25 years after three Springfield women went missing, the tips still trickle in

The tips still trickle in.

"They've leveled off," said Springfield police Sgt. Todd King. "We tend to get, I would say, a couple a month."

It's been 25 years since three Springfield women vanished without a trace. On June 6, 1992, 19-year-old Suzie Streeter and her friend Stacy McCall, 18, graduated from Kickapoo High School. They spent the evening at graduation parties.

In the early morning hours of June 7, the two retired to a home in the 1700 block of East Delmar Street, where Streeter lived with her mother, 47-year-old Sherrill Levitt.

That's where the mystery begins. Levitt, Streeter and McCall were never seen again.

When a friend called the home around 8 a.m., there was no answer. Over the course of the day, friends and family members made the rounds and made calls, checking out places they thought the women might have gone. Assumptions that the three women would return any minute gradually gave way to worry. On the evening of June 7, McCall's mother called police.

The scene was concerning. Each of the women had a car, and all three were parked outside the unlocked house. Their purses were at the top of the stairs. Levitt and Streeter, both smokers, had left their cigarettes behind. McCall had left without her migraine medication.

But there was no sign of a struggle. The only thing amiss was a porch light cover that had been busted. Friends of the women, however, had cleaned up the broken glass long before the cops were called, thinking they were being helpful.

It was a highly-publicized case from the start. The FBI was called. Search parties were organized. Within a week, the faces of Springfield's three missing women were broadcast on the television show "America's Most Wanted." Tips poured in.

A case that everyone expected to be quickly solved, however, turned into the city's most well-known cold case.

"It's always been open," King said in a recent interview late last month. "It's an active investigation."

The Springfield Police Department has turned over. There are no sworn officers left that were on the force back in 1992. Over the years, the case of the Springfield Three, or 3MW, has been assigned to numerous investigators. Whenever one has retired, or been promoted, the case has been handed off to someone new. Fresh eyes.

For the last year and a half, the eyes have been those of Detective Scott Hill. King, as his direct supervisor, helps him respond to the tips that come in.

There have been thousands over the years, although fewer as time has gone on. The majority that come in these days are identical, or similar, to previous ones. That's not to say they are unwelcome. After 25 years, the department's plea hasn't changed: Keep them coming.

"Somebody out there knows something and has not come forward, with a piece of information to put this thing together," Lt. Culley Wilson said.

"We wish they would come forward, because it's awful to lose a child for those families," Wilson continued. "But to lose a child and not know where they're at, or to not know what's happening, it's tragic."

Where do tips come from? Darrell Moore — who was Greene County's chief assistant prosecutor in 1992, and later led the office for more than a decade — told the News-Leader that prisoners have been one common source.

"As people went to prison, they would try and find ways to maybe leverage themselves out of trouble and out of prison," said Moore, who now works for the Missouri Attorney Generals' Office. "So they would hear stories so they would call a lawyer who would call the police department. It got to the point where we could say, 'We’ve looked at that, we’ve already done that.'"

The case's public profile has waxed and waned over the years. By the late 1990s, developments were few. In the early 2000s, tips prompted several digging operations. The past decade, however, has been largely quiet.

King said that a lot of information was shared in the case's early days. However, at some point, he said, telling the public everything "to a point can hinder an investigation, because when we do look at a potential person of interest or something of that nature, they have just as much information as everyone else on the street."

"So we don't have anything held back to judge whether or not they're being honest with us," King said.

Those who followed the case in the 1990s will remember the name Robert Craig Cox, a convicted kidnapper known to be in Springfield when the women went missing, who proceeded to tell the authorities the three were dead and he knew where they were buried. His status hasn't changed in recent years. He remains a person of interest.

A stubborn theory in some corners of the internet is that the women are buried underneath a south Springfield parking garage owned by CoxHealth. Police spokeswoman Lisa Cox said the department first received that tip in 2006, but that the original tipster "provided no evidence or logical reasoning behind this theory at that time or since then."

Cox said police have spoken with the woman who made the tip, as well as individuals she hired to scan a portion of the parking garage. In some cases, Cox said, the individuals denied making statements the woman attributed to them. A professor told police he was unaware of technology that could scan the area in the way the tipster described, according to police.

Construction of the parking garage began in September 1993, Cox said — some 15 months after the women went missing.

"Digging up the area and subsequently reconstructing this structure would be extremely costly, and without any reasonable belief that the bodies could be located here, it is illogical to do so, and for those reasons SPD does not intend to," Cox said. "Investigators have determined this lead to not be credible."

King said Springfield police "keep very close contact with the McCalls." Contact with the extended Streeter family is more occasional.

The causes of cold cases breakthroughs can generally be divided into two categories. First, someone can talk, either in the form of a confession or just another tip, one that leads police to the perpetrator(s). Second, there can be a scientific breakthrough that makes existing evidence more valuable. Some cold cases, for instance, have been solved with DNA technology that didn't exist when the crime first occurred.

Moore said the first option is likely the only one here. He said he's unaware of "any evidence found at the scene that could ever implicate anybody."

Wilson and King, of Springfield police, said they both remain optimistic.

"We're going to solve it," Wilson said. "I don't know when. It may not be within our time left here (at the department), but we're going to solve it."

Moore said he finds hope in the fact that, during his time as prosecutor, people were brought to justice in two cases more than 20 years after the fact.

The first was the 1982 murder of 15-year-old Tammy Smith, whose body was found two months after she disappeared after returning a shopping cart to a Ramey's grocery store; Joel "Jody" Moore was sentenced in 2005. The second was the prosecution of Gerald Carnahan for the 1985 murder of 20-year-old Nixa resident Jackie Johns; a jury found Carnahan guilty in 2010.

“So at times I think it’ll never be resolved, but then I remind myself of at least those two cases where eventually there was resolution," he said.

Twenty-five years later, the Springfield Three still resonates as a case it seems everyone local knows. Wilson, however, said that if you went back 30 years, it's likely most people could rattle off the details of the Young Brothers Massacre. But now there are plenty of locals unaware of the 1932 gun battle that killed six law enforcement officers in present-day Republic.

"That's kind of the fear," Wilson said. "As more time goes by, this case gets colder and colder."

Still, he said, "we're both optimistic.”

How did the three missing women case impact Springfield's psyche?

Here's a timeline of the case:

— 1992 —

June 6:  Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall graduate from Kickapoo High School, later attending two graduation parties together. The pair wind up at Streeter’s house at 1717 E. Delmar St. about 2 a.m. June 7.

June 7: A friend calls the house at 8 or 9 a.m. and gets no answer. She stops by a little after noon, but there is no sign of the girls or Suzie’s mother, Sherrill Levitt. Police are called late that evening.

June 8: Police begin investigating the case. The unlocked house appears as if the women simply vanished while getting ready for bed.

June 9: The FBI is called in.

June 14: Authorities begin a sweep of wooded areas and streams in the Springfield area and search an apartment building after a letter containing a rough drawing of the apartment complex and the phrase, “use Ruse of Gas Man checking for Leak,” is found in a News-Leader rack at a grocery store. Also on this day, pictures of the women air on the television show “America's Most Wanted.”

June 15: Police begin working a fresh tip about a transient who neighbors reported seeing near the home in the days before the women disappeared. A sketch is released, showing a man with long hair and a full beard.

June 16: Police release a photo of a retouched Dodge van, similar to one seen near Levitt and Streeter's home early on June 7.

June 24: Police work on a new tip. A waitress at George’s Steakhouse, one of Levitt’s favorite restaurants, says she saw the three women at the diner between 1 and 3 a.m. June 7. The women arrived and left together. The waitress said Suzie appeared giddy, perhaps intoxicated, and her mom tried to calm her down.

June 28: Police end their 24-hour command post at Levitt’s home.

— 1993 —

Jan. 2: An anonymous New Year’s Eve caller to a switchboard operator of “America's Most Wanted” is cut off when the operator tries to link up with Springfield investigators. Police still seek contact with the man, whom they consider to have prime knowledge of the abductions.

Feb. 14: For the first time, police announce that they are considering the possibility that the disappearances are the work of one or more serial killers.

Aug. 28: Information from an informant leads police to search farmland in Webster County looking for bodies. Police say they find items at the scene, but will not elaborate. The results of the search warrant were sealed.

— 1994 —

A lead prompts authorities to search a section of Bull Shoals Lake, where they find animal remains and pieces of clothing. The clothing does not match the description of what the women were wearing.

— 1995 —

A grand jury disbands in January without handing up indictments. Robert Craig Cox, whose name came up early in the investigation, is arrested in Texas for aggravated robbery. After information on Cox is presented to a grand jury, investigators interview him in a Texas prison. In the grand jury, Cox’s ex-girlfriend tells jurors that she lied when she told police Cox was with her at church the morning of June 7, 1992.

— 1996 —

Former News-Leader reporter Robert Keyes interviews Cox from prison. The inmate tells Keyes he knows the women were killed and buried somewhere in Springfield or close by. “And they’ll never be found.”

— 1997 —

The family of Sherrill Levitt and Suzie Streeter go through court proceedings to declare the two women dead. Stacy’s parents vow that they will not declare their daughter dead until her body is found.

— 2001 —

Maj. Steve Ijames takes command of the Criminal Investigations Section and reopens several cold cases, including that of the three missing women.

— 2002 —

Springfield police write Cox a letter, requesting an interview. He declines. Also this year, Webster County authorities dig near an abandoned slaughterhouse south of Marshfield. They find teeth and bone fragments estimated to be about 100 years old.

—2003 —

Following new tips, investigators check an old farm about five miles south of Cassville. Cadaver-seeking dogs show interest in various areas. Tires, trash, a motorcycle and sections of a green vehicle are dug up from the surrounding farmland. DNA samples taken from an abandoned house on the property are sent to a lab for testing, but no match is found.

— 2006 —

A group of amateur detectives go to Springfield police and Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore with their theory that the three women are buried under a parking garage near Cox South hospital. Authorities decide not to dig under the garage, saying there isn’t enough evidence to warrant the cost of digging.

— 2010 —

Paul Williams, Springfield's new police chief, initiates a review of the case, which extends into 2012.

— 2012 —

Springfield police investigators travel to Virginia and present their review of the case to a panel of 25 criminal-justice investigators assembled by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.