Every year, there are more than 300,000 reports filed of missing children, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Some are reports of the same runaways. Some are not. Most turn up alive. But there are those - a small number - who do not.
In my last book, Child Last Seen, I wrote about one of those who didn't come back.
Patty Desmond, a teen-aged girl who went missing In Pennsylvania. She vanished in the 1960s, a time when a number of teens ran off, when parents often had to wait 24 or 48 hours before filing a missing persons report. It was a case that few knew about except for her family and investigators.
Today, I'm researching another case involving a missing teen, one that shook a community to the core, one no one can forget. Her family keeps her memory alive. Those who were children at the time are still haunted by what happened.
Both teens are important. Both cases deserve to be memorialized. Both girls should always be remembered.
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