CA CA - Michelle Pulsifer, 3, Huntington Beach, July 1969

blueclouds

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:doh: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,130535,00.html
AND IT TOOK SO LONG BECAUSE????????????????????????

LINK WITH PHOTO OF LITTLE GIRL:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5849157/

" woman who said she left her 3-year-old daughter behind with relatives after moving from California 35 years ago has been accused in the girl's death.

Donna Pulsifer Kent Prentice, 57, was arrested Friday at her home in rural southwest Wisconsin (search) on a homicide warrant and jailed without bail. Two days earlier, authorities in Illinois arrested Michael Kent, who had been Prentice's boyfriend at the time the girl disappeared.

Both are charged with murder. Kent, 62, has been extradited to California (search).

Michelle's father, Richard Pulsifer Sr., said he began searching for the girl in July 1969 when he arrived at his ex-wife's home in Huntington Beach one weekend and found everyone gone.

"I tried to find Michelle but no one would help," said Pulsifer, who now lives in Las Vegas (search)."
 
In Germany they say
Kleine sünden bestraft der Liebe Gott sofort, Große etwas später.
or
Kleine suenden bestraft der Liebe Gott sofort, Grosse etwas spaeter.

German is hard to translate, but loosely, the meaning is....
Little sins are punished by God immediately, the big ones come some time later.

No matter if they were caught in this world, they would be held accountable for this crime. In every faith it is believed that when we die we face accountability...

Redemption may be their only salvation on earth. It is surely their only salvation for eternal life.

May God have mercy on them for things we do not know.

Michelle, you will not be forgotten.
Prayers for justice for this precious one, Lanie
Help For The Missing
HelpForTheMissing@yahoo.com

Please join us in the missing forum. Maybe you will recognize one and can reunite a family, and thanks.
http://websleuths.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=16
 
Missing since 1969, then In 2001, a former in-law of Richard Pulsifer Sr. hired a private investigator to find out what happened to the girl. The private eye worked the case for more than two years before turning his file over to the Orange County D.A.'s office.

A former in-law of the biological father--I guess that would be relative of mother-- hired a P.I. after more than 30 years. 30 years went by before someone did the logical thing, and probably an expensive thing since the P.I. investigated for 2+ years.

I'm going to hope that Michelle Pulsifer is still alive, having been raised by unofficially adopted parents, and is a happy 38-year-old out there somewhere.
 
This is so so horrible. One thing in the article really got me, a quote from her brother:
...." he recalled the night Michelle burst into his room at the family's home and crawled under the covers, pleading with him to "please hide me."
"She sounded real scared," said the younger Pulsifer, now 41. "And then my mom came into the room and got her."

"I never saw her again," he said."............

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,130535,00.html

That poor little girl. She must have been so scared. And her brother who must have spent years wondering what happened to his sister. I hope he is able to find some answers. I feel guillty when I have a little argument with any of my family. How anyone can live with the knowledge that they have done something as terrible as this is beyond me.
 
LE has said they have a good idea where her body is buried, they are not releasing the info yet......This little baby would be as old as one of my sisters, she missed out on so much.
 
The mother had relatives, it mentions them in the news article. Did they never notice or never question the mother regarding where her daughter was? You would have thought that as time went on, SOMEONE would have noticed that the child was missing!
And the poor brother, I hope he gets counseling. As a kid there was nothing he could have done, but I am sure he has some very mixed feelings about the discovery. I wonder if he was abused? I wonder if he ever questioned his mother as he got older? I am glad that he found his father, and that he now knows his father searched for him.
It has always amazed me when they find an unidentified child body (boy in the box, as an example) These kids have siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives. But when they go missing, the relatives just seem to accept that they were left with someone, and no one investigates what happened to them!
 
:( it is just so sad to imagine that day described. Poor little girl poor brother.
 
Sunday, October 3, 2004
Volunteers hiked a steep hillside Saturday in remote Williams Canyon, poking into the nests of wood rats for clues to a long-ago disappearance.

Down below, a team of anthropologists scattered through brush picking up and bagging sun-baked coyote dung, hoping to find a small human bone or maybe a tooth, anything that could help solve the mystery.

And a few yards away, a senior deputy coroner directed a backhoe operator as he carefully scraped layers of dirt – a few inches at a time – looking for a secret burial site.

The 35 searchers worked the canyon for nine hours Saturday, seeking the remains of Michelle Pulsifer, a 3-year-old, big-eyed tyke who went missing from her mother's Huntington Beach home in the summer of 1969.

It was the fourth time that investigators have combed the hillside since Donna Pulsifer Prentice, Michelle's mother, and James Michael Kent, the child's former stepfather, were arrested in August and charged with her murder. Kent, 62, and Pulsifer, 57, are scheduled for arraignment in Orange County Superior Court on Oct. 14.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/10/03/sections/local/local/article_262751.php
 
Scientists seek trace of girl
Anthropologists, botanists, entomologists sift dirt in Williams Canyon, trying to solve a 35-year-old mystery

CASE INFORMATION
Background

Michelle Pulsifer, 3, disappeared from her Huntington Beach home in 1969. Donna Prentice, her mother, and James Michael Kent were arrested in August and charged with murder.

What's new

A team of volunteers scoured remote Williams Canyon Saturday, searching for Michelle's remains.

What's next

Prentice and Kent are scheduled for arraignment Oct. 14 in Orange County Superior Court.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2004/10/03/sections/local/local/article_262751.php

I also posted this on a thread in crimes in the news, but felt that Michelle deserved a mention here also
 
mysteriew said:
The mother had relatives, it mentions them in the news article. Did they never notice or never question the mother regarding where her daughter was? You would have thought that as time went on, SOMEONE would have noticed that the child was missing!
And the poor brother, I hope he gets counseling. As a kid there was nothing he could have done, but I am sure he has some very mixed feelings about the discovery. I wonder if he was abused? I wonder if he ever questioned his mother as he got older? I am glad that he found his father, and that he now knows his father searched for him.
It has always amazed me when they find an unidentified child body (boy in the box, as an example) These kids have siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives. But when they go missing, the relatives just seem to accept that they were left with someone, and no one investigates what happened to them!
Exactly .
I just cant fathom the number of Jane/John does who are found and not indentified........this people didnt create themselves! They came from somewhere! Like "Precious Doe"............how is that little girl never been identified???
 
Mother Faces Trial in Girl's '69 Death
Three-year-old daughter is believed buried in an O.C. canyon. Murder defendant's lawyer says a boyfriend, now dead, committed the crime.

By Claire Luna, Times Staff Writer

A former Huntington Beach woman was ordered Tuesday to stand trial in the 1969 slaying of her 3-year-old daughter, whose body is believed buried in an Orange County canyon.

Donna J. Prentice, 58, has been in jail since August, when Orange County prosecutors charged her with murder in the death of Michelle Pulsifer.

A judge's ruling setting a trial followed a three-day preliminary hearing in which investigators detailed the alleged involvement of former boyfriend and co-defendant James Michael Kent, 62. Before dying in February of kidney and liver failure, Kent was in custody and cooperating with homicide detectives.

Prentice's attorney, Ron Brower, attacked Kent's credibility, saying that if Michelle was actually dead, he was the more likely killer.

According to Kent, when Michelle didn't come to breakfast one morning in 1969, Prentice went into the girl's room and came out pale, said Ed Berakovich, an investigator for the Orange County district attorney's office.

Kent said he went to the bedroom that Michelle shared with her brother and Kent's son and found the girl in her pajamas, curled on her bed in a fetal position with no sign of blood or injury. He said he touched her face, then felt for a pulse. "She was cold and lifeless," Berakovich said Kent told him.

Berakovich said that according to Kent's account, he returned to the hallway, where Prentice waited. The couple embraced and started crying. She asked, "What are we going to do?" He placed the child's body on the floor in the back seat of his car.

Calling the police or paramedics "never crossed his mind," Berakovich said.

Kent said he drove the body to Williams Canyon, in eastern Orange County, and dug a 3-foot-deep grave that he covered with rocks to keep animals away.

Within two days, the couple, their boys and their Labrador retriever moved to Illinois, Kent told investigators.

"There was never any discussion about what happened to Michelle," Berakovich said Kent told him. Michelle's brother, Richard Pulsifer Jr., said he had been told that his sister went to live with relatives in Canada and said he never saw her after 1969.

Prosecutors believe Prentice killed Michelle the night before, when Kent left the house for several hours to return a motorcycle he had stolen.

But Brower argued that Kent was the more likely killer and that he terrorized Prentice into keeping quiet. Kent threatened women, including Prentice, by putting guns to their heads, the lawyer said, and gave his son "man-size beatings with his fists" starting when the boy was in the first grade.

On the other hand, there is nothing "to even remotely suggest" that his client is responsible for the death, Brower said. Even Kent described Prentice as an "easygoing" woman and a "good mother," Brower said.

Searches for Michelle's body in Williams Canyon in September, with cadaver dogs, old maps and a backhoe, yielded nothing.

Prentice told detectives when she was interviewed in 2003 that Michelle had gone to live with Kent's mother when the rest of the family moved to Illinois. Kent's mother, however, was battling breast cancer and died in 1972, and witnesses said the woman never took care of Michelle.

"We have a mother whose child has been killed who is still lying 34 years later," Orange County Superior Court Judge John D. Conley said at the conclusion of Prentice's preliminary hearing.

Prentice is next scheduled to appear in court June 28, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Larry Yellin said he hoped the trial would start by January. Despite the lack of a body, Yellin said he was sure jurors would convict Prentice.

"A jury's going to have no problem seeing her lies as horrific," he said outside court.

Attending the hearing were several of Michelle's relatives, all wearing white badges with the child's name pinned to their chests.

They filed out of the courtroom after the ruling, one woman in tears. Michelle's father, Richard Pulsifer of Las Vegas, stayed behind and stared at his ex-wife, her gray hair in a ponytail and gaunt frame clad in a navy blue jail jumpsuit. He didn't get up until a bailiff led her from the courtroom.
 
Any updates on the arrest of mom and her boyfriend, 35 years later?

I cannot believe it took police so long to arrest and charge them.

What a sad case and it is VERY obvious mom and boyfriend had something to do with her disappearance. Also any updates on the brother?


http://www.doenetwork.us/
 
Nocgirl said:
Any updates on the arrest of mom and her boyfriend, 35 years later?

I cannot believe it took police so long to arrest and charge them.

What a sad case and it is VERY obvious mom and boyfriend had something to do with her disappearance. Also any updates on the brother?


http://www.doenetwork.us/



What is the story behind this little girl's disappearance?
 
So frightening that the little girl was trying to hide herself in her brothers room - so young to know that was something she needed to do...
 

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