So my father-in-law’s funeral is over and this past weekend I went to the Wisconsin Missing Persons Awareness Event, where I gave the keynote speech and the Charley Project was awarded a plaque from the organization. It was a really awesome event; they get bigger every year and every year more people show up. Now I’m home again. And have a bunch of cases to resolve ..read more

This week’s featured missing person is Corey Tahj Kelly, who was 19 and within days of becoming a father when he disappeared from North Charleston, South Carolina on September 11, 2017. He left his mom’s home to stay at his sister’s, then left his sister’s place and never came back. Corey is black, 6’0 and 165 pounds, with black hair, brown eyes and a tattooed arm there’s a photo of, as well as other tattoos. He had a history of drug abuse and mental illness, both possible causes for his disappearance, but his family doesn’t think a voluntary disappearance is likely because his baby was born j ..read more

Yesterday (Friday) evening he collapsed and though they got his heart started again, he was without oxygen for about 20 minutes and based on that and other indications the ICU doctor has predicted massive brain damage. We do not expect him to come back from this and have summoned the extended family to say their goodbyes. Given David’s age (78 I think) and state of health, this wasn’t unexpected. But it really sucks. We’re all very sad. He was a very good man. I had known him for 22 years. Every Friday my in-laws have lunch with my husband. I don’t usually join them but yesterday I did and we ..read more

Yeah, Blake Deven? Whom I wrote about earlier? Another relative, a girl named London, is missing too. From this article: FPD reported Thursday that investigators recently identified another possible missing relative. London Deven, who would be 28 years old today, was last seen in 2019 in Fayetteville. The most recent photo of London available to investigators was taken in approximately 2007, when she was likely 12 years old. No age progression photo is available for London. Press X to doubt she actually went missing in 2019 ..read more

I suck at capitalism. I think of ways I could make more money off the Charley Project, like merch and stuff, and wind up not doing anything because I get to feeling horribly guilty because 1. It seems like there is no way to make money without the risk of exploiting others. Like merch. How do I know my merch wouldn’t be made by enslaved Uyghurs in Chinese labor camps (that’s who makes all the Temu stuff from what I’ve heard) or by child laborers in Bangladesh or something? 2. I don’t want anybody to ever be thinking I started the site as some kind of grift for donations. I’ve been accused of i ..read more

Spent some time writing up the Jeanette Ray disappearance/Renay Ray murder and was quite appalled by the dad’s behavior. It sounds like he may very well have been a serial killer. I think the minimum “body count” is three, and there’s Renay, almost certainly Jeanette as well, and probably poor Doreen Heskett too. I try to keep the Charley Project’s narrative “voice” as neutral as possible, but I’m pretty sure a reader of Jeanette’s casefile can sense my loathing and contempt for Claude. I remember reading the articles and gradually getting a sense of the story and how bad things were. They int ..read more

So the cops are looking for this missing boy, Blake Deven, but apparently no one has seen him in years and years. The most recent photo they can find is from 2012. The NCMEC has put up a poster with an age-progression of how he’d look now, at age 17. I think he’s probably dead. It seems like every time this happens–a kid not reported missing till YEARS afer they were actually last seen–it turns out the kid is dead and their family knew all along. I really hope I’m wrong ..read more

So yesterday I was just doing random updates when things took an abrupt left turn after I found an article describing a rural Oklahoma property known as “the bully farm” (because it was once used as a puppy mill for bulldogs) that has been linked to, like, a zillion disappearances. They’ve found burned bone fragments scattered there. The place is like Treblinka but scaled down to “meth-fueled white supremacist prison gang hideout” size. That Mikell Smith sounds like an absolute monster, managing to commit multiple murders by proxy from behind prison walls; he’s described as the most dangerous ..read more

This week’s featured missing person is Albert Charles Haft IV, last seen in Columbus, Ohio on December 12, 2014. Haft was 52 then, and would be 61 now. He has black hair and green eyes. Haft had been staying in a transitional home after being discharged from a psychiatric hospital. He was caught drinking which was against the rules of the home, and they kicked him out. This was a few days before he was last seen. He wound up with a room in a motel, but had gone missing by morning. His sister believes he could be dead. Certainly that’s possible, even likely by now. But I wonder if he is still a ..read more

I updated Harmony Montgomery’s casefile the other day with news of her father’s murder conviction. Justice was served, I guess, even though her dad tried to wriggle out of it by throwing his wife under the bus, claiming she did it and he only disposed of the body. Well, Adam, only one person in the family bragged (bragged!) about “bashing Harmony around” and giving her bruises, that person was you. He will probably never breathe free air ever again and good riddance. But it’s not just her father and stepmother that failed Harmony. Everyone did. Adam and Kayla should never have gotten custody i ..read more