Saturday, August 31, 2013

Recap of the Mcstay family disappearance, and a book review

Is this the McStay family?


My first google alert was about the McStay family just now.

I'm not terribly surprised about this. This disappearance is one I will talk about with anyone who will listen, have lost sleep over, have googled late into the night. I'm not sure what I think I'll find by googling, but this case is memorable for being baffling to an almost ludicrous degree. When one person goes missing without a trace- as so many people on this show have done- that's terrible enough. When an entire family goes missing, it seems to bend all the laws of likelihood and possibility. Seems fitting my first post should involve this case.

Anyway, my alert was to this post by Sean Munger.

It provides a good recap of the case thus far, as well as the leading theories. There's also a review of No Goodbyes, Rick Baker's book on the subject. Munger comes away with a negative impression of the book, and I'm not surprised. From what I've heard, No Goodbyes is ... not especially kind to Summer McStay. Everything about her is spun in the most negative light possible. And at least some readers have posted that the book takes a porn related spam email as evidence in McStay's inbox that she was involved in shady dealings. In that case, 90% of people with an email inbox are secretly sketchy!

I want this disappearance solved, but I'm a little wary of the tone surrounding this case sometimes. This isn't a story where there's piles of circumstantial evidence leading to to a likely culprit (such as in the case of Hatice Corbacioglu.) In this one there are many possibilities. And, well, if you pore over the minute details of anyone's life, most people will begin to look suspicious.

There's a difference between presenting information, and trying to steer an interpretation of information, and Summer McStay isn't here to defend herself.

Introduction


Brittanee Drexel. Missing since 04/25/09, from Myrtle Beach

About a year ago on Netflix, I came across an Investigation Discovery show called Disappeared, and proceeded to watch the entire series over the course of a month or two. It was a crash course in problems faced by families of missing persons, law enforcement blind spots, and the overall agony of not knowing what the hell happened. I search many of these names on a frequent basis, in the hopes of resolution.

Today I've decided to just go for it and set up a blog for this show. I have put the names of each victim on my google alerts, and will link to whatever pops up.

I hope that the friends of family of every person featured on Disappeared will one day find satisfactory information.