ID ID - Pocatello Abductions, 1978-1983

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Whatever happened to the single mother that one of the dead girls babysat for? Is she still in the area?
 
Not as far as I know. I never got the vibe that anyone really cared to find out who she was
 
The whole thing is sad--it seems as though law enforcement doesn't want to do their job. I still want to know, in the case of Linda Smith,what crime the family knew about that the suspect committed.
 
In many large cities crime rates have declined significantly and resources are available to seriously pursue Cold Cases. Many high profile arrests have been made in cases that were long cold. These arrests are good PR for Police and DA's and these municipalities are willing and able to spend the money.

In small towns, the situation can be quite different. Crime rates are often rising and many towns are experience finical problems. (I have no idea what the situation is in Pocatello and surrounding counties). Many civic leaders may perceive the call to re-open a cold case to be a demand to spend money they can't afford. Re-opening cold cases also opens the past investigations to serious scrutiny. Some solved cold cases have proven very embarrassing to detectives and administrators who are now retired. In big city departments, folks retire and disappear and nobody cares too much about their reputations. In smaller towns, retired police chiefs are often "civic leaders" with considerable clout. I have no evidence or information that any fiscal or political factors are hampering these investigations.

There is no Statute of Limitation on murder so these cases are "technically" open even if no one is doing anything. There is no FOIA access to information. Police Chiefs, Sheriffs or the director of whatever LE agency has jurisdiction has absolute discretion as to what information on a high profile Cold Case to disclose. In some situations, the entire case "folder" is turned over to the media in hopes that publicity will shake out new leads. In other cases, there is a complete information "black-out". The justification is usually that they don't want to "jeopardize an open investigation" but as often as not, they just want the case to go away and be forgotten.

I don't know what is going on in Pocatello but anyone in the area would have a better idea. Local media can run stories and the public can put pressure on but there is really no way to force a Dept to reopen an investigation or disclose information. It might be worth a try.
 
scriptgirl said:
Found this forum-Apparently, Linda Smith's family knows who killed her.

http://missing87975.yuku.com/topic/3749/Linda-Smith-Murder-1981#.UEfecI1lTZg
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Interesting, thanks for the link! Having grown up in Pocatello, I have a couple of thoughts. (Bear with me, though, I've tried to forget much of Pocatello, as IMO it's a repressive, soul-sucking place, so my input is from the best of my recollection).

The article states that Linda's clothing was found a week later, by a motorist, near the Pocatello Creek Road Exit. There's only like, 4 exits in the whole dang town, all coming off of I-15. The Pocatello Creek exit and the Center Street exits were the ones most used when I lived there. The Pocatello Creek exit takes you to Highland High School, which was one of two high schools back then (now there's a third). I wish the article was more specific about which exit ramp specifically...If you're going northwest on I-15 and get off the Pocatello Creek exit, there's only a bit of a "shoulder" on the side of the road, with low vegetation, then a hotel and other businesses right nearby. That area has a lot of motorist traffic and a fair amount of pedestrian traffic, so I find it odd that her clothing wasn't found for a week. Perhaps it was seen, but dismissed as trash until the one motorist actually called it in? If it was on the other exit ramp, there's a little more vegetation and a little less pedestrian traffic, but still it would seem odd to me no one would notice the clothing, unless as mentioned above, no one took note of them enough to reported them until a week later.

So, they lived on 8th street. Her body was found near Hospital Way. Her clothes by Pocatello Creek exit. So my guess is, the perp drove her from 8th over to Center Street, then up Center Street, to the hills by the hospital, where he killed her, and because her clothes weren't on her, perhaps sexually assaulted her as well. Then he took the clothes with him, got back on I-15 heading northwest, and got off the next exit, which is the Pocatello Creek Road exit, throwing her clothing out of the vehicle? Or, perhaps more likely depending on exactly where the clothes were found, he tossed her clothes out the window while still on I-15 but near the Pocatello Creek road exit, then kept on I-15 and out of town.

Hmm...okay I'm at work so I gotta go b/c my break is over, but I'll check in again soon.

I'm so glad to see these cases here...the Cindy Bringhust one was the one I remember most vividly, and I remember my sisters and I being scared and confused about it all. Also, I played at Alameda Park a lot, which is where the two girls disappeared from the Pioneer Days celebration...these were also the days when we weren't allowed to go in bathrooms at parks (I don't remember exactly why but I think we were told it was something to do with gay sex...) and Alameda Park's bathrooms were the most notorious, at least in my circle of friends/family.

Pocatello's an odd little town. (See the Jeralee Underwood case for more awfulness--at least that one was solved, but still gruesome)...whenever I read a Stephen King book about Derry, Maine, I think it could have just as easily have been written about Pocatello.

Oh! one more thing!!! In the article about Linda, it states that her mother was told she'd been seen around town. Now, this isn't a one-stop-light-only town, but it's not that big, either, so I'm skeptical about those sightings.

Also, does anyone happen to know of the religious backgrounds of any of these girls?
 
Flourish, thanks so much for your input. Have you visited the lewiston civic cases thread? If not, please do! you might know something there. Also, do you have any idea of the ID of the guy that is the main suspect in Linda's case?
 
Kimster, thank you so much for featuring this case! I hope that we can get new info on it and bring peace to the families.
 
Are they able to collect any DNA evidence at this point or were the remains mishandled too?
 
sorry I haven't gotten back here yet...haven't forgotten, I just need to be emotionally prepared when even thinking about Pocatello...

it was a trip to login this AM and see downtown Pocatello on the front page of WS!!!

thanks, Kimster, and Kemo and all :)

Idaho is bigger than people realize...so I don't know anything helpful re: Lewiston cases...only ever driven through once :)
 
kemo said:
Flourish,

You got it. Actually Linda Smith's body was found in a vacant lot very close ot town off Hospital Way. Cindy's body was found in the West Branch of Mink Creek; about 75 miles from town. This is a pretty remote spot.

Overall, a stranger passing throuigh doesn't just pick two homes at random and abduct 14 year old girls. He knew that Linda lived where she did and he knew where Cindy was babysitting. This is a guy with ties to the families involved. Since you grew up there, did you hear any rumors of who did it?
Click to expand...

Did the girls go to school together? Perhaps they were all on the same mail route or garbage route, delivery of some sort route? Were they connected by activity?
 
At the time, there were four junior high schools and two high schools in Pocatello. Alameda Jr. High is, IIRC, where Lynette Culver (Ted Bundy) attended school (as did I many years later). It is now an alternative school. There there's Irving Jr. High, Hawthorne Jr., and Franklin Jr. High. The high schools then were Pocatello Senior High School and Highland Senior High School.

I don't remember where Cindy Bringhurst attended jr. high--I wanna say Franklin or Alameda, because for some reason I thought her family lived over in the "Hyde Street" area, which would be one of those schools.

It depends on where on 8th Street Linda lived--anyone know the exact address? But there's a good chance she also attended Alameda.

Creepy, too, is that the two girls who went missing in '78 went missing from what was then called "Alameda Park."

Background--back in the day (I don't know how far back), Pocatello was made up of the town of Alameda and the town of Pocatello, with Chubbuck being an outlying farming community. Inevitably, as town growth occurred, Alameda and Pocatello merged and Pocatello absorbed Alameda (and Chubbuck is now right up next to Pocatello. When you look at a map of Pocatello, you can see a section where angled streets meet up with streets that are in a more traditional "grid." This merging is at E. Oak, if you wanna check out the google map to get a feel for the layout of the town.

I really wish I remembered more about the Cindy Bringhurst case, but at the same time, besides where her body was found, I would have been getting my info from my siblings/cousins and parents and the local news, and the news and the newspaper were only getting their info from the police, so ... that's not much. It's not like Pocatello is a big draw for investigative journalists. Also, a lot of the rumors I did hear came via my cousin who is a pathological liar of Casey Anthony proportions, so although there's a name I remember her insisting to me was this creepy pervert teacher guy at, surprise, Alameda Jr. High, I have to take anything she has ever said with a ginormous cellar of salt.
 
I was thinking of the gap in time between cases and how these girls in particular were targeted. A teacher who had each in his classroom over the years, or a preacher, store clerk, sports instructor, or a peripheral person in a location like a school, say janitor, could have seen all the girls over time. Something they all did, perhpas. Maybe not at the same time, but with the same person. Were they Girl Scouts, 4J, have the same pediatrician? Was there a hang out area the local teens and tweens may have gone to (in my town, it was The Cross)?

I would be great to see police reports and such on this case. It's really intriguing.
 
Flourish, thank you for your info. I think that a serial killer took all these girls, but I am not sure if the same perp took Linda. how far are Pocatello and Lewiston from each other?
 
scriptgirl said:
Flourish, thank you for your info. I think that a serial killer took all these girls, but I am not sure if the same perp took Linda. how far are Pocatello and Lewiston from each other?
Click to expand...

Pocatello and Lewiston are about 550 miles apart:) Pocatello is in the south-east corner while Lewiston is north up by the Washington and Oregon borders. I think of Idaho as being made up of 3 parts: The southeastern section, which includes Pocatello, Idaho Falls, and then some outlying littler towns. Then there's the Boise area, which I lump Twin Falls in. Then there's "Northern Idaho" aka "the panhandle." Since my family actually came from a town on the Idaho and Utah border, most of my travels from Pocatello were south versus west or north, so that's part of why I don't know much about the other areas--I've only even been to Boise once.

If I had to make a wild guess, I'd guess that perhaps my crazy cousin wasn't too far off and maybe it was a teacher at Alameda Jr. High. As far as I know, there have been no missing and then murdered girls since Cindy Bringhurst...when I have more time, I'll have to see if I can confirm that the teacher who my cousin talked about was even an actual person who taught there.

Upthread I asked about religion. What a lot of people don't realize is that the southeastern part of Idaho has a very large population of Mormons. I found this link: http://www.bestplaces.net/religion/city/idaho/pocatello which states that at the time of that particular study (sorry don't know what year) out of the people in Pocatello who identified themselves as "religious," 44% were Mormon. I'd bet that percentage was higher in the past. In my experience, pretty much everyone knew who was and wasn't Mormon, and often the Mormon children were discouraged from playing with non-Mormon children, unless, of course, it was an effort to convert the non-Mormon child. With such a high population of Mormons, you can imagine how the non-mormon kids felt--in my elementary classes, there were usually just a small handful of non-Mormons--the Mormons had the majority by far.

I'm gonna pause here and add a disclaimer: This is all from my perspective having lived there from the age of 5 to the age of 25. So, I'm not saying my experience and perspective is the same as other people who lived there.

For those that don't know much about the setup of the Mormon church, here's a quick overview in order to add some additional information, background and a hint at the culture of Pocatello, which is very intertwined with the LDS (Mormon) church:

  • Mormons attend services at a local church which is dependent on geography. For example, all the kids in my immediate neighborhood all went to school AND church together. You don't get to choose which congregation to attend--it's assigned. If you move, you get assigned to a new church and the church automatically forwards all your information to the bishop at the new ward. This happens regardless of whether a person want it to or not.
  • Each "congregation" is referred to as a "ward." The wards then are grouped together into "stakes," then stakes are grouped into "regions."
  • If a person was baptized into the Mormon church, which they do at age 8, that person is on the Mormon records for the rest of their lives and even after that, unless they are excommunicated (kicked out) or specifically make a written resignation and/or request for the removal of their name from the church records. Point being, this church keeps its eyes on its members and doesn't let go easily.
  • At the age of 12, boys are given the lower of the two levels of Mormon priesthood. The leader of the ward, who in other churches would be a pastor or priest, is a layman member of the ward, who usually works a full-time job in addition to being the bishop of the ward. The bishop oversees everything in the ward, from speaking in "sacrament meeting" (chapel) to holding regular 1:1 interviews with the ward's youth (which I found to be an extremely uncomfortable conversation--a young girl alone in a closed office with a much older man who is also an authority figure and he's asking if you "touch yourself" or "let boys touch you"--can you imagine?)
So what does this have to do with the missing girls? Well, if they were Mormon, then it would be prudent to look at which wards they attended, which stake, and then look at the members of the church, as well as the members of the bishopric or sake council. Even if they weren't all in the same ward, there are group activities which include many wards, so there's that, too. From my experience, Mormon children are taught not to question religious leaders, so the killer could use that to his advantage, particularly if they were "high up" in the church.



Even if the girls didn't attend school, if they had been baptized, or sometimes even if their parents had been baptized, they would have more than likely been visited by church representatives on a somewhat regular basis who would be making efforts to "reactivate" family members who had stopped going to church. (Even if a person hasn't attended church for twenty years, trust me, they still come a'knockin).


From what I can remember, for some reason I have the general impression that Cindy Bringhurst was not a member of the Mormon church, or if she was, she wasn't "active." I have no idea about two other girls who went missing from the Pioneer Days at Alameda park, except that the Pioneer Days celebration is put on by the Mormon church, as it is a celebration of when the first Mormon pioneers finally made it to the Salt Lake Valley (July 24th). However, non-Mormons also attended those celebrations because they were more extravagant and carnival-like than any local Independence Day celebrations.


I think I had more of a point going here, but I'm exhausted and losing my train of thought, so I'm gonna stop for now:)


I hope this information is helpful, at least for getting a feel for the town and its people.


Oh! I remember one thing I wanted to mention--Mormons have a reputation for taking care of their own. They have their own welfare system and food banks, etc. When a Mormon family is in need, there's usually tons of fellow Mormons there to help. When a non-Mormon family is in need, well...it basically depends on a lot of factors which go into deciding if the church will help them and in what capacity and what strings, if any, are attached to the help.

When Jeralee Underwood went missing and was murdered and found (someone saw her get abducted and they identified the guy quickly, but it was still too late), the Underwood family, who were Mormon members, received a lot of support. Granted, that happened in 1993 (+/-), so it was a decade later and I was a decade older, but I don't remember the same kind of outpouring for the families of the girls we're discussing here.

So, I don't think it's absurd for me to suggest that it's possible that the investigations of these girls may have been hampered, consciously or not by their family's religious status. jmo so don't throw any stones at me:)


Later :seeya:
 
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