The Kansas City Star
1992-06-28
Section: METROPOLITAN
Edition: METROPOLITAN
Page: B1
Springfield on mission to find missing women
LANE BEAUCHAMP Springfield Correspondent
SPRINGFIELD - They walk through the house looking for an answer. Maybe it's in Stacy's pile of clothes in the bedroom. Or in Suzie's purse, dropped nearby. Or maybe the answer is back in one of the filing cabinets by Sherrill's desk.
Veteran police officers, longtime friends turned amateur detectives, and frustrated relatives have combed through the well-kept three-bedroom house at 1717 E. Delmar St. hoping to find some sign, anything at all, that can give them an answer.
But the searches have yielded few clues as to the whereabouts of Sherrill Levitt; her daughter, Suzie Streeter; and Streeter's friend, Stacy McCall.
Three weeks ago this morning, the three women vanished from Levitt's east Springfield home.
Police are convinced they were abducted. Their families think they are still alive.
"I really feel they're being held somewhere against their will," said McCall's mother, Janis McCall. "We have to hope that they're alive. We think about all the worst, but we have to hope.
Without hope, you don't have anything. " Police say there is no reason the three would have left on their own. They are stable, responsible persons. Levitt, 47, has long been a hairdresser at a Springfield salon. Streeter, 19, works at a movie theater and is thinking about becoming a cosmetologist.
McCall, 18, has been looking forward to starting college and a pledging a sorority in the fall.
They aren't into drugs or cults, police say. To be gone for a day without calling someone would be unusual for them. To go three weeks without contact would be impossible.
"This is a tough case," Springfield Police Chief Terry Knowles said. "Everyone in the department, everyone in the community feels this case. We all just want to find them. " No signs of trouble. The unlocked front door of the house on Delmar Street opens to a home filled with mystery.
Everything seems in its place. Clothes, purses, keys. No signs of trouble.
Springfield police investigator Dana Carrington slowly walks from room to room, taking what is probably his 1,000th trip through the house in the last three weeks. He's looking for something, anything.
"We've unfolded every piece of paper in every pocket in the house," Carrington said. "We've checked every page of every book, gone through every drawer trying to find a clue. " The scene doesn't make sense to anyone.
Levitt and Streeter are chain-smokers, so why would their packs of Marlboros and Virginia Slims be left behind?
McCall suffers recurring migraine headaches and took nightly medication to keep them under control, so why would her pills be left behind?
"I think Stacy had gotten ready for bed," Janis McCall theorized. "She had taken off her shorts, her shoes, her jewelry, her bra. All she would have had on was her shirt and underwear. " Streeter also had changed clothes. The outfit she had on earlier that night was tossed in a dirty-clothes basket.
Levitt and Streeter always made their beds in the morning, friends said. Yet their bedsheets were rumpled, indicating they may have gone to sleep.
There is virtually no trail for police to follow. No cash missing. No credit cards used. Technically, investigators don't even have proof a crime has been committed.
One friend of the teen-agers said it was as if someone walked through the walls and zapped the women with a gun that made them vanish.
Graduation parties The evening before they disappeared was filled with frivolity.
Streeter and McCall, longtime friends but not particularly close ones, had graduated from Kickapoo High School. The night would be spent celebrating.
It was about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 6. Classmate Janelle Kirby remembers Streeter arriving at her house first. McCall came a few minutes later in her own car.
The first party of the night was at the home of Kirby's next-door neighbors.
"Suzie had a little stomach ache, but nothing else was bothering her," friend Shane Appleby remembered. "She was excited about finally graduating. Everything was kind of open for us.
Anything we wanted to do was out there now, and we could just reach for it. " Appleby, 18, said Streeter always called him her big brother, even though she is a few months older.
"Her license plate says it all: SWEETR," Appleby said. "She's a sweet girl. She's a person you can always depend on. Anytime I was down or troubled, she would give me good advice. She'd tell me to stand up on my own and be my own person. " Appleby said he and Streeter spent much of graduation night reminiscing about their high school days - the people they had met, the things they had done.
Streeter is friendly but shy, friends said. She is more likely to stick closer to people she knows. McCall, on the other hand, bounces about a party and immediately brings life to everyone around her.
"You can be as down as down can go, and Stacy will come up and make you laugh and smile," said Kirby, McCall's best friend.
By about 2 a.m. Sunday, the parties were winding down. McCall decided she would spend the night with Streeter and the group would meet later that morning to head for a water amusement park in Branson, Mo.
"I saw Suzie and Stacy walk down to their cars," Appleby said.
"Everything was normal. That was the last time I saw them. "
Plans to go to Branson
Levitt, as much a friend to her daughter as a mother, apparently spent the evening at home. A private person who had been divorced twice, Levitt seems to prefer redecorating her house, which she bought this spring, to going out.
Her daughter's friends marvel at the relationship between Levitt and Streeter. The two can talk about anything. Levitt is very protective of her daughter, yet gives her the room to make her own decisions, friends said.
Levitt spoke by telephone with a friend about 9:30 p.m. She gave no indication of any trouble or concerns. There has been no confirmed contact with Levitt since.
Streeter was not supposed to be home that evening. Initial plans had her staying with McCall and their other friends at a hotel room in Branson. That shifted over the night to their sleeping at one of the friends' homes in Battlefield, Mo. But in the end there were too many people there, so Streeter invited McCall over to her home. The two are thought to have arrived about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, June 7. When friends didn't hear from the pair Sunday morning about the day trip to Branson, they tried calling, then went to the house.
They found all three women's cars in the driveway, locked. They found the house unoccupied but left unlocked - something Levitt wouldn't do. The globe from a porch light was shattered on the ground.
"We cleaned it up because we knew Sherrill wouldn't want it that way," Kirby said. "Normally, the second it broke she would have cleaned it up. " Still not suspecting anything was wrong, as many as 18 friends that day walked through the house, looking for some indication of where Levitt, Streeter and McCall may have been.
As the day wore on with no signs of the three, police eventually were called in, and the search began.
A motive continues to baffle police. They looked into the three women's backgrounds, hoping to find some spark that could ignite the investigation. So far there has been nothing solid. They have given polygraph tests to a few people who knew the women, but the police chief said no strong suspects had developed.
In three weeks, 30 Springfield police officers and a handful of state and federal authorities have received more than 1,200 tips and followed nearly 500 leads.
$40,000 reward
The case has captivated this southwest Missouri city of 140,000.
There are billboards, posters or yellow ribbons everywhere you look.
Volunteers have showed up by the truckload to lend a hand in searches. A reward fund offers $40,000. Television and radio update the case each newscast, and a newspaper keeps a front-page tally of how many days the women have been missing.
The case has even received national attention.
Fox Television's "America's Most Wanted" series has featured the women for the last three weeks. A crew from the CBS News show "48 Hours" is documenting the investigation for an hourlong segment not yet scheduled.
"The community has been absolutely phenomenal," Janis McCall said. "It's overwhelming. They've helped with food and love and prayers and cards. It keeps you going. " But all the help and support and interest hasn't brought back the three women. And police admit they are not much closer to solving the case today than they were three weeks ago.
"There's nothing to get your teeth into," Police Lt. Mike Brazeal said. "It's hampered by a lack of knowledge. The hard facts are very few. " Police now are focusing on what the women did between about 2 and 7:30 a.m. Sunday, June 7. Streeter and McCall obviously made it to the house, and the three had at least gotten ready for bed. But they don't know when that happened or whether anyone else was in the house.
A plea for the public's help has turned up two possible sightings in that period. A convenience store clerk thinks Levitt came into his store searching for her daughter. A waitress at a crowded all-night restaurant thinks she served Levitt, Streeter and another woman, possibly McCall. No other witnesses have corroborated those stories, though.
The investigation, then, often leads to unanswered questions.
"We look at the reports and wonder if the answer is in there," said Knowles, the police chief. "Or is the answer at the graduation party? Or is the answer in the residence?
"There is a genuine desire in this department, in this community, to get this case resolved," he said. "All we're looking for is that something to point us in a direction. "