Sherrill Levitt, Stacy McCall, & Suzanne Streeter

[The Tracker]

Sherrill Levitt

Classification: Endangered Missing Adult
Date of Birth: 1944-11-01
Date Missing: 1992-06-07
From City/State: Springfield, MO
Missing From (Country): USA
Age at Time of Disappearance: 47
Gender: Female
Race: White
Height: 60 inches
Weight: 110 pounds
Hair Color: Blonde
Hair (Other): Naturally curly
Eye Color: Brown
Complexion: Light
Identifying Characteristics: Freckles on neck and chest.
Clothing: Floral print dress.
Circumstances of Disappearance: Unknown. Stacy McCall and her friend, Suzanne Streeter, had graduated from high school the day before and after leaving a party at approx. 2:15am, it appears that Stacy went to stay the night at Suzanne's house where she resided with her mother, Sherrill near Glenstone and Delmar St. Their vehicles and all personal belongings were found at the residence. All three women are missing.
Investigative Agency: Springfield Police Department
Phone: [phone]
Investigative Case #: 92-40169
NCIC #: M-710004696

[The Tracker]

Stacy Kathleen McCall

Classification: Endangered Missing Adult
Date of Birth: 1974-04-23
Date Missing: 1992-06-07
From City/State: Springfield, MO
Missing From (Country): USA
Age at Time of Disappearance: 18
Gender: Female
Race: White
Height: 63 inches
Weight: 120 pounds
Hair Color: Blonde
Eye Color: Blue
Complexion: Light
Identifying Characteristics: Cleft chin.
Clothing: Yellow shirt, flowered bikini panties.
Jewelry: 14" herringbone necklace, ring with small diamond, flat gold initial ring.
Circumstances of Disappearance: Unknown. Stacy and her friend, Suzanne Streeter, had graduated from high school the day before and after leaving a party at approx. 2:15am, it appears that Stacy went to stay the night at Suzanne's house where she resided with her mother, Sherrill Levitt near Glenstone and Delmar St. Their vehicles and all personal belongings were found at the residence. All three women are missing.
Investigative Agency: Springfield Police Department
Phone: [phone]
Investigative Case #: 92-40169
NCIC #: M-790005349

[The Tracker]

Suzanne Streeter

Classification: Endangered Missing Adult
Alias / Nickname: Suzie
Date of Birth: 1973-03-09
Date Missing: 1992-06-07
From City/State: Springfield, MO
Missing From (Country): USA
Age at Time of Disappearance: 19
Gender: Female
Race: White
Height: 62 inches
Weight: 102 pounds
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Complexion: Light
Identifying Characteristics: Scar right forearm, small tumor left corner of mouth.
Clothing: White T-shirt, pink shoes.
Circumstances of Disappearance: Unknown. Suzanne and her friend, Stacy McCall, graduated from high school the day before and after leaving a party at approx. 2:15am, it appears that Stacy went to stay the night at Suzanne's house where she resided with her mother, Sherrill Levitt near Glenstone and Delmar St. Their vehicles and all personal belongings were left behind. All three women are missing.
Investigative Agency: Springfield Police Department
Phone: [phone]
Investigative Case #: 92-40169
NCIC #: M-000005024

[The Tracker]

On June 7, 1992, the Springfield, Missouri Police Department was notified of the disappearance of three women from a residence in central Springfield.

The parents of Stacy McCall, one of the missing women, contacted the police department in reference to their daughter's disappearance from the home of Sherrill Levitt and Suzanne Streeter, the other two missing women. Upon officers' arrival, the house bore no signs of a struggle, but rather the appearance of the missing women being abducted. All personal property was left behind including purses, money, clothing, cars, keys, cigarettes, and the family dog.

Stacy McCall and Suzanne Streeter had graduated from high school the day before their disappearance and were last seen at approximately 2:15 a.m. on 06/07/92 when they left a graduation party in a nearby community enroute to the Levitt/Streeter home at 1717 E. Delmar, Springfield. It appeared as though they had arrived at the residence because their clothing, jewelry, purses, and vehicles were still at this location.

Suzanne's mother, Sherrill Levitt, was last heard from at approximately 11:15 p.m. on 06/06/92 when she talked with a friend about painting a chest of drawers. Levitt's car, purse, keys, etc., were left at the residence and it appeared as though her bed had been slept in when friends and police arrived to check the residence.

With the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Missouri State Highway Patrol, and numerous other law enforcement agencies, an extensive investigation into the lives of the missing women has been conducted with no positive leads concerning the reason for their disappearance or their location.

A reward fund of $42,000 has been established for the location and prosecution of the persons responsible for the abduction of the three women. Anyone with information into the disappearance of Mrs. Levitt, Miss Streeter, and Miss McCall is requested to contact the Springfield Police Department or CRIME STOPPERS.

[The Tracker]

'Confusion turns to worry, then a call to the police
Officers find purses in the house, cars in the driveway and a skittish dog.

By Laura Bauer
News-Leader

Janelle Kirby was curious. She had been with Stacy McCall and Suzie Streeter at graduation parties the night before, and they had agreed to meet her the next day for some fun at a Branson water park.

It was nearly noon, and the girls hadn’t called.

Janelle decided to drive over to Suzie’s house at 1717 E. Delmar St. — where she figured Stacy and Suzie were sleeping in — to investigate. Hopping out of her car barefoot, the first thing Janelle noticed was broken glass shimmering on the front steps.

The porch globe was busted, yet the yellow bulb burned bright under the midday sun.

Someone — or some thing — must have bumped it, she thought. No big deal.

“As a favor” to Suzie’s mom, Janelle’s boyfriend Mike grabbed a broom, swept up the glass and dumped it in the garbage.

A decade later, authorities view that broken glass as a possible clue to the disappearance of McCall, Streeter and Sherrill Levitt on June 7, 1992. Back then it was an annoyance that could have cut Janelle’s feet.

And as Janelle peered into the house through the living room window, Mike unknowingly discarded the only piece of evidence in what appears to be a kidnapping and triple murder — a case that still reverberates in the Ozarks.

Each of the missing women had a car parked in the driveway. Looking through the window, nothing seemed to be amiss inside. The living room was tidy.

Janelle walked around to the back yard, thinking her friends might be sunbathing on a cloudless day with temperatures near 80.

Nothing.

Better have a look inside, Janelle and Mike thought.

Maybe they were asleep. Maybe they had left a note.

The house was still

Janelle knew Suzie’s little Yorkie well, but had never seen the him yap and carry on as he did when she cracked open the front door. Cinnamon jumped up into her arms, comfortable being with someone he knew.

“I started yelling for them, for Stacy, Suzie and Sherrill,” Janelle says.

The house was still.

She walked through the living room and kitchen, then the bathroom and Suzie’s room.

Little things caught her attention. Suzie’s bed covers were pulled back. The room was a little messy, but nothing unusual for a teen-ager.

The women’s purses were still in the house, piled up on the steps of Suzie’s sunken bedroom.

Suzie and her mother, Sherrill, had left behind their cigarettes. That was odd, Janelle thought. The two were constantly smoking, and rarely went anywhere without smokes.

Puzzled, Janelle and Mike went to a friend’s house, wondering if Suzie and Stacy had gone there before meeting for the trip to Branson. But their friend Shane hadn’t seen the girls. In fact, he was still in bed.

Janelle and Mike returned to 1717 E. Delmar St. one more time. Nothing.

It suddenly occurred to them that the women might have walked to a neighborhood sub shop for lunch, so they hurried over there but, again, found nothing.

They scanned sidewalks of every street they passed, hoping to find the women taking a leisurely walk.

By this time Janelle and Mike were worried, but they still didn’t think the women had disappeared. They just didn’t know where they’d gone.

Maybe Janis knew.

‘Let me talk to stacy’

When Janis McCall hadn’t heard from her daughter by midday that Sunday, she called Janelle’s house.

Janelle’s sister answered the phone.

“Have they gotten up yet?” Janis asked.

The sister explained that Janelle wasn’t home, she left with Mike.

“Let me talk to Stacy,” Janis asked.

“She didn’t stay here,” the sister answered.

Janis told the sister that Stacy did stay there last night, explaining that Stacy had called her about 10:30 p.m. with the news.

No, Janelle’s sister insisted. Stacy went to Suzie’s house. The Kirby house was crowded with relatives and Stacy and Suzie had decided to Suzie’s so they could sleep in her new king-size waterbed.

Janis was a little upset that her daughter didn’t stay where she had planned to sleep. But she would talk with Stacy about that later.

For the time being, she called Suzie’s and left instructions on the answering machine for Stacy to call her when she returned.

Like Janelle and Mike, Janis was worried but not alarmed. The McCall family went to Lake Springfield to watch miniature boats race, as planned. Janis’ mother from Oklahoma was in town, and the family enjoyed a hot day in the sun together.

Janis had talked to Janelle, who explained that she and Mike couldn’t find Stacy and Suzie.

As the day wore on, Janis’ voice on Suzie’s answer machine was getting more frantic, her concern evident. Her worry grew when she got a call from a friend, the mother of one of Stacy’s close friends.

“Are you aware Stacy’s purse and her car and Suzie’s car is still at Sherrill’s house but the girls aren’t?” the woman said.

The sun was starting to set. Janis and one of her two older daughters jumped in the car and drove toward the tiny house on Delmar. The plan was that the sister would drive Stacy’s car home.

“I was going to let her look for her car and clothes,” Janis says. “I thought, ‘That serves you right. You didn’t let me know anything and I won’t let you know.’”

‘Where could she be?’

Light was fading from the evening sky and mature trees around Levitt’s home made the entryway dark. Janis searched for a light, and finally found the switch on a table lamp. She looked around the small, dimly lit living room and made her way through the house.

Suddenly, the house on Delmar was filling with people. Family and friends and parents of friends began pouring into the little house, wondering where the women could be.

Janis paced in the kitchen, still upset that Stacy hadn’t told her where she was. That wasn’t like Stacy, the youngest of three daughters. She was the type of girl who let her parents know where she was at all times.

Stacy had earlier snuck out of the house — only to find her mom waiting outside the apartment building she had gone into. Stacy knew her mom. She knew that Janis worried and that a phone call was always required.

Janis couldn’t understand why her daughter had been gone so long. Things weren’t adding up.

Not only were the purses of all three women inside — with car keys and a large sum of money in Sherrill’s bag — but so were some of Stacy’s clothes. And her migraine medication, something she never left behind, was in her purse. Stacy relied on that medication when her headaches were too much to bear.

“I thought, why would she leave all of this here?” Janis recalls.

She kept asking Janelle, back at East Delmar for the third time that day, “Where could she be? Where could she be?”

The mother of one of Stacy’s friends was with Janis in the kitchen. They planned to look through Sherrill’s personal phone book and call friends to see if they had any idea where the women might have gone.

Let’s make a pot of coffee, the friend suggested.

Janis thought, “I don’t want to do that. What’s Sherrill going to say when we’re sitting in her kitchen drinking coffee?”

Janis started calling people, including a former stepdaughter. No one had heard from Sherrill. Janis called her husband, Stu.

“There’s something not right, something is really wrong.”

He agreed.

It was time to call police. But not 911, Janis thought. That’s only for emergencies. And that’s not what this was. Not yet.

“I was still waiting for them to come in,” Janis says.

She called the department number, and the dispatcher asked if she wanted to call 911.

No. Just take down the information and send an officer, Janis asked.

Within minutes, Officer Rick Bookout got the call.

The overnight shift

The overnight shift is typically a cop’s favorite. The calls are exciting. Officers don’t have to bother with the traffic. And requests for service aren’t as heavy; they can work proactive cases.

Bookout had just clocked in when he heard the police radio crackle. Dispatchers needed the three-year veteran to go to 1717 E. Delmar St. to take a missing- persons report.

“You get a lot of those,” Bookout says. “They’re pretty typical.”

When he got to the house, the door was open. The lights were on. The smell of varnish hit him hard; he figured someone must be doing a remodeling project.

Several people were already inside, milling around the house a block west of Glenstone Avenue. Janelle was there; so was boyfriend Mike. They hadn’t gone to White Water, settling instead for a water slide in Springfield known as Hydra-Slide. Janelle still had her swimsuit on underneath her clothes, her shorts soaking wet from the suit.

Bookout first talked to Stu and Janis McCall.

The officer began jotting down the McCalls’ story in his tiny flip notebook.

Their youngest daughter, Stacy, 18, had come to the house to spend the night with Suzie Streeter, a childhood friend. Stacy and Suzie weren’t supposed to spend the night there, but when plans changed they decided to sleep at the house and go to White Water that morning with some friends. They never called friends to rendezvous for the trip to Branson and they never answered phone calls, which began about 8 a.m.

Bookout took a walk through the home, Janis at his side. They went into Suzie’s room, where pictures of famous blondes hung on the wall and seven oversized stuffed animals were scattered across the floor. Two slats in the window blinds had been separated, as if someone was looking out.

The three women’s purses were all together, Stacy’s sitting on Suzie’s overnight bag.

The officer made some notes in his notebook.

The television was left on. The bed wasn’t made. It looked as if the two girls had gotten ready for bed.

Bookout looked at Janis, “They could have just gone out having fun,” he speculated.

“If she is, she’s in her underwear,” Janis answered. On the floor were Stacy’s flowered shorts, her rings and her watch in the pocket.

Could she have worn some of Suzie’s clothes to go out? Bookout asked.

No, Janis answered. Stacy wouldn’t fit into Suzie’s clothes.

Bookout sat at the dining room table with the McCalls and others. The little Yorkie jumped up on his lap. Cinnamon was shaking like crazy, scared with all the strangers in his house, Bookout said.

“I was thinking, ‘I wish this little dog could talk.’”

Panic rises, hope fades

Officer Brian Gault was the second officer called to the scene. He and Bookout took inventory of the sparse facts they had:

• The three women were gone.

• Their purses had been left behind, along with the keys to their cars, all parked in the

driveway.

• The porch globe had been broken, the glass swept up and discarded.

• The missing mother and daughter were smokers, and they had left their cigarettes.

“She’d leave her house without a lot of things, but a smoker wouldn’t leave without her cigarettes and lighter,” Bookout says today. “I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, this probably isn’t a good situation.”

The officers determined this was a missing-persons report, and that foul play was suspected.

As Janelle watched Bookout jot down notes and interview people in the home, her panic level rose. Sitting on the porch steps facing Delmar Street, she watched every set of headlights approach, praying that a car would stop and the women would get out with an explanation for their absence.

But hope was beginning to fade. She sat on the steps and cried. Hard.

The next question hit Janis like a brick.

“Can you obtain dental records for Stacy?” Bookout inquired.

Her heart sank. She knew then that everything in the house, the clothes and cigarettes and keys left behind, spelled trouble.

“I thought, if they want dental records, they want to identify my daughter,” says Janis, a dental hygienist. “They thought my daughter could be dead.”

Finally, the group of people paraded out of the house and Bookout locked the front door.

Janis was startled, her voice frantic.

“How are they going to get in when they come home?”

Bookout tried to reassure her.

“If they want to get in, they can come to the department and identify themselves.”

He taped a small blue note on the door. It was a standard missing-persons letter, with a handwritten message on back: “When you get in, please call, 864-1810 and cancel the missing persons report.”

[The Tracker]

A decade later, questions haunt the investigators
Some detectives say former chief didn’t let them do their jobs; he disagrees.

By Laura Bauer
News-Leader

It looked like a grave. The earth moist and dark on top, as if soil had been freshly turned.

Officers Dana Carrington and Ron Hutcheson stood gripping shovels on a patch of rocky, wooded terrain near Lake Springfield.

The call had come in like hundreds of others offering help with the three women who had vanished days earlier. It seemed promising — the break police needed.

“This is a place where someone could bury someone,” Hutcheson thought as he glanced around at the secluded area covered with brush and towering trees.

But this “lead” played out like all the rest in the 10-year-old mystery surrounding the disappearance of Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall. Optimism soon faded to disappointment.

“It was a large anthill. An anthill,” emphasizes Hutcheson, now a lieutenant in the traffic division who was a major-crimes investigator in 1992. “That’s just one story. I went on many leads like that. It showed us we were really grasping for evidence.”

Officers followed buzzard sightings, even flying an investigator to Arkansas to check a field where hovering birds had been spotted two days earlier. Visions from psychics were pursued, and officials had tarot cards read at least once in hopes that it would generate a lead.

When it came to possible evidence, everything — regardless of relevance — was collected, tagged and stored. Among the items were dingy, soiled jeans from a trash can that prompted a citizen’s tip of a “suspicious odor,” and a large pair of women’s underwear floating in Lake Springfield — shorts so big, all three women could have fit inside.

Unlike in any case before — or after — the disappearance of the three women, detectives chased tips that came from the community, not from officers on the street. Some blamed that on former Police Chief Terry Knowles, whom they described as a micromanager who didn’t let detectives do their jobs. Officers says key suspects who investigators believed had a motive to abduct the women were ruled out by the police chief himself.

George Larbey was president of the Springfield Police Officers Association in 1992. He says officers felt Knowles did not have confidence in them, and that generated a lot of in-fighting within the department during the biggest investigation of detectives’ careers.

“If your highest command tells you how it’s going to be, simply put, that’s how it’s going to be,” says Larbey, who now serves as a captain in the Greene County Sheriff’s Department. “Detectives felt powerless. ... The newer guys wouldn’t have any idea what was going on; that this wasn’t normally the way we did business.”

Adds Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore, who was assistant prosecutor when the women disappeared: “This was clearly the most micromanaged case I’ve ever seen. Seasoned detectives were not allowed to use their experience and judgment in this investigation. ... This is the only case where that happened and I don’t understand that. Other chiefs and sheriffs have let the guys run with the investigation.”

Knowles doesn’t deny he has a hands-on approach as a leader. He says he wants more than a briefing; he wants to know what’s going on.

But Knowles disagrees with detectives who claim his dictatorial ways undermined the case.

Contacted recently at his office at the Kansas Bureau of Investigations in Topeka, where he’s the deputy director, Knowles says he has not heard accusations of micromanaging.

“I don’t recall that being an issue back then,” he says today. “What anyone wants to say 10 years later — I can’t control that. It’s certainly disappointing, and it’s frustrating at the time to be doing everything you possibly can.

“Cases don’t always work out the way you want them to,” says Knowles, who didn’t elaborate on whether he, like the detectives, is haunted by the mystery.

“How you feel 10 years later is immaterial — how I feel now will not help solve this case.”

‘It could be bad’

It was Sunday, June 9, 1992. Lt. Mike Brazeal was out of town. He was fairly new in the detective division and was on a five-day, five-city tour of police departments to learn how other cities ran a detective division, how they did investigations. His thoughts often drifted back home to Springfield, where three women had vanished two days before.

“We got a situation going on now with three missing people,” now-retired Capt. Tony Glenn told Brazeal on June 8, 1992, when he called to check in. “It could be bad.”

“I asked several times, ‘Maybe I should come back,’” says Brazeal, who is now retired and running an investigations business.

“There’s nothing you can do at this point other than stand here with me and worry,” Glenn recalls telling his colleague a decade ago.

This case was difficult because nothing — except the busted globe of an outside light — was amiss at Sherrill Levitt’s south-central home on 1717 E. Delmar Street, where the women disappeared the day after Streeter and McCall graduated from Kickapoo High School. A vehicle belonging to each woman sat in Sherrill Levitt’s driveway, and the women’s car keys and purses were inside the small, tidy home. There was no sign of a struggle.

On Tuesday, June 11, the worry at police headquarters had increased.

“We’re in a full-court press and I don’t know where this is going to go,” Glenn told Brazeal in a telephone conversation.

Brazeal was familiar with a full-court press, Knowles’ term for throwing extensive resources at a case, pulling officers from other cases to give priority to just one.

Each day, Brazeal called Glenn. He was torn and so was Glenn. Brazeal wanted badly to be in Springfield.

But as this case grew bigger and more mysterious, police also knew what Brazeal was learning on the road was more important than ever. He stayed on the trip. And when he got home on Friday, June 12, the day before officers took off on ATVs and horses and power boats to randomly search for clues throughout Greene County, things had changed.

‘The line was blurred’

Investigation briefings now were being held in the chief’s conference room. Daily news conferences were scheduled to update the media. The Federal Bureau of Investigations had joined the case. Detectives were discouraged from sharing with one another tips they had run down.

Instead of coming into the department and working the phones, letting one lead prompt another as they would on any normal major investigation, detectives were mostly getting tip cards — everything from sightings to suspicious activity — to run down. Some sat answering the phones and listening to callers’ concerns. Veteran detectives were baffled by this new game plan.

“It was no longer a CIS (Criminal Investigations Section) case. It was a case run out of the administration,” says Cpl. Doug Thomas, who was a major-crimes investigator in 1992 and carried the missing-women case longer than any detective. “Investigative decisions were made out of the chief’s conference room. The line was blurred because we hadn’t done that before.”

Thomas doesn’t criticize when he talks about the change in protocol. His comments reflect only a confusion detectives felt 10 years ago when they showed up for work and everything they’d known and done for years had changed.

What’s so puzzling is that the detectives who felt handcuffed were talented, says Glenn, who was division commander.

On all other cases, they were given latitude to do their jobs. Good detectives need to be supervised, Glenn says — not micromanaged.

Webster County Sheriff Ron Worsham, who was Knowles’ assistant chief in 1992, believes the case was managed well. Knowles had come from the FBI, and Worsham had attended the FBI academy. They were trained for major investigations.

“Who else would you want doing the investigation?” Worsham asks today. “The best people at the department ran the investigation. ... We didn’t let investigators just run and do whatever they wanted. I don’t know how anybody can criticize. For those who do that — they have psychological problems.”

Case takes on life of own

Darrell Moore was at a prosecutor’s conference in September 1992 when the television news magazine “48 Hours” jumped to life on the screen.

He found a television at a Lake of the Ozarks hotel because he knew Springfield’s case of the three missing women would be featured for sweeps week.

Moore saw clips from across the city. The hair salon where Levitt worked. The house on Delmar where the three women vanished. The McCalls passing out posters with the women’s photos and descriptions.

What he saw next, he’ll never forget: footage of two suspects being given a polygraph test.

“That’s a total violation of the disciplinary rules,” Moore says today. “We can’t even say whether or not polygraphs have been done. ... Much less allow the media to film it.”

Reporters were given unprecedented access 10 years ago, prosecutors say. They were allowed to air and print tips that came in. Nearly every detail from the house — from what was inside to how rooms looked that June morning when the women disappeared — was released.

If police had developed a suspect, and that person was charged, prosecutors feared they would have trouble in court.

“If the defense was alleging police misconduct, it would have been true,” Moore says today. “But that was done by one person — the chief.”

Knowles disagrees. He needed to get information out, and the media helped do that, he says. If this was a serial crime, other communities across the nation might be able to help.

At one point then-Prosecutor Tom Mountjoy wrote Knowles a letter, saying the lid had to be closed on information being released. If things didn’t change, people could be held legally responsible.

Mountjoy, now a Greene County judge, won’t talk about the turmoil from a decade ago, explaining that dredging up the past won’t help the ongoing investigation. He adds only that prosecutors are supposed to be kept apprised of a case, to make sure it’s clean when it goes to trial.

“I don’t think I had a handle on what was going on,” Mountjoy says today. “There was not a case lead detective, not one person you could go to.

“With a high-profile case, those cases can take on a life of their own. If left on their own, something other than the law enforcement can become in charge.”

A moss-green van

The woman was sure of what she saw on June 7, the day the women vanished. She was on her porch in east Springfield, enjoying the morning sunrise. She saw an older-model Dodge van, of moss-green color, pull into the driveway next door.

A young blonde was driving — she looked just like Suzie Streeter, whose picture had been in the newspaper and on television — and she looked scared. The woman on her porch could hear a man’s voice say, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

She didn’t report it for several days because she was too scared to come forward. And by the time she had, police were working other sightings of an older-model Dodge van. Sometimes the color was dark blue or a dirty brown, depending on the time of day.

One man told police he was sitting in the parking lot of a grocery store, near Levitt’s East Delmar home, and saw a van with a young blonde in the driver’s seat. She was waiting on someone in the store. He jotted down the license plate on a newspaper because he thought there was something strange about the van. But he had thrown the newspaper away and when police had him hypnotized he could remember only the first three digits.

“We ran every registered van in the United States that matched that description,” Worsham recalls.

A moss-green van, similar to the one the woman said she saw at sunrise, was parked in front of the police station for weeks with the hope someone else would remember seeing one like it around the time of the disappearance.

To this day, opinions differ on the van. Some officers believe a van was involved in the disappearance; others are doubtful. And yet others say police never had enough information to say either way.

For the families

The pain doesn’t fade. Neither does the idea that maybe something could have been done differently. Maybes and what-ifs fill the minds of detectives.

“Could we have done something differently? Probably,” says Asher. “You could point fingers ... but that won’t help find these three women.”

And beyond the infighting of 1992, detectives say they knew who they were working for.

It was the family of Suzie and Sherrill. It was Janis and Stu McCall.

Within the first few weeks of the investigation, the McCalls sat across the desk from then Sgt. Mark Webb and played for him a tape of a public service announcement they made, pleading for their daughter’s return. When the tape ended, Webb struggled to retain his composure.

“I remember thinking, this wasn’t someone who had their microwave stolen,” Webb says. “They had their baby girl stolen and they wanted her back. We were responsible for getting her back. ... I’ll never forget Janis looking at me in the eyes and saying, ‘You have to promise me you’ll bring my baby girl home

[The Tracker]

Officers dig for clues to vanished trio
Barry County search yields tires, trash, more, but so far, no answers.



State and Barry County law enforcement officers look through debris dug from an earthen dam on a farm south of Cassville.
Bob Linder, News-Leader

Two backhoes dig more than 12 feet into an earthen dam at a farm in southern Barry County. Law enforcement is digging on the farm based on information received in the case of three women who disappeared in Springfield in 1992. Springfield police have received more than 5,000 tips in the case.
Bob Linder / News-Leader
By Laura Bauer
News-Leader

Cassville -- About five miles south of this Barry County seat, in the middle of rolling hills and stock ponds, authorities hold out hope they are uncovering the answer to a decade-old mystery of what happened to three women who vanished from a Springfield home.

For three days now, backhoe crews have been digging up land where anonymous tipsters say the bodies of the women are buried. Working off those tips, and other information law enforcement won't divulge, cadaver-seeking dogs scoured the land and "showed interest" in various areas, said Barry County Sheriff Mick Epperly.

"We just felt we had to dig," Epperly said Tuesday afternoon as he slipped on gloves to shield his hands from the abnormally cold spring air. "We felt like it was a credible enough lead -- you know, it wasn't just one person saying this -- that we had to find out if there was anything here."

Scoop by scoop, the two backhoes have gone as deep as 15 feet in one spot and several feet in another area since Saturday night when authorities obtained a search warrant to begin digging. Each new pile of dirt uncovers something, from old tires and trash to parts of cars and appliances. But no sign of clues yet in the disappearance of childhood friends Stacy McCall, Suzie Streeter and Suzie's mom, Sherrill Levitt.

Law enforcement officers privately say they remain hopeful, but cautious. Too many times they've been down this road, and every time a promising lead quickly fizzled to a wild goose chase. Springfield police are still no closer to knowing what happened inside Levitt's house in 1992 than they were that day friends and family showed up at the home calling out for the women.

As authorities continue to investigate this latest lead in a baffling mound of more than 5,000 tips, those close to the women must wait it out.

Janis McCall, who has become a nationally known advocate for missing children since her daughter vanished hours after her high school graduation in 1992, said she has mixed emotions as crews dig in Barry County.

"I would like to have knowledge, but at the same time I don't want them to find my daughter dead," she said Tuesday evening. "I don't have a gut feeling on this one, but at other times I have."

During other digs or explorations of leads, she's felt panicky, worried of what they might find. Sometimes, the feeling weighs upon her, and she carries the concern everywhere she goes. She's afraid of the phone calls she might get and worries when the phone doesn't ring.

This time, she's just waiting to hear.

barry county focus

The tip came in more than a month ago. Then another.

Investigators checked them out, and more information led them back to this property south of Cassville on the way to Roaring River. It's the same land Springfield police received a tip on in 1996.

As Barry County sheriff's deputies and the Missouri Highway Patrol investigate, Springfield officers are helping. The department -- which has had a full-time detective working on the missing women case for the past year -- has opened its files to investigators, as it has other times when agencies worked leads regarding the 1992 disappearance.

"We're assisting other agencies with anything they may need in their investigation," said Cpl. Allen Neal of the Criminal Investigations Section. "We're all working on the same thing. We all want to find them."

The two most recent tips the Barry County department received said the women were buried on the farmland where backhoes are digging. One tipster went as far to say the women were left in a van, and the entire van was buried, authorities said.

When the women vanished from a home in south central Springfield in the early morning hours of June 6, 1992, thousands of tips came in. Several calls in the beginning pertained to a Dodge van, painted a light or moss-colored green. Witnesses said they saw it in the area, and one woman told authorities she saw it in her neighborhood early in the morning with a frightened blonde driving and being ordered to turn around by a man's voice. The caller said the girl looked like Suzie Streeter.

For years that van has been one of the only mainstay clues, though law enforcement has never had any evidence to say for sure whether the van was involved.

As crews dug Tuesday, a large metal part of a vehicle was dumped into the piles of dirt and debris. It was a shade of green.

"We certainly looked at that," Epperly said. "We've dug everything out of there, you name it. There's been tires and appliances, a motorcycle ... ."

By 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, right before unleashing another search dog through the piled-up debris and deep hole, authorities cordoned off a part of the county road where they searched. A man working on the property, doing welding work, glanced over to the crew periodically and asked a news crew to leave.

Since authorities received a search warrant Saturday night, Epperly said officers have been monitoring the property around the clock. Before the warrant, crews had dug up some of the land late last month. But a relative of the property owner told authorities if they weren't done by a certain date, they needed to come back with a warrant if they wanted to do more digging.

Barry County authorities asked for the help of a special prosecutor when Barry County Prosecutor Johnnie Cox recused himself. Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore was appointed. On Tuesday Moore said he couldn't say anything about the case, other than the fact investigators were searching.

'Starting to look gloomy'

As the backhoe operators continued digging, one or two men stood nearby. They were the spotters, watching to see what was being scooped and what was being dumped into the mounds of debris.

Investigators looked closer at some of the big stuff, especially the pieces of green metal.

As the hours of digging continued, the sheriff said he wasn't as optimistic as he was days ago. Still, he wasn't giving up.

"I really felt pretty good about the situation," he said. "As of (Tuesday) it's starting to look gloomy. ... If I don't come up with anything at least we're not going to worry for the rest of our lives that we didn't do our jobs out here."

Crews planned to continue digging through much of Tuesday night. The plan for today was to begin filling back in the holes that were dug.

But that's not the end, Epperly said.

"We'll continue on with any leads in the case," he said. They will keep going until they are able to disprove the tips and leads they have.

McCall is glad to hear that.

"I think it's wonderful he's going to the full extent he can to prove or disprove everything," McCall said. "That's all I've asked of any law enforcement: Go to the full extent to prove or disprove.

"Mainly I'm waiting it out," she said. "I'm not feeling panicky on this. Yes, I want closure, but I don't think it's coming this time. I don't think I'll have closure until I'm dead and gone to heaven and God will tell me everything."

[The Tracker]

[The Tracker]

THIS AERIAL SHOT FROM 1996 SHOWS A LARGE TRIANGLE JUST EAST OF THE ADDRESS WHERE THE THREE WOMEN DISAPPEARED, MARKED OUT WITH ORANGE TRIANGLES. THERE IS ALSO A TRIANGULAR AREA RIGHT ACROSS FROM THE HOUSE!

[The Tracker]

Possible Witness Testimony??

WHILE DRIVING ON MISSOURI INTERSTATE 70 ABOUT 2 HOURS FROM SPRINGFIELD MISSOURI, A MAN DRIVING A LOWERED WHITE T-BIRD WITH A SUNROOF OVERTOOK A MOSS GREEN VAN WITH PENNSYLVANIA PLATES DRIVING ALONG IN THE RIGHT LANE.
IT WAS IN THE PRE-DAWN DARKNESS.


AS HE CLOSED ON THE VAN HE NOTICED SOME ENERGETIC ACTIVITY INSIDE THE VAN, LIKE SOME KIND OF FIGHT WAS GOING ON.


AS HE DROVE ALONG BESIDE AND SLIGHTLY BEHIND THE VAN HE WATCHED A MAN VIOLENTLY AND REPEATEDLY STRIKING A WOMAN, UNTIL SHE FELL OUT OF SIGHT AND THEN BEGAN BEATING ANOTHER WOMAN. NEITHER WOMAN WAS ABLE TO RESIST THESE BLOWS TO THEIR FACES AND HEADS, AS THOUGH THEIR HANDS WERE TIED.


SUDDENLY THE MAN NOTICED THE WHITE T-BIRD, TAPPED THE DRIVER OF THE VAN ON THE SHOULDER AND POINTED TO THE CAR. HE GLARED AT THE DRIVER OF THE WHITE T-BIRD, WHO WAS LOOKING RIGHT BACK AT HIM THROUGH HIS OPEN SUNROOF.


HE THEN REACHED UP AND SNATCHED SOME CURTAINS CLOSED. AT THAT POINT THE DRIVER OF THE WHITE T-BIRD BECAME ALARMED AND AFRAID OF THE PEOPLE IN THE VAN, AND STEPPED ON THE GAS AND LEFT THEM BEHIND, AND KEPT GOING. NOT UNTIL LATER DID HE MAKE THE POSSIBLE CONNECTION TO THE 3MW.


NOW THAT WE FINALLY HAVE A PICTURE OF ROBERT CRAIG COX POSTED ON THE INTERNET, WE ARE HOPING TO HEAR FROM THIS DRIVER, AND SEE IF HE THINKS COX IS THE PERSON HE SAW. ALSO HE NEEDS TO SAY IF WE HAVE HIS STORY RIGHT. AND IF HE'S TELLING THE TRUTH, HE NEEDS TO TELL THE AUTHORITIES.

[The Tracker]

MORE STRANGENESS
GRAVE ROBBERS?


LATELY IT HAS BEEN REPORTED TO ME BY A VISITOR THAT
SUZIE STREETER AND A BOYFRIEND WERE TO BE CHARGED WITH
DESECRATION OF A GRAVE!
THIS BOYFRIEND IS SUPPOSEDLY THE SON OF A WEALTHY PERSON.
HIS FAMILY WANTED TO AVOID THE SCANDAL. APPARENTLY SUZIE WAS TO TESTIFY AGAINST HER ACCOMPLICE/BOYFRIEND IN EXCHANGE FOR IMMUNITY.
SO THIS CONTRIBUTES TO THE THEORY THAT IT WAS A MURDER-FOR-HIRE.


I found this on a website dedicated to this case, so take it for what it sounds like.

[The Tracker]

Psychic Intervention or

One day about eight years ago my youngest son, who was about 9 years old at that time, and I met with an elderly lady who was the mother of a young woman we knew in Springfield. We were visiting her home in regards to a matter concerning her daughter, who is a friend of ours. As we sat and chatted with her, she began to tell us about an experience she had regarding the three missing women.


Now this is where things began to get a little strange. You see, in turns out this lady was a locally well-known psychic. It was widely known in certain circles that she had the "gift", but I never knew it until she told us, after we had known her a while. We sat and listened to what she had to say.


Over the years she had predicted several significant events in her family's lives, including the death of one of her sons, at whom's funeral I was a pallbearer. The day I met the lady for the first time was the day her son died.


She had cataracts was legally blind, and had been for years. At the time we met her she was very sickly, and in poor health in general. Just skin and bones. She was pushing 80 years of age, She was not at all flashy or self promoting, or in any way flaky or suspicious. She spoke to us about her "second sight" ability as off-handedly as someone who had an accident, and now has a limp or a scar as a result.

She told us that she had had a couple of her "spells" at a couple of different times and she had seen and interacted with Suzie Streeter, one of the missing girls. She never had any "connection" with Sherrill Levitt or Stacy McCall.
But she had seen Suzie, and Suzie had shown her where they were, and how they got there.


She told us that they were down in a "cistern" or old dry well located in a triangular area with a farm "wagon track" cutting through it. Also, you must walk the perimeter of the triangle to enter the place though an opening in its side, rather than through the top, as if the side of the well has been excavated, or washed out.

She told us, " I saw Suzie. I don't know how I knew who she was, I just knew it was Suzie Streeter, one of the three missing women. She was wearing a simple cotton dress, with a small floral print. She was barefoot. She led me to an area of ground shaped like a triangle. The triangle was as large as a field, and had what looked like an old wagon track cutting through it on one side. Out in the center of the triangular area is an old cistern, which is like a well for drawing water. This is a concrete cylinder sticking up out of the ground, with a round wooden cover. The cistern is washed out on one side, and doesn't hold water any more.
"Suzie showed me where the cistern was, but we couldn't go straight to it. We had to walk the triangle [from A to B to C to D, see the diagram] then through the underbrush to the cistern. As we began to walk towards the cistern, the brush got so high and thick, I couldn't get through. I thought, 'How am I supposed to get through here,' when suddenly I felt myself being lifted and carried around my waist, by a large, strong person, who had me under one arm, and was carrying me with my head and feet hanging down, and he carried me over the brush to the top of the cistern. It was wood, about three feet in diameter.


"Then we were down in the cistern, which was like being in an underground room. One side of the cistern had washed out, and there was an opening about the size of a two-car garage leading out . The cistern cover was above us, over our heads. There were rocks [the size of softballs] under our feet, and down around the rocks, I could see water moving. That's where they are. They are in that cistern. They are near water. I saw two men there. One wore a hat like Colonel Hogan on Hogan's Heroes. The other was the big man.


"The next time I saw Suzie was in a separate episode, several weeks later. I was standing on a street corner, waiting for the light to change so I could cross. Suddenly, a car [ if memory serves, a blue Buick Skylark was what she told us] ] pulled up in front of me, to make a left turn. Suzie was sitting in the front seat on the passenger side. She was not in distress, just going for a ride. I couldn't see who was driving. Suzie turned to me and smiled. As the car pulled away she gave me a wave as if to say, 'See-ya!' I haven't had any more visions or contacts with her since."



I HAVE INCLUDED THIS STORY FROM THE WEBSITE LISTED BELOW, BUT HAVE DOUBTS AS TO IT'S USEABILITY.
airalex.homestead.com/MISSING.html

[The Tracker]

A LIKELY SUSPECT?

ROBERT CRAIG COX


ROBERT CRAIG COX IS CURRENTLY SERVING A LIFE SENTENCE IN TEXAS FOR AGGRAVATED ROBBERY
WITH NO PROJECTED RELEASE DATE AND A PAROLE REVIEW DATE OF MARCH 29, 2025.
IN OTHER WORDS, HE'S NOT GOING ANYWHERE ANYTIME SOON.


HE WAS ONCE ON FLORIDA'S DEATH ROW FOR THE MURDER OF 19-YEAR-OLD SHARON ZELLERS, BUT WAS RELEASED ON APPEAL.


THE PHOTO ABOVE DATES FROM HIS INCARCERATION IN FLORIDA, TAKEN 10 YEARS AFTER THE MURDER.


HE ALSO DID SOME TIME IN CALIFORNIA FOR A KIDNAPPING AND ASSAULT OF TWO DIFFERENT WOMEN THERE.


HE IS A REAL PERSON OF INTEREST IN THE CASE OF THE THREE WOMEN MISSING FROM
SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI SINCE 1992.


THERE ARE THOSE WHO BELIEVE HE MAY BE INVOLVED IN THE
1-70 AND I-35 SERIAL MURDERS.


WHILE IN CUSTODY IN TEXAS, HE CLAIMED TO KNOW WHERE THE THREE WOMEN WERE AND BRAGGED THAT THEY WOULD NEVER BE FOUND.


SOME OF THE I-70 MURDERS FIT HIS GENERAL M/O AND HIS LIFE TIMELINE PLACES HIM IN SPRINGFELD AT THE TIME OF SEVERAL OF THE KILLINGS. SPRINGFIELD ISN'T TOO FAR FROM I-70.


SHERRILL LEVITT
SUZIE STREETER
STACY McCALL
SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI'S THREE MISSING WOMEN


BETWEEN THE TIME HE LEFT PRISON IN CALIFORNIA, AND WENT TO PRISON IN TEXAS, COX SPENT SOME TIME IN SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI, WHICH HAS BEEN REFERRED TO AS HIS HOME TOWN. HIS ADOPTIVE PARENTS MOVED THERE FROM WITCHITA WHEN ROBERT WAS AN ADOLESCENT.


I HAVE RECENTLY LEARNED THAT ROBERT COX'S PARENTS USED TO LIVE A
FEW BLOCKS FROM THE LEVITT/STREETER HOME, WHICH IS WHERE THE THREE MISSING WOMEN WERE ABDUCTED.


THE EVENING OF THE ABDUCTION, COX CALLED HIS THEN-GIRLFRIEND TO TELL HER HE WAS SPENDING THAT NIGHT AT HIS PARENTS, PLACING HIMSELF IN PROXIMITY OF THE CRIME SCENE.


HE BECAME A PERSON OF INTEREST IN THE CASE WHEN THERE WERE SOME CONFLICTS IN HIS ALIBI FOR THAT NIGHT.


LATER, WHILE IN CUSTODY IN TEXAS, HE APPARENTLY BRAGGED ABOUT KNOWING SOMETHING ABOUT THE SPRINGFIELD CASE. HE CLAIMED TO KNOW WHERE THE WOMEN WERE, AND THAT THEY WOULD NEVER BE FOUND.
WHEN PRESSED FOR DETAILS, HE CLAMMED UP.


CONVINCED HE DOES KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THESE CRIMES, PRISON AUTHORITIES HAD HIM PLACED IN PROTECTIVE, SOLITARY CONFINEMENT.

[The Tracker]

MORE ON COX

Suspect now silent, but handwriting reveals much
Analysis of letters create profile of a slow-witted, authority-spurning loner who dwells in the past.

By Laura Bauer
News-Leader

In Lovelady, Texas, Robert Craig Cox sits in an isolation cell at a maximum security prison.

He once was a chatty inmate who enjoyed interviews with the media and likened talks with police to chess games.

But Cox now says he’s had enough. He blames police for being segregated from his fellow inmates and insists that he will talk no more.

Cox does still write letters, however, and in the past seven years he has penned about a dozen to the News-Leader.

According to an internationally recognized handwriting analyst, the penmanship of Robert Cox says things about him that he won’t say himself. Graphologist Shelia Kurtz, who analyzed the handwriting of high-profile inmates including New York’s Son of Sam, provided an analysis on Cox’s handwriting for the News-Leader.

Kurtz, president of Graphology Consulting Group in New York City, said she could determine these facts from the words Cox prints on yellow tablets:

• “He’s slow-witted.”

• “He is inconsistent in thoughts and actions. Neither the writer nor anyone else can be sure what ideas or deeds will emerge next. The writer’s moods shift rapidly and without apparent reason.”

• “He is rebellious and defiant of authority figures.”

• “He is direct in expression, with good attention to details. Writer will ‘say it as [he thinks] it is’ with muddled thinking.”

• “He is ‘a loner’ (often self-absorbed) who dwells in the past.”

• “He thinks he senses (intuits) the true moods of other people, but who knows what he does with all the information he thinks he has?”

Authorities who have interviewed Cox or sat with him in the courtroom say he is similar to the infamous murderer and rapist Ted Bundy.

“Cox wants everybody to believe him to be a suspect, but he doesn’t want to give enough information to truly be a suspect,” says Jeff Ashton, one of two Florida state prosecutors who prosecuted Cox in the 1978 murder of a young woman.

“He’s just like Bundy, he wants to be out there,” Ashton says. “He’s not going to come out and say I did it, then he would be convicted. He’s going to keep playing with the media and police like Bundy.”

Before Cox talks to people, he wants a list of questions. In letters, he answers them one by one.

In a letter written to the News-Leader in May 1997, Cox detailed his interview with three Springfield police officers.

Cox talked of how he refused to take a polygraph — because he deemed some of the questions inappropriate — and how he gave officers his detailed alibi for June 7, 1992.

“(Cpl. Bill Thomas) told me that I had told the two police officers who first approached me a week after the disappearance that I had gone to church with my girlfriend,” Cox wrote.

“At that time she confirmed my story,” Cox wrote. “But at the Grand Jury hearing she said that she didn’t go to church with me, but was covering for me because I had called her and asked her to do that for me. They seemed concerned with this minor detail.”

In that same letter, Cox explained how Sgt. Kevin Routh asked him to just tell him where the bodies were.

“Then I told Sgt. Routh that if I could tell him where the bodies were, then he would come after me with an indictment and seek the death penalty,” Cox wrote. “His response was, ‘Just get word to me without letting me know it is you.’

“I told him he wasn’t very informed about information coming in or going out. .... I could tell you (the News-Leader reporter), but I don’t think you would be able to keep me as a source without revealing who I am and where you got the information. Am I right?”

Reporter Robert Keyes contributed information to this story.

[The Tracker]

After studying maps and reading up on this I have two big questions -

1) Who were the friends they were going to Branson with? A follow up on them may prove interesting.

2) Were the southern and southwestern routes checked thoroughly?

If the Cox person is involved and was arrested afterwards in Texas would it not follow that his escape route would lead to Texas.

The most southern route which goes through Branson, would allow him to intersect with the freeway in Arkansas which is a direct path to Dallas

The southwestly route, while more irratic would take him to 71 and down to a freeway that would again take a person fairly directly to Dallas.

Both routes take a person through some relatively isolated areas. This allows for a hidden agenda on the part of the perps.