03/19/1988...03/19/2011

Today is Saturday, March 19, 2011.

23 years ago today was also a Saturday - Saturday, March 19, 1988.

Readers of This Night Wounds Time may recall that Susan Smalley's mother is quoted on Page 107 of that book as saying, "I always look at March 19th as the day Susan disappeared, as this was the last day I saw her."

Our prayers and good wishes go out to the Madison and Smalley families today and every other day.

Update re: Chapter 17 of "This Night Wounds Time"

As the readers of This Night Wounds Time may know, the individual identified as "Jason Lawton" in Chapter 17 of the book was the subject of a criminal investigation in a state other than Texas in 2010.

That investigation, wholly unrelated to the March 20, 1988 disappearance of Stacie Madison and Susan Smally, resulted in "Lawton" being charged in September 2010 with multiple counts of physical and sexual abuse.

This case was set to go to trial on Monday, February 28, 2011.

Under the American system of justice, one is innocent until proven guilty, and it must be noted that the charges against "Lawton" were dismissed on Friday, February 25, 2011. The charges that were dismissed are as follows:

* Two counts of criminal abuse, first degree, with a child under 12 years of age;

* Three counts of wanton endangerment, first degree;

* One count of assault, second degree;

* One count of terroristic threatening, third degree;

* One count of distributing obscene material to minors, first offense;

* Three counts of indecent exposure, first degree, first offense; and

* One count of intimidating a participant in a legal process.

Insofar as is known, a domestic violence charge brought against "Lawton" in 2010 by his fourth wife remains pending as of this writing.

1958 missing persons case with ties to Carrollton, Texas

In the preface to This Night Wounds Time, I write, "The equation is a simple one: solved mysteries are revisited by the media ad nauseam while cold cases - the ones truly needing exposure - languish." Therefore, doing my part to promote other cold cases, I'd like to draw everyone's attention to a story featured in the January 29, 2011 edition of The Dallas Morning News, which tells the story of Myrisha Faye Campbell and A.J. Campbell, Jr., two children missing since 1958:

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/carrollton-farmers-branch/headlines/20110129-carrollton-man-trying-to-solve-52-year-old-kidnapping-case.ece

For additional information, see:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=59664093867&v=wall&ref=mf#!/group.php?gid=262909358233

"Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are silent forever. They can fulfill their duties only by trying to reconstruct precisely things as they were and by wresting the past from fictions and legends."

- Czeslaw Milosz, accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980

Cruising Forest Lane

This (partial) June 1971 Car Craft magazine article about crusing Forest Lane is courtesy of

http://www.city-data.com/forum/dallas/602144-forest-lane-cruising-70s-early-80s-4.html

The top 10 stories of 2010 in Carrollton

The article "Reconnecting can lead to connection in case" by James Roth, which was originally published on July 16, 2010 in The Carrollton Leader, was recently included among that newspaper's "The top 10 stories of 2010 in Carrollton."

Mr. Roth's article may be accessed at http://scntx.com/articles/2010/12/30/carrollton_leader/news/154.txt.

"This Night Wounds Time"...one year later...

On Tuesday, November 16, 2010, it will be one year since the book This Night Wounds Time: The Mysterious Disappearances of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley was released. And what a year it has been.

In the book’s Preface, I acknowledge the harsh truth that "solved mysteries are revisited by the media ad nauseam while cold cases – the ones truly needing exposure – languish." This proved to be largely true of the press’ reaction in 2009 to efforts to reignite the then 21-year-old Madison/Smalley case.

Thankfully, there are exceptions to every rule, with the most visible one in this instance arriving in the form of television reporter Jason Whitely who, on December 2, 2009, presented a story on WFAA-TV (the Dallas, Texas area affiliate of ABC) entitled "Unsolved Disappearance of Two Girls Detailed in New Book."

This news report did more for the case than anyone could have foreseen and a tremendous amount of thanks is definitely owed to both Jason Whitely and WFAA.

The WFAA story was viewed by many who remembered the Madison/Smalley case and, as I was able to report in a speech presented to the Friends of the Carrollton Public Library on May 24, 2010, "Since the publication of the book and the subsequent WFAA story, people have come forward with what I’ll term 'additional information.'" ("Detectives won't reveal what that information is," The Dallas Morning News would later report in this regard, "but they say it's credible.") This would prove to be but one of many positives.

This "additional information" was gleaned by a Carrollton Police Department which, as Jon Nielsen of The Dallas Morning News reported in a July 6, 2010 story, was devoting "new resources [to] the case [and] re-examining theories dismissed long ago." Of these theories previously dismissed, Sgt. Joel Payne of the Carrollton Police Department would tell The Dallas Morning News, "We threw out all the assumptions, and we started from scratch." Payne would later elaborate on this statement and tell The Carrollton Leader, "I pulled in some of the original witnesses and began to verify things."

In some of these efforts Payne has been assisted by the Denton County District Attorney’s Office which, according to The Dallas Morning News, became "involved with the investigation after a possible link to the area was revealed in the book." And their combined efforts continue.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all of this, legendary novelist Anne Rice, the author of Interview with the Vampire, raised the case's profile by graciously reviewing the book on Amazon.

Again, what an amazing year this has been. The focus, though, must remain on what lies ahead and the fact that the case has yet to be closed - nearly 23 years now since the girls disappeared.

At the time that he was interviewed by The Dallas Morning News, Sgt. Joel Payne stated, "What I need is something somebody's been holding on to for 22 years." If you or someone you know has information regarding the Madison/Smalley case (no matter how trivial), now is the time to speak up.
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With thanks to Jason Whitely, Jon Nielsen, Kara Koilini, Senitra Horbrook, James Roth, and Christen M. Stroh, the following is a collection of the media pieces devoted to the Madison/Smalley case since November 2009:

http://www.wfaa.com/news/Unsolved-disappearance-of-two-girls-detailed-in-new-book-78381357.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/carrollton/stories/070610dnmetmissing.20496b1.html

http://neighborsgo.com/stories/55589

http://missinggirlsbook.blogspot.com/2010/10/madisonsmalley-case-featured-in.html

http://www.scntx.com/articles/2009/10/06/carrollton_leader/news/70.txt

http://www.courier-gazette.com/articles/2010/07/16/carrollton_leader/news/78.txt