CA CA - Mitchell Owens, 4, Menlo Park, 3 Feb 1983

emma l

Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2004
Messages
415
Reaction score
73
I wanted to post this because minority missing children are SOMETIMES ignored, but everybody is loved...........and this case is horrific.


" Mitchell was 5 in 1983 when he walked into his mother's room in their Menlo Park home and found a man raping her. Ora Owens screamed at Mitchell to hide as the rapist strangled her, but when she woke up two days later in a hospital, her son was gone. " snip .......

Heres Mitchells Doe page:

http://doenetwork.org/cases/173dmca.html

Is a strange one because the kind of criminal that rapes an adult is not usually interested in children. I doubt whether the were woried about him as a witness, being so young......Although saying that Samantha Runnnions little friend did give a breathtaking account of her abducter.
I think the fact that Mitchells mum recieved calls threatening to take her other children is horrific and also very unusual in this kind of case. I wonder whether there was a personal grudge?
I just wanted people to keep Mitchell in their hearts and you never know who might have seen this cute little boy.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi%3Ffile=/chronicle/archive/1998/12/04/MN79938.DTL
 
Thanks for that wasblind. I was shocked by one story in the link , a quote form Mitchels mother...........

"Two decades ago, Owens said, it took almost three days for authorities to find her in the hospital and take steps to find her son. She thinks police took her less seriously because she was young, poor and black. She alleges an investigator told the single mother on welfare that she had ``one less mouth to feed.''

Mitchell Owens would be 24 today. His mother, now a Southern California resident, said his absence is an ache that won't go away. She prays for brown-eyed Mitchell daily and looks for his face everywhere."
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/6039900.htm

Its just so sad.......................
 
Yes, it is sad, emma. The problem is epidemic.

Please feel free to e-mail me for the quiz for the missing. Taking that might give you better insight into what the work entails and what sort of struggles the families face in getting media exposure for their missing loved ones.

And pray, pray for those still missing and those who search for them.
There is no such thing as closure. Nothing in their lives is ever closed again. People sometimes get an answer, or answers, but there are always questions, and more questions.

Molly Bishes mother, Magi, said it best in her power point presentation about Molly. "You can lose your keys, and you can lose your glasses, but how in America do you lose your child?" ( link to quote is here http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/01/48hours/main586143.shtml )

It is happening everywhere, not just in America, as you well know.
Education is paramount, to protect ourselves from this crime and to understand that empathy and compassion are so critical to the families.

Write me if you want, and the offer extends to anyone who reads this.
Just put "emma from WS" or your nick in the title...so I do not inadvertantly delete your mail, and thanks.

With HOPE, Lanie
Help For The Missing
HelpForTheMissing@yahoo.com
 
It is most probable that the intruder thought that he had killed the mother, as was his intent. He took the little boy who witnessed the attack to silence him.
This is very similar to the case of the Murninghan girl, Lansing Michigan in the summer of 1970. A jewlry store robber struck the owner of the store on the head with his pistol and it discharged. The woman was knocked unconcious, but not killed. Thinking that he had killed her, he abducted the teenage girl from the store, took her to a secluded place and shot her in the head to prevent her from identifying him. In this case, the owner of the store recovered and described the robber/ murderer. Unfortunately, he has never been caught.
 
This is a very likely senario Richard............ I guess it also fits with the mother recieving threatening calls about her other children after Mitchell vanished. So horrific............
 
Why steal the kid unless you are going to give him to someone? I mean, if you're going to kill a woman and leave her body there, obviously the perp thought she was dead, why not just kill the child right there? Why take the risk of taking a traumatized child from the home if you're just going to kill him elsewhere? That's the one thing that would point to this child still being alive or being alive for a significant time after the event.
 
Was the mother able to identify her rapist? If his face was masked, maybe it was someone who knew her. Maybe he raped her to hurt her, then took her son to hurt her even more.

Maybe he left the door open and the little boy wandered out and away, then fell into a drainage ditch and was swept away.

Maybe the little boy fought the rapist, and the rapist accidentally killed him, then took the body to hide it.

I wonder if evidence was kept that could be checked and cross-referenced for DNA.
 
Mitchell Deon Owens, 4, Missing since February 3, 1983 from Menlo Park, CA

Mitchell Deon Owens
Missing since February 3, 1983 from Menlo Park, San Mateo County, California
Classification: Non-Family Abduction

Vital Statistics

Date Of Birth: November 21, 1978
Age at Time of Disappearance: 4 years old
Height and Weight: 3' 0" - 91 cm, 40 lbs - 18 kg
Distinguishing Characteristics: Black male. Black hair; brown eyes.
Marks, Scars: Owens has a scar on the upper portion of his nose. He also has a surgical scar on the left rib area of his chest and and a lazy right eye.
Dentals: Not available

Circumstances of Disappearance

An unidentified person broke into the Owens' family home in Menlo Park, California on February 3, 1983. The intruder attempted to strangle Ona Owens, Mitchell's mother, with a telephone cord and she lost consciousness. She was also savagely beaten. When Ona awoke, her son was missing. Mitchell has never been seen again and the intruder has never been identified.

Ona received telephone calls for several years from an unidentified man who threatened to take her other two sons; the man's identity remains a mystery and it is not known if he was connected to Mitchell's abduction.

Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:

Menlo Park Police Department
650-858-3308
Email

All information may be submitted on an anonymous basis.

Agency Case Number: F83-403

NCMEC #: NCMC601850

NCIC Number: M-123892335

Please refer to this number when contacting any agency with information regarding this case.

Source Information:

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
The San Jose Mercury News
California Department of Justice
The Doe Network: Case File 173DMCA

LINK:

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/173dmca.html
 
What an absolutely horrific case. Why hasn't any sort of sketch been released on her attacker? I assume police have DNA but because this guy has not been arrested since then, they cannot identify him?? I feel so terrible for little Mitchell. What a brutal attack on the mother. There is no question that their race has caused this case to be swept under the rug. I am very frustrated right now.
 
My heart goes out to Ora Owens and I agree with her anger toward the police, but I feel like she's holding something back. Her belief that the man at the club who offered her a drink was the one responsible make little sense. Even if he followed her home and knew where she lived, why would he then attack her and take her child? Because she refused his drink offer? That seems a bit of a stretch.
 
A couple of thoughts.

Ora Owens lived at a apartment complex not a house right? Menlo park is located at Palo Alto, it's kind of suburban but they have a small main street, I couldn't find alot of big housing complex based on google maps so probably she lived close to main street in a 2 floor apartment complex. It's also close to stanford university so I suppose there's plenty of students around and if you wanna take a drink there should be some bar close to the house. I suppose she was a young single mom and let someone babysit her kids once in a while to take a drink with some of the student/young aduts around. It couldn't been hard for anyone to stalk her cause she basically lived next door. This is a small community mostly suburban.

However if somebody wanted to assault her, didn't the neighbours hear anything? it must've been wild since she almost died and spent time in a hospital. Was she raped?it doesn't say but if she was there should be plenty of DNA evidence. Even if she was not the intruder must have left so much evidence since he beat her badly and must have hurt himself too. Just looking at his hands should've been enough to take him into custody. Remember this is a small community.

Also if she saw the man at the club, was he the same now or was he masked? What about the police man? maybe just a coincidence. She met the man at Moffett Field Naval Air Station. Wss he in the air force? If so it shouldn't be hard to find him. There must've been many witnesses there and imagine someone coming back with a broken hand. Apparently he was a white man but the desciption is very vague. Would like to see a scetch of the subject. Perhaps he is even the same man as the presumed police officer that came just before. He could have come just to check if she lived alone and the assault was possible.

What I don't understand is the abduction though, I doesnt make sense. Kids that age are never good witnesses anyway and if he was there for the mom the boy wouldn't be in his interest nor a threat. If the bar man is responsible for this I don't see wwhere the kid comes in. He didnt even know she had a kid.

The only explenation I find for the abduction is that someone was out for the kid and wanted to overpower the mother to get him, possibly for a illegal adoption. If so the boy was the real target. Perhaps she was stalked for longer then she knew just to collect enough information about her.

Is it possible that she's lying? The assault is probably hard to invent. Maybe she knows more about the intruder then she sais? I wonder what the police found at the crime scene and if she really went to that bar and if they really looked for suspects and interviewed witnesses. My impression is that the case was badly handed by the local police and she was neclected by her race at the time. I feel like it was rather easy to solve based on the circumstances. With DNA and with parabon and simular agencies I feel like there is hope to find the perp and close this case. I have no idea why the boy dissapeared but if the perp is caught we should know.
 
Another possibility is ofcourse that she made up the mystery man. Perhaps he was her ex or the boys father. He beat her with such rage that it mustve been more personal then just a refused drink at a club. The boy may have been the target not the mother or he was taken just as a matter of fury against the mother. Did they ever clear her ex? Or the boys father?
 
Bumping for Mitchell as we approach the 39th anniversary...

Mitchell Deon Owens

Mitchell-Owens-72674_5.jpg
Mitchell-Owens-72674_6.jpg
 

Members online

Online statistics

Members online
132
Guests online
1,457
Total visitors
1,589

Forum statistics

Threads
589,162
Messages
17,915,010
Members
227,745
Latest member
branditau.wareham72@gmail
Back
Top