missing | person

For my Death Sentencing class at PSU, I have been researching the plea agreement in the Green River Killer case.  This is perhaps the only serial killer case in US history that ended in a plea deal for life instead of death.  Gary Ridgeway sought the plea deal, offering police a chance to find more of his victims in exchange for a life sentence.  In my research, I want to answer (or at least explore) these questions: Should a prosecutor wield such discretion when it comes to sentencing? Is it the function of the courts to solve cases and find missing people (or simply to adjudicate guilt and find dispositions)?  When the ABA demands that a prosecutor seek justice, what does it mean? (The term "justice" is surprisingly vague in the ABA guidelines.) Was justice done in this case?  Would this plea deal have happened if the victims were wealthy instead of (mostly) prostitutes?  If they were college students? 

I am anti-death penalty, but I find this case fascinating because it challenges everything I believe, at the same time raising serious questions about our legal system in general.  Also, if we are going to have the death penalty, it ought to be reserved for the worst of the worst.  Certainly, Ridgeway qualifies.  Who is the death penalty for, if not him?

And then I see this page, and I am confronted with even more questions.  What does "missing" mean when police and family know you are dead - a victim on the long list of a serial killer?  Certainly, the quality and meaning of the word change a little, when the victim is already dead.  I plan to explore this in the coming week.  Maybe I can find another way to say missing.

A reader emailed to tell me about this story:

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001051313

I can barely write through my tears.  Tammy's family & friends have waited so long for justice.  Could this finally be it?  I hope so. 

Right now, I feel too overwhelmed to write.   But you can read my essay about Tammy Zywicki here. 

More soon.  And to the reader who emailed me:  I will write you back soon.  Your message gave me chills.  Right now, I am dealing with the possible loss of my favorite city, and that is too much to bear.  Thank you for sending the article. 

Corvallis Police have served a murder warrant to Joel Patrick Courtney in the disappearance of Brooke Wilberger.  Courtney is currently serving time in a New Mexico jail "in connection with the knife-point abduction and rape of a foreign student at the University of new Mexico last Nov. 30," according to a report in the August 3rd Oregonian. 

On May 24, 2004 - the day Brooke disappeared - Courtney was scheduled to appear in Lincoln County Circuit Court for his arraignment on a DUI citation.  He never arrived.   He did, however, call the court and inform them he was in Corvallis and heading to Newport.   (Source: Oregonian)

A news conference is scheduled for 2:00 PM today. 

Three weeks have passed since I last walked through downtown Portland. Three weeks since I fractured several bones in my left foot.  Yesterday was the first day I could stand upright without severe pain across the metatarsals, tissues so fat and blue they look like an autopsy photograph.  I rode the elevator to the roof, learned new movements using my crutches, and basked in the afternoon sunshine. 

I looked out over the skyline and longed to walk down to my favorite cafes.

Just prior to the injury, I had overcome a deep depression and eased back into a routine of visiting the same couple of coffee shops every morning to write, with Moleskines and a stack of research articles in hand.  I claimed the same table, ordered the same small cup of house coffee, and watched as familiar people did the same. 

It was a relief to be back.  I had always written in coffee shops, because for some reason, public spaces fuel my inspiration. Not sure why.

Over the years, I often wondered about people who disappeared from the scene - even people I never actually spoke with or knew by name.  Were they sick?  Did they move away?  Die?  Take a vacation? Land a job with a weird schedule?   I would stare over at their table and imagine their outline in the air, like one of those colorform books.  Sometimes, I invented intrigue and mystery where none existed.  Could the man with the black leather motorcycle jacket - the one who always dumped blueberry muffin crumbs straight out of the pastry bag into his mouth - have been CIA? 

I wonder: Has anyone noticed I am missing from the scene?  Does anyone invent intrigues about me?

After five years in this city, still nobody knows me here - except my husband and a few old friends I rarely see.  Should I accept on faith that total strangers will notice my absence, as I do theirs? 

Looking out over the rooftops, I closed my eyes and leaned back to soak up the light.  I imagined my outline at the table right next to the trees, with a view of the sidewalk outside.  I wondered if anyone had claimed my favorite table as their own, and how long until I disappear completely from the barista's memories. 

Project Jason facilitates a unique missing persons program, targeted at the startling number of people who lose their homes and drift off the radar every year.   You can find more information here.

From the Project Jason website:

There are an estimated 3.5 million people in the United States who experience homelessness each year. People may become homeless for varied reasons, which include mental illness, addictions, domestic abuse, poverty, trauma, and lack of affordable housing.

Project Jason's mission statement includes creating and increasing public awareness of missing persons. With an estimated 850,000 new cases per year, it remains a challenge to find avenues to reach all facets of society in an effort to locate missing persons. It is not known how many of the homeless may be reported missing persons, but it is a certainty that many are.

In order to reach this segment of the population, the Come Home program was created. The bi-monthly Come Home poster will feature all of the necessary data and contact information about a selected missing person. It will also include a personal message to the missing person from their family. They simply want their loved one to Come Home.

I have been watching the coverage of the terrorist attacks in London, and I find myself transported back in time - to 9/11.  The posters of the missing haunt my dreams.  I marvel at the incredible faith it takes to wander the streets with those pictures.  Everyone knows the likely fate of the missing, and yet, their loved ones hope. 

As an MFA student at Antioch, I wrote my critical paper about art after 9/11.  I called it Form Zero: Creating in Cultural Crisis.   One section of the paper dealt with the missing persons posters in New York City after 9/11.  Here is a shortened version of that section, adapted for this blog:

Missing Persons as Found Art

Following the 9/11 attacks on New York City, missing persons posters were taken down, photocopied, and framed for a national museum tour.  The show, Missing: Last Seen at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, was organized by Brooklyn Heights resident Louis Navaer, with some funding from the Mesoamerica Foundation.  While the show was well received in Los Angeles and San Francisco, it failed in Washington, DC.

But what does it mean to aestheticize missing people?  And is that what the show ultimately does?  Can missing persons posters function as found art?

The posters were not created as aesthetic objects, though they certainly contained an aesthetic dimension, both intrinsically and in the reactions and attachments New Yorkers formed around them.  Once removed from New York, however, they lost their primary function and meaning. They could no longer help locate lost loved ones.  Tearing them down symbolized the transition into a new historical moment: the attacks had officially become history, and the posters could no longer point toward a future - only the past. Their immediate emotional connections severed, the posters transformed into something else: a catalog of the dead, a visual account of human loss, evidence of the horror. 

But does that make them art or historical artifact?  Both? Do we lose some sense of the history - of the real human dimension - when the posters are curated, framed, and displayed?  Or is it a matter of finding the right way to display them?

In Washington, DC, in particular, the show was hung with little consideration for these questions. 

Garance Franke-Ruta wrote in the American Prospect: 

Here in Washington, just across the river from another attack site, the framed “Missing” fliers are being displayed cheek-by-jowl with a cheery group of unrelated paintings in three gallery rooms donated by the Artists’ Museum (where they will be until March 29). Local gallery-goers know this venue for its middlebrow art and kitsch, such as a recent show of glittery papier-mache masks with feathers on them.  And in this context, perhaps it’s only fitting that Nevaer has purposefully aestheticized the 210 posters on display, excluding black and white fliers from his show, he says, because they are less attention grabbing.  Indeed, the show’s March 8 opening struck an offensively irreverent tone: Gallery-goers wandered amidst the posters drinking glasses of chardonnay while live jazz music thrummed in the background from a band playing in another gallery down the hall. (Franke-Ruta)

The frames are significant because they draw a border between art and non-art.  Western culture has come to associate them with a high-art context.  Framing a missing persons poster, however, creates a whole new set of questions: How do we look at them? Why do we look? What does it mean to be missing?  What does it mean to separate the missing from the non-missing?  Are we supposed to think about the ways in which we objectify the dead?  Or perhaps the ways in which we transact with other people’s images – in the media, in art, in life and death? 

But this does not seem to be the intention of the show.  First, as the American Prospect reported, black and white fliers were excluded from the collection.  This implies a formalistic set of criteria, as opposed to a social/historical/cultural one.   Second, no physical separation was created between the posters and the permanent museum collection - no threshold, no curtain, no door.  This implies the missing persons posters fall under the direct jurisdiction of art. 

The fact that this particular museum is dedicated to kitsch art adds another dimension.  It wouldn’t necessarily be a problem to hang the posters in this context, but an experience needs to be created to separate the kitsch from the solemn atmosphere of missing persons posters.  What kind of space could achieve this?  The separation itself would have implications for interpreting the images.  Perhaps the best curatorial design would be a hallway: the literal liminal.  Viewers move from the mundane (the kitsch), through the space of the missing, and into the unknown.

References

Franke-Ruta, Garance. "'Missing' Sensitivity." The American Prospect.  20 March 2002. Online.

Images: Still frames from surveillance video showing Shasta Groene in the company of Joseph Edward Duncan. Taped a short time before Shasta was recognized at a Denny's restaurant and rescued.

What strikes me, as I study these surveillance frames, is the number of people all around.  I cannot help but wonder: How many times have I walked over a threshold with a missing person right beside me? How many times have I literally brushed arms with someone I could save?

And I cannot help but notice Shasta's posture: head down, shoulders slumped, arms folded across her chest.  Imagine: walking into a busy convenience store, your kidnapper directly behind, and not crying out for help.  Only sheer terror can buy that kind of silence. 

Imagine: not being noticed by the customers, clerks, and people waiting in cars.

Updates in the case against Duncan:
(CORRECTED)

According to CNN, Shasta has told investigators that she was woken up by her mother on the night of May 15/16 and taken to the living room, where she saw Joseph Duncan. She had never seen him before. He tied up the entire family.

Shasta and her brother, Dylan, were taken from the home and placed in a pickup.  Later, they were transferred to the now-famous red Jeep and driven to campsites in Montana. Both Dylan and Shasta were raped.  Shasta was raped repeatedly.  (Note: According to one report by Rusty Dornan of CNN, Shasta never used the word rape, but the details "make it clear" that is what she meant. Another CNN television report used the word rape. Sadly, I believe that is exactly what happened.)

News reports have not clarified whether Shasta and Dylan witnessed the brutal bludgeoning of their oldest brother, their mother, and her boyfriend.   Dylan remains missing, although remains have been found in Montana and are being DNA-tested as I type.

Shasta's story places Joseph Duncan at the murder scene. Finally, this predator is looking at life in prison (and possibly the death penalty.)

You can view free video clips at cnn.com

Another update on the Idaho kidnapping case:  Earlier reports were inaccurate.  Dylan is now feared dead.

The Joseph Duncan story is worse than I thought.

According to The Spokesman-Review.Com:

Duncan reportedly took down the Missing Children poster of Shasta and Dylan as he entered the restaurant near 4th and I-90, according to the restaurant manager.

Waitress Amber Deahn said she and manager Linda Olson noticed that Shasta looked familiar and withdrawn. After they called police, Deahn comforted Shasta while Duncan was taken into custody.

“I picked up that child and held her and hugged her,” said Deahn.

Duncan obviously believed he could rip down the poster and waltz into the restaurant with no consequences.  What kind of narcissism does that take? 

Imagine Shasta: watching as her own face gets ripped and tossed away, almost as if she went missing twice.  (I think of all the cases that receive no media coverage, and I shiver.  It is a little like the poster being ripped down.  These people are stolen twice: once from their lives, and once again from public memory.)

To Duncan, there was probably little difference between the two acts: kidnapping Shasta and tearing her image from the wall.  He seems to care so little for human life, I doubt he even understands the distinction.

It gets worse:

Duncan is registered as a level III sex offender in Fargo, N.D. Level III sex offenders are those with the potential to reoffend, according to the city’s sex offender registry Web site.

Duncan was 16 years old when he stole four handguns and ammunition from a neighbor’s home in Tacoma and, that evening, he abducted a 14-year-old boy who had been walking in his neighborhood, according to registry information. Duncan raped the boy at gunpoint, a crime he was convicted of and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

After 14 years, Duncan was released on parole in September 1994, but was sent back to prison three years later for parole violations, according to his registry information. He was released from prison on July 14, 2000, with no conditions and arrived in Fargo, N.D., a week later.

Released with no conditions?  It is bad enough the system set a sex offender free knowing full well he would molest or rape again.  But an unconditional release?  What, exactly, does that mean? 

When I think about all the missing people who fall victim to sex offenders, I cannot help but feel rage at a story like this.  Either our legal system fails to understand sexual predators, or it cares more about predators than their victims. 

I was not even sure I should post this, but I decided it would show the true depravity - and narcissism - of sexual predators. 

Joseph Edward Duncan, the registered sex offender arrested for the kidnapping of Shasta and Dylan Groene, apparently kept a blog in which he decried societal and legal "discrimination" against sex offenders.  Boo hoo.

You can find some of the archives here.  (link removed due to reports of viruses at that site.)

Warning: Content is disturbing.