The Springfield Three Odd Mysteries

No one knows what happened thirty years ago to Sherrill Levitt, Suzanne Streeter and Stacy McCall. They disappeared together June 7, 1992 in the night. Did anyone see what happened? Did they vanished from a dwelling house in Springfield, Missouri?

This article is a new part of the in-depth study of the unexplained disappearance of three women during June 1992 in Springfield, Missouri. It will be more understandable to readers familiar with the case through the previous articles of the series.

Could the disappearance be the action of someone connected to the graduation parties, and more broadly to the school and/or love lives of the girls, and having indirectly reached Suzie Streeter’s mother, or is it the act of someone connected to Sherrill Levitt, her house, or that would only make sense because they were women?

About the case of the three missing women of Springfield, we can consider two possibilities. The first is the three women were abducted somewhere other than in or in front of the house on East Delmar Street and that the perpetrator of the abduction wanted us to believe that the events took place here. Lining up the cars, lining up the bags, the illusionist shows them to us so that we don’t look away.

Getting started, most of the time, in The Springfield Three disappearance, the women have lives that are independent of each other and, at specific time slots, important events take place.

Branson Cancelled

At what time does Janelle warn her mother the departure for Branson was postponed until the next morning? Or is it pre-arranged? “Janelle later states that the girls would call her in the morning so they could go to White Water.” as I wrote in a previous post.

Next, I wrote “At 1:50 a.m., was there still talk of going to Branson in the night? Hadn’t the project been cancelled when Stacy called her mother at 10:30 pm? If we suppose that this call was made from Brian’s house, can’t we deduce that the idea of going to Branson at night was abandoned at this place and around 10:15 pm? That’s pretty early in the evening.” In fact, it seems even earlier because the following timeline** shows that the decision to cancel the night in Branson would have been made shortly after the party at Brian’s house started. At least for Stacy and Janelle, because we have no real indication that Suzie and Nigel had planned to leave for Branson on the night of the 6th to 7th.

A Bold timeline

Saturday June 6 after 8:30 p.m., once at Brian’s house, the girls asked him if they could spend the night at his house, which he agreed to do, since his mother was not home. According to the News-Leader, at “9.30 p.m. – Janelle calls her mother, [Ed: here mother’s name], to say the three have decided against leaving for Branson as planned, and says they’ll stay at the party and leave for Branson in the morning.” From her part, at 9:30 p.m., Sherrill is on the phone with a friend about house renovation.

~ 10:00 p.m. the dog Cinnamon is outside the property. Between 10:00 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. the girls are likely to leave Brian’s house in Battlefield, separately, to go to the ApCo A-mart store. Suzy and Stacy arrive at the convenience store, each a passenger in a different car. Stacy is with a young man, Suzie with a girl. They buy some items and the crews leave. Stacy and the man head north, as if going to Michelle’s, about a mile away, Suzie and the other girl head south, as if going back to Brian’s. The employee “vaguely” remembers overhearing the girls talking about seeing each other again later in the evening.

At 10:30 p.m. Stacy calls her mother (location unknown, Michelle’s house?) to tell her that she is not going to Branson, but will be sleeping at Janelle’s house (although she knows at this point that she will be sleeping at Brian’s house). Suzie leaves from Brian’s house in Battlefield to Michelle’s house in Springfield.

Sunday June 7, according to Sherrill’s demand to the clerck at 02:15 a.m. (she said “within the past hour and a half or two”), the girls could have been at a convenience store or in this area again ~00:10-00:40 a.m.

01:30 a.m. Suzie and Stacy are present at Michelle’s house – At 01:40 a.m. a neighbor in Hanover Street called the police, then “Police showed up about 1:50 a.m. and broke up the party” at Michelle’s house. Many, include Suzy and Stacy, are leaving the party. ~ Sherrill Levitt is informed (of what? how? by whom?). She must leave to find her daughter. (note: Unless a cut-off time to return to 1717 Delmar East has been set by Sherrill upon Suzie’s departure and she was concerned).

“A little before 02:00 a.m., Streeter and McCall jumped in a jeep belonging to Streeter’s friend Shane” for returning to Brian’s. ~After getting ready to go out, Sherrill leaves her home. Then, Janelle with others are back to Brian’s house.

~ 02:10 a.m. Sherrill Levitt is at the Git’N Go convenience store. Then, at 02:15 a.m. she appears at the ApCo A-mart store. During this time, Suzie, Stacy, Janelle, leave Brian’s with Shane to Janelle’s.

02:20 a.m. Mrs. K. said she wakes up. She learns that she must host two more girls in her house while in the living room the sofa must already accommodate her daughter. – Suzie and Stacy leave Battlefield for Suzie’s home.

02:30-02:35 a.m. Odd, a Mitsubishi similar to Sherrill’s is seen in front of Git’N Go phone booth.

~ 03:00 a.m. the dog Cinnamon is outside the property.

First conclusion

Janellle leaves her mother’s house around 8:30 p.m. to go to Brian’s house and doesn’t return home until 2:15 a.m., Sunday 7. Her mother, who had not seen Suzy and Stacy since “they were leaving her home with Janelle”*, knows, from her daughter’s phone call that the girls won’t go to Branson the night. Until 02:00 a.m. Stacy knows she will sleep at Brian’s. So she is not willing to sleep at Janelle’s.

When they return to Brian’s the girls only stay/will stay a few minutes. They learn, at least for Stacy, that they will not be sleeping at the boy’s house. Travel time from Hanover Street, time for the others to arrive at Brian’s, time for Brian to think, time for discussion before each other’s decisions, the timeline that serves as the basis of the story is very “tight”.

Putting together the timeline of the missing women, we can see that until they arrive (would arrive) at 1717 Delmar East, the two girls have a life independent of each other. This is normal, they are not twin sisters, they belong to different groups of friends who were to have a different professional future. We can also discover that Sherrill and Suzie (and Stacy) were, towards the end of the story, in the same area at the same times and that they may have (or could have) crossed paths.

The East Delmar Street Mysteries

The rooms

Sunday June 7, at night, Stacy MacCall’s mother called the other daughter of Sherrill Levitt, Melinda U., from 1717, East Delmar, “hoping she knew where the women were”. Melinda U., to be precise, is the daughter of Don Levitt, Sherrill’s former husband. She “lived with Sherrill Levitt for several years” and in 1992 she still calls her “my mom”. Melinda U. was “very close” to Suzie too and by the way, she said “she’s like my little sister” *.

From Seattle where Melinda U. lives, she was shocked to learn from a NewsLeader reporter that Levitt’s room was “messy, with clothes and shoes on the floor.” “That’s not my mom” Melinda U. said*. Strange indeed. Families and friends came on Sunday. The house was cleaned and tidied by them, not the rooms.

The dog

When friends of Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall went to the house looking for them Sunday morning or/and at noon (this is unclear) the dog Cinnamon “was in Levitt fenced back yard”.
There is a dog flap at the back of the house, it is always there, and Cinnamon could go in and out as he wanted. What is curious is that the neighbors saw a dog “matching Cinnamon’s description (…) (who) showed up about a block from Levitt’s home” twice during the night.

Around 10:00 p.m.,”The neighbors were on their patio with friends when the dog arrived at their house the first time.” They are dog’s owner’s and their friends too. Although they don’t seem to have heard anything unusual, people note the little dog wanted to climb up in their laps. They don’t know this dog, so it’s not another neighbor’s. They all “showed the dog some affection” and finally “the man of the house carried it to the street and set it down”.
We know that Sherrill and Suzie have lived in this area for only a few weeks and at this point we assume that the dog finds a way in from the streets (and not from the neighbors back yard). Logically, at this time it should be around 10:15 p.m.

The phone calls

In the previous timeline we learned when Janelle and Mike arrived at 1717 East Delmar, Janelle took the phone, and answers two phone calls at about 00:45 p.m.

The phone rings when the couple is inside Sherrill’s house but did the phone ring as soon as they arrived in the house? The event was repeated later, when Stacy’s mother was also in the house. It would have been interesting to know if these calls came especially when someone was present in the house, or were these calls occurring at meal times? And most importantly, did they stop the next few days? Did the investigators receive any further calls?

About friends phone calls, Sunday morning, Nigel said“I got the answering machine, I left her a message, I hung up and laid back down, waited for her to call me back, and she never called me back,”. From Stacy’s mother, we know “”Janis is also getting antsy waiting to hear from Stacy. “I said ‘You know, she should have called me by now, I don’t think she’s still asleep,’ said Janis McCall. “Then I left another message probably an hour to two later and by the third message I was getting pretty frantic.”“°°. For her part, Janelle said “I called, I called, I called, I got no answer.” °°°

She doesn’t leave any message? Note that answering machines in the 90’s could be of a cassette or chip model. The older the model, the longer it took for the device to respond before you could call again.

It was revealed that the calls had lewd sexual content, that the evening call was considered a post-graduation prank and therefore deleted. Not a word about the four messages left by both Nigel and Stacy’s mother. Who listened to them?

The building

Accross the Est Delmar Street in Springfield, Missouri. At a block from the intersection with Glenstone Avenue, in front of the house where Sherrill Levitt and Suzie Streeter lived for less than two months, what do we see? A grove, probably smaller in 1992. In 2007 it is less dense than in 2016. This being, the decorative wall and especially the box, probably the air conditioning, allow someone to hide or watch.

In front of the house. Across the street (Google Street View).

It’s right across the street. It is possible to see the reflection of the house on the windows. But that’s not all. The multiple windows of the building are as many potential observation points. And the example of the van seen on the right shows that such a vehicle could be parked on this open parking lot on the night of the disappearance. As this building looks today really new, we can ask ourselves the question: Was it already built in 1992? The answer can be found on a sky view extracted from an Investigation Discovery document. The building was there. The construction year is 1986.

Aerial view of the area

However, the questions are like the windows of the building on Delmar Street, they are multiple. Whether it is by looking behind one of them or hidden at the foot of the building.
Could someone have been in the building on the night of June 6 to 7, 1992? The person could have witnessed the arrival of the women and possibly their abduction. And a golden place for prank phone calls when someone enters the house. No one talks about this building or the companies that were in the offices. If only as potential witnesses.

Former renter speaks

Soon after the three women disappeared, a local reporter managed to contact Sadie R. the former occupant of the 1717 East Delmar Street. Sadie rented the house from her son, who owned it, and says she saw transients and “parking lot partiers” near the house almost “every weekend when she lived there”. The former renter also says she sometimes “had prowlers at the house” some of which “peeped into the house through the window in the carport” and some trying to open “the screen door leading into the home from the carport”.*

Her son had sold the house about two months earlier to Sherrill Levitt and it is not known if the house was vacant between Sadie’s departure and Sherrill’s arrival and if so, for how long. The woman added that the neighborhood was generally very safe and she didn’t want to move away. However, a strange man was seen around 1:15 a.m. Sunday morning by a neighbor three blocks from the house.

Also, was there a time when the house was on vacation during which someone could have hidden drugs in them? Drugs that the person would have wanted to retrieve in Sherrill and Suzie’s absence?

Strange cars right next door

It could have been in the “Cars at the Heart of the Mystery” part of this series. The last and perhaps most surprising mystery of East Delmar Street is the aerial view of lot next door (1059) and the eight models of cars seen parked in the business property. Some of them look quite old compared to the one parked in the parking spaces in front of the business and to the cars of the missing three. And the oldest ones have the biggest trunks. Were these cars there on the night of the disappearance? If so, what could have been in their trunks?

Sources : *News-Leader June 9, 10, 12, 14, 19, July 6, 1992 + date unknown, **timeline partially based on the News-Leader reported facts with personal additions in italics,°°True Crime Daily 2017.10.17,°°°KY3 News June, 1992 and Investigation Discovery May, 2021, Websleuths, SleuthSeeker994 on imgur. Italics, except quotes, are author’s view. Images from Pixabay, Google Street View, Investigation Discovery. Updated March, 5 and June, 19, 2022.

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