FL FL - Landon Lee Deriggi, 13, Miami Shores, 27 July 1973

Richard

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Landon Lee Deriggi (age 13) Missing since 27 July 1973, from Miami Shores, FL

Landon Lee Deriggi

Missing Since July 27, 1973 from Miami Shores, Dade County, Florida.

Classification
: Lost, Injured, Missing


Vital Statistics
Date Of Birth: October 31, 1959
Age at Time of Diappearance: 13 years old
Height and Weight at Time of Disappearance: 4'7"; 68 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: White male. Blond hair; blue eyes.
Medical Conditions: Deriggi has a deviated septum; as a result, his nose appears to be slanted. He also has impaired vision and a reading disability. Deriggi is hyperactive.

Circumstances of Disappearance
Deriggi told his mother he was going to the store on July 27, 1973. He was never seen or heard from again.


If you have any information on this case, please contact: Miami Shores Police Department Det. Glen Cosner 305-759-2468


Agency Case Number: 11216


Source Information:
The National Center For Missing and Exploited Children


Link:
http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/28dmfl.html
LDeriggi.jpg
LDeriggi1.jpg
 
Richard-Do you know if John McRae was ever looked at in relation to this case? As I remember, he was paroled in '71 and left immediately for FL. Though he settled in Brevard County to the north of the Miami area (to work as a prison guard in a juvenile detention center!) this young man certainly matches his other confirmed and unconfirmed victims. As far as I know, he was only seriously considered a person of interest in the 3 cases from '77 to '79.
 
Landon Lee Deriggi

Missing Since: July 27, 1973 from Miami Shores, Florida
Classification: Endangered Missing

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Date Of Birth: October 31, 1959
Age: 14 years old
Height and Weight: 4'7, 68 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Blond hair, blue eyes.
Medical Conditions: Deriggi has a deviated septum and his nose appeared slanted as a result at the time he disappeared. His vision is badly impaired. Deriggi has a reading disability. He is also hyperactive.

Details of Disappearance

Deriggi told his mother he was going outside to either play or go to the store (accounts differ) on July 27, 1973. He has never been heard from again. Few details are available in Deriggi's case. He is considered to be at risk. Some agencies may classify Deriggi's case as that of an endangered runaway.

Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Miami Shores Police Department 305-759-2468

Source Information

The National Center For Missing and Exploited Children
Child Protection Education Of America
Florida Department of Law Enforcement
The Charley Project: Landon Lee Deriggi
Link:
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/d/deriggi_landon.html
 
Do we have any more news on who any of these bodies may have been? Wow 8 bodies! this could provide closure to so many families.
 
I have done numerous searches but can find NOTHING on this poor boy. I don't know what upsets me more -- missing persons cases where there a lot of very distressing details available (Peter Kema's being the best example) or cases which are decades old with NO INFO AT ALL. Did Landon run away? Did he get in an accident? Was he kidnapped? Harmed by a family member? I don't know and neither does anyone else.

Maybe someday someone will do a feature article "looking back at this cold case" on Landon.
 
I agree. Its just so heartbreaking to read about someones child that just disappeared off the face of the earth one day and that was that! They thought he could be a runaway at one point but even in that scenario some news of him would have turned up.
 
8 Bodies were recently found in Fort Myers across the state from where he disappeared (about 150 mi or 2 hr and 10 min drive according to the yahoo map.) I have not yet heard any details about the bodies but it makes me wonder.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/195710

I believe all the bodies were of people who died in the nineties. I think two have been identified thus far.
 
Anyone interested in discussing this case? Would be great to get some new information and interest in finding out what happened to Lanny.

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/28dmfl.html

MIAMI SHORES July 27, 2008
Teen's disappearance still unexplained 35 years later - The mother of teenager Landon Deriggi still holds out hope in Miami Shores' only unsolved missing persons case.

BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@MiamiHerald.com

Just before leaving town for good, Linda Scott taped a letter addressed to her son on the inside of a fuse box in their former Miami Shores house:
``We have moved to Georgia. God forgives everything. I forgive everything. We love you.''
Decades later, Scott, now 64, retired respiratory therapist, great grandmother, devout Lutheran, cancer survivor, can still be found in the small town of Douglasville, Ga. Back in Miami Shores, time has stolen the letter.
Just like her Lanny.
Today marks 35 years since Landon Deriggi, a small 13-year-old with freckles, a blond mop of hair and bad vision, left his Miami Shores home and vanished.
It is the only unsolved missing persons case in village history, a largely unknown jigsaw puzzle kept alive by a succession of detectives and fliers posted on the Internet.
Leads trickle in on occasion. Shores Chief Kevin Lystad believes Lanny is probably dead. DNA technology, he says, might help.
''There have been lots of unidentified bodies throughout the years and no way to place them because they carried no IDs,'' Lystad said.
Four years ago, detectives asked Scott for DNA, with hopes her genetic profile could help create one for her son.
But battling breast cancer, repressed emotions and 667 miles between her and Miami Shores, Scott never gave a sample. As the anniversary neared this week, Scott vowed to do so.
''I know before I die, I have to deal with that,'' Scott said. ``I've been dealing with this my whole life by not thinking about it.''
Lanny disappeared on July 27, 1973. Back then, missing children did not spur e-mailed media bulletins, Amber Alerts or wall-to-wall cable TV coverage.
Lanny's mother never spoke to reporters until this week. ''He was a unique child,'' she remembered.
Lanny was born Oct. 31, 1959, four weeks premature at Northshore Medical Center.
He had a deviated septum. Despite a diagnosis of extreme hyperactivity, Lanny scored a 160 on an IQ test. ''But Lanny didn't have a lick of common sense,'' Scott said.
Lanny also couldn't see the blackboard at school. He was found legally blind but refused to wear his glasses.
The Deriggis lived in a 1950s-era house on the 400 block of Northwest 112th Terrace, across from an old dog-racing track, down the street from Barry University. He had a baby sister, Angel.
Lanny loved their backyard pool. ''He could swim like a fish,'' his mother said. His hangout was often the Barry athletic field.
After Lanny turned 13, however, his behavior worsened. Children began to pick on him at school. He exploded when asked to do simple household chores.
''I liked Lanny. He was constantly shaking his head back and forth, normal for kids with high anxiety,'' said neighbor Greg Pecchio, 55. ``He tried to get in with the big boys but when you're only four feet tall, all the guys tower over you by three feet, you're going to get picked on.''
Lanny had started running away, for brief spells. Once, he was found in Fort Lauderdale. Another time, his mother found him at the Barry field, alone.
''This change came over a very short period of time. I was thinking it was a transitional phase and it would go away,'' Scott said.
He vanished during his family's vacation. They had all spent a couple days camping in the Florida Everglades, roasting hot dogs, hiking paths and fishing.
They returned home late on July 26, about 10 p.m., planning to drive to Disney World the next day.

THE DISAPPERANCE
Thirty-years later, the details are fuzzy. Scott, then 29 years old, recalled she was sleeping when Lanny nudged her and asked to go to Barry to play. Yes, she replied.
Lanny left the house. She never saw him again.
Scott admits not calling authorities right away. Lanny usually returned quickly. A day or two passed before she dialed Miami Shores police.
The search, she remembered, was relatively low-key. Officers found some of his belongings in the hedges of a near-by house. They speculated he was meeting somebody.
Investigators interviewed neighborhood pals, to no avail.
''If a predator was courting him, it would have been a secret. He didn't have anything new -- no toys, nothing,'' Scott said. ``And if he wanted to run away -- it never made any sense. Why would anyone want to run away in the middle of vacation? Why would any kid turn down a trip to Disney?''
Scott kept to herself. Emotions overwhelmed and numbed her.
She quietly attended a vigil for him at the family's church, Good Shepherd Lutheran, 12600 NW Fourth Ave. To keep from dark thoughts, Scott pushed Lanny to the back of her mind.
She repeated in her head at night: ``Sleep in peace. Sleep in peace.''
Shortly after his disappearance, Scott discovered she was pregnant. Soon, she finished her school for respiratory therapy.
One year after Lanny disappeared, Scott was driving to her job at the Miami Heart Institute on Miami Beach. The date was Oct. 31: Landon's birthday. She pulled over on the expressway shoulder.
''It was the first time I had cried the whole time. I broke down,'' Scott said. ``After that, I would say, I just got stoic.''
The years melted away without any contact from Lanny.
Miami-Dade serial killer Robert Frederick Carr was kidnapping and raping young runaways in the 1970s -- but was imprisoned in Connecticut when Lanny disappeared.
In 1977, the family moved to Georgia, leaving the letter, which left Landon instructions how to reach them. They taped it inside the electric panel. No one is sure what happened to the letter.
Scott had two more children, Dean Scott, now 33, and Chris Scott, now 28, and later informally adopted another son, Artie Lydecker, now 28. She is still married to Michael Scott, who took his wife's maiden name.

FOLLOWING LEADS
The case grew cold, to be sure. But Miami Shores detectives continued pecking away at leads.
In 1995, the FBI, following up on a corpse found in San Mateo, Calif., asked Miami Shores if Lanny had a cleft palate. He did not.
In 2002, a tip came in that Lanny, now an adult, was working as a teacher in Connecticut. It wasn't him.
Two years later, Shores detectives called Scott -- the corpse of an unidentified teenager found in November 1979 strangled to death in the woods of St. Helena Parish, La., fit Lanny's description.
The teen, found hog-tied with rope, had possibly been murdered by a serial killer.
Technology had advanced so much that a DNA sample taken from Scott could help investigators match his genetic profile to Lanny.
But there were logistical glitches in trying to get a DNA sample to Miami Shores. Scott was also undergoing chemotherapy, which ravished her body and mind.
''When they contacted me the first time, it was during my cancer treatment. It upset me a lot to see how this kid died in Louisiana,'' she said. ``I didn't want to deal with it. I didn't want to know.''
Her body strengthened, Scott now wants to provide DNA. Miami Shores police welcome her cooperation.
But as so many times before, the search turns exhausting. Last month, Louisiana police identified the corpse found in the woods.
It was not Lanny. It was a drifter from California.
 
``He tried to get in with the big boys but when you're only four feet tall, all the guys tower over you by three feet, you're going to get picked on.''

Well, I think it's quite possible, that Landon was killed by a bunch of older boys, who were unnerved by his behavior.
 
Truly heartbreaking and tragic,

My concern would be that it is very sad that Landon's Mother would let him go out places alone because of his developmental disability. Legally blind and lacking common sense as she indicated, along with the problems in school, presumed that this poor child was probably bullied often. This is a very painful case that needs answers.

Tragically, he could have been an easy target for a kidnapper or pedophile. It is shocking to me that investigators found some of his belongings near a hedge. What were those items? What sort of questions were asked about the people interviewed living in the homes and around the homes where Landon's belongings were found? It sounds like LE did not do a very good job during the initial investigation.

Satch
 
I think one should not put the blame on Landon's mum. The early seventies were a very different time, people were much more trusting and happily unaware of many dangers.

What does "legally blind" exactly mean? That he was treated legally as if he was blind?
 
I think one should not put the blame on Landon's mum. The early seventies were a very different time, people were much more trusting and happily unaware of many dangers.

What does "legally blind" exactly mean? That he was treated legally as if he was blind?

Good points. Times were so different back than. It was a different world than it is today. I found the definitions of legal blindness here:

BlindnessFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
This article is about the visual condition. For other uses, see Blindness (disambiguation).
Blindness
Classification and external resources

A white cane, the international symbol of blindness
ICD-10 H54.0 , H54.1 , H54.4
ICD-9 369
DiseasesDB 28256

Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.

Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness.[1] Total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as NLP, an abbreviation for "no light perception."[1] Blindness is frequently used to describe severe visual impairment with residual vision. Those described as having only light perception have no more sight than the ability to tell light from dark and the general direction of a light source.

In order to determine which people may need special assistance because of their visual disabilities, various governmental jurisdictions have formulated more complex definitions referred to as legal blindness.[2] In North America and most of Europe, legal blindness is defined as visual acuity (vision) of 20/200 (6/60) or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means that a legally blind individual would have to stand 20 feet (6.1 m) from an object to see it—with corrective lenses—with the same degree of clarity as a normally sighted person could from 200 feet (61 m). In many areas, people with average acuity who nonetheless have a visual field of less than 20 degrees (the norm being 180 degrees) are also classified as being legally blind. Approximately ten percent of those deemed legally blind, by any measure, have no vision. The rest have some vision, from light perception alone to relatively good acuity. Low vision is sometimes used to describe visual acuities from 20/70 to 20/200.[3]

Source: Wikipedia: Blindness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Satch
 
Hi Satch :)

Thanks for this explanation. If Landon's eyesight was so poor - I read somewhere that he could not see the board in school - there are also chances that he just fell victim to an accident and his body was not discovered.
 
Hi Satch :)

Thanks for this explanation. If Landon's eyesight was so poor - I read somewhere that he could not see the board in school - there are also chances that he just fell victim to an accident and his body was not discovered.

That's very possible. It seems like an accident or an abduction are the most likely possibilities. It is very sad. He seemed vulnerable. It is really painful for me to read that the family left a note for him on where to find them, after they moved to another state, and someone took the note. I'd really like to know what happened to that note?

Satch
 
Well perhaps the note just faded and yellowed and got illegible?
And then someone just threw it away....
 
Well perhaps the note just faded and yellowed and got illegible?
And then someone just threw it away....

Sure that is likely as well. What a sad situation. But you're right, if the note was no longer readable due to age, someone could have just thrown it away.

Maybe I missed this information, but was it ever discovered approximately when the family moved to Georgia?

Satch
 
``He tried to get in with the big boys but when you're only four feet tall, all the guys tower over you by three feet, you're going to get picked on.''

Well, I think it's quite possible, that Landon was killed by a bunch of older boys, who were unnerved by his behavior.

I have to agree with this theory, maybe they didn’t plan to hurt the poor kid things just got out of hand. If that's the case I hope someone will one day tell the truth so the family have some closure.
 

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