Season 08 Episode 31: Morning Has Broken

but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to Crimewavetsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to see you on board. It was a hazy summer morning in nineteen ninety two when eighteen year old Janelle Kirby turned her car onto a quiet suburban street in Springfield, Missouri. She'd been up late the night before celebrating her high school graduation when she was running on fumes. Despite this,

she didn't feel tired. If anything, she felt too awake, a little on edge. She'd been trying to reach her friend Susie Streeter since seven a m. But all of her calls had gone to voicemail. It wasn't like her at all, and Janelle couldn't help shake the feeling that something was wrong. Janelle pulled into the driveway of Susie's home, relieved to see her friend's car parked up outside. See, said her boyfriend Mike, who was sitting next to her,

nothing to worry about. Finally, Janelle could relax. She knew she was overreacting after the late night they'd had. Susie had just slept through the calls, but even still, it was strange. She thought that Susie's mum, Cheryl, hadn't picked up the either. She was always up early, even on a Sunday. Janelle parked up and got out of the car. Then, together she and Mike walked up the driveway toward the house. As they climbed up the porch steps, Mike put a

hand on Janelle's arm to stop her. Careful, he said, pointing to the top step. It was covered in tiny shots of broken glass. Janelle looked about, wondering where it had come from. Then she clocked the broken porch light overhead. That's weird, she thought. That feeling of unease which she'd been trying to ignore, grew stronger. They rang the doorbell and waited. Then they rang it again. Growing impatient, Mike knocked hard on the front door, but still no one came.

Janelle pressed her ear to the door, straining to hear any sound from inside. The plan had been to drive to a water park for the day along with another friend of Janelle and SUSY's, named Stacy McCall. As far as Janelle knew, Stacy had spent the night at SUSY's, so both girls should have been there. But the house was completely silent, and after ringing the bell one more time, Janelle and Mike gave up. Janelle spotted a broom leaning up against the side of the house and carefully swept

up the broken glass. Then she and Mike discussed their options. The house was within walking distance of a number of local restaurants. Maybe Sheryl had offered to treat the girls to a post graduation breakfast. Janelle and Mike hovered on the porch, unsure what to do next. In the end, they decided just to wait it out at the house. The missing trio with no doubt to show up soon.

Surely they couldn't have just disappeared. You're listening to Unexplained and I'm Richard mc lean smith for forty seven year old Sheryl Leavitt nineteen ninety two had started on a high note. After years of scrimping and saving from her wages as a cosmotologist, she'd finally been able to afford a down payment on a home of her own. Seventeen seventeen East del Mar Street was a modest house in a lovely historic neighborhood of Springfield, Missouri. It needed some work,

but that suited Sheryl perfectly. She'd always been house proud, but she'd never had the chance to put her own stamp on a place before. For the first half of the year, Chryl spent most of her spare time redecorating the house room by room, transfer forming it into a dream home for herself and her daughter, Susie. At nineteen, Susie was about to graduate from high school. She and her two best friends, Stacy McCall and Jenel Kirby had

spent weeks planning out their graduation weekend. By the beginning of June, they had it all pinned down. After the graduation ceremony, they would attend a series of parties that classmates were hosting all over town. Then they'd drive forty miles south to the nearby city of Branson and spend the night at a fancy hotel. The following day, they'd continue their celebrations with a visit to Whitewater, a thirteen

acre water park in Branson. On the evening of graduation day, June sixth, eighteen year old Stacy went out to dinner to celebrate with her family at a local steakhouse. Afterwards, she gave her mother Janice, a goodbye kiss on the cheek and headed out to the parking lot at the restaurant, where Susie was waiting to pick her up. The two girls headed to three different parties that evening, meeting Janelle

along the way. At some point, they realized they'd been over ambitious with their plan to drive to Branson that night. They decided to stay in town at Janelle's house instead, then drive to the water park. Early the following morning, Stacy called her mum to give her the update and let her know that she was planning to stay the night at Janelle's. It was the last time Janice ever spoke to her daughter. Around one am. On graduation night,

Susie Streeter and Stacy McCall were both flagging. The party they were at was still in a full swing, but both girls wanted to be relatively fresh for the water part the next day. Just as they were debating what to do next, as Siren was hurt approaching the property, then blue lights began to pulse through the window. A neighbor had called the police complaining about the noise, and now they'd arrived to break up the party. The young

women took it as their cue to leave. Janelle was ready to leave too, so she, Stacy, and Susie headed home for the night, but when they arrived at Janelle's they realized there was a problem. A lot of Janelle's family had come from out of town for her graduation ceremony, meaning the house was completely full. Janelle's mother offered to make up beds for the girls on the living room floor,

but Susie had a better idea. She'd just been given a brand new water bed as a graduation gift, and it was more than big enough for two, so she and Stacy decided to stay at Susie's house. Janelle would meet up with them the following morning to drive to Whitewater. That night, Susie and Stacy, in their separate cars, drove away from Janelle's house. Based on the distance, they probably arrived at Susie's house on East Delmar Street sometime around

two fifteen am. The girls both parked their cars in the circular driveway of the house, gathered their belongings, and went inside to bed. While her daughter was out celebrating her graduation, Cheryl Levitt had spent a quiet Saturday night in She spent the evening painting a chest of drawers that she'd picked up at a vintage store and chatting to an old friend on the phone. Around eleven fifteen pm, she told the friend she was planning to get an

early night. Janelle woke up restless early the following morning. Quite the late night, she had no interest in sleeping in, keen to get on the road and make the most of the day. White Water was bound to be busy that weekend, and she wanted to get there for when the doors opened at ten a m. As soon as she was up, she called Susie's house, but there was no answer. She tried again, figuring they were all still probably sleeping still nothing. After three calls, Janelle got a

strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. She brushed it off as best she could, probably feeling more irritated than anxious. Still, she told her boyfriend Mike to get dressed as fast as he could so they could drive over to the house, just to calm her growing nerves. At seventeen seventeen East Delmar Street, all was quiet. Both Stacy and Susie's cars were parked in the driveway and Sheryl's was parked in the car poard to the side

of the house. After cleaning up the broken glass and knocking to no avail, Janelle and Mike sat down on the porch steps and waited under the morning sun. But then Janelle thought to try something they hadn't done yet. Jumping up, she stepped toward the front door and turned the handle. To her shock, the door opened. She looked back at Mike, no longer trying to disguise her unease.

This was a low crime neighborhood, but Springfield wasn't the kind of town where people ordinarily left their doors unlocked, not overnight, and definitely not when you weren't home. Suddenly, they heard frantic yapping from inside the house, accompanied by the teartap of little paws. A brown and black bundle of fur launched itself out at the front door and onto the porch Susie's Yorkshire terrier, Cinnamon. Janelle knew the dog well. She reflexively caught him in her arms, afraid

he'd run out into the road. Thankfully, Cinnamon recognized her and calmed down enough to let Janelle carry him back into the house, But in sight, Cinnamon remained agitated. He ran frantically back and forth between rooms, yapping and whining. Janelle had never seen him act like this before. He

barely made a sound usually. Though Janelle had been inside Sheryl and Susie's home many times before, it didn't feel right tiptoeing around uninvited, and if they had just stepped out for some food, she really didn't want them to come back and find her. In sight, she quickly went from room to room just to make sure there was nothing unto ward. Certainly, from what she could see at first,

everything looked as it always did. Peeking into Susie's room, she saw the bed had clearly been slept in, with both sides of the covers pulled back on a dresser. Next to the bed was the outfit that Stacy had worn to graduation in a neat pile. Next to Susie's clothes, there was also a bikini and a pair of shorts laid out ready for the water park. Aside from that, there was nothing much else to gleam. At a loss, Jeanelle and Mike left Cinnamon inside and headed back to

their car. They made a quick search of the neighborhood, checking on spots where they thought the trio might have gone for breakfast. They asked if anybody had seen them at all, but nobody had, and by then they weren't the only ones who were starting to worry. Janie McCall wasn't too surprised when she didn't hear from her daughter

Stacy first thing on Sunday morning. She knew the girls were out late celebrating, and she was safe in the knowledge that Stacy had gone to Janelle's house for the night. By midday, she was starting to feel anxious. She called Janelle's house to see if the girls were awake yet, but when Janelle's sister answered the phone, she told Janie that Stacy wasn't there. She'd spent the night at Susie's instead, she said. Janis was surprised and slightly irritated. Stacy was

normally very responsible. Janis made a point of making sure her daughter kept her updated at all times if her social plans changed, and when she called Susie's house and nobody answered the phone had left her even more on edgeH Still, she tried to keep things in perspective. Stacy and her friends had probably headed out early that morning to beat the crowds at Whitewater. She thought she didn't

want to be a killjoy on graduation weekend. But as the day wore on with no word from Stacy, Janie could no longer ignore the nauseating knotty feeling steadily growing in her stomach. She called Susie's house again and again, every unanswered call, making the knot Titan. Finally, with dusk approaching, she couldn't stand it any longer. She drove over to Sheryl and Susie's house, accompanied by some other concerned friends and relatives. Janis immediately recognized Stacy's car in the driveway,

just like with Janelle. As soon as Janis and the others entered the house. Cinnamon, the Yorkshire terrier, sprang to his feet and began and yapping, frantically, racing back and forth, heading to the bedrooms at the back of the house. Janie too found Susie's unmade bed and saw her daughter Stacy's outfit neatly folded on the dresser and the swimming outfits too. Moving back into the main house, she then found the three missing women's handbags, with their wallets and

keys still inside. Janice gasped when she opened her daughter's and saw that her bottle of migraine medication was still in side. Stacy had suffered bad migraine since childhood, had never traveled anywhere without her medication in case she felt one coming on at short notice. No longer able to stop the deep panic rising within her, Janie was paralyzed with fear. She called her husband, stew and relayed everything she'd found to him without hesitation. He told her to

call the police immediately. Janie hung up the call with her husband, then called the local police department. The dispatcher asked her if she wanted to be connected to nine one one, since that was the emergency number. Almost without thinking Janice said no, Surely this wasn't an emergency, she told herself, not yet, and so she asked the dispatcher to send an officer over to the house instead. A

young officer named Rick book Out took the call. When he arrived at the house, Janis greeted him anxiously and filled him in on the situation. She emphasized the fact that Stacy was a very responsible girl, not the kind of teenager who might run away on a whim. Officer book Out noted the fact that Stacy, Susan and Sheryl's handbags were all together inside the house, lined up neatly in the living room. That struck him as unusual. So did the fact, according to Janie, all of the clothes

Stacy had with her were inside the house. If she'd gone out willingly somewhere, she must have done so in her pajamas. Book Out also learned that Susie and Cheryl were both heavy smokers, and they'd left their cigarettes behind. To the observant officer, that alone was a red flag. Then Officer book Out took a walk around the perimeter of the house, where he noticed the broken porch light, a couple of shards of glass were still lying on the ground, but most of it seemed to have been

cleared up. It seemed like a clue, perhaps an intruder trying to cover his tracks. But when he began taking statements, he learned from Janelle and Mike, who by then had joined the group at the house, that they had swept a glass that morning. It never occurred to them at the time that they were destroying crucial evidence. Stepping back into the house, the young officer looked about at all the concerned relatives, friends and neighbors, and sighed, if this

was a crime scene, it was now hopelessly compromised. His eyes fell on Cinnamon, the little Yorkie. It was now curled up under a dining chair. If only that little dog could talk, he thought he might be the only creature in the world who knew what had really happened in this house. As he left the property that night, Officer book Out told Janie that he would be filing this as a missing person's report with the suspicion of

foul play. He didn't want to panic her, but it was better she hear it from him than from a local newspaper. In truth, he had a very bad feeling about it all. In the days following their disappearance, the police made efforts to piece together information about Cheryl, Susie, and Stacy's lives. They were on the lookout for anything that might point to a suspect, somebody who might have held a grudge against any of the women. There was no sign of a struggle or forced entry at the house.

Investigator's best guess was that the women had left willingly, perhaps with someone they knew or trusted. Cheryl's colleagues at the salon where she worked described her as reliable, hard working, and well liked, close to a model employee. That'd been no indication that there was anything wrong in her life. In fact, she seemed to be in a better place than ever after moving into the new house. Susie and Stacy were both known as dependable and responsible girls, not

trouble makers or likely runaways. But after a few days police did identify one potential lead. Susie had an ex boyfriend named Dustin Reckler, who'd recently had some significant run ins with the law. The previous year, Dustin and two of his friends had been arrested for crave robbing. They'd broken into a Springfield Mausoleum and tried to steal gold fillings from a corpse's mouth. It was a particularly disturbing

crime that had horrified the local community. Susie broke up with Dustin around this time and had reportedly been due to testify against him in an upcoming court case. According to various unconfirmed reports, an acquaintance of Dustin's overheard him wishing Susie dead before her discas appearance. Dustin was promptly called in for questioning along with one of his grave robbing accomplices, but due to a lack of any significant evidence,

the pair were released soon after. Another tip came in from a woman who lived only a few streets away from Sheryl and Susie. She recalled that on the morning of June seventh, she was sitting out on her front porch at around six thirty am when she saw a green van park up in the street. This was notable to her, not just because it was before dawn on a Sunday morning, but also because she knew everybody on

her street. The neighbor claimed she saw a distressed looking young woman in the driver's seat who looked as if she'd been crying. Then she heard a man ordering the young woman to back up and get out of here. Seconds later, the van screeched into motion. When the neighbor saw the news about the missing women the following day, she recognized Susie, asked the woman in the driver's seat. The police did what they could to pursue the tip, but ultimately failed to track down the van or find

any corroborating witnesses. In the end, just like all the others in the case, this lead went cold. Five years after the Springfield Three, as they became known, disappeared, an incarcerated kidnapper named Robert Craig Cox gave an interview to a local reporter claiming that he'd been involved in the crime. Speaking to Dennis Graves from KY three TV, Cox stated that Sheryl, Susie, and Stacy had been murdered and that their bodies would never be found. I know that they're dead.

I'll say that, and of that that's not a cleary yeah, but I know that they're just sad as you know that they're dead. Cox was a highly decorated army ranger with a history of abducting women. He moved to Springfield a few weeks before the three women went missing, but he also worked with Stacy's dad at a local car dealership.

Had he stalked Stacy and followed her to Sheryl and Susie's home the night they went missing, the police had more than enough reason to bring him in for questioning, but he was soon released when his girlfriend gave an alibi for the night in question. The only thing was when Cox was arrested some time later for a different offense, his girlfriend seemed no longer willing to back him up,

and she retracted her initial alibi statement. In the end, police decided that Cox, who was a notorious fabuloist, was messing with them. A suspected serial killer by the name of Larry de Wayne Hall has also been put forward as a possible suspect. Although Hall has never been convicted of murder, he's currently serving a life sentence for kidnapping and is suspected of killing dozens of women and girls during the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. In nineteen ninety two,

Hall reportedly spent a lot of time in Springfield. Given that his preferred approach was to abduct women from their own homes, Many have theorized that he could have been involved, but this too, has never been corroborated. One long standing rumor posits that the women's bodies may be buried underneath

the Springfield Hospital. At the time of their disappearance, the parking garage of Springfield's Cox Health Hospital was under construction just five minutes from the house on East Delmar Street. In two thousand and seven, local crime reporter Kathy Baird hired a specialist to conduct the ground penetrating radar survey

at the hospital's parking garage. That survey reportedly detected three anomalies of a size and shape that indicated human remains, but this theory has been dismissed by the Springfield police as implausible. Despite receiving nationwide attention and being featured in an episode of America's Most Wanted, the disappearance of the Springfield three is a complete and horrifying mystery. No arrests have ever been made, no solid theory of the case

has ever emerged. Today, a bench dedicated to Sheryl, Susie, and Stacy stands inside Springfield's victim's memorial garden, but it has done little to stymy the gaping hole of grief that their loved ones continue to carry to this day. The question of what really happened on that night June sixth, nineteen ninety two remains to this day Unexplained. This episode was written by Emma Dibden and produced by Richard McLain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained as an Avy

Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or

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