Welcome to Mysteries of the Missing, a podcast and blog about missing person's cases. You can find my podcast, my blog, and my social media pages on my Linktree at: https://linktr.ee/MysteriesoftheMissing.
Keep in mind that I am only reporting the events of what have happened, per my research through various media outlets. I’m not trained in any way in true crime. Instead, I'm a published author who loves to blog. Also, I’m solely a human being that’s trying to do my part to get the message of the story of "The Springfield Three" out there so that one day, hopefully, they may be found, and their case may be solved. Join me as I dive into the last day that people saw Sherrill, Suzanne, and Stacy, and what happened after they were last seen.
Sherrill Elizabeth Levitt Suzanne (Suzie) Streeter Stacy Kathleen McCall
Springfield is the third biggest city in the state of Missouri. It boasted of a 2020 population of over 169,000 people. This is not a small city by any means, but it's also not huge. It would be your quintessential, suburban, American town. Some of the things that Springfield is known for are "The Bible Belt" (due to its affiliation with an abundance of Christianity), "The Trail of Tears" (which is situated in the heart of Springfield), and the well-known store of Bass Pro Shops (Heaven-on-Earth for fishermen and women) makes its home there. The city is primarily white, with a total of 87% of its population being Caucasian, with a small percent of black and two or more races at a total of 9%.
The history of Springfield contains lynching's, country music, and a battle between the Confederate and Union Armies for the area during the Civil War. Based on that information, the city's history doesn't have much respect from me. While I do love country music, as I was raised on it, I don't love the racist history I discovered about this city.
Many of the residents stated that before the three women in this case I'm covering today went missing, it was a safe place. No one locked their doors.
What I want to focus on here, though, are the missing people: Sherrill Elizabeth Levitt, Suzanne (Suzie) Streeter, and Stacy Kathleen McCall. The group went missing from Sherrill's home on June 7, 1992, so this is a pretty old case. In fact, June 7, 2023 marked the 31st year of the trio's disappearance.
Sherrill was raised in Bellevue, Washington with her dad, mom, and sister Debra. Debra says that Sherrill was always looking after her. Side note: I've been to Bellevue and it's a beautiful area. My husband and I have run several races there.
At the time she went missing, Sherrill was 47 years old. A cosmetologist at New Attitudes Hair Salon, Sherrill was a single mother to Suzie. Suzie and Sherrill had just moved into a new home in April, before they disappeared in June. Sherrill was known to be a model employee at her salon. One of Suzie's friends stated that Sherrill was always welcoming to Suzie's friends.
Suzie had a small tumor in the left corner of her mouth, which made her look like she was sucking on something. She planned on following in her mother's footsteps by going into Cosmetology. Suzie worked at the local movie theater. One of her coworkers said that Suzie was always happy, pleasant, and was a "good human."
Sherrill's sister Debra stated that Stacy was a "sweetheart of a girl" and "simply beautiful." Stacy modeled at a local bridal shop and worked at Springfield Gymnastics. According to Stacy's mom, Janis, she was always helping others.
Suzie and Stacy met in second grade. They grew apart and didn't start hanging out again until three to four weeks before graduation.
The day before they went missing, best friends Suzie and Stacy had just graduated from Kickapoo High School on June 6, 1992. On June 7, 1992, Suzie and Stacy attended graduation parties, where they were last seen by their peers. Their original intention was to spend the night in Branson to go to a waterpark the next day, then at their friend Janelle's house, but after deciding that it was too crowded there, the pair decided to spend the night at Suzie's and Sherrill's house. After 2 am, they headed home from Janelle's. Since the girl's jewelry, clothing, cars, necessary medication, and purses were found at the house the next day, it was assumed that the girls arrived there.
Stacy & Suzie at their graduation from Kickapoo High School on June 6, 1992
The night they went missing, Sherrill was last heard from at 11:15 pm by a friend on June 6 (the evening that Suzie and Stacy graduated), whom she told that she was painting an armoire.
At around 7 a.m on June 7, 1992, Janelle tried unsuccessfully to call Suzie's house. Then, at about 12:30 p.m, Janelle and her boyfriend arrived at Suzie and Sherrill's house because Suzie and Stacy were supposed to come to her house so they could all drive to the waterpark together. Of course, Suzie and Stacy didn't arrive, so Janelle was worried. What was jarring was that Janelle found the door unlocked, the porch lamp shade shattered, and no sign of her friends or Sherrill. Also, the cars of all three women were found at the home.
The women were gone...but their cars weren't. Did they walk somewhere, or did someone take them with their own car?
Sadly, Janelle and her boyfriend swept up the broken glass from the porch lamp shade, which police stated could have gotten rid of evidence. They were just trying to help, but they destroyed something that could've been tied back to the kidnapper. Word to the wise: If you feel weird about something and you discover your friends are gone when they say they will meet you, do not touch anything.
Sherrill and Suzie's house in Springfield, Missouri
What happened to Janelle next would have freaked me out: When she and her boyfriend went into the house, the phone rang and a strange man started speaking sexual things to Janelle. Scared, Janelle hung up, then another call came in from the same man, and she hung up again. Thank God Janelle wasn't alone, that her boyfriend was with her. However, this makes me think that the person knew Janelle was in the house, and was perhaps watching her. But how? It was 1992 and the cell phones at that time were very primitive, as well as the fact that not everyone had them.
The family dog appeared agitated, as if something had happened. Animals usually know when something is wrong, and they pick up on the feelings of their owners. Clearly, the dog was mirroring what The Springfield Three had felt when they went missing. Spooky.
After not receiving word from her daughter, Stacy's mother Janis came to the home to find out what was up. She discovered both Sherrill's and Suzie's cigarettes were still in the home, and they never went anywhere without them. They were chain smokers. In addition, Stacy's clothes were folded neatly and the trio's purses were left on the floor. Immediately, Janis called the police from the home phone to report the women missing. In the process, she listened to a strange message on the answering machine from the same man who had said obscene things to her on the phone...and was the second person to mess with evidence. She erased the voicemail! Now, I get that Janis may have been trying to find out where her daughter was. She was doing this innocently, as a scared mother obviously, but...I'll say it again: If you discover your daughter, her friend and her friend's mother are missing, do not mess with anything.
In fact, the police believe that the crime scene may have been corrupted by between ten to twenty people. Guys, this is not a small number when it comes to a crime scene.
Your intentions may be good -- clean up a mess, see if you can figure out if the message is tied to where your daughter is -- but your actions may impede a case being solved. Please for the love of God keep that in mind.
Back to the case: It was sixteen hours from the time Janis McCall reported the three women missing and the last time someone heard from or saw them. That's a long time, and if they were kidnapped, it gave their abductors plenty of time to get away and have their way with the women.
When Officer Bookout of the Springfield PD finally arrived, he said that he knew that people always went missing so he thought it was possible that the three women went missing on their own accord. (I've heard that before!) He noticed the same things that Janis and Janelle did, in addition to the fact that Sherrill's bed looked like it had been slept in. No sign of a struggle was noted, except for the porch lamp shade being shattered.
Something insensitive was then asked of Janis by Officer Bookout: "Could you get your daughter's dental records?" Yes, the police would need those, but do you think this was the time or place to ask that? Maybe the officer thought he was getting on board quickly in case a body would be found, but imagine being a scared mother who had just called the cops, and you get asked this. Janis was also a Dental Hygienist, so she would have known exactly why a cop would ask for her daughter's teeth. How disheartening would that be?
As Officer Bookout left the home, he locked the door and left a note for the three women to call the police department to cancel the search when they came back home. I think that was smart, and I've never known a police officer or investigator to do that. Unfortunately, the women never called the police department.
The Springfield Police Department used divers to search Lake Springfield and the James River, but nothing turned up. The whole area is covered in dense forest. Stacy's mom asked for hunters to be on the lookout when they were hunting. 60 people searched with all terrain vehicles and by foot but nothing came up.
Houghton Lake is about an hour from Springfield and many families go fishing there. One of the officers with details went to search in that area. A fisherman at Houghton Lake said that when he brought up his artificial feed, it had blonde hair on it. Did the hair belong to the women? No, it turned out to be moss.
This case got a lot of coverage within the first few months after the women went missing: The FBI got involved just two days later, on June 9, 1992. In addition, more than 20,000 missing person's posters were posted around Springfield and CBS, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and 48 Hours covered the women's cases after they disappeared.
After the three went missing, Janis McCall had a dream that Stacy was tied to a high-backed chair. Super creepy.
Just six days later on June 12, 1992, an anonymous tip came in. It was in a sealed envelope left in a newspaper box in a grocery store and it said, "used ruse of gas man checking for leaks." It was a dead end.
On June 15, 1992, police switched back to investigating the house and the neighborhood. Neighbors reported seeing a transient with long, scraggly hair near the house prior to the disappearance. A gas station clerk, Steve Thompson, stated that he saw the women on the night of their graduation. They came in, bought a couple of things, and left in separate cars. Stacy was in a gold car with a man in his 30's with long black hair and a mustache. Guess what? He matched the transient described by the neighbors. Supposedly, Steve said that Sherrill came in at 2:15 am, after Stacy and Suzie left, to ask if he had seen her daughter and her friend.
On December 31, 1992, a man called America's Most Wanted with information about The Springfield Three's case, but his call was disconnected by the phone operator who attempted to transfer him to the Springfield Police Department. Face palm...yet another mishap occurred with this case. The Springfield Police believed this man had evidence that could solve the case, and they responded by begging the man to call them. He never did call in anywhere about the case again.
Flash forward to 2007: Investigators received a tip (I did not find out from whom in my research) that the women's bodies were buried under the foundations of the south parking garage at Cox Hospital. Crime Reporter Kathee Baird and mechanical engineer Rick Norland used ground penetrating radar to scan the area, and they found three anomalies "consistent with a grave site." The parking garage was built in September 1993, over a year after the women went missing. This means that the person who provided the tip may have a.) been the kidnapper and possible murderer, and/or b.) may have been affiliated with the kidnapper and/or possible murderer. Investigators said that the tipster didn't provide them with the way or reason that they knew this information, but one can guess how this individual knew what they did.
Unfortunately, the SPD decided not to dig up the area "because it would be too costly." Excuse me? If this was your daughter or wife, wouldn't you want the police to do everything they could to find your loved one?
The SPD admits they didn't place much emphasis on the tip anyway, due to the fact that it was later revealed at the tipster was a psychic who had a dream or vision about the missing women's case. I may be mystical, but sometimes, psychics are right. Yes, other times, they may mess up a case or may provide wrong information, but in this case: Why were there anomalies found in the parking garage that resembled graves, which was proven by an expert? I think the police dropped the ball in this case, and by now, it's not surprising to me: Nearly every case that I've covered has been one in which the investigators haven't done their job right or at all.
Potential suspects and situational theories include the following:
Usually, the loved one is the first suspect that the police look at when someone goes missing, and this case is no different. Dustin Recla, the ex-boyfriend of Suzie, was in the area with his friends the night she went missing. What's so odd about Dustin? Three months before Suzie went missing, he stole gold fillings from a skull from a mausoleum. You have to be pretty desperate to rob gold from the mouth of a dead person...and pretty sick, too. But does that make you a killer or a kidnapper? Maybe, maybe not.
However...Dustin didn't commit his theft alone. Two friends, Michael and Joseph, also stole with him. Suzie gave a statement about the theft before she broke up with Dustin, and she stated that she was afraid that she would have to testify in court. Subsequently, Michael said that he would like to see the three women dead. Michael and Dustin were called in for questioning but were let go because of the lack of evidence and are still considered suspects to this day.
Bartt (Suzie's estranged brother and Sherrill's estranged son) was also considered to be a possible POI (person of interest). He was known to be an alcoholic, and not surprisingly, his alibi was that he came home and passed out from drinking too much. No one could back up his story, but he did pass a polygraph test. I have questions if his home or vehicle were searched by police or not, though. It doesn't appear that they did search anything belonging to him, which wouldn't be shocking to me. When Bartt was arrested for public intoxication in 2019 in Tennessee, he was investigated again about the case by the SPD, but was let go. Bartt isn't very active on social media but he does run an online forum called The Streeter Family Blogg, where he tries to investigate what happened to his sister.
When it comes to SPD, Bartt feels they're not doing their job correctly. He would have to question them and get in their faces to get them to do something about his mom and sister over the years. This is a common occurrence with many police departments involved with the cases I'm reporting on. Bartt thinks the police department is involved in the case somehow. He also has a list of potential suspects and the reason why they are suspects on his website, which is also available here on my blog (some are not shared by me).
A convicted abductor and rapist, Robert Craig Cox, told authorities that he "knew the women had been killed, buried, and their bodies would never be found." Even though Robert lived in Springfield in 1992, his girlfriend corroborated his alibi that he was in church at the time of The Springfield Three's disappearance. We know that alibis provided by other people can sometimes be false, though...and if this convict was known to hurt women, who's to say he wasn't threatening his girlfriend to provide him with an alibi? That would prove to be the case here: Robert's significant other later recanted her protection of him and stated that he had coerced her into saying that they were together when the women disappeared. To aid in his lies, his parents then stated that he had been at their house the night the women went missing. Robert said he would reveal where the three women were after his mom died. Why? Maybe he doesn't want to upset her with his guilt and involvement in the case? Robert's looking good as a suspect...but as of 2023, he hasn't been charged for this case. What's the problem, Springfield PD?
A neighborhood witness said that she saw a green van in the area two days after The Springfield Three went missing. A blonde woman with a birthmark on her cheek was driving the van and a man was heard aggressively telling her, "Don't do anything stupid." I wonder why the possible abductor would allow one of the women (ID as Suzie) to drive back to the scene of the crime, aka their home? What's strange about the birthmark on the woman in the van is that Suzie had one on her cheek as well, but often covered it with makeup.
Speaking of the green van: No one in the neighborhood owned one.
That same night, another neighbor was up with her newborn baby in the middle of the night. She said she heard a woman scream. Freaky.
The FBI created a subject profile of the possible suspect in the case and here is what they concluded: - The "Unsub" (unidentified suspect) is a white man in his 20's or 30's at the time and acted alone.
- He would have been a loner who lived by himself; he might have been friendly to neighbors, but he avoided contact with other people as much as possible.
- He may or may not have a criminal record.
- Likely, the Unsub was obsessed with Sherrill and had scoped out her house.
- The suspect had a plan, knew what he was going to do, and didn't expect the girls to be there with Sherrill at the time he committed the crime.
In 1997, Suzie and Sherrill were legally declared dead, but their cases remained "Missing Person's Cases" with the police department. Five years? That's all? I'm sorry, but to me, that's not long enough to call someone dead. If I were the family of Suzie and Sherrill, I would be so upset with this local police department. What about you? That same year, a bench with their names on it was dedicated inside The Victim's Memorial Garden in Springfield.
2002 brought an investigation into a green van belonging to a group of men who worked in a concrete business in Webster County. Investigators brought in cadaver dogs, who recovered bones from the site the men were working at. Unfortunately, the bones were deemed too old to be connected with the case. This means they didn't belong to The Springfield Three...but I don't have knowledge of who they belong to. This ruled out the workers...or did it?
Just one year later, in 2003, investigators received tips to search farmland in the area of Cassville, Missouri. Using hoes, they dug up areas of the ground, leading to the discovery of blood and the section of a green vehicle. Your hopes may get up at this discovery like mine did...until I discovered that when investigators sent the blood evidence they dug up for further testing, the results were inconclusive.
Every. Single. Road. Leads. To. Nothing. In. This. Case! If you think I'm frustrated, imagine how frustrated the family members, friends, and detectives feel!
Local journalist Anne Roderique-Jones created a podcast in 2021 about the case called "The Springfield Three: A Small Town Disappearance."
As of 2023, there have been 5,000 tips, but still no solved case.
In my heart of hearts, I believe that whomever took and possibly murdered The Springfield Three was close to them.
A reward fund of $43,000 has been established for the location and prosecution of the person or people responsible for the abduction of the three women.
Who do you think took the women? What do you think happened to them? Let me know by commenting on my Instagram, Facebook, and X posts about this case, or you may email me at mysteriesofthemissing2023@gmail.com.
At the time of their disappearance, “The Springfield Three” were described as:
Sherrill Levitt: 5', 110 lbs., brown eyes, short bleached-blonde hair, naturally curly hair, longer on top and short in the back. Sherrill Levitt has a thin build and has freckles on her neck and upper chest area. (Born: November 1, 1944)
Suzanne (Suzie) Streeter: White female, 5'2'', 102 lbs., brown eyes, straight bleached-blonde, shoulder-length hair, large teeth with no dental work. She has a 3-1/2'' scar on top of her right forearm and a small tumor in the left corner of her mouth which gives the appearance that she has something in her mouth. (Born: March 9, 1973)
Stacy McCall: White female, 5'3'', 120 lbs., blue eyes, dark blonde hair to the middle of her back with sun-lightened ends. Freckles on her face and a dimple in the middle of her chin. (Born: April 23, 1974)
Suzie, Sherrill, and Stacy: If you're out there still, people haven't stopped looking for you. You're famous in your hometown, and they really care about you. Stacy, your mom says she won't stop looking for you until she finds your body. Hopefully, she doesn't find your body -- hopefully, she finds you, your friend, and her mother alive. I also hope that whomever this creeper is that called your home after your disappeared and obviously took you all will be found and brought to justice one day, hopefully soon.
Anyone with information about the disappearance of Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter, and Stacy McCall is asked to contact the Springfield Police Department at (417) 864-1810, Crime Stoppers at (417) 869-TIPS, or you may email me at mysteriesofthemissing2023@gmail.com.
This has been another episode of Mysteries of the Missing. Until next time, stay safe...
Resources:
Springfield, Missouri Government: https://www.springfieldmo.gov/2498/Three-Missing-Women
CrimeWire: https://thecrimewire.com/true-crime/Vanished-The-Springfield-Three
Springfield News Leader: https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2022/06/03/springfield-3-missing-women-cold-case-theories-stacy-mccall-suzie-streeter-sherrill-levitt/9926916002/
"The Springfield Three" podcast: https://www.anneroderiquejones.com/season-1-the-springfield-three/ep-01
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