Stacy McCall, 18, Suzie Streeter, 19, and Suzie’s mother, Sherill Levitt, 47, disappeared from Levitt’s home at 1717 E. Delmar St., Springfield, Mo., June 7, 1992.
Created by 3missingwomen on Apr 27, 2010
Last updated: 08/27/10 at 04:43 PM
Independent investigator Kathee Baird says she found evidence that the women are buried under a parking garage near Cox South Hospital. Police spent many months trying to verify her claim but declined to tear up the garage to search for bodies.
Searchers dug at a property south of Cassville, following tips that led them to believe the women might be buried there. Nothing was found there that indicated a link to Streeter, Levitt and McCall.
Webster County Sheriff Ron Worsham led a search, which included cadaver dogs, men with backhoes, archaeologists and FBI agents, of a property on Highway A in his county. Worsham’s department received a tip about two men who drove a green van and worked for a concrete company in Greene County. The property was where the concrete company dumped material. The search, which covered parts of two weekends, turned up nothing that led investigators to believe the missing women’s bodies were on the property. Worsham was assistant police chief in Springfield when the women disappeared.
A judge granted the request of relatives of Streeter and Levitt to officially declare them dead after the mandatory five-year waiting period had passed. McCall’s parents have declined to take that step.
On the fifth anniversary of their disappearance, hundreds of friends and family members gathered in Phelps Grove Park in Springfield to dedicate a monument to them -- a black granite bench engraved with their names -- in the park’s Crime Victims Garden.
Jim Williams, Levitt’s father, died in Seattle.
“America's Most Wanted” got a tip with directions to "bodies" near Gainesville, Mo. Searchers found a garbage bag with two blue T-shirts with gunshot holes and “old” blood on them. An animal’s body also was in the bag.
A federal grand jury reviewed evidence in the missing women's case. Police sources said they had three suspects at the time. One was a 36-year-old man from Springfield with a long criminal record dating to 1978. He's spent most of his adult life in jail or prison, including sentences for stealing, burglary, theft, robbery and harassment. He had escaped from prison and, most recently, was arrested for raping and sodomizing a woman in Springfield after breaking into her home. On this date, he was behind bars. The second suspect was a 28-year-old man from Kansas. He, too, has a criminal record dating to 1984, including convictions for burglary, aggravated assault, escape and various parole violations. He also was behind bars at this time. The third suspect was a 28-year-old man who was originally from Cedar County, Mo., near Stockton. He was first arrested in 1985 and has done time for burglary, stealing and parole violation. He escaped from prison with the first suspect in 1990 but was in custody as of this date. These three men were moved around the Kansas prison system for years and often did time together in the same facility. When the three women disappeared, all three of the men were on the street. The federal grand jury issued no indictments.
Ripley County, Ind., sheriff's officers recovered a 1985 blue Dodge van motor home in a campground in Versailles, Ind. People in the campground said it had been occupied by a man until about June or July and felt it was abandoned. The van's vehicle identification number matched the VIN on a van stolen from an automobile dealership in Springfield between June 4 and June 9, 1992, that once was considered to be a possible suspect vehicle in the missing women case.
Law officers with a search warrant spent all day looking for the bodies of the three women on the farm of Francis Robb in Webster County. Afterwards, officers said they found "some" evidence that they analyzed but nothing ever came of the search.
A cassette tape with three songs dedicated to the missing women was packaged and sold to add to the reward fund.
Police continued tracing leads. Sixty-six calls came in from a story on "America's Most Wanted." Four Springfield detectives still worked on the case full-time.
Springfield police finished a mock-up of a green Dodge van that might have been involved in the abductions. That van sat on the front lawn of the Springfield Police Department for many months to remind people about the case and to try to jog some memories.
A CBS program, "48 Hours," featured the missing women's case. Other national programs that covered the case included NBC's "Unsolved Mysteries,” and Fox's "America's Most Wanted.”
An FBI expert on violent crime arrived in Springfield to work on the case.
A reward fund climbed to $40,000 for information on the case
Billboards with the women's pictures went up around the area.
Springfield police assigned more than 30 officers to work on the case around the clock. Police notified reporters that morning, setting off massive waves of publicity about the case. McCall’s parents distributed flyers about the women to businesses, hoping that someone would remember something that would be useful.
Stacy McCall, 18, graduates from Kickapoo High School in Springfield. She meets her friend Suzie Streeter, 19. The two plan to travel to stay in Branson overnight. McCall phones her mother to say she and Suzie will be staying at a friend's house in Battlefield. They left the home and decided to spend the night at Suzie's home at 1717 E. Delmar St.
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