This is my first attempt at a blog. I will give everyone a little background history before I start. I have always been interested in Law Enforcement and mysteries. I have been a Law Enforcement Officer for the last 15 years and in January of 2010, a drunk driver ran into the back of my parked patrol car at approximately 50mph. Since that time, I have been recovering from a concussion and post concussive syndrome. During my career, I have always been fascinated by the mystery of a crime and trying to find the puzzle pieces, either through witness statements or physical evidence left at the scene that will enable you to bring closure to a case. Although you may never find out the complete story of what happened, you can usually come pretty close. I have also learned that criminals will minimize whatever they did, so this always plays into whether or not you ever get the complete story of what really happened.
Two years ago, I was involved with a 5 year old runaway case. A 14 year old girl had run away from home in 2004 and her family never heard from her again. After 5 years of chasing leads across the United States, we formed an investigative team and decided to go over the case and recontact the family, friends and acquaintances of the missing girl. We met with her mother at the beginning and you could see the pain in her face of not knowing where her daughter was and the fact that she had been enduring this pain for the last 5 years with no answers. We conducted a whole new interview with her mother and at the conclusion, she was crying, hugging me and begging me to please find her daughter.
After a few months of interviews, the runaway girl began calling her relatives and she eventually made contact with her mother. I have to say that my hope for finding her alive after 5 years was very slim. We were able to reunite her with her family and it's really hard to properly explain the happiness on her mothers face. I think ever since that moment, I have been hooked on investigating missing persons cases. That was extremely rewarding to see the happiness on her mothers face.
So after sitting around injured for awhile, I decided to start looking at other long standing missing persons cases. I found the case of Joan Hall in Warrenton, Oregon. Ms. Hall left school one afternoon, in September of 1983 and has never been seen or heard from since.
Her parents and one of her sisters have since passed away without knowing the whereabouts of Ms. Hall.
The case has some interesting aspects. Ms. Hall was part of a Law Enforcement explorer program and was elected president of that group the night before, the crime scene is not that large (meaning the area she had to cover before she disappeared was not expansive) and some copies of the original police reports are available on the internet.
Another interesting piece to this case are the disappearances of some other teenage females in adjoining coastal towns following Ms. Hall's disappearance.
An article was written by a local investigative reporter suggesting that all the disappearances are related. A Facebook group has been formed to find Ms. Hall.
I did manage to obtain the copies of the original police reports. From the initial statements, I was also able to develop the crime scene based on Ms. Hall's destination (Warrenton Grade School) after she left the high school and witness accounts of where she was last seen.
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