Their profiles are the stuff of every parent’s worst nightmare.
Zackery Hinsley, age 17, was last seen in Laramie County, Wyoming on September 21, 2021.
14-year-old Elizabeth Siegrist was last seen in Casper, Wyoming on September 5, 2021. She was last seen in a Taco Time uniform.
Samara Renee Callender, 17, was last seen in Campbell County, Wyoming on August 11, 2021. She took extra clothes and was picked up by a man.
Cameron Jalyssa Hill was last seen in a black limousine with an unidentified man. The 14-year-old was last seen in Fremont County, Wyoming, on June 19, 2021.
This is just a small selection of the dozen of missing person profiles that now populate the Wyoming Missing Persons website hosted by the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation. The website includes over 70 missing people from 1974.
Wyoming law enforcement agencies are working cooperatively on unsolved missing persons cases in the state, according to the website launched last week.
The website was launched just weeks after Gabby Petito’s body was found in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. The Petito case caught national attention and sparked an uproar on social media. Dozens of social media detectives were involved in the case, offering tips that detectives may have brought on their bodies.
Teton County Search and Rescue said the tremendous public attention paid to Gabby Petito’s case helped them find the remains of a hiker who was also missing in the Bridger-Teton National Forest earlier this summer.
Robert “Bob” Lowery was last seen wearing a black duffel bag, sleeping bag, and tent on the Black Canyon Trail in the Bridger-Teton National Forest on August 20.
Remains matching Robert “Bob” Lowery’s description were found at the base of Teton Pass on September 28, more than a month after he was last seen. The Houston father of two traveled to Jackson Hole on Aug. 19.
An investigation into the whereabouts of Lowery was underway, but a search and rescue team was deployed on September 28 based on new evidence.
“Widespread coverage of the search for Gabby Petito helped shed light on the Lowery case and resulted in at least two members of the public calling local authorities over the past weekend with new information about his possibly last seen point,” said the search and rescue team.
Their stories also highlight the tens of thousands of missing persons stories that don’t attract that much interest; According to the National Crime Information Center, there were nearly 90,000 active missing persons cases in the U.S. as of late 2020.
In Wyoming, indigenous peoples make up 3% of the state’s population. However, they account for 14% of the missing people and 21% of the total murder victims in the state, according to a January report by the Wyoming Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Task Force.
In the wake of the Petito case, Indigenous activists quickly pointed out that over 700 Indigenous women have been missing in Wyoming over the past decade, but received only a tiny fraction of the attention that the Petito case received.
In Johnson County, both the police and the sheriff’s office share information and photos with the Buffalo Bulletin to generate leads and encourage tipsters to come forward. While this new state website is a great first start, the state of Wyoming needs to use more than just social media to promote this website.
Wyoming’s newspapers still reach more than half the state’s population. In Johnson County, over 70% of the population reads the Buffalo Bulletin. If we really want to find these missing people and resolve these unsolved cases, we must use the power of the newspapers. The cost of advertising these cases would save thousands of man hours and mobilize the public to help find them.
Together we can track down these missing people and bring justice or closure to their families.
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