June 9, 2002
For families, no justice, no rest
They keep lost loved ones in memories and photos, but closure is a distant, painful concept.
By Laura Bauer
News-Leader
In her dream Debbie Schwartz saw the image of her sister Sherrill’s face, blonde curls of hair surrounding it.
It was like Sherrill was trying to tell her something.
Schwartz had this experience six months after her sister, her niece Suzie Streeter and a friend of her niece, Stacy McCall, disappeared in June 1992.
“I had dreams then that felt more like visions,” Schwartz says today from her home in the intermountain West. “They were very powerful impressions that she was not on earth anymore. I was accepting of that.”
While family and friends of three missing Springfield women face another year without them, and another year with the frustrating mystery of what happened, some see the women in their dreams.
Others keep them alive in memories and photos, praying that one day they’ll know what happened that June morning in 1992. A bench dedicated to the women inside the Victim’s Memorial Garden in Springfield’s Phelp’s Grove Park is full of flowers and mementos this weekend, marking the 10th anniversary of the disappearance.
“We know we’ll never forget them. But do we proceed with the other things and now go on with what we have to do? Yes,” says Cliff Williams, Sherrill Levitt’s uncle. “I don’t like that word closure. ... Closure, that’s the buttons on your shirt, the zipper on your britches.”
He stops and leans to his left, reaching out for the sliding glass door of his home outside Strafford, and gives it a push.
“This is closure,” he says as the door slams tight.
Without Sherrill, Suzie and Stacy, these families believe, there is no closure. So they don’t wait for it. They just hope for the day authorities call them and say they have a suspect in the disappearance — and that they have found the remains of the women.
Janis McCall says she is 99 percent sure the women are gone.
“But even if there’s a fraction of an amount of possibility she could be alive, I’d be wrong not to hold that hope,” Janis says. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. ... It’s hard to think of what she might have been, what she could have been.”
The only photo the McCalls keep on their mantle is a picture of Stacy with some of her waist-length brown hair in a ponytail.
Janis and Stu McCall tell their grandchildren about their Aunt Stacy.
And Janelle Kirby, a close childhood friend of Stacy and Suzie, tells her children about the girls she was with the night before they disappeared. Janelle also has taken her 9Ï-year-old stepdaughter to the bench.
Janelle occasionally watches the six hours of videotape from television news agencies from 10 years ago. She cries a lot these nights.
“Before the day I die, I want to know why, who and where,” Janelle says.
Schwartz wants authorities to find the women’s remains.
“The worst part is the disrespect,” Schwartz says. “They had to suffer so much and now their remains are somewhere. ... The only thing I can give to Sherrill is some sort of justice and respect of her remains. The fact that’s denied us as a family is ultimate cruelty.
“It’s bad enough you took them from us,” Schwartz adds, directing her anger at the unknown suspect. “But you don’t even allow us to bury them.”
For families, no justice, no rest
They keep lost loved ones in memories and photos, but closure is a distant, painful concept.
By Laura Bauer
News-Leader
In her dream Debbie Schwartz saw the image of her sister Sherrill’s face, blonde curls of hair surrounding it.
It was like Sherrill was trying to tell her something.
Schwartz had this experience six months after her sister, her niece Suzie Streeter and a friend of her niece, Stacy McCall, disappeared in June 1992.
“I had dreams then that felt more like visions,” Schwartz says today from her home in the intermountain West. “They were very powerful impressions that she was not on earth anymore. I was accepting of that.”
While family and friends of three missing Springfield women face another year without them, and another year with the frustrating mystery of what happened, some see the women in their dreams.
Others keep them alive in memories and photos, praying that one day they’ll know what happened that June morning in 1992. A bench dedicated to the women inside the Victim’s Memorial Garden in Springfield’s Phelp’s Grove Park is full of flowers and mementos this weekend, marking the 10th anniversary of the disappearance.
“We know we’ll never forget them. But do we proceed with the other things and now go on with what we have to do? Yes,” says Cliff Williams, Sherrill Levitt’s uncle. “I don’t like that word closure. ... Closure, that’s the buttons on your shirt, the zipper on your britches.”
He stops and leans to his left, reaching out for the sliding glass door of his home outside Strafford, and gives it a push.
“This is closure,” he says as the door slams tight.
Without Sherrill, Suzie and Stacy, these families believe, there is no closure. So they don’t wait for it. They just hope for the day authorities call them and say they have a suspect in the disappearance — and that they have found the remains of the women.
Janis McCall says she is 99 percent sure the women are gone.
“But even if there’s a fraction of an amount of possibility she could be alive, I’d be wrong not to hold that hope,” Janis says. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. ... It’s hard to think of what she might have been, what she could have been.”
The only photo the McCalls keep on their mantle is a picture of Stacy with some of her waist-length brown hair in a ponytail.
Janis and Stu McCall tell their grandchildren about their Aunt Stacy.
And Janelle Kirby, a close childhood friend of Stacy and Suzie, tells her children about the girls she was with the night before they disappeared. Janelle also has taken her 9Ï-year-old stepdaughter to the bench.
Janelle occasionally watches the six hours of videotape from television news agencies from 10 years ago. She cries a lot these nights.
“Before the day I die, I want to know why, who and where,” Janelle says.
Schwartz wants authorities to find the women’s remains.
“The worst part is the disrespect,” Schwartz says. “They had to suffer so much and now their remains are somewhere. ... The only thing I can give to Sherrill is some sort of justice and respect of her remains. The fact that’s denied us as a family is ultimate cruelty.
“It’s bad enough you took them from us,” Schwartz adds, directing her anger at the unknown suspect. “But you don’t even allow us to bury them.”
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