FL FL - Maurice Jefferson, 16, Fort Lauderdale, 28 Nov 1983

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Maurice Laron Jefferson

DATE MISSING: 11/28/1983
MISSING FROM: Ft Lauderdale,FL COUNTY: Broward
BIRTH: 8/8/1967 AGE DISAPPEARED: 16 yrs 3 months RACE: Black HEIGHT: 5' 11" WEIGHT: 115 SEX: Male HAIR: Red EYES: Brown


Maurice's photo is shown age-progressed to 36 years. He was last seen leaving his home in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, to attend basketball practice. He is very bowlegged, has a mole on his right ear and two warts on his right wrist. His black hair has red tips.
 
[FONT=Verdana,Arial, Helvetica][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Pembroke Pines event focuses attention on missing kids[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana,Arial, Helvetica] Maurice Jefferson told his grandmother he was heading to school for basketball practice. Instead, the 16-year-old student at Dillard High School walked out of the house in November 1983 and vanished.

"I've always said, `It's like the Earth opened up and swallowed him,'" said his grandmother, Ethel Mitchell, 74, who still lives in the Fort Lauderdale house she shared with Maurice before he disappeared that Monday afternoon. "What happened to him, we don't know."

[/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Arial, Helvetica] If he is alive, Maurice will turn 40 this year. Teresa Fittin, of Fort Lauderdale, was 18 when she vanished in 1975. Today, she would be 50.

So would Amy Billig, who was 17 when she vanished in 1974. Billig drew national attention when she disappeared from a Coconut Grove street corner, reportedly abducted by bikers. Her mother searched for 30 years until she died of cancer.

Maurice's case caused barely a stir. Under police guidelines at that time, his family had to wait three days for the investigation to begin, his grandmother said. There were never any strong clues or even sightings. The family hired a private investigator and turned up nothing.

[/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Arial, Helvetica] Maurice, nicknamed "Red," split his time between his grandmother's house in Fort Lauderdale and his mother's home in Alabama.

The day Maurice disappeared, he told his grandmother he was meeting a friend at school. He never showed up. No one was arrested.

"In the back of my mind, I kept telling myself, you have two other kids to live for, you might as well focus on them and move on," said Maurice's mother, Betty Bridges, 57, who now lives in Williston, S.C. "I have pictures in my house that I look at every day, look at them and wonder: `Where are you?'"

[/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Arial, Helvetica]
[/FONT][FONT=Verdana,Arial, Helvetica] Currently, there are about 185 cases of missing children at the Broward Sheriff's Office and 93 cases of unidentified remains at the county Medical Examiner's Office. Twenty percent of the remains are those of children, said Dr. Reinhard Motte, associate medical examiner.[/FONT]
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TWENTY PERCENT of the deceased are children who are unidentified :banghead: :furious: :mad: How can that be?????
 
TWENTY PERCENT of the deceased are children who are unidentified :banghead: :furious: :mad: How can that be?????

Yeah, I know! And that's only for Broward County. 35-40 children. Imagine that times the entire state of Florida. Then magnified by the entire United States. Too many children with no names! Too many innocents murdered.

I imagine that many of those children are newborns and run aways. So very sad.
 
Yeah, I know! And that's only for Broward County. 35-40 children. Imagine that times the entire state of Florida. Then magnified by the entire United States. Too many children with no names! Too many innocents murdered.

I imagine that many of those children are newborns and run aways. So very sad.


And they are all CHILDREN. Where are the parents of these kids and aren't they looking for them? I don't understand. I wonder what the ages of these children are...teens? Little kids? It is sickening to think about.
 
This article talks about the very first age progessions ever done in searching for missing children. This article also appeared in a True Detective magazine about the same time as the Miami Herald article.



Miami Herald, The (FL)

April 24, 1988
Edition: BRWRD
Section: FRONT
Page: 1A


Topics:

Index Terms:
LOST FLORIDA JVENILE



SKETCH TECHNIQUE 'AGES' MISSING KIDS
Author: DON VAN NATTA Jr. Herald Staff Writer



To Robert Stewart, his daughter Jean Marie stopped growing the moment she disappeared from a Miami Lakes convenience store on March 25, 1980.

For eight years, his mind replayed images of a 16-year-old Jean Marie, a daughter lost to time.

Then last week Stewart saw an age-progression pencil sketch of a 25-year-old Jean Marie. A medical illustrator used a process, pioneered in 1985 by a pair of University of Illinois professors, to age Jean Marie's face by eight years.

"This is the greatest hope we've got," Stewart said of the sketch. "There is no way to bridge anything about her except this. We have had hope -- we'll always have hope -- and now we have this sketch, too."

For the first time ever, a national directory of 60 age- progressed drawings of missing children -- including six from Broward, Dade, Palm Beach and Collier counties -- will be distributed later this month to school systems in Florida, California and New England.

Besides Jean Marie Stewart, the five others are:

* Maurice "Red" Jefferson of Fort Lauderdale, a 16-year-old Dillard High School student who disappeared five years ago from a Franklin Park basketball court.

* Jason Townsend of Lauderhill, last seen in Fort Lauderdale in 1980. He was 3 1/2. In the sketch, he is 11. Broward sheriff's deputies suspect foul play. He was last seen by an acquaintance of his mother who was shot to death two days after Jason's disappearance in a struggle with police.

* Marjorie Christy Luna, who disappeared in Greenacres City in Palm Beach County as she walked the 500 yards between a convenience store and her house. In her last picture, Christy is 8. In the sketch, she is 12.

* Amy Billig, who was 17 when she disappeared in Coconut Grove in 1974. Amy's father told police he feared his daughter, who frequently hitchhiked, was the victim of foul play. Her composite was difficult; the illustrators aged her face 14 years.

* Kristan Taylor Sherwood, a 1 1/2-year-old boy with blond hair and blue eyes who was taken from a Naples nursery school by his father in 1981. He was aged seven years. Kristan's composite may have been the hardest of all. "Aging a baby is always hardest," said Scott Barrows, who helped develop the technique.

In the directory, the sketches appear side by side with the last photographs taken of the children, all of whom have been missing three years or more.




Memo:
also in PLM BCH, KYS, GLF; see boxes 14a BRWRD
Copyright © 1988 The Miami Herald
Record Number: 8801290925
 
Published on Jun 6, 2016
MAURICE LARON JEFFERSON
DOB: August 8, 1967

[video=youtube;kGDwfE6b06c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGDwfE6b06c[/video]
 
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/j/jefferson_maurice.html
jefferson_maurice_ap.jpg
Age progressed to 43

http://doenetwork.org/cases/49dmfl.html
MJefferson1.jpg
MJefferson.jpg

Maurice Laron Jefferson
Missing since November 30, 1983 from Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida.
Classification: Non-Family Abduction

Vital Statistics

Date Of Birth: August 8, 1967
Age at Time of Disappearance: 16 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'11; 160 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Black male. Black hair, tipped with red; brown eyes.
Marks, Scars: He is very bowlegged, has a mole on his right ear and two warts on his right wrist. His black hair has red tips.
Clothing: His usual basketball practice attire, T-shirt, Short pants, long socks and tennis shoes.

Circumstances of Disappearance
Maurice (Red) Jefferson, a former choirboy who planned to become a doctor, was last seen leaving his family's Fort Lauderdale, Florida home to attend basketball practice at Dillard High School on November 30, 1983.
He left his wallet, containing all of his money and identification, lying on a television set in the living room of the family home at NW 30th Terrace.
Two unidentified teenage girls told deputies that they saw two black men in an Oldsmobile approach Jefferson that night while he was shooting basketball in Franklin Park, they saw the men force Jefferson into the car.
The FBI entered the case but dropped out after another youth reported having seen Jefferson a few hours later.
There were never any strong clues or even sightings. The family hired a private investigator and turned up nothing.
rbbm.
 
Wondering what exactly is meant by black hair tipped with red, as bolded by me in above post.
Was Jefferson naturally red-haired or black-haired, was it dyed, or changes colour on its own?

Any chance that singing in a choir made him stand out to someone outside his social circle, and who may have abducted him?
He had grand plans, was somebody jealous?
imo, speculation.
 

So according to the Charley Project, two teenage girls saw him being abducted ! He was taken by two African American men, and they were driving an Oldsmobile ! No LE sketches of the two men ??? Or a description of the vehicle ? That 3 day rule in effect at the time was the crucial thing...had a sketch of the two men been released right away, along with the vehicle color etc, it might have made a difference. This is so very sad ! jmo
 
So according to the Charley Project, two teenage girls saw him being abducted ! He was taken by two African American men, and they were driving an Oldsmobile ! No LE sketches of the two men ??? Or a description of the vehicle ? That 3 day rule in effect at the time was the crucial thing...had a sketch of the two men been released right away, along with the vehicle color etc, it might have made a difference. This is so very sad ! jmo

Wondering if those two girls could be approached again just to see if they still remembered things as they originally reported, same for the boy who thought he saw Maurice after that time.
He seemed to be an innocent young guy with a very bright future, what could have happened to him, who might want to harm him and why?
 
Wondering if those two girls could be approached again just to see if they still remembered things as they originally reported, same for the boy who thought he saw Maurice after that time.
He seemed to be an innocent young guy with a very bright future, what could have happened to him, who might want to harm him and why?

I read that the FBI did not pursue this as an abduction, because a boy said that he saw Maurice after the two girls said that they saw him being forced into a car. The FBI chose not to place importance in the story the two girls told. I would tend to believe the two girls : there were two of them, and they both saw the same thing. They said that Maurice was forced into a vehicle by two men. Not many good endings for a scenario like this one.

I agree, it would be great to hear what those two teenage girls recall seeing... so long ago. I read that a woman was talking about doing a documentary film about Maurice's disappearance, but nothing looks to have come of it.

I want to look through the local papers, see what else turns up. Anyone know any good sites for newspapers ? Also, I wish I had a timeline of that night, and a local map. I read someplace that Broward county has or had a cold case unit, I wonder if they have ever looked at this case.
 
http://terryaoneal.com/documentary/
attachment.php

http://www.terryaoneal.com/pdf/MauriceJeffersonPROFILE.pdf
rbbm.
“Hope of Finding a Son: The

Maurice “Red” Jefferson Story,is a documentary that tells a story of a 16 year-old boy, known to his family, friends, and the people in his town as“Red”. He was a choirboy at the Piney Grove First Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale;and he played junior varsity basketball at Dillard High School, where he was a student. Red had a bright future ahead of him carrying, aspirations of becoming a doctor one day.
After he went missing, Maurice’s family hired a private investigator that searched far and wide for answers about what happened to him, but he, too, came up empty handed. Maurice’s file was then closed by the Broward County Police Department.
Maurice’s mother believes that the answer lays in the silence of the neighborhood children, who are now scattered across the U.S. and have since then moved on with their lives. Unfortunately, for the family of Maurice Jefferson, time has stood still.
 

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Bumping.
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/49dmfl.html
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Left and Center: Jefferson, circa 1983; Right: Age-progressed image of Jefferson at age 43 (circa 2011)

Maurice Laron Jefferson
Missing since November 30, 1983 from Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida.
Classification: Non-Family Abduction


  • [*]Date Of Birth: August 8, 1967
    [*]Age at Time of Disappearance: 16 years old
    [*]Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 5'11; 160 pounds
    [*]Distinguishing Characteristics: Black male. Black hair, tipped with red; brown eyes.
    [*]Marks, Scars: He is very bowlegged, has a mole on his right ear and two warts on his right wrist. His black hair has red tips.
    [*]Clothing: His usual basketball practice attire, T-shirt, Short pants, long socks and tennis shoes.
 

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