The Springfield Three
18-year-olds Stacy McCall and Suzie Streeter were excited about graduating from high school. Suzy was planning to become a hairdresser just like her mother, while Stacy had enrolled at Missouri State University.
Suzie's mom, Sherill, was also living her dream. Not only was she excited that her daughter was all grown up, but she had also recently bought her dream home in one of Springfield's most beautiful areas. However, little did these women imagine that their lives were about to turn into a living nightmare...
Graduation Night
Suzie and Stacy had been close friends back in their childhood days, but they had actually grown apart during their junior and senior years. While Suzie was the typical popular girl who fell for bad boys, Stacy was more of a high-spirited girl who liked to hang out with the goofy crowd.
In spite of their differences and for old times' sake, the two friends decided to go to the same graduation party after their diploma ceremony. Fate, however, was about to reunite these two young girls in the most wicked of ways.
Wild Plans
The girls were hoping to go all out and keep on partying once the graduation party was over. Their plan was to drive all the way to Branson, Missouri in the middle of the night and go to the White Water amusement park first thing in the morning.
Stacey's mom, Janis, tried to deter them once she found out about their plan. "I'm saying 'No, please, don't go down tonight, you can go tomorrow'. I think I was afraid of a car accident", Janis confessed. Even though Janis feared the worst, she never imagined what would happen...
Change Of Plans
The very same morning before the graduation party, Stacey called her mom and told her there had been a slight change of plans. "Mom, don't worry, we're not going to go to Branson tonight", the soon-to-be college student told Janis.
Guessing that driving to another city at midnight was maybe too risky, the girls decided to throw a pijama party at another friend's house and head to Branson the following morning. Their plans, however, went awry...
On Their Way Home
Just as they had planned, the girls drove to their friend's house once the party was over, but the sleepover was so incredibly crowded that Stacey suggested they both spend the night at Suzie's place instead and meet the girls at the water park the following morning.
The girls headed back to Suzie's home roughly at 2 AM. Investigators believe that they walked past Suzie's home approximately 15 minutes later, but nobody knows what happened then.
Answering Machine
The following morning, Suzie's friend, Nigel Holderby, phoned her to ask at what exact time they were leaving for the park, but she got the answering machine. Even though she left her a message, Suzie never called back.
Meanwhile, Stacy's mom had also got the answering machine when trying to reach out to her daughter. "Then I left another message probably an hour to two later and by the third message I was getting pretty frantic", Janis recalls.
Something Was Off
Once all of Stacy and Suzie's classmates failed to contact them about their water park getaway, they drove to Suzie's house to check whether they were OK. Stacy's mom, Janis, also joined them. They were initially relieved upon realizing that both their cars were parked in the driveway, but it wasn't long before they realized something was off.
Nigel realized that Suzie's car wasn't where she always parked it. "Suzie was a creature of habit. Almost OCD to some degree. Where she parked her car in the driveway was always the same. She would always pull right into the carport, that's not where her car was", Nigel pointed out. Could this mean anything or where they just being paranoid?
Odd Signs
As they approached the house, the girls came across a few other weird signs. To begin with, there was a glass on the porch and a lampost had been shattered. Nagel quickly swept up the glasses and threw it at a nearby dumpster.
Then, Nagel knocked the door, but nobody answered. She tried turning the doorknob, and for some reason, the door was open! "I thought, 'Why would they leave the front door unlocked?", Janis said. Janis tried calling Suzie's mother, Sherrill, but she wouldn't answer the phone either. What was going on?
No Signs Of Struggle
Nagel and Janis stepped inside the house and realized that while the lights were off, the TV was on. Suddenly, as they inspected the living room, a figure came dashing towards them from the shadows.
To their relief, it was only Suzie's dog, Cinnamon, but strangely, the dog wouldn't stop yelping. They then tiptoed their way to Suzie's bedroom. "Sherrill's house is immaculate and I said either she'd already made up her bed or she hadn't gone to bed. No signs of struggle, everything was nice and neat", Janis recalls. But then, they found this...
They'll Be Home Any Moment
To everyone's surprise, the three women's purses were lined up one next to the other. Janis opened up their purses but while nothing seemed to be missing, something else caught her attention: Sherill's cigarettes were still in her purse. According to Janis, Sherill was a chain-smoker and wouldn't go anywhere without her cigarettes!
Instead of calling 911, Janis and the rest of the girls chose to be cautious. They were still expecting the three women to show up and walk through the door in any minute. They began tidying up the house as they patiently awaited them. All of a sudden, their hearts jumped...
The Day Went By
Suddenly, the phone rang. They were so nervous that they didn't dare answer, but the caller left a message. To their disappointment, it wasn't the girls, but a stranger. "It was a very rude phone call. Lewd sexual content", Janis recalls. At first, they guessed it was only a post-graduation prank, so without giving it much thought, they just deleted the message.
As time went by, however, they really started to panic and wondered whether that phone call had been something other than a prank. When the night came, they realized it was time to report them missing to the police.
No Leads
The Springfield police knew something unusual had happened from the moment they stepped inside the house. "We're going to take a report, and this is going to be as missing persons, and not only that but foul play suspected", one of the officers told Janis.
But the investigators stumbled upon a major problem. Janis and the missing girls' friends had cleaned up the house, thus contaminating the crime scene. "There's nothing. You have no threads, hair, blood. No DNA", former Prosecutor Darrell Moore observed. To make matters worse, there was nothing they could do to recover the deleted message!
Sketchy Ex-Boyfriend
After meticulously examining the house, one of the investigators came across something rather odd in Suzie's room. "It turned out there were a lot of things about devil worship and satanic things that she was looking into", Janis said.
As they dug deeper into the girl's background, they found out that she had recently dated a teenager who had been arrested for being part of a grave-robbing gang. Apparently, he had recently broken into a mausoleum and stolen the teeth out of a few skulls. But what did this have to do with Suzie's disappearance?
First Suspect
As it turns out, Suzie had broken up with the guy after finding out about the grave robbery. "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", said Sgt. Todd King.
In fact, Suzie had agreed to testify against her ex and his gang in court, which by the time of her disappearance was only a few weeks away. "That raised an issue, and if they got mad at her, did they get sufficiently mad to actually try to kidnap her and kill her?", Prosecutor Moore said.
Suspects Cleared
The Springield police tracked down the grave-robbing gang, but all of them denied any involvement with the case. Since none of their fingerprints where found at Suzie's home, the prosecutors had no real motive to link them to the women's disappearance.
In other words, the police had gone back to square one. To make matters worse, two endless weeks passed by and there still wasn't any sign of the women. Just when everyone was starting to lose all hopes, a person called in with a new lead.
New Lead
A stranger called the police claiming she thought she had seen Suzie driving a green van the very same morning she had gone missing. She also said that the girl looked terrified and then added an eerie detail.
The woman said the thought she had heard the voice of a man screaming at her from the back seat. "[He was] saying some kind of threat, 'You better keep driving if you know what's good for you,' something like that", Moore said. But did this testimony lead anywhere?
Endless Theories
Unfortunately, the woman's phone call was one among many leads that led nowhere. For weeks, then months, and then years, all sorts of bizarre and contrasting theories dribbled in to the Police Department.
"Reports after reports after reports. We've seen theories, everything from space aliens to They were grabbed up in the human-trafficking angle", King said. It wasn't until a year after the disappearance that they finally landed on a promising lead...
Terrifying Suspect
Throughout the next year, the police looked into over 5,000 tips across 21 states trying to figure out what had happened to the Springfield Three. Then, all of a sudden, their focus shifted to a criminal who had a terrifying history.
The police were given a lead that a criminal named Robert Craig Cox could have been responsible for the kidnapping and rape of the three women. Allegedly, he had also chopped them into pieces and then fed them to pigs. But who was Cox and why was he in the suspect list?
Criminal In The Loose
Cox was a former Army Ranger that had been convicted for the murder of a 19-year-old girl in Florida. He was eventually cleared due to lack of evidence, though he ended up serving nine years in jail for the abduction of two other women.
Coincidentally, Cox had moved to Sprinfield just a few days before the Sprinfield Three went missing. Allegedly, some family members claimed that Cox had secretly been working with Stacy's dad at a car dealership. But where was Cox hiding?
Bone-Chilling Interview
Right when the nationwide search for Cox was launched, the man was arrested in Texas for robbery. When investigative journalist Dennis Graves flew to Texas to interview Cox, the latter made some pretty spine-chilling statements.
"I know that they're dead, I'll say that. I know that", Cox asserted. However, when asked to give further details, he said he wouldn't give any other lead until her 82-year-old mother passed away. Was he just bluffing?
Gruesome Theory
To this day, the police haven't proven any connection between Cox and the Springfield Three's disappearance. In the words of Sgt. King, 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".
But just when the case was about to cool off once again, a freelance journalist named Kathee Baird came into the spotlight. Baird claimed that the women were buried beneath a hospital parking lot that used to be a dirt lot at the time they went missing.
Theory Dismissed
According to the police, Baird "provided no evidence or logical reasoning behind this theory at that time or since then". They also claimed that digging up the area would be extremely costly, especially considering there was no reasonable evidence suggesting that the bodies were actually there.
In spite of this, Baird hired a man who used a state-of-the-art ground-penetrating radar capable of locating graves hidden beneath the concrete. However, she didn't land on any decisive evidence either, so her allegations where thus dismissed. Has there been any other lead ever since then?
Case Still Open
Nearly three decades have passed since the Springfield Three's disappearance and the mystery still hasn't been unveiled. All in all, the police have investigated nearly 10,000 tips and there's an ongoing $42.000 reward for any concrete evidence.
"I do believe they're probably gone, they're probably deceased. But I don't have anything that tells me for sure, so until they have found their remains I have to believe that they're still alive and well", Stacy's mother said. As to the rest of their family and friends, all they can do is keep on fighting for truth.