Featured Image Credit: Springfield Police Department
Topics: US News, no-article-matching, True crime
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: US News, no-article-matching, True crime
Three women have still not been found after they disappeared nearly exactly 30 years ago.
Suzanne Streeter, 19, Stacy McCall, 18 and Streeter's mother, Sherrill Levitt, 47, vanished in the early hours of 7 June, 1992.
Despite detectives receiving nearly 10,000 tips, it is yet to be uncovered what happened to the trio, who have since become known as 'The Springfield Three'.
Streeter and McCall had been at a Kickapoo High School graduation party on 6 June.
The pair had been set to have a sleepover at their friend's house, but because it was crowded, decided to return to Streeter's house on East Delmar Street instead.
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They were last seen at roughly 2:00am.
On 7 June, the pair vanished between 2:00am and 7:30am alongside Streeter's mother.
A group including McCall's mother, Janis, came searching for the high school students when they failed to show up to a trip to the White Water Branson amusement park and when Streeter failed to answer her friend Nigel's calls.
When the group got to the house, they saw the trio's cars all in the driveway, but Nigel noted how McCall's car was not parked in its usual spot.
The porch was found covered in glass - the result of two shattered lampposts. The front door was also discovered unlocked.
Upon entering the house, Mrs McCall told True Crime Daily how the Streeter's dog was 'just going crazy, just yipping and crying'.
She noted there were 'no signs of struggle, everything was nice and neat'.
However, peculiarly all three of the woman's purses were in a row next to one another.
Suddenly, the phone rung. Mrs McCall said it was 'lewd sexual content' but someone in the group hit 'delete' presuming it was just a post-graduation prank call.
They didn't initially phone 911 because they believed the trio would return home soon and instead decided to tidy the house in preparation.
The trio were reported missing later that night.
Foul play was suspected and the house was treated like a crime scene.
However, the group who first discovered the trio had gone missing had contaminated the crime scene by unassumingly clearing it up.
The police were resultantly left with 'no threads, hair blood. No DNA [...] Nothing'.
The suspected prank call was also unrecoverable.
While evidence was scarce, the police found a book 'about devil worship and satanic things' in Streeter's room, according to Mrs McCall.
Streeter was also discovered as having recently broken up with a man who had been arrested for grave-robbing - with the high-school student having even agreed to testify against her former boyfriend in a trial set to take place in a matter of months.
"The theory was that they always suspected Suzie of being the one that had turned them in and got them charged with the grave-robbing," stated former chief assistant prosecutor Darrell Moore.
However, the boyfriend and his friends denied any involvement and no evidence linked them to the crime.
Moore noted: "The chief of police at the time cleared them. Some of us do not believe they should be cleared."
Two weeks later, police received a call from a potential eye-witness who claimed to have seen Streeter driving a van while being shouted at by a man.
But the call led nowhere.
"Reports after reports after reports. We've seen theories, everything from space aliens to they were grabbed up in the human-trafficking angle," Springfield Police Sergeant Todd King said.
An army ranger named Robert Craig Cox was suspected because of his previous - since reversed - conviction relating to the murder of a 19-year-old girl and his link to Streeter because of working at the same place as her father.
Despite 'a lot of things' that Cox said not adding up, his girlfriend provided him with a solid alibi. However, after he was arrested for aggravated robbery she changed her tune.
From prison in Texas, Cox also told reporter Dennis Graves he knew the trio were dead. "Yeah, but I just know that they're dead. That's not my theory, I just know that," he said.
Although he vowed to not say more until his 82-year-old mother passed away.
Sergeant King stated: "He's made different statements that of course keeps him as a person of interest, but never has made any true statements to point us in one direction or another. He's never been ruled out."
Another journalist, Kathee Baird also became involved in the case.
She claimed to have received a tip that the trio were buried underneath a hospital parking lot. However, prosecutors questioned the authenticity of the tip.
A high-tech ground-penetrating radar seemingly confirmed the trio's presence, but the timeline didn't fit according to police.
Baird has claimed she's been 'advised to leave this case alone'.
She said: "There is something very dark in this story. Something super-frightening when you get down to it, of who you trust. Just be very careful. There's a reason this case hasn't been solved."
A room in the police department remains dedicated to any tips about the 'The Springfield Three'.
The Streeter Family Blogg also remains active with a £42,000 reward.
Sergeant King resolved: "It's a reminder that the ladies are still missing, we still need to be diligent in what we're doing in hopes of finding them.
"I would love nothing more than to be able to show up at their doorstep and say 'We've figured it out'."
If you have information about the case, contact Springfield Police Crime Stoppers at (417) 869-TIPS.