Return to Me

Those of you who have read my books know that missing persons cases are of particular interest to me. They've been a part of the series from Goodnight, Irene to Kidnapped. I've known people whose family members have been missing. Some still wait. It's a particular kind of hell.

One of the best stories I've seen on this subject is "Return to Me," by Stacey Chase, which ran in yesterday's Boston Globe Sunday magazine. Like most articles about the missing, most of its focus is on missing children. (I am all for making every effort to find missing children, who are so vulnerable. I just wish missing adult cases mattered more to us — the National Center for Missing Adults also needs your help.) Chase's article is well worth reading, and I hope you'll take the time to do so.

Medical Examiners and Coroners Offices

I'll talk more about this after I finish up with the class I'm teaching, but...

In case you missed the news, the Bureau of Justice Statistics just issued a report on a study of Medical Examiners and Coroners Offices in the US, based on the year 2004.

News releases noted that there are over 13,500 unidentified human remains on record in those offices.

The report is also another resource for those who want to see numbers on how overworked public forensic science providers are these days.

A Tale of Vampires - Part 2.5

This Part 2.5 instead of Part 3 -- I said I'd be talking about vampires in part 3, and that was before I checked my schedule.

This will be brief, because I'm getting up early to go to San Diego tomorrow, where I'll be one of the stand-ins at the Elaine Viets Tour-by-Proxy event at Mysterious Galaxy.

So a little more delay. But I think it would be good to give you a couple of quick Web site reading assignments in the meantime, warning that they will still not seem to have anything to do with vampires, or even "The Haunting of Carrick Hollow." But they do have something to do with a key conversation I had with Paul Sledzik about writing short stories, which you'll hear more about in the next post, probably on Monday.

During that conversation, I talked to him about the story "Two Bits." To read about the historical case that inspired that short story, I invite you to visit Web sites about the first (or perhaps first publicized) kidnapping for ransom case in the U.S., the most notorious kidnapping case prior to the Lindbergh case -- a case that gained national attention before there were radios or newsreels.

So click here or here or here to learn about Charley Ross, and on his name to see a portrait of this four-year-old boy on the cover of sheet music for "Bring Back Our Darling," one of the songs written about him in 1874 -- the year of his disappearance. A project that brings attention to missing children's cold cases bears his name.