WA SUSAN LIBBY MARABLE: Missing from Yakima, WA - 23 April 1991 - Age 34

Susan Libby Marable
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Marable, circa 1991

Missing Since: 04/23/1991
Missing From: Yakima, Washington
Classification: Endangered Missing
Sex: Female
Race: White
Date of Birth: 05/09/1956 (63)
Age: 34 years old
Height and Weight: 5'0 - 5'2, 90 pounds
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A denim jacket, blue jeans, tan clogs with white soles, and a single silver unicorn earring.
Medical Conditions: Marable was addicted to heroin at the time of her disappearance. She also suffers from anxiety.
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair, brown eyes. Marable has scars on both upper arms, on her neck and on her abdomen. She has a homemade tattoo of a star on her left hand between her thumb and index finger. Her ears are pierced. Marable's nickname is Sue, and she may use the last names Hernandez and/or Shortt.

Details of Disappearance
Marable was last seen in Yakima, Washington at 9:30 p.m. on April 23, 1991. She had gone out with friends to the Sports Center Tavern. The bartender saw her getting into a maroon pickup, which he recognized as owned by Bill Robinson. She has never been heard from again.

According to her sister, Marable got involved with drugs after she graduated nursing school, and wound up losing her nursing career and custody of her daughter due to drug abuse. By the time of her disappearance, she was a street prostitute. She was abducted and raped by a stranger in 1990, and suffered from anxiety after the attack. The parking lot where she was last seen was the same lot she was abducted from.

The attacker, John Robinson, was convicted of first-degree rape and kidnapping in Marable's case. During his sentencing in the spring of 1991, he threatened her and her family in open court. Marable disappeared a few weeks later.

John was civilly committed as a sexually violent predator after his release from prison. He was released from the commitment center in February 2019 and went to live in the Tacoma, Washington area, but was returned to the center a few months later after violating the terms of his release.

John was in jail at the time of Susan's disappearance, but it's worth noting that it was his brother Bill's pickup truck that Susan was seen getting into on the night of her disappearance. The police never interviewed Bill about Marable's disappearance, and he died in 1992.

Marable last saw her family in February 1991. She was acting uneasy and told her family she wanted to turn her life around. Foul play is suspected in her disappearance, but there have been no solid leads in her case in decades.

Investigating Agency
Washington State Patrol 360-704-4227

Source Information
NamUs
Washington State Missing Persons Information
41 WMGT
NBC News
The Yakima Herald
Facebook Page for Susan Marable

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Article from 2018
https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/l...cle_39b9ce86-f078-11e8-900a-8ffee67526ff.html

In the picture she seems to have a nice ring....nothing is mentioned about that in the files. Also I wonder what kind of scars she has, especially the one on her upper arm and neck. Did she had a child/children? Star tattoos are very common...what kind of star, I wonder.

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/col...ng-27-years-after-seen-getting-maroon-n863696

So answering some of my own questions. Quotes from the article above:
"She moved away from Aberdeen after 12 years working in her dream career as a nurse"
"“When she got involved with drugs, it completely destroyed her life,” Robyn <her sister> told Dateline. “She lost her nursing career. She lost her daughter. She lost her life.”

"Susan’s daughter, Rebecca, was four years old when her mother went missing. After her mother’s disappearance, Rebecca, who had been in the foster system at the time, was adopted by one of Susan’s nieces, Robyn told Dateline. Rebecca’s father was not a part of her life."

Yes, here we go again:

"The investigation that followed included ground searches and interviews with Susan’s friends and family. Sgt. Bardwell told Dateline that police at the time did not interview Bill Robinson <brother of John Robinson who raped her and was convicted for this crime, and the person owning the car where a witness see her get into>, but the reason for that was not clear. Bill Robinson died the year after Susan’s disappearance. Sure! I hate this.
"Sgt. Bardwell also said that Leroy Sadecki, Susan’s roommate at the time, did not speak with police. Authorities continue to try to contact him for an interview".

Susan Marable would be 61 years old today. She is 5’2” <other sources say, petit, 5'0, 5'0 - 5'2, 90 pounds is accurate IMO> with brown eyes and brown hair. If you have any information about Susan’s whereabouts, please contact Sergeant Tim Bardwell with the Yakima Police at (509) 575-6012.
 
Just reading this one. This is so strange.

So they never interviewed the driver of the truck she got into who was the brother of her rapist who was known to have threatened her in open court? That makes absolutely no sense to me. He seems like the prime suspect.

And they never interviewed her male roommate? That is odd as well.

While the one seems like the prime suspect, if people knew about this threat to her, it would be easy for someone else that did this to point the finger in that direction.

The bartender said she got into this truck, did any of her friends see her do so?

It is just so unbelievable LE did not talk to these people who may know something. Did they just think she was missing of her own accord?
 

Relatives of missing people find new ways to keep their loved one's story in the public eye​

Robyn Shortt Peery remembers the last time she saw her older sister, Susan Libby Marable. Peery was living in Aberdeen then, and Marable traveled from Yakima to see her family on Easter weekend 1991.

Before she left on Easter Sunday, Marable asked her youngest sister to style her newly cut hair with a curling iron. That everyday sort of interaction between sisters was especially precious, because Marable had been struggling with addiction and other issues. She rarely came home to Aberdeen.

“All these years, the more I’ve learned the more that day haunts me. God how I wish I could have been half of who I am now, I would never, never have let her leave the house, not ever,” Peery of Boise, Idaho, wrote in a post on the Justice for Susan Libby Marable Facebook page.

“Had I only known I would have called the police; I would have done anything to stop her from leaving, anything.”

Marable was last seen in the downtown area of Yakima on April 23, 1991. Peery is marking 30 years since her sister disappeared with a mix of emotions. She is sad and frustrated to see another year pass without answers or justice. At the same time, social media has recently brought much more interest in Marable’s case.


“I think social media has the potential to be a great tool for old and new cases, with a couple of caveats,” she said. “It also has the potential to be very damaging to cases because once misinformation is out there, then it seems to take on a life of its own and can cause serious problems for a case.”

When people are reading about a missing person, Peery asked that they refrain from cruel comments, speculation around the victim and family and the case in general. And the families of missing people don’t want to hear others’ opinions, she said.

“We need support, validation, compassion and understanding,” Peery said. “We are living a real-life nightmare that we don’t get to wake up from.”

Marable is among several women and men who have gone missing from the city of Yakima in the last 40 years.


“Research has shown that for every missing person there are at least 12 people on average that are affected emotionally, physically, psychologically or financially,” it says.
 

Susan Marable went missing in Yakima in 1991. Investigators are looking for clues​

Robyn Peery and Jeanette Vargas stood together outside the AM/PM on East Yakima Avenue with missing person flyers in hand on May 9. It was the birthday of Peery's sister, Susan Libby Marable.

Marable would be 68 years old. She has been missing since the evening of April 23, 1991, when she was last seen by a friend in downtown Yakima. Marable had left to walk the short distance from where she was staying to the AM/PM and never returned.

Peery created the two-page flyers printed on heavy paper. She chose the color photos and wrote the summary of her older sister's life. Marable grew up in Aberdeen with many pets and friends and worked as a registered nurse after graduating in 1977. She struggled with heroin addiction after her fiancé was killed in a car crash in 1985.

"My family and I need your help. We are desperate to find our Susan," the flyer reads. "We want her to be returned to us so that we may give her a proper, respectful burial next to our Mother, who passed away in 2012 without ever knowing what became of her sweet daughter."

Marable's missing person case is the focus of the Yakima Police Department's latest Cold Case Files video, which is out this month. It is the first video highlighting a long-term missing person case; previous videos featured cold case homicides.

The department has highlighted a cold case in a video every month since last August. Cold cases are investigations in which possible leads have been exhausted and no new evidence is immediately anticipated or available.

Kevin Cays, a major crimes unit detective focused only on cold cases, is working with a group of volunteers to take a closer look at homicides and missing person cases. They're sharing some on social media to bring renewed attention because authorities believe they could be solved.


Peery has advocated for her beloved sister for years. She drove to Yakima from her Idaho home for a few days to talk to Cays, speak for the video and hand out flyers and rubber bracelets she made to raise awareness. Over time Peery has talked to several Yakima police detectives, has shared her story on social media and in podcasts — a two-part podcast about her sister came out this month — and has talked to traditional media outlets.

As relatives and friends of missing people know, any updates from investigators are crucial but communication often requires persistence on their part. By keeping their loved one's story in the public eye through social media, they can share information with a nearly limitless audience and possibly jog someone's memory.

"If you know something, or know someone who does, please, please speak up about it," Marable's missing person flyer reads. "You may know something that you think is insignificant, but in a cold case those small things are generally the key that unlocks everything."



"I'm not giving up. ... I absolutely believe there are people in this community who know things. I know there are. I just need someone to please put aside your own fear. You can leave tips anonymously to say anything that you know," she said. "Maybe you saw something you don't think if relevant; it likely is."

If somebody was willing to come forward with what they know, "that would mean everything," Peery said.

"Both of our parents are gone. Our other siblings are aging. Our family's been shattered by this. So if somebody could just find it within themselves to please, please say something," she said. "You could give us peace and that would be momentous."
 
Yakima police renew focus on 1991 missing person case of Susan Marable
Normally the Yakima Police Department highlight cold cases each month, this time for the month of May, they are highlighting a long-term missing person.


Police say Susan was last seen leaving her friend's van, which she also lived in, to go to the Arco ampm off North 6th St. and East Yakima Ave. When she didn't return, her friend went out to search for her. Rumors say that she might've been seen entering a pick-up truck behind the Sports Center in Yakima, but that has not been confirmed to police.

We spoke with cold case detective Kevin Cays, who says police were able to find belongings and associates of Susan with some assistance from her family.

"With Susan's sister's help, we were able to track down the van that she had been staying in, to see if there was potential evidence there, track down a number of people that were acquaintances of hers or known to her to try to speak with them," Cays said.

Finding other people associated with Susan has not been easy for YPD

"Unfortunately, there's a lot of people that were close to her that we can't find, that are either confirmed deceased or, their identity at the time wasn't verified well enough to where we can identify them certainly now and track them down," Cays said. "So trying to figure out who they are even if they are still around is proving to be fairly difficult."


"Our family's been shattered by this, so if somebody could just find it within themselves to please, say something you could give us some peace and that would be momentous," said Robyn Peery, Susan Marable's sister. "Just say anything that you know, maybe you saw something that you don't think was relevant, it very likely is."

Detective Cays tells us the theory regarding Susan, is that she may be deceased, and was a victim of a crime, such as a homicide.
 

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