SC SC - Silas Sessions, 55, Charleston, 9 July 1999

http://www.nampn.doenetwork.us/cases/sessions_silas.html



Silas Sessions Jr.

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance
# Missing Since: July 9, 1999 from Charleston, South Carolina
# Classification: Missing
# Date Of Birth: November 21, 1943
# Age: 55 years old
# Height and Weight: N/A
# Distinguishing Characteristics: Black hair; brown eyes. Sessions may have a moustache, beard or a goatee.

Details of Disappearance
Sessions was last seen leaving Charleston Memorial Hospital on Calhoun Street in Charleston, South Carolina on July 9, 1999. He has never been heard from again. The circumstances surrounding Sessions' disappearance are unclear.

http://www.abcnews4.com/news/stories/0106/291623.html

Carolina Cold Case

Charleston, SC - In Charleston... a murder remains unsolved... following a man's disappearance after leaving hospital. Six years later, police are still searching for Silas Sessions. ABC News 4 continues that search in this week's Carolina Cold Case.

Susana Sessions sits and waits...hoping she'll live to see her son again. "I want to know what happened to him, whether he's living or dead and nobody knows that...God's the only one that knows that," says Ms. Sessions. She last saw him 6 years ago...July 9th, 1999. She wonders -why- he never came home, "all I can say is he was cooking breakfast and I walked out into the room. He said he was going over there to get a pack of cigarettes. I haven't seen him since, he didn't come home that night."

Silas Sessions lived with his mother in a house on Wolf Street. He was often seen walking around Reed and Meeting Street, sometimes near Simons Street. On the day he went missing, Sessions told his mother he was going across the street, somehow he ended up at Charleston Memorial Hospital.

"All I know for sure is that he was treated and released, so they thought he was well enough to go home on his own," says Sgt. Sherry Niblock, the lead detective on this missing persons case.

Sessions suffered from mental problems and was a heavy drinker. It's unknown why he was admitted to the hospital...he may have been severely dehydrated or intoxicated. After being released, Sessions was seen leaving the hospital and approaching a cab. As he reached the taxi, he got into an argument with the driver who later refused to take him anywhere. A cop was called to help him get home, but Sessions refused the ride. "He could have been so upset he didn't realize where he was or where he was going," says Sgt. Niblock.

In a state of confusion, Sessions could have wandered anywhere...he's presumed dead, but there's no evidence to prove it. No foul play is suspected because no unusual deaths in the area have been reported since he disappeared. Vital records checks with the Coroners Office were also made to make sure no bodies were left unidentified. Police believe Sessions could have fallen or been injured by some of the construction downtown...but search after search led nowhere. A missing person who is missed by his family and who's disappearance remains a mystery. "I just can't go through it no more, I'm sick...I'm not gonna give him up, that's the only son i have, the only one," cries Ms. Sessions. She's searching for closure, hoping if he's alive someone can help bring their family back together...and if he's not, she hopes questions about what happened to him will be answered.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of silas sessions, please call Crimestoppers of the Lowcountry at 554-1111 or toll free at 1-800-452-1111.

Could this be him? The jaw seems to be longer, but both reconstructions show the mouth open, while the photo of Silas shows the mouth closed.

According to google its about 14 hours from where Silas came from, to where John Doe was found. Problem is, John Doe was found near the I-65 but according to google maps, the I-65 isn't near Saraland
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=...&daddr=charleston,+south+carolina&btnG=Search

[font=arial,verdana,geneva,lucida][size=-1]http://www.doenetwork.us/cases/262umal.html[/size][/font]








Reconstruction #1 on left, Silas in center, Reconstruction #2 on right

Unidentified Biracial Male

* Located on December 5, 1999 near I-65 in Saraland, Mobile County, Alabama.
* The time of death may have been 1 year prior to discovery.

Vital Statistics

* Estimated age: 50 - 65 years old
* Approximate Height and Weight: 5'7"- 5'11"
* Distinguishing Characteristics: His race is a mixture of Black, Native, and White. He had an old right shoulder injury and an injury to the right side of the head. The wound to his shoulder is arthritic in nature; the wound to his head is a fracture that could possibly be the cause of death. The victim had broken his nose at least once prior to death.
* Dentals: Available. Prior dental repairs and a non-specified gum disease.
* Clothing: He was wearing a short sleeved polo-style Knights of Roundtable brand shirt with horizontal green stripes, size large; Long dark trousers labeled Magic Stretch by Haggar with 33 inch inseam; and white boxer style briefs. No shoes or socks at the scene.
* AKA: Authorities refer to him as "Woody".

Case History
The victim was located in Saraland, Alabama on December 5, 1999 by someone walking through dense woods near Interstate 65.

I submitted this and have received confirmation that they are looking into the possibility.

http://www.nampn.org/cases/sessions_silas.html

Silas was declared deceased by probate court in 2006.

Not all missing persons get national attention
Published on 07/12/01
BY EDWARD C. FENNELL
The Post and Courier Staff
Susanna Snipe of Charleston thinks missing Washington, D.C., intern Chandra Levy gets way too much publicity - while her son's missing person case languishes in obscurity two years later.

Snipe actually called Charleston police this week and told them so.

"I told them I was tired of hearing about her and that I wanted to hear them talk about my son," Snipe said Wednesday.

She said that maybe if her son - 57-year-old Silas Sessions - was given the around-the-clock, all-channels, all-newspapers publicity that is being given Levy, maybe he could be found.

Local investigators can't decide which cases will get news coverage, but many agree with Snipe that publicity can help them solve missing-persons cases.

"Publicity is very important, especially in cases where there is very little information to work with," Charleston police Detective David Bridges said.

Charleston County Sheriff's Office spokesman Mitch Lucas said news coverage, including the showing of pictures of the missing person, often helps turn up new clues. Publicity often brings in new information about sightings beyond those already known about by the missing person's closest relatives and friends, he said.

Lucas said police get scores of missing persons reports every month. In most of them, the person reported missing turns up or is found within 48 hours, he said.

Many missing adult cases turn out to be related to domestic troubles.

"Someone goes off by themselves for whatever reasons and doesn't realize that there will be manhunts and police getting involved," Lucas said.

In a few cases, publicity won't help.

The local press gave extensive coverage to the 1998 disappearance of a Berkeley County woman, Shannon McConaughey, Lucas noted. But no one saw her alive again - she had been killed and her body hidden the day she vanished.

Missing-child cases generally attract lots of media attention. One of the state's largest manhunts was launched in March when 6-year-old Gabriel Britt was was reported missing from his home in Dorchester County.

The search, and fears expressed that he was abducted, drew national attention. Gabriel was found dead in a pond near his home more than a week after he vanished. The case remains under investigation.

Lucas said the sheriff's office has four open missing-adult cases and six cases of missing juveniles believed to be runaways.

One missing adult is Thomas Young, a man in his 80s suffering from dementia, who was last reported seen at an acquaintance's house on Edisto Island Jan. 13 of last year.

Bridges said the Sessions case is one of two long-standing missing- persons cases Charleston police are probing.

In both cases, searches were conducted and relatives and friends were questioned, but clues stopped coming in long ago.

Both men vanished near hospitals, though there is no reason to suspect the cases are related, and no evidence of foul play was found in either case, he said.

Bridges said Sessions, who lived with his mother on Woolfe Street, was last seen July 9, 1999, leaving Charleston County Memorial Hospital getting into a taxi.

Mark L. Binette, 50, of Hanahan was last seen April 1, 2000, leaving work at the Veterans Administration Hospital on Bee Street.

The media often give a lot of initial publicity to missing-persons cases. But over time, news accounts cease, and the chances of finding the missing person diminish, Bridges said.

All missing-persons investigators would like to see their cases get the amount of publicity that the Levy case has, Bridges said.

But Bridges said he and other detectives in his office are weary of the constant TV coverage.

"Actually, we're all tired of hearing about it," he said.

Anyone with information about local missing-persons cases can call Charleston police at 577-7434, the sheriff's office at 554-4700 or Crime Stoppers at 554-1111.


http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive...712296247.shtml

Helping loved ones find closure
Charleston police unit to focus on missing persons
Published on 08/07/05
BY JOHN CHAMBLISS
Of The Post and Courier Staff
Silas Sessions left home for a pack of cigarettes in July 1999 and never returned.

In the years that followed, the missing persons case changed hands three times. Eventually, it was put on the back burner as detectives focused on new cases.

Now, for the first time at the Charleston Police Department, a missing persons case won't be handed to just any random detective.

On Monday, the department will start what is believed to be the first municipal missing persons unit in the state.

Police Lt. Richard Moser came up with the idea to start the unit. He said he was tired of more attention being paid to a stolen vehicle than a missing person.

"We will now have a detective assigned to (a missing person) the whole time instead of five different detectives."

Moser will oversee Sgt. Sherry Niblock, a 10-year veteran with the department who previously has worked white-collar crimes. A second person should be added to the unit next year. Niblock will be responsible for following every missing persons case, making phone calls to track people down and keeping in touch with loved ones who have filed the reports.

Each year, about 160 people are reported missing in Charleston. Most of the time, they turn up a day or two later. In the past four years, 739 people have been reported missing. Of those, 312 were missing and 427 were runaways.

Currently, there are only two long-term missing persons cases in Charleston. In addition to Sessions, Mark Binette, who was 50 when he disappeared on April 1, 2001, was last seen leaving work at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center on Bee Street.

Binette, who reportedly was suicidal, had been reported missing three previous times. A Highway Patrol trooper found his car at an old weigh station on the westbound side of Interstate 526.

Police scoured the nearby woods, but Binette never turned up.

Binette's mother said she thinks her oldest son wandered into the woods and committed suicide.

"It frustrated me for a while that they couldn't find him," said Barbara Hitch of New Mexico. "But now I've accepted that he is dead."

In the Sessions case, police thought they had a break in November 1999 when someone called the department and told detectives he was Silas Sessions and that he was "OK."

Detectives, though, were unable to determine the caller's identity, and Moser said it might have been a hoax phone call after a news story ran about Sessions.

Sessions' mother, Suzanne Snipe, said her son was taken to a local hospital after he fell on the pavement while returning home from a gasoline station. After he was released, Sessions was about to get into a taxi when he argued with the driver and then walked away.

Snipe's only son was 55 years old when he was reported missing on July 11, 1999. No one has heard from him.

Erin Bruno, lead case manager for the National Center for Missing Adults, has noticed that more local law enforcement agencies have taken an interest in missing adults.

Bruno said that, since the center opened in 2000, police have begun working more closely with national organizations to find people.

"Resources were scarce when this started, but with more national attention, it is changing the way they look at cases overall," Bruno said.

This year, 47,828 adults are listed as missing. Of those, more than 30,000 have been gone for more than a year.

The numbers are higher for children.

Nearly 800,000 children are reported missing each year. Of those, 58,200 children were abducted by nonfamily members; 115 children were the victims of the most serious, long-term non-family abductions called "stereotypical kidnappings"; and 203,900 children were the victims of family abductions, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The missing children are found in more than 95 percent of the cases, the center found.

For Moser, the uncertainty is the worst thing for people who have reported their loved ones missing.

Snipe said she sometimes calls police and asks if there are any new leads in her son's case.

"He never came home," she said. "I wish I knew where he was."

John Chambliss covers crime. Contact him at 937-5573 or jchambliss@postandcourier.com.

http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive...072473154.shtml

Police seek help to find missing man
Published on 10/16/99
BY Staff reports

Charleston police need help finding a 55-year-old Charleston man who has been missing for three months.

Silas Sessions was last seen leav- ing Charleston County Memorial Hospital July 9 and getting into a taxi cab. Sessions lives with his mother on Woolfe Street and needs medication for seizures three times a day. Sessions

He was last seen wearing a plaid shirt, khaki pants and a blue cap. He is about 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 130 pounds.

Anyone with information about Sessions' whereabouts is asked to call Charleston police at 577-7434.


http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive...016240914.shtml

There are two possible matches on the unidentifed namus

https://identifyus.org/en/cases/8490

https://identifyus.org/en/cases/8823

BUT Silas Sessions DNA in namus is "Initial enquiry underway"

https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/2738/0/

Can someone enlighten me here, I mean this was sumitted back in 2009

Am I a nuisance to email namus?

Bumping for Silas...it's now been 21 years.

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)