OR OR - Betty McCullough, 10, Silver Creek Falls, 21 June 1941

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anthrobones-- are you the person who first came up with boulder jane doe? i don't think i've ever seen a match so close, at least going by the face/bone structure. she looks like an exact match to me. what happened with this? any results yet? i don't understand why someone on the other site brushed that tip off so easily. i wish someone would provide more info though.... how long do they think she was dead before being found? what was the condition of the body, and how do they know she was murdered?
 
reb said:
anthrobones-- are you the person who first came up with boulder jane doe? i don't think i've ever seen a match so close, at least going by the face/bone structure. she looks like an exact match to me. what happened with this? any results yet? i don't understand why someone on the other site brushed that tip off so easily. i wish someone would provide more info though.... how long do they think she was dead before being found? what was the condition of the body, and how do they know she was murdered?
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Reb, no. I found that information on the comments section of the news article about Betty. Someone named Judy Mahoney made a comment saying that she thought Boulder Jane Doe was Betty, not me. I don't know if this person actually reported the tip to law enforcement or not.

Websleuths also had a thread on the Jane Doe I think too. I will have to search for it.
 
 
meggilyweggily said:
The only thing I can tell about her disappearance is that she had very large ears
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I know this thread is no laughing matter but I couldn't hold back a grin when I read this :)

No offense Meaghan
 
Well, if you go back and look at the birthdate of McCollough and the probable birthdates of Boulder Jane Doe -- they are a match. Also this looks like a case of very similar facial stucture too. Just wish that any sort of illnesses were listed on BJD.

It is possible that someone took a wondering child to care for it (which can happen with autism as well), and if she was not a really high-functioning autistic, then she may NOT have been able to tell someone where she lived or given them any indication of anything being wrong with her. Even these higher level autistics have difficulty with things such as communication and writing.
 
Betty McCullough
Missing since June 21, 1941 from Silver Creek Falls, Oregon
Classification: Missing

Vital Statistics


Age at Time of Disappearance: 10 years old
Clothing: A man’s shirt, shoes
Medical : She was subject to sudden bouts of illness and was also unable to hear or speak. She was diagnosed as only having a few years to live, possibly to her late teens.

Circumstances of Disappearance

Early morning, on June 21, 1941, Betty McCullough woke up, took a water bucket and quietly slipped by her two sleeping sisters. She was going to get water from the water pump outside. She was never seen again. No sign of her, no clues, nothing left behind.

Days following her disappearance, her father, other family members, neighbors and police scoured the area, searching for signs of her. Nothing was ever found. It is feared she may have been picked up by a passing motorist.

Source Information:
Salem News
The Doe Network: Case File 2054DFOR

LINK:

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/2054dfor.html
 
Here is the link to the original story I first posted on this case.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august022006/little_betty_8206.php


In the comment section it said DNA testing was going on in regards to Betty being Boulder Jane Doe but I don't see where there were any results. The lady handling the press on BJD, Silvia Pettem didn't seem to think BJD was Betty. They're still doing testing to see if BJD was Katharine Farrand Dyer, who disappeared from the Flagstaff, Arizona area sometime after 1950. But there are no comments posted after December 4, 2007, in the initial article on the disappearance of Betty.
 
anthrobones said:
She doesn't really look like a girl. Doesn't really have anything to do with anything, just something I noticed.
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In one of the pics she looks like a little boy with long hair (for the times) but that's due to the grainy quality of the photo and 1930's fashion that dictated women wore their hair very short, making some of the younger ones look like boys. In the other pics we can see she's definitely a girl.

Since other disappearances had occurred in the same area with no particular victim pattern, I wonder if there wouldn't be a terrain feature, perhaps a natural cavity with a small opening or a bog, in which she could have fallen? I remember reading about a case in Europe (I think it was France in the late 19th century) where police investigated multiple disappearances in a same area for decades without result until a farmer saw one of his animals be swallowed by the earth before his eyes as he put it. Turned out to be the opening of a shaft into an underground stream, and many other openings were later found. The holes were not visible because vine roots had grown across them and a layer of dirt on which vegetation thrived had accumulated on top of the roots over the centuries.

Not saying this is what happened but I guess it's possible. France is much more densely populated than Oregon and yet it took decades to discover what had happened because nobody knew what to look for.
 
Tim King Salem-News.com Video Report
The story of a little Oregon girl who vanished without a trace in the early 1940's.



Little Betty
Photo courtesy: Lela Taylor

(SILVER FALLS) - The family of Lela Taylor experienced the worst kind of change in 1941 when her aunt Betty, a ten-year old girl who could neither speak or hear, went missing in the Silver Falls area.


After many decades the story of Betty, someone she missed knowing by just a year, is an active part of Lela's life. And it was one year ago when Lela asked me if I would assist her in doing research on the long lost child, and possibly creating a television documentary.


She hopes such a program could shed light even after so much time has passed, and how could I say no?


So rather than pursue the traditional television documentary format, we decided that we would deliver the research as it happens here on Salem-News.com.


So here is the first part of Angel in the Wind. We hope that as people watch it, they comb the farthest reaches of their minds for any sort of a clue. Perhaps Lela and I will miss things along the way, maybe there are sources we aren't thinking of.


The comment section exists for feedback and we would like to hear anything that a visitor even remotely thinks would be interested to us.


Lela thinks that Betty could have been located in later years too, by people who weren't familiar with the story, and that her remains await identification in a morgue or box somewhere. Thanks to DNA, these things can now be determined.


It is assumed that she probably fell into harm's way, perhaps a predator or a wild animal?


Or maybe Betty was picked up by a family who thought she was lost. She could never have given them the information they would have needed to leave her alone. Maybe, just maybe, Betty is still alive today. At this point, only time can tell.


But there is more... Lela and I have learned another fact that is a little unsettling; that six years prior to Betty's disappearance a man named Harold Brown who lived nearby went for a walk and never returned. Earlier in the century, there was another missing person case involving more than one person.


And today, locals tell you that things aren't always predictible there; strange people, large animals, and thousands and thousands of acres of the most remote land in the Willamette Valley.
 
I wonder what was wrong with her that lead the doctors to believe she was terminal. I think there's a kind of genetic kidney disease that also causes deafness but I forget what it's called.
 
meggilyweggily said:
I wonder what was wrong with her that lead the doctors to believe she was terminal. I think there's a kind of genetic kidney disease that also causes deafness but I forget what it's called.
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I do medical transcription and there's a kidney disorder called Alport syndrome that can cause deafness. Also deafness can be a rare side effect for polycystic kidney disease which is largely hereditary and is a disorder where multiple cysts grow in the kidneys and destroy kidney tissue. After looking up more info on the Alport syndrome, it said that it too is an inherited form of kidney inflammation, or nephritis. I wonder if anyone else in her family had kidney disease? It just seems such a strange conglomerate of symptoms that she had though, making it difficult to pinpoint any one particular disease.
 
liz325 said:
Here is the link to the original story I first posted on this case.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august022006/little_betty_8206.php


In the comment section it said DNA testing was going on in regards to Betty being Boulder Jane Doe but I don't see where there were any results. The lady handling the press on BJD, Silvia Pettem didn't seem to think BJD was Betty. They're still doing testing to see if BJD was Katharine Farrand Dyer, who disappeared from the Flagstaff, Arizona area sometime after 1950. But there are no comments posted after December 4, 2007, in the initial article on the disappearance of Betty.
Click to expand...

Just posted on http://www.boulderjanedoe.com are the comments on a photographic comparison just completed.
 
talelights said:
Just posted on http://www.boulderjanedoe.com are the comments on a photographic comparison just completed.
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Thanks for the update. I should probably rephrase my original posting. Katharine Dyer was from near the Flagstaff, AZ area but had been living in Denver when she disappeared. I wish they could find a relative of Dyer's to get DNA from to compare to BJD. I put the updated link on the BJD thread.
 
meggilyweggily said:
Perhaps Betty had some kind of immunodeficiency. Would they have been able to recognize that back then?
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Unlikely, as she would have probably died sooner. Apert's is possible, but I don't know if she has the facial features because of the bad photo. Polycystic kidney disease doesn't show up until adulthood.
 
meggilyweggily said:
Perhaps Betty had some kind of immunodeficiency. Would they have been able to recognize that back then?
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I don't think so..I found the first article posted below that says immunodeficiency disorders were first discovered in 1952.

It said in the original newspaper article about Betty that she was subject to sudden bouts of illness which might fit with having an ID, especially if she was sick a lot, but I couldn't find where the inability to hear or speak was a symptom. Unfortunately, whatever she had didn't seem to have a clear diagnosis back in 1941.

First article on ID:

Summary:The past 50 years have seen enormous progress in this field. An unknown concept until 1952, there are now more than 100 different primary immunodeficiency syndromes in the world's literature. Each novel syndrome has shed new insight into the workings of the immune system, dissecting its multiple parts into unique functioning components. This has been especially true over the past decade, as the molecular bases of approximately 40 of these diseases have been identified in rapid succession. Advances in the treatment of these diseases have also been impressive. Antibody replacement has been improved greatly by the development of human immunoglobulin preparations that can be safely administered by the intravenous route.

And from another article...
People with an immunodeficiency disorder tend to have one infection after another. Usually, respiratory infections develop first and recur often. Most people eventually develop severe bacterial infections that persist, recur, or lead to complications. For example, sore throats and head colds may progress to pneumonia. However, having many colds does not suggest an immunodeficiency disorder. Infections of the skin and the membranes lining the mouth, eyes, and digestive tract are common. Thrush, a fungal infection of the mouth, may be an early sign of an immunodeficiency disorder. Skin infections by bacteria or viruses are also common. Bacterial infections (with staphylococci, for example) may cause pyoderma, in which the skin is covered with pus-filled sores. Warts (caused by viruses) may occur. Many people lose weight. Children tend to develop slowly. Other symptoms vary depending on the severity and duration of the infections.
 
Is it possible that, if Betty were autistic, that she was also epileptic? I've read that epilepsy occurs at a drastically higher rate in autistic children. That might account for the description of "sudden bouts of illness".
Just a thought.
 
shadowangel said:
Is it possible that, if Betty were autistic, that she was also epileptic? I've read that epilepsy occurs at a drastically higher rate in autistic children. That might account for the description of "sudden bouts of illness".
Just a thought.
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That's a good thought. Epilepsy never really occurred to me. When you mentioned it, I realized that epilepsy doesn't always manifest as blatant seizures, like with convulsions. Staring spells can be termed seizure-like activity too with the temporary inability to speak. They said Betty had sudden bouts of illness and was unable to hear or speak. I wonder if that inability to hear or speak was all the time or could have just been "spells?" I would love to have seen medical records on her just to read how a physician described all her symptoms and what diagnosis was made. With just the little information in that article, it's so hard to pinpoint what was wrong with her.
 
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