commemorate the 15th anniversary of a teenage girl who disappeared without a trace.

Jessica Lee Cain was last seen at the age of 17 leaving a Bennigan’s restaurant at Bay Area Boulevard at Interstate 45, where she’d met a group of friends after a performance at Harbour Playhouse in Dickinson.

Cain’s father found her car the following morning on the southbound shoulder of I-45 in La Marque between exits 7 and 8, but there was no trace of her. Her wallet and keys were inside the 1992 Ford pickup.

Cain’s disappearance was among the mysteries of several women reported missing or found murdered in Galveston County since 1971. A $50,000 reward was established for information leading to Cain’s whereabouts or an arrest and indictment in the disappearance.

La Marque police detective Danielle Herman said Thursday she believes there could be a statement from Cain’s relatives at the vigil, which will be from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Aug. 18 at La Marque’s Highland Bayou Park. There will be a dedication of a newly constructed memorial

Herman also expected information about a newly issued reward and possibly a team’s review of the case.

+++

Mysteries Along Interstate 45

Here is a list of cases of missing and murdered girls and women in Galveston County:

July 1, 1971 — Brenda Jones, 14, was last seen in Galveston, after saying she was on her way to visit a relative in the hospital. She never made it there. Brenda’s body was later found floating in Galveston Bay, about 500 yards west of the Pelican Island Bridge, with a head wound and a piece of cloth stuffed into her mouth.

Nov. 9, 1971 — Allison Craven, 12, vanished from her Galveston home. About three months later, her dismembered remains were found buried in two separate places — in a field near her family’s home and in another field in Pearland, about 13 miles southeast of Houston.

Nov. 19, 1971 — The half-nude bodies of Ball High School students Debbie Ackerman and Maria Johnson, both 15, were found in Turner’s Bayou in Texas City four days after they had gone missing. Both had been shot to death.

Sept. 6, 1974 — Brooks Bracewell, 12, and Georgia Geer, 14, were last seen at a pay phone outside a Dickinson convenience store. Their remains were later found in an Alvin marsh.

Oct. 10, 1983 — Sondra Romber, 14, left her Santa Fe home for school but never arrived there. Her father reported her missing the day after he returned home to find his daughter gone and his house unlocked.

Oct. 26, 1985 — Michelle Doherty Thomas, 17, disappeared after leaving her Alta Loma home with a group of friends. Investigators believe she might have been kidnapped and killed because she had served as a police informant in a drug bust.

May 1986 — Shelley Sikes, 19, left her summer job at Gaido’s restaurant for her Texas City home but never made it. Her car was found on Interstate 45’s northbound feeder road about a mile north of the causeway. Her body was never recovered, but Bayview resident John Robert King and El Lago resident Gerald Peter Zwarst were later convicted of aggravated kidnapping, the most severe charge prosecutors could pursue without a body.

Oct. 1988 — Suzanne Rene Richerson, 22, disappeared from the lobby of the Casa Del Mar Condominiums on Galveston’s Seawall Boulevard. One of her shoes was found, but no one has been able to turn up any other trace of her.

Sept. 1991 — The remains of an unidentified woman, known as “Janet Doe,” were found in a Calder Road field, just east of Interstate 45. Her body was the fourth found in the field since 1984. Heidi Villareal Fye, 25, disappeared in 1983 and Laura Miller, 16, disappeared in 1984, both from the same convenience store. The bodies of Fye and Miller later turned up in the field, as did another unidentified woman, known only as “Jane Doe.”

March 5, 1996 — Krystal Jean Baker, 13, was reported missing after being seen last walking in the 4500 block of FM 1765. Her body was later found near Interstate 10 and the Trinity River in Chambers County. Authorities retested DNA evidence in the case and arrested Kevin Edison Smith on Sept. 22, 2010. Smith was convicted April 26 of capital murder, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison, the longest punishment he could receive under the 1996 state Penal Code.

April 1997 — Laura Kate Smither, 12, disappeared while jogging near her Friendswood home. Her body was found weeks later in a Pasadena retention pond. Friendswood Crime Stoppers, at 281-480-8477, is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest and indictment of anyone involved in her death.

Aug. 17, 1997 — Jessica Lee Cain, 17, disappeared on her way home from a Bennigan’s restaurant in Webster. Her father found her tan 1992 Ford extended-cab pickup on the shoulder of southbound Interstate 45 between exits 7 and 8 in La Marque. Her wallet and keys were inside. The Cains have established a $50,000 reward for information leading to her whereabouts, or to the arrest and indictment of anyone involved in her disappearance. Anyone with information can call the Laura Recovery Center at 281-482-5723.

July 12, 2001 — Tot “Totsy” Harriman, 57, was visiting family in League City when she left for a planned trip up state Highway 35 looking for property to buy. Neither she nor her 1995 Lincoln Continental have been seen since.

July 12, 2002 — Sarah Trusty, 23, was last seen riding her bicycle near Algoa Baptist Church. Fifteen days later, two fishermen found her decomposed body on the Texas City Dike. Her death was ruled a homicide, and doctors determined she had been dead more than a week when her body was found.

Nov. 3, 2006 — A man on a motorcycle found the body of Terresa Vanegas, 16, at the edge of a Dickinson High School practice field. Vanegas had last been seen three days earlier at a Halloween party on California Avenue. Her death was ruled a homicide, with police saying she had suffered various types of injuries.

Nov. 10, 2006 — A passer-by found the body of Amanda Nicole Kellum, 27, lying facedown at the eastern edge of Omega Bay, just north of the neighborhood bearing the same name. She had been beaten and stabbed to death.

July 15, 2007 — Beach campers found the body of Bridgette Gearen, 28, on Crystal Beach. Gearen, a single mother who worked at a Beaumont law firm, had been raped, beaten and strangled. Gearen vanished one Saturday night from outside a beach house at the corner of Redfish and Crystal Beach roads that she was renting along with a dozen friends.

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