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Question baffles: Why do so many people go missing from Montgomery and Liberty Counties?
By Carol Christian Updated 1:29 pm, Friday, October 23, 2015
On any given day, hundreds of people are considered missing in Texas.
A sizable chunk of them – more than 40 – have been reported missing from either Montgomery County, Liberty County or neighboring areas.
That's a lot, according to Jerrie Dean, who is retired from federal law enforcement and coordinates the website Missing Persons of America.
It seems so unusual, in fact, that Dean, with some local assistance, has set up a Facebook page, The Missing Texas Forty.
Dean, who lives in San Diego, said she got interested in missing persons because her older half-brother and half-sister were abducted before she was born and weren't located until they were teenagers.
She started writing a blog and a few years ago was contacted by a Pennsylvania man, Jerry Kinner, whose brother, Larry Baker, had disappeared in 2010 from Cleveland in Liberty County.
As Dean looked into the case, she came across more and more reports of missing people and eventually came up with The Missing Texas Forty, which she posted in March 2012. Since then, the number reported missing has fluctuated, with some people added to the list and a few who have been found.
Capt. Ronnie Silvio, spokesman for the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, noted that six of those listed were described as missing from Harris County, with the qualifier "just south of Montgomery County," two were from Humble in Harris County and one was from Houston.
Given that two cases were added by mistake and some of those initially reported missing have been found, that leaves 16 actual missing persons cases from Montgomery County, Silvio said. Those include Toby Ray Coleman, Michelle Prasek, Jane McDonald Crone, Darrell Calhoun and Michael Beaudoin.
The cold-case division in Montgomery County handles not only murders but also missing person cases, Silvio said. The combined list of cases can be found here.
Last year, the sheriff's office requested funding for three detectives and a sergeant to create a missing-persons squad but didn't get it, due to other pressing needs, he said.
Capt. Ken DeFoor of the Liberty County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that "five or six" people have been reported missing in the past four years in Liberty County. He said he didn't believe there was any connection with those missing from Montgomery County.
When someone goes missing, DeFoor said, the Sheriff's Office does mount a search.
"We do ask for support and backup from local fire departments and Texas Equusearch," he said.
One of those still on the Missing Texas Forty list is Ali Lowitzer, who disappeared from Spring in Harris County after getting off the school bus on April 26, 2010, at age 16.
Her younger brother was at home but didn't see her arrive, so presumably she didn't make it home, said her mother, JoAnn Lowitzer. Ali had planned to walk to her nearby workplace to pick up her check but never made it there, either, her mother said.
It would be another year, Lowitzer said, before she connected with Dean in her efforts to find her daughter.
Lowitzer now helps Dean maintain the Facebook page devoted to the Missing Texas 40.
On Thursday, she added another name: Clint Miller, 27, who was last seen about 5 p.m. May 25. His Liberty County home in Moss Bluff burned down later that night.
www.crimewatchers.net
