Back to Home > News > Monday, Sep 25, 2006 Breaking News Posted on Mon, Sep. 25, 2006 email this ... Relatives, law officers go

But that hope is always shattered. Her inbox has spam, business correspondence - but nothing about her sister-in-law, Kathy Stobaugh, who mysteriously disappeared more than a year ago.

Ever since Munday began Findkathystobaugh.info, a Web site dedicated to raising awareness about the teacher who went missing at age 43, Munday anxiously awaits clues, leads, anything that will lead to her sister-in-law's whereabouts.

"I just wish people would at least get on the guestbook and talk to Kathy," Munday said. "She may be reading it. We just don't know at this point."

Kathy Stobaugh's family is among scores of desperate relatives and hundreds of police departments across the country that have created such Web pages to generate leads in cases gone cold or to build a support system of people in similar situations. Others form sites because they feel a social responsibility or are obsessed with a cold case.

"The Internet is emerging and constantly evolving," said Keith Whitworth, a sociology instructor at Texas Christian University. "There are more users finding new ways to utilize it."

Fort Worth police have a cold-case link on the department's Web page for unsolved killings. Pictures of victims are rotated, and viewers are asked to stop and take a glance. Detective Manny Reyes started the cold case unit in 2004, with 764 unsolved cases to work on. So far 70 have been solved, Reyes said, and the Web site often contributed to their resolution.

"With shows like `Cold Case Files,' the Internet and computers now, people are really getting into all this," Reyes said. "It may not be someone they really knew ... but word has it someone got killed and they look out of curiosity. The Internet is pretty much the way of the future for finding people."

Bigger and better-known Web sites such as the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Doe Network often link to smaller sites to help channel Web surfers to sites like Stobaugh's and one set up by John Terrell.

Terrell created Justiceforcarla.com in 2002, 16 years after he retired from the Fort Worth Police Department. Carla Walker's death still haunts him.

The 17-year-old was abducted from a parking lot at a west Fort Worth bowling alley Feb. 17, 1974. Her body was found two days later under a culvert near Benbrook Lake, a few miles from her home. She had been raped and strangled.

Even tips that are ruled out can be helpful to authorities, said Dana Austin, an investigator at the Tarrant County, Texas, medical examiner's office. Austin has worked closely with Darrell Bartell, who created a similar site to help identify bodies. The tips help identify dead-end lines of inquiry, leaving police to pursue more promising leads. Austin said she needs all the help she can get to identify about 80 nameless bodies at the office dating back to 1982.

Bartell, a former military police officer and private detective, uses networking sites Myspace.com and Blogger.com to get the word out about Amber Alerts, missing adults and unidentified bodies. His knowledge of apparently cold cases such as Stobaugh's drives him to help by posting missing-persons reports and pictures of wanted fugitives.

He links with other users and often sends out bulletins to more than 500 contacts with pleas such as "Do you know this man?" or "Have you seen this child?"

Some leads can be generated directly from Web site usage, said Flower Mound, Texas, investigator Douglas Crewse. Several of his clients maintain sites that have proved useful in tracking people down.

"There are programs so that when people visit the site, I know their Internet protocol address, how many times they visit and how many people get on," he said. "If we have a suspect or a viable lead it might be the abductor checking to see how close we are."

Munday put Stobaugh's story onto the Internet in June. Stobaugh disappeared days after Christmas 2004. Her estranged husband, the last person known to have seen her, is still under suspicion, said Tom Reedy, a spokesman for the Denton County Sheriff's Department.

Munday says it is unlike her sister-in-law to leave her children, and she fears Stobaugh is dead. Relatives in Gainesville and Fort Worth led many searches in Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas and still search on foot when they are in the Sanger area. Munday and her husband, Stobaugh's brother Chris, said they feel police are not working as intensely on the case as when it was newer. Although police say the case remains active and is assigned to a deputy, the Mundays have turned to cyberspace for a final effort to find Kathy Stobaugh.

The site, which was visited 123 times last month, has helped the Mundays rule out a lead on a body in New Jersey. Munday won't stop trying to keep Stobaugh's story alive.

"If you are not in the public eye, you are just not thought about," she said. "We are only a speck in the whole national database. It is really sad."

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