Vanishing without a trace is seemingly impossible but the Springfield Three have been missing for 30 years without any solid leads.
Sherrill’s daughter Suzie Streeter was 19 at the time. She had dreams of following in her mother’s footsteps in being a successful hairdresser. Her friend described Suzie as very outgoing, fun and just a happy person, she was a creature of habit to an “almost OCD to some degree”. Her friend would tease her about where she would park her car in the driveway since it was always the same.
Suzie’s good friend Stacy McCall was 18 at the time of the case. She wanted to attend Missouri University after high school. Her mom would describe her as funny and bubbly, she said that the family would call her “spacey Stacy” because of the things that she would say, her mother comparing them to “a space cadet things”.
Those three women are now known mostly as the Springfield Three.
In June of 1992, the two teens had just graduated high school and were preparing to celebrate with the other seniors in their year. Their original plans were to go to Branson, Missouri and stay at a hotel for the night, partying there for the night. In the morning they would head to Whitewater Park. Last minute, the plans changed. Stacy and Suzie went to a friend’s house, Janelle, to stay the night before heading to Branson together.
As the girls went to Janelle’s they found out there was a large house party celebrating graduation next door. Before they all left to join the party, Stacy called her mom at 10:30 pm, letting her know that the plans had been changed. Janis McCall asked to be called in the morning before they left for the waterpark, just wanting to make sure that her daughter was safe.
The girls quickly realised that there wouldn’t be space for them to stay at Janelle’s place. So, as 2 am rolled around, they left the party, promising Janelle they’d be back in the morning. In separate cars, Suzie and Stacy went back to where Suzie lived with her mom, Sherrill. It is later confirmed that the pair made it there safely, took off their make-up and changed for bed, potentially sleeping in Suzie’s bed.
Morning rolled around and Janelle hadn’t heard anything from her friends and they hadn’t come back to her house as promised. Six hours since they left, Janelle began to call Suzie’s house phone, but there was no answer. Assuming that everyone was still asleep or just hadn’t heard the phone, Janelle tried again getting the same results. Rather than trying a third time, Janelle and her boyfriend, Mike, drove over to the house. They would arrive at 9 am, seven hours since anyone had seen Stacy and Suzie.
Out front three cars were parked up, Janelle noticing that Suzie’s car wasn’t parked in its usual spot. The couple head up to the front door but Janelle stops at the sight of the broken porch light fixture, glass shards covering the floor, her concern was that she was barefoot. Mike sweeps the glass out of the way so that Janelle could make it safely to the door. They go to knock on the door but find the door was unlocked, finding it odd the pair head inside.
Aside from the TV left to play static the home is quiet, Janelle later stated that nothing looked off but she had a bad feeling. Just as they started further into the house, the family dog, Cinnamon came running up to the familiar faces, acting anxious. They would end up thinking that they had just missed the three so Janelle and Mike started to leave. As they were going the phone rang, and Janelle picked up instantly. She was met by a man on the other end making sexual innuendos so she hung up. The phone started to ring again and understandably Janelle hesitates but still picks up. It was the same as before, an unknown man making lewd comments. Finally, the couple left the home. Janelle would later tell the police that Suzie had told her about prank calls of a similar nature, she assumed they were the same person.
Janis McCall had started to worry as well and called Janelle’s home, certain that her daughter was still there since she hadn’t been updated on the change of plans. Janelle was the one to explain that the girls had stayed at Suzie’s home, calming the mother’s worries. Janis decided to trust that her daughter was safe and let her have the space to do her own thing. She would wait 7 hours before attempting to contact her daughter again. Janis calls Sherrill’s house, no answer. She assumes that the phone is broken and drives over to check if her daughter is there.
Janelle and Mike had spent the day not seeing or hearing from Suzie and Stacy so they go back to the house, bumping into Janis. Together they check around for any sign of where Sherrill, Suzie and Stacy could be.
Janis was in Suzie’s bedroom, she finds Stacy’s makeup bag, and her purse alongside Sherrill’s and Suzie’s. It wouldn’t be weird to see but the bags were on the floor. Deciding that was enough evidence in her mind, Janis calls the police and then her husband. Whilst waiting for the police, Janis spots the light on the answering machine and listens to the recorded message. It was another man saying lewd things down the phone. As she listened to the message it didn’t save on the machine, automatically deleted after one listen.
It had been a full day since anyone had seen or heard from Sherrill, Suzie and Stacy.
Whilst they were waiting, Janis began cleaning the home, getting joined by Janelle and Mike. Obviously, they had done it with positive intentions but for the investigation, they had contaminated the crime scene.
When police arrived they noted that Suzie’s bed looked slept in, the girls’ clothing was folded and put away and used make-up wipes were scattered around the room. They found $900 in Janelle’s purse along with car keys and all their jewellery, so they knew that it wasn’t a robbery gone wrong. They found Sherrill’s cigarettes and lighter in the house too which they were told was weird since Sherrill wouldn’t ever willingly leave the house without them. The police tried to recover the message but couldn’t.
With nowhere else to look the police started to look into the women’s past, they started with Suzie’s ex-boyfriend, Dustin. He had recently been arrested for being a part of a grave robbing gang. Suzie knew of his criminal activities as she gave the police a statement about what she knew on March 5th, 1992. The “gang” was set to go to trial in a few months with Suzie set to testify against them. The police questioned Dustin and his friends, they all passed polygraph tests but since they had no evidence the police had to release them, even though none of them had a solid alibi.
The
next person they looked into was Suzie’s older brother, Bart Streeter.
He is nine years older than Suzie and had a bad relationship with his
family that he wanted to work on. He was deemed the black sheep of the
family and kicked from the family home, he had previous struggles with
alcohol and kept his distance from the family since being kicked out.
After a bad break-up, Bart moved back to Springfield, got himself a job
and was working on his drinking problems. To try and re-kindle the
sibling bond, Suzie moved in with Bart but they got into a fight, Bart
got aggressive towards Suzie and she moved back home right away. They
didn’t have a relationship after that.
The police brought Bart in for
questioning. The night that the women went missing he was at his
neighbour’s house, drunk before he went home at 11:30 pm and passed out.
He had no witnesses. Once again he passed a polygraph test and without
evidence, the police were forced to let him go.
The
third lead they got was from an older woman in the neighbourhood who
liked to watch the street. She called the police a few days after the
disappearance, telling them about an unknown green van driving around
the block. She noticed the driver was a young blond woman that appeared
stressed and she could hear a male voice in the back talking to the
driver, aggressively telling her “don’t do anything stupid” or something
similar. She didn’t know about the missing three women which is why it
took so long for her to report what she knew to the police.
The
police show the woman pictures of Sherrill, Stacy and Suzie and the
woman stated that the driver looked like Suzie, she had no description
of the man.
The police had deemed the woman a credible witness and went looking for the van that was described as a greenish-coloured 1960–1970. They ended up buying a van similar and parked it out front of the police station, putting a sign in the window asking for information. They had lots of tips come through but each one was about a van in a different colour.
It went six months without any leads.
On New Year’s Eve 1992, America’s Most Wanted shared information about the Springfield Three. That night a man called the hot line with information and whilst they tried to connect him through to Springfield detectives the call dropped. He didn’t call back and the police couldn’t trace the call.
1993 Steven Garrison came forward claiming to know where the three women were buried but he wanted a plea bargain. He was at a party and a drunken friend confessed to him, so he passed the information to the police. The information he had shared was partially not known to the public. Steven took the police to a burial site. Three search warrants in two states were based on Steven’s knowledge. The site that he took the police to had also been mentioned in a previous missing person case, two women vanished in 1990 but it is not at all related to the Springfield Three. The police more than likely found something at the site either related or unrelated to the case. There was a gag order placed on Steven and the case itself.
A tip from Florida came in claiming that Robert Cox was responsible. He was a highly trained army ranger convicted and sentenced to death for murdering a 19-year-old but the verdict was reversed. The police found out that Cox had moved to Springfield around the time of the disappearance and he worked at the same dealership that Stacy’s dad worked in. He was questioned and said that his alibi was a golf tournament and the morning after he took his girlfriend to church, this was backed by the girlfriend.
In 1995, Cox was arrested in Texas for aggravated robbery. His girlfriend — now ex — told the police that she had lied previously about Cox’s alibi. Springfield police went to Texas to question Cox but he refused to talk with them.
A year later an interviewer with a local reporter, they asked him about the Springfield Three. Cox went on to say “I know that they’re dead” and “I’ll say that” about him knowing that the three were dead. The police were called in to question him but Cox answered in cryptic responses. He remained a person of interest but no evidence and once again the case went cold.
Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall all were legally dead in June 1997 but the case still considers them missing. It was five years later when the police stopped actively working on the case.
Years went by and in 2002 a similar van was spotted at a concrete company. The police went taking cadaver dogs to search the place and they found bones but they were deemed too old to be any of the three missing women.
Another year would go by and a tip would lead the police an hour away to a farm. They found possible blood evidence and a piece of the vehicle that could have been a part of the van. The blood evidence was sent off but came back as inconclusive.
The final potential lead came from a journalist called Kathee Baird. She would get a call in 2007 from a person claiming to have had either a vision or a dream about where the Springfield three were buried. They claimed that they were buried underneath the Cox Hospital south parking garage, which was built a year after the women vanished. Kathee shared the information with the police but they didn’t do anything about the information. Kathee continued looking into the case, hiring a mechanical engineer to use a ground penetrating radar. The worker finds two parallel images in one spot and another nearby perpendicular to the first two. Kathee then tells the worker that she was working on a missing person case to which he also revealed that the images are exactly what he would see going over a grave. Kathee took the scans to the police but they said that the scans weren’t enough for them so she kept on looking before she just randomly stopped searching.
Kathee was interviewed years later and she claimed to know what happened to the women and that Stacy was collateral damage. She also said that she was advised not to say anything and to leave the case alone. She is afraid for her safety but is certain she knows what happened.
Despite Kathee’s certainty about the case, the Springfield Three case is still unsolved 30 years later and Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall are still missing without anything close to giving their family answers.
(originally posted on medium.com/@natasha.leigh)
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