MONTPELIER – Stephen Perry’s life wasn’t easy, but it had gotten better in recent months.
Perry, a former Vermonter, went from being homeless in his car to living in a suburban Florida home. A charity began helping him pay for the treatment of his terminal bladder cancer.
Then he went missing May 9. Friends and family stopped receiving e-mails and phone calls from the 56-year-old writer, who was divorced. Police discovered his van – soaked in blood and abandoned – in a parking lot.
A severed human arm was found near the vehicle, police said. When they went to Perry’s home, it was ransacked and empty.Stephen Perry
Thursday, police in Zephyrhills, Fla., confirmed what many feared.
“The Zephyrhills Police Department is now investigating the disappearance of Stephen J. Perry as an apparent homicide,” said Capt. Rob McKinney in a news release. “Laboratory results on evidence are still pending at this time.”
Perry’s two roommates – both of whom have lengthy criminal histories – are in jail on unrelated charges, although police consider them “persons of interest” in the case.
“As you can imagine, this has been horrifying, sickening, depressing, frustrating, infuriating, sorrowful news,” Stephen R. Bissette of Windsor, a close friend of Perry’s since the 1970s, wrote on his blog.
Becoming a writer
Perry was born in Maine and moved to Vermont in the early 1970s to attend Johnson State College. He lived in this state when he wrote much of his most widely seen work, including several issues for Marvel Comics and several episodes of the 1980s “Thundercats” cartoon.
Johnson is where Perry met Bissette, a comics creator who now teaches at White River Junction’s Center for Cartoon Studies.
“When I first arrived at Johnson, everyone told me I needed to meet Steve,” Bissette said. “He was already writing a lot then, including two plays and an unpublished novel.”
The two friends began working on stories together.
Perry’s first break came in 1981, when he and Bissette created a series of stories for Marvel Comics. By the mid-1980s, Perry’s comics – although never huge sellers – were garnering critical acclaim.
His big break came when he began writing for animation studio Rankin/Bass on the children’s television shows “Thundercats” and “Silverhawks.” The first show was a hit, spawning toys, comics and other merchandise.
But this was all work-for-hire, meaning Perry didn’t receive royalties. When “Thundercats” toys came out, Perry had to buy them from a store for his young son.
“Freelance work is a meager living,” Bissette said. “You wait for paychecks to come in and try to land as many jobs as you can.”
In the late 1980s, Perry’s writing work dried up. Editors stopped returning his calls. Checks stopped coming in. He was heartbroken. Writing comics was his dream.
After comics
But he didn’t give up on the dream.
In the early 1990s, he answered a newspaper ad for a job at Moondance Comics, a Brattleboro store. Owner Alan Goldstein said Perry was the only applicant to come in with a portfolio. He quickly hired him.
“He threw himself at the job,” Goldstein said. “Steve was one of the most loyal people I worked with. We quickly became friends.”
Years later, Perry would provide the inspiration for Goldstein to launch his next business, an independent video rental store in Brattleboro.
“First Run Video was Steve’s idea,” said Goldstein, who recently sold the business and retired to the West Coast.
But Perry still never made much money. He relied on weekly flea market sales in the spring and summer. For a few years he worked for a carnival that traveled between Maine and Florida, where he would later relocate.
“When he was let go from ‘Thundercats,’ the light went out of his eyes,” Bissette said. “Even when life was good for him, life was still bad.”
The crime
“My name is Steve Perry and I used to be a writer,” Perry says at the start of a promotional video for the Hero Initiative, a California-based charity for veteran comics creators experiencing financial or health problems.
Perry minces no words when describing his living situation before help arrived early this year: homeless in his car, no income, no health insurance, no hope. His body ravaged by cancer, he thought he was close to death.
The Hero Initiative paid for some of his medical bills and got him a place to live. It also assisted him in signing up for state and federal benefits – food stamps, Social Security and Medicaid. Life seemed to stabilize, although he knew he was still one late payment away from having the electricity turned off.
“They really saved my life,” he said in the video.
Two months after he recorded that video in Florida, Perry’s life took what appears to be a grisly turn.
Here’s what is known publicly about the crime: Perry lived in a rundown home in Zephyrhills, a community outside Tampa with a population of less than 12,000, with two roommates – James Davis, 46, and his wife, Roxanne Davis, 49, whom Perry had taken in to help pay the bills.
Police originally investigated the disappearance of all three after Perry’s van – and the arm – turned up in Tampa in mid-May. By the end of that week, James and Roxanne Davis were found and arrested on unrelated drug and robbery charges.
What had started as a missing person case quickly became a possible homicide. Police have released few details – communicating with the media mostly through news releases – and it is not known if the arm belonged to Perry or if police have found his body.
“He didn’t deserve this,” Goldstein said. “An evil has been done to him.”
McKinney, the police captain in Zephyrhills, acknowledged that the public was frustrated with the lack of updates on the case. He said last week – before announcing the case was now considered a homicide – that investigators were “dotting our I’s and crossing our T’s.”
“This isn’t ‘CSI: Miami,’” McKinney said. “We’re waiting on lab results. The crime can’t get solved in the last half hour like they do on TV.”
Media attention to Perry’s health care plight seemed to ignite some interest in his comics work. At least two companies expressed interest in releasing some of the comics as books, and one announced it had bought the rights to reprint one of his comics. And he wrote a new “Salimba” short story, based on one of his final comic books.
“The sad reality of this is that Steve’s death has reignited some interest in his work,” Bissette said.
Updtae : Chicago police announced this evening that King Drakeford was located in Jefferson County, Wis., when he ran out of gas and was assisted by the Jefferson County Police. Drakeford has been reunited with his family. Further details were not released.
King Drakford
Chicago police issued a missing person alert this morning for a 71-year-old man who failed to pick up his wife from work Wednesday.
King Drakeford, of the 1400 block of West 73rd Street, is believed to have left his home in his 2001 burgundy Buick LeSabre 4-door with whitewall tires, silver trim on the doors, and bobble head dogs in the back window, according to the alert. His car has Illinois license plate DEF149, police said.
Drakeford picks up his wife from her job everyday at about 1 p.m., but failed to do so Wednesday. He was last seen wearing a beige cap, red, blue and white checkered short-sleeve shirt, blue jeans and black shoes, police said.
He takes blood pressure medicine, police said.
He is described as black with a dark complexion, 5-feet-8½, 147 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair.
Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or the Wentworth Area Special Victims Unit at 312-747-8385.
GREELEY, Colo. — Police retrieved a decomposed body from an irrigation ditch in northern Colorado on Wednesday, about a half-mile from the home of a missing sixth-grader.
There was no immediate indication of whether it was the body of 12-year-old Kayleah Wilson, who was last seen walking March 28 to a friend’s house for a birthday party.
“We are unable to make an identification at this time,” Sgt. Joe Tymkowych said. “The decomposition is to the point where it’s difficult to say whether it’s a male or a female.”
Tymkowych said investigators couldn’t rule out that the body was the brown-haired, blue-eyed Wilson, described as about 5-foot-1 and 145 pounds. “Given the size of the person and its state of decomposition, it’s a possibility,” he said.
A worker checking the ditch for problems after heavy rain Tuesday found the body in about 3 feet of water early Wednesday, Tymkowych said.
Tymkowych wouldn’t comment on how long officers believe the body was at that spot. Searchers had checked the ditch at least twice before while looking for Kayleah, he said. Investigators planned to use dental records and possibly DNA and hair fibers to identify the body.
Identifying the body through dental records could take days, but it could take weeks if investigators must use DNA, FBI spokesman Dave Joly said.
A few of Kayleah’s friends and residents gathered at the ditch as officers walked along it searching for evidence on Wednesday afternoon. Investigators found what appeared to be a scrap of clothing in the ditch.
“Whether that particular piece of evidence at the scene is related to the case, we still don’t know,” Tymkowych said, adding that investigators also found a coffee cup and other items he would not disclose. “Anything that’s not a weed or a rock or piece of dirt, we picked it up.”
Kayleah’s friend Shelly Culver, 18, described Kayleah as outgoing and said she loved to draw. “Kayleah would not be the kind of person to run away.”
Melissa Lynch, 31, whose daughter goes to school at nearby Frontier Academy, said, “To a lot of us that live here that have kids, it’s more than just ‘that Greeley girl.’”
A victim’s advocate at the home of Kayleah’s mother, April Wilson, said Wilson declined to comment Wednesday.
Associated Press writer Samantha Abernethy contributed to this report.
Suzanne Pilley was just yards from her work in a city centre street in broad daylight, when she simply vanished. Richard Bath investigates
‘EXCUSE me sir, would you be interested in a copy of the Big Issue?” asks a young homeless man in a neat jacket and suspiciously clean trousers. He’s outside the branch of Sainsbury’s on the corner of St Andrew Square and Rose Street, and his exaggerated politeness plays well with the thousands of buttoned-up commuters who walk past him every day. His prize pitch, right in the commercial centre of Edinburgh, is strategically placed within two minutes’ walk of the capital’s main bus and railway stations. He says this is the best place in the city to sell the magazine. “Day or night, there are always tons of folk around here.”
The small Sainsbury’s supermarket that was designed to service the commuters who flood into the city each day is always packed. The busiest periods are at lunchtime when there’s a brisk trade selling sandwiches; just after 5pm when the men and women in suits pick up a bottle of wine and a ready-made meal for one on their way back to the suburbs; and first thing in the morning when the area’s office workers pop in to pick up a croissant and the milk for their day’s coffee.
Preparing for her working day was exactly what Suzanne Pilley was doing on the Tuesday morning after the May bank holiday. We know that because 12 days ago at precisely 8:51am the Sainsbury’s CCTV captured her leaving the store, carrying a shoulder bag containing her lunch and a large bottle of mineral water. From there she wandered 100 yards along the west side of St Andrew Square, across George Street and towards her office in Thistle Street. At 8:55, five minutes before she would normally be quietly ensconced at her desk, she was spotted on CCTV next to a black people carrier taxi at the junction of North St David Street and Thistle Street as it dropped off its passengers. From there, it was less than 50 yards to the front door to her employers, financial services firm Infrastructure Managers Limited.
The quietly-spoken and popular 38-year-old book-keeper never made it to her desk. Instead, somewhere between the corner of Thistle Street and her office at No11, she simply disappeared into the ether.
Last year, there were 43,780 incidents of people being reported missing in Scotland, with 75 per cent being found within 48 hours, many of them children who had simply got temporarily lost, or had lost track of time while out playing with friends. This case, however, is far from ordinary. A spokeswoman from the charity Missing People admitted that it is “extremely unusual” for someone to vanish without any underlying cause, yet nothing that the police have so far turned up in her background has suggested that Pilley has any of the issues that commonly explain disappearances. No drugs, no alcohol, no stress, no mental health issues, no debt, no violence, no job loss.
On the contrary, Pilley was an almost model citizen, a font of contentment. Her employer Alan Jessop, the managing director of IML, spoke of a “lovely lady” and a “very valued member of staff” who had an unblemished employment record and who had never missed work without getting in touch beforehand. There was, he stressed, nothing in her behaviour or demeanour in the days leading up to her disappearance that suggested that she had any problems at work, or away from the office. “We’re obviously very concerned at Suzanne’s disappearance,” he said, as forensics officers scoured the office in vain for any signs that Pilley had ever made it there.
Her 67-year-old parents, Sylvia and Robert, were equally dumbfounded. The Pilleys are a very close family, Suzanne living just around the corner from her parents in the city’s Stenhouse area. Ever the dutiful daughter, she would ring or text her mother every day just to keep in touch. It was her parents who alerted the police that evening when she didn’t return home.
Last week they spoke of a healthy young woman who lived life to the full and a “proud Scot” who filled her life with exercise and doing good for others. Her father spoke of the family’s hurt, of how her disappearance was completely out of character for a daughter whose life had stability and routine. Her mother spoke of a daughter who “loves the great outdoors and is always cycling, walking and loves keep fit”, of a woman who “is a great fundraiser for charity, even abseiling off the Forth Road Bridge recently”.
As Sylvia Pilley talked about her daughter, she reacted as any parent would, with a palpable sense of pre-emptive grief and trepidation. “We miss her terribly,” she said. “The past week has just been like our worst nightmare – we almost cannot believe it is actually happening. Every morning you wake up and wonder, is this really happening? You never think it’ll happen to you. You see it on the television with other people, and you feel sorry for them, but you don’t really understand the grief. We just don’t know what’s happened. We just want to find out, get to the bottom of things and put our minds at rest.”
The reaction of the police would have done little to reduce their sense of unease. Throughout the week the Lothian & Borders force screened the CCTV footage of her movements on a big screen in St Andrew Square and dozens of officers questioned passers-by about possible sightings. A large-frame ad trailer depicting Pilley was placed in George Street, and, this weekend, a Facebook appeal page was launched by concerned friends.
The depth of the concern felt at her abrupt disappearance, and in particular the fact that her bank cards have not been used since she left Sainsbury’s, was underlined by Detective Chief Inspector Gary Flannigan. The man who heads up the investigation said that “we have very grave – and I must underline the word grave – concerns for the wellbeing of Suzanne. We are desperate to speak to anyone who saw her last Tuesday. A large team has carried out extensive inquiries in the last week, and I have to say there are strong indications that a criminal act could account for Suzanne’s disappearance.”
The clear implication was she could have been abducted. If so, the time and the place – daylight in a busy city centre street – suggests it was by someone who knew her and her daily routine. This is a line of inquiry being mined by the police, who are trying to unravel her private life.
The focus of the investigation has now moved to the unmarried 38-year-old’s apparently complicated romantic life. According to neighbours, a boyfriend had been sharing her home for the past six months, with his Vauxhall Vectra parked outside every evening until around six weeks ago. Police sources, however, say that this relationship had ended and a new one had started. Amid speculation that she was involved in a “love triangle”, police have prioritised tracing anyone who was romantically involved with Pilley, scouring her mobile phone records in an effort to try and reconstruct her life.
YET if an abduction by a current or ex-boyfriend seems to be the main line of inquiry, officers have not discounted the possibility that Pilley has simply disappeared in the wake of a failed relationship and doesn’t want to be found. Research in 2003 suggested that 30 per cent of people who went missing did so because of a failed relationship. These people were also the most resistant to being found or reconciled with friends and family when they were tracked down, with 58 per cent refusing go back to their former lives when located by the National Missing Persons Hotline.
However, the lack of any apparent plans to vanish, the fact that she was so clearly on her way to work, and the fact that her bank and credit cards haven’t been used, have led police to suspect the worst. Certainly, the tenor and style of the investigation is more like that for a major crime than a missing person. Specially trained officers from four Scottish police forces have been called in to form a major incident co-ordination and development unit, while 60 detectives from Lothian and Borders Police are now working full-time on the case, poring over 300 hours of central Edinburgh CCTV footage and speaking to Pilley’s friends, family and colleagues.
A great deal of attention has been paid to piecing together her journey to work that Tuesday morning. The detail they have managed to collate has been impressive, but not so far illuminating. They know it was a day much like any other for Pilley, one that began with the usual bus journey from her home in Whitson Drive in Saughton, to the West End. She had caught a No2 bus from Stevenson Drive at 8:20, texting her mother to say she was on her way to work. Twelve minutes later she got off the bus on the Dalry Road opposite Caledonian Terrace, catching the No4 bus into town three minutes later.
Three minutes after stepping off the bus outside Jenners at 8:48, she was caught on CCTV in Sainsbury’s, which she left at 8:51. By 8:55 she was caught on CCTV at the corner of Thistle Street, wearing a light blue waterproof jacket, red fleece top, light blue trousers or jeans, and trainers. Despite intensive searches of the lanes behind Thistle Street and the high-profile publicity drive, that’s where the trail abruptly goes cold.
As the face of Madeleine McCann became a cause célèbre among the many children abducted each year, so the smiling photos of exuberant everywoman Suzanne Pilley have become the face of the disappeared. It is a strange and macabre sort of fame she and her family neither sought nor want. For the rest of us, it is an unwelcome reminder that even in the middle of the day, in the middle of one of the busiest streets in the capital, no-one can take their safety for granted.
Missing
A 2004 study found of the 1 per cent of missing people unresolved after a year, most will be people who have “drifted” away, but a proportion will be people whose disappearance was sudden and out of character.
• A 1999 study found that the number of people who went missing each year was 3.6 per 1,000 members of the population.
• A 2005 study by Parents & Abducted Children Together (PACT) estimated that more than 100,000 children go missing every year, or “one every five minutes”.
• The under-18 age group accounts for about two-thirds of all missing person reports.
• 71 per cent of 13-17 year olds reported missing are female, whereas 73 per cent of those over 24 who go missing are male.
• 75 per cent of missing cases are solved within 48 hours. Some 99 per cent of missing people are found within one year, while 0.6 per cent of missing people are found to have died.
• Since 2002, police have recorded between 600 and 1,000 child abductions every year.
LAKELAND, Fla. — Alma Martinez picked up her three-year-old granddaughter, Analise, at the girl’s bus stop Wednesday afternoon. It’s normally her son’s favorite thing to do, but 16-year-old Marco Martinez disappeared on April 5th.
Kevin Martinez, Marco’s younger brother, remembers coming home to the bizarre scene: “So I came in the backyard. She was on the steps just crying and shaking. So I went inside and he wasn’t in there.”
No sign of struggle, or even evidence that he ran away. His bedroom is as he had left it. He didn’t even take his cash savings from his part-time busboy job at Fred’s Market on Harden Rd.
Kevin said his brother had a court appearance set for two days after he vanished. It was over driving without a license, but his family said the teen wasn’t nervous or scared about the situation.
The day of his disappearance, Alma called Marco after he picked up Analise from the bus stop. They agreed he would order pizza for dinner. Later, when she called her son again, she got his voicemail after a few rings. Two more times, and the phone went straight to voicemail.
It’s strange, Kevin says, that he’d just leave Analise all alone. “He loved her a lot,” Kevin said. “He wouldn’t call her his niece. He would call her his baby. Because I know that a lot of people know things and they just don’t want to say anything.”
Anyone with information is asked to the Polk County Sheriff’s Missing Persons Unit at (863) 534-0740. Calls after 5pm should go to (863) 533-0344.
At Kathleen High School, where the junior hasn’t been seen in over a month, some students told ABC Action News there are lots of rumors about Marco’s disappearance.
Stories or not, the Polk County Sheriff says he has no leads and wants to hear what’s being said.
“We know that someone knows something. They’ve got a missing link. They may think it’s a rumor, they may not think it’s true,” Sheriff Grady Judd said. “But we want people to call us.”
Judd went on to say that the young man was busted for having marijuana once in the past, but he doesn’t believe that would be connected to Marco’s disappearance.
Kevin says his family’s praying more than they ever did before. Little Analise, he says, just thinks Marco’s been at work all this time.
Kevin’s begging for someone to come forward with answers about his big brother.
Copyright 2010 The E.W. Scripps Co. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Concern Shifts to Whether Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station Violated Mitrice Richardson’s Civil Rights
Congress member Maxine Waters continues her steadfast efforts to assist the family of Mitrice Richardson, who vanished eight months ago, following an incident in a Malibu restaurant that led to her being transported to the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station for booking.
Rep. Waters is awaiting a response to a letter she wrote last week to the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, requesting a federal investigation of the puzzling case.
Waters is adamant that she is deeply concerned that Richardson’s civil rights have been violated. She directed key staffers to meet with the woman’s mother, Latice Sutton, and her family support group members, including Dr. Ronda Hampton, a psychologist with whom Richardson, a Cal State Fullerton honors graduate in psychology, interned, after Waters received numerous telephone calls, emails and faxes asking her to assist their efforts to find the missing woman.
In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, who heads the civil rights section, that was copied to Attorney General Eric Holder, Waters writes, “I am deeply concerned about the circumstances surrounding the detention and release of Mitrice Richardson…who disappeared on Sept. 17, 2009.”
The representative challenges the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s assertion that deputies didn’t know Richardson was mentally ill.
Waters says that restaurant personnel told deputies about the woman’s bizarre behavior, and there reportedly are witnesses who attest to at least one deputy acknowledging that she was “acting crazy.”
Rep. Waters continues, “People with disabilities, including mental disabilities, are a protected class in this country. It appears the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Department failed to follow its own policies, which state that individuals with mental disabilities are to be released into the care of family, friends, or medical professionals.”
The Congressmember concludes “I believe that the Justice Department is the best-equipped agency to handle this investigation.”
Spokespersons for the LASD maintain that Richardson was handled properly, according to all the department rules, and that she was coherent and rational while in LASD custody.
Reiterating her concerns, Waters said, “I believe that Mitrice’s civil rights were violated when she was arrested and then let go in the middle of the night without money, a phone, or transportation. The roads of Malibu are dark and dangerous at night, and since the Los Angeles Police Department later concluded that Mitrice appeared to be suffering from bipolar disorder that evening, I believe that the circumstances surrounding her disappearance warrant a thorough federal investigation.”
Waters is giving the case this attention even though Richardson is not a resident of her Congressional district.
RECAP
On Sept. 16, 2009, Geoffrey’s restaurant personnel placed a 24-year-old African-American woman, Mitrice Richardson, under private person arrest for nonpayment of an $89.51 dinner tab. A staffer telephoned Lost Hills Station directly, saying “to come pick her up.” The female caller described the woman’s behavior as “crazy.” Witnesses said Richardson told them she was from Mars and began speaking gibberish.
Several deputies took Richardson into custody and drove her to Lost Hills for booking on misdemeanor charges, which could have been handled with field citations that would have allowed her to return to her car and drive away.
A booking cage video, the existence of which was first denied by Lost Hills officials, reportedly indicates physical and mental stress. Richardson appears to be trying to curl up into a fetal position. Family members say her booking photo differs dramatically from her usual appearance. Her eyes appear vacant.
None of the LASD personnel involved in the booking process is willing (or being allowed) to speak to the media.
Richardson was released from the station shortly after midnight on Sept. 17 on foot into the dark and remote industrial area with no money or cell phone.
Her purse had been left in her car that the restaurant reportedly called the Malibu tow yard to remove from the parking lot, including documentation that the woman had several thousand dollars in the bank.
No immediate search was undertaken the first few days that Richardson was reported missing by her mother, but there have been several official agency search efforts in the weeks and months that followed, including aero-drone reconnaissance and mountain search and rescue team field checks that covered areas around the Lost Hills Station. These have not produced a single clue to her whereabouts.
Richardson’s mother, who agrees with subsequent medical assessment that her daughter was experiencing bipolar disorder onset, and her circle of relatives and friends have repeatedly expressed frustration with what they view as foot-dragging by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and the City of Los Angeles Police Department—the agency formally in charge of what is still classified as a missing person case.
BACKGROUND
Ronda Hampton and Charles Croft, another support team member, have been working with Congressmember Waters’ staffers from her Washington D.C. and Los Angeles offices for several months.
Several weekends ago, one of her reps, who flew in from Washington, and another rep from her L.A. office met with Hampton and Croft in Malibu to trace Richardson’s steps.
The four also went on an extensive tour of Monte Nido where Richardson is believed to have been sighted at around dawn on the morning that she went missing and several other areas where suspicious activity has been reported.
They then drove to the Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station and talked with a deputy at the front desk. Finally, the four made contact with people who had been at the restaurant on Sept. 16 who “confirmed that Mitrice was not in her right mind and one deputy [who was at the restaurant] agreed.”
After several hours of reconstructing what is known to have transpired, Hampton said Waters’ staffers were reportedly convinced that the FBI needed to become part of the investigation and that Richardson’s civil rights had been violated.
The FBI had declined earlier involvement in the case because Richardson is an adult and there is no indication of foul play, but civil rights violation allegations might be viewed differently.
Hampton told the Malibu Surfside News “that Maxine Waters’ office has stated that they have been following the case, particularly through [MSN articles], and they were waiting for something to break that would allow them some intervention. They stated that there had been nothing they could really do to push for a missing person investigation, but after [the MSN] article about the viewing of the [previously denied] video, they felt that this was an opportunity to investigate a civil rights violation.”
PARENTAL DISCORD
The close cooperation between Waters staff and the mother’s support group has reportedly angered Mitrice Richardson’s father, Michael Richardson, who interrupted Rep. Waters at a political press conference on Monday, demanding recognition that it was he who was bringing about potential DOJ involvement, not the Congressmember.
The father originally took his daughter’s missing person case to a number of media outlets, but many of these outlets are now downplaying his involvement, according to Latice Sutton, who says that they question his behavior and statements.
Mitrice Richardson’s parents never married and went their separate ways when she was very young. Sutton said that since her daughter was six, her husband Larry Sutton was Mitrice’s “de facto” father. She indicated that Michael Richardson was “out of his daughter’s life for about 10 years” and only recently began establishing contact.
Latice Sutton said that public officials tell her they do not want to work with the father, which prompted her to write Congressmember Laura Richardson (no relation), whose political aid Sutton is also trying to enlist, “I do not support Michael Richardson’s antics, views, methods, intimidation, or narcissism, and do not work with him in any way.” Laura Richardson represents the Congressional district where Mitrice Richardson was living before she disappeared.
Sutton said Michael Richardson’s “ambush” of Waters at the press conference has forced her to make her strongest statement so far about him. She told the Malibu Surfside News, “I know that when we bring Mitrice home, and she is well, she will disown his actions. Michael Richardson deserves no credit for aiding in this investigation, but he will get the credit if he destroys the federal investigation.”
NEXT SEARCH EFFORT
The mother and her family and friends are planning a large two-day search the weekend of June 5 and 6 in the greater Malibu area. Maurice Dubois, the father of murdered teenager Amber Dubois who has become a vocal missing persons advocate, will help to coordinate an effort that will involve hikers, horseback riders and trail bikers, as well as general flyer distribution throughout the region.
INFORMATION
Anyone who was in Geoffrey’s restaurant or parking lot the evening of Sept. 16 and recalls anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, that might be related to this case is asked to email The News at editor@malibu surfsidenews.com
Additional information about the case is available on the mother’s website at www.findmitrice.info; or by contacting Dr. Ronda Hampton at 951-660-8031.
