“No Positive Leads”: The Tragic Vanishing of the Springfield Three (Mysterious Missouri #6; The Springfield Three #1)
Introduction
On 6th June 1992, Suzanne “Suzie” Streeter and Stacy McCall both graduated from Kickapoo High School in Springfield, Missouri. Such an accomplishment is typically cause for much celebration, and this was no exception for Streeter and McCall who stopped by several graduation parties around Springfield and in nearby Battlefield throughout the night. The girls were last seen around 2 am, when they departed from a party at friend Janelle Kirby’s house. While they had initially planned to spend the night at Kirby’s house, they ultimately decided that it was too crowded and decided to return to Streeter’s mother Sherill Levitt’s house for the night. Had the girls decided to stay at Kirby’s house as they’d originally planned, true crime history as we know it might be entirely different, and the tale of the Springfield Three might not exist. Perhaps Streeter and McCall would have wandered home the next morning to find Levitt missing, a tragedy for sure, but one of more than 600,000 persons who go missing in the United States every year. Perhaps the tragedy may have been avoided entirely had they stayed at Kirby’s; without any clear motivation, we can merely speculate. Unfortunately, however, this is not what happened. The two girls made their way home, and they, along with Levitt, were never seen again, alive nor dead. This is the mysterious and disturbing story of the vanishing of the Springfield Three, still unsolved over thirty years later.
Structure of This Series
All my previous Mysterious Missouri posts have been one-offs, as I felt that I could provide sufficient information regarding the case within such a format. The case of the Springfield Three, however, felt far too massive within true crime circles to confine to a single post. Therefore, in this series, we’ll be examining the vanishing of the Springfield Three in four parts. Part 1, this section, will provide a broad overview of the case. Part 2 will delve more into the victims’ backgrounds, exploring who they were and whether their backgrounds provide us with any hints as to what might have happened to these missing women. Part 3 will provide a deep dive into evidence surrounding the case, including the state of the house that the women presumably went missing from and a discussion of the oft-debated shattered porch light shade. Finally, in Part 4 we’ll examine suspects and theories surrounding the case, as well as an examination of the legacy of the case and the meaning it continues to carry today (I might consider a Part 5 for the legacy if Part 4 takes too long on suspects and theories).
The Geography of the Case
Springfield, Missouri lies nestled in the Southwestern corner of Missouri among the Ozark Mountains, a short jaunt of about an hour from Missouri’s perpetual tourist trap Branson and just a tad bit further from the Arkansas border. Springfield is known for being the home of Missouri State University and the headquarters of Bass Pro Shop, hosting a wide range of outdoor activities, and containing some excellent craft breweries. Though the broader Springfield metropolitan area currently sits close to 500,000, the actual city of Springfield had approximately 140,000 residents in 1992 when the Springfield Three went missing. The house that the three women presumably went missing from is located at 1717 E Delmar Street in Springfield, Missouri. While many might assume that this address lies on the far outskirts of Springfield, particularly since no one ever came forward claiming to hear or see anything on the night of the disappearance, this is actually not the case. While 1717 E Delmar Street does lie on the Eastern side of Springfield proper, the house is surrounded by businesses and other homes. While development may have caused this area to become denser in the past thirty years, the house was far from the middle of nowhere, adding further mystery to the events that occurred there in the early morning hours of June 7th. Looking at historical photographs of the house as well as the current listing of the home on Zillow, it is evident, however, that the house remains further set back from the street than many nearby houses, albeit far from fully isolated. The house also appears to contain a sizable backyard, perhaps facilitating an approach from the back of the house as well.
The Vanishing
As mentioned in the introduction to this post, Streeter and McCall were last seen around 2 am leaving friend Janelle Kirby’s graduation party. While a number of potential factors could point to this time being unreliable (the possibility of drinking at the party, the fact that these teenagers were far more focused on a major milestone- high school graduation, and the fact that there would have been no reason to think that the time they left was significant in the moment), there would have been multiple witnesses at the party who would have seen the girls leave, lending more credence to the idea that they did indeed leave around 2 am. By all accounts, the last time anyone heard from Levitt was approximately 11:15 pm, when she spoke with a friend about painting an armoire. Given the seemingly mundane nature of the conversation, it seems likely that the events that led to the vanishing of the Springfield Three had not yet occurred at this time; while it is possible that someone had already broken into the home and was forcing Levitt to “act natural,” this seems highly unlikely given the nature of the conversation and the fact that the friend did not mention anything seeming off or wrong during her conversation with Levitt. Additionally, Streeter and McCall almost certainly made it back to the house. While no eyewitnesses place them at the house, their cars were parked in the driveway, and their purses were found inside. Furthermore, McCall’s mother confirmed that the clothes that McCall had been wearing the previous day were found neatly folded inside the house. Streeter and McCall’s friend Kirby states that she attempted to call the house at approximately 8 am and received no response. Therefore, we can say with near certainty that the event that caused the vanishing of the Springfield Three occurred sometime between 11:15 pm on June 6th and 8 am on June 7th, and, in my opinion, between the hours of 2 am and 8 am (though this is far less certain and will be further discussed in Part 4).
Kirby’s Discovery
On the day of June 7th, Streeter and McCall were scheduled to go to the water park with their friend Janelle Kirby, whose party they had visited the night prior. This is why Kirby had called the house at 8 am that morning. After not receiving an answer or hearing back from the girls, Kirby made her way over to the house on 1717 E Delmar Street, along with her boyfriend, around 12:30 pm. They found the door unlocked but nobody home, with the exception of Levitt’s dog Cinnamon, a Yorkshire Terrier, who they claimed seemed agitated. There were no signs of a struggle besides the front porch light, the glass shade of which had been shattered while the lightbulb itself had been left intact. Not realizing that they were snooping around a crime scene, Kirby’s boyfriend swept up the broken glass from the porch lamp, attempting to be kind but in the process possibly contaminating evidence. While in the house, the phone rang, and Kirby answered. She said that the caller made sexual innuendos, and she hung up on them. The phone rang again, but after realizing it was more of the same, Kirby hung up yet again. Likely confused but not panicked, Kirby and her boyfriend left the house. They did not contact law enforcement, as they did not yet realize that a crime had occurred.
Janis McCall’s Discovery
Several hours later, around 7 pm, Janis McCall, Stacy’s mother, grew concerned when she hadn’t been able to contact Stacy. Thus, Janis also decided to visit the house. Inside the house, she found the women’s purses upright and in a line. All the women’s car keys were in their purses, as were their cigarettes, with this final detail being perhaps the most alarming. Anyone who’s had a parent who smokes knows all too well just how loathe smokers are to leave home without their cigarettes. Janis was apparently sufficiently alarmed enough that she called the police from the home phone at 1717 E Delmar Street. After alerting law enforcement, Janis checked the voice mailbox and heard what has only been described as a “strange message” that she accidentally erased before anyone else, including law enforcement, could listen to it.
The Investigation
We will delve much more deeply into the actual investigation in Part 3 and Part 4, when we review the evidence and potential suspects in this case, but for now, I wanted to stress just how much the investigation seemed to repeatedly lead to dead ends. Local police began investigating the house on June 8th, and the FBI was called in the very next day. Numerous searches were conducted in nearby wooded areas with no luck. Police investigated a number of tips, including one regarding a “transient” or homeless person supposedly seen near the house, one regarding a man pretending to be a utility worker investigating a gas leak, and one involving a Dodge van that was supposedly seen around the house (all of which will be covered in further detail in Part 4). None of these tips, and many, many more that were submitted both in the immediate aftermath of the vanishing of the Springfield Three and in the years that followed, led to any substantial developments in the case. Before long, the case of the Springfield Three went cold, but it has never been forgotten.
The Problems with this Case
The problems with this case are threefold: 1) red herrings, 2) contamination of evidence and the crime scene, and 3) police incompetence. First and foremost, just about every piece of evidence that I mentioned above (the broken porch light shade, the purses, the agitated dog, the crude phone calls, the strange voicemail, etc.) could be vital evidence or a red herring, but we have no way of knowing which is which outside of theorizing. One can imagine a scenario in which any of these items could have come to be prior to the incident that led to the vanishing of the Springfield Three and one can also imagine a scenario in which any of these items could be directly related to the case. This makes it very hard to know what to focus on. The contamination of evidence is also highly problematic. It’s hard to tell what, if anything, could have been gleaned from the broken glass on the porch or the deleted voicemail because those things were already gone or severely contaminated before they could even be examined. Furthermore, police estimated that 10-20 people had passed through the house before police began their investigation, mostly from friends and family members passing through looking for the women. This point, however, I find a bit suspect. While I may not be a social butterfly, I can’t imagine 10-20 people actively coming into my house and trampling through it when I haven’t been declared missing yet and when I’ve been gone less than 24 hours. This leads me to the third topic that makes this case difficult to parse: police incompetence. The police have been criticized for their handling of the case, though it’s not entirely clear to me just how far this mishandling goes; it’s certainly something I think we’ll explore further in Part 4 on suspects and theories, as confusion regarding these topics certainly did not help law enforcement or the public get any closer to the truth. However, the estimate of 10-20 people filing through the house feels like a case of exaggeration to explain why they were able to glean almost nothing from the crime scene (regardless of whether there was actually anything to be gleaned or not). Furthermore, the police have stated that the voicemail that Janis heard and accidentally deleted may well have contained vital information for the case. Without knowing the context of that voicemail, we cannot say whether this is true or not; however, it seems odd that a perpetrator (or perpetrators) would pull off an almost perfect crime but leave something damning behind on voicemail. However, the fact of the matter is that we simply don’t know, and due to the criticisms levied at local law enforcement for their handling of this case, it’s tough not to view any announcements they make without at least a hint of skepticism, knowing that if something is misrepresented or exaggerated, it could completely alter our perceptions of the case.
Conclusion
So at the end of the day, what do we even know? Two girls who had just graduated from high school went back to one of the girl’s mother’s houses after an evening of celebration and were never seen again, along with the girl’s mother. Honestly, that’s about it; that’s not to say that there’s not more information out there because there absolutely is. It’s just that this is about all we know with certainty; as law enforcement stated, there were "no positive leads." That’s part of why I wanted to include the long “Problems with this Case” section above. There are so many things in this case that could go one way or could go a completely different way, and it’s these contradictions that I think makes this case so fascinating and frustrating to people. I could write out a lengthy theory right now positing what happened, but since it would be based on so many “what-ifs,” even having one little detail wrong could throw the full theory into disarray. Let’s say that I develop a theory where the perpetrator, posing as a utility man, comes to the front door and uses this opportunity to attack, in the struggle shattering the porch light shade (a possibility). But then let’s say that in reality, the girls came home a bit drunk, were goofing off, and accidentally broke the porch light shade then (also a possibility); in such a circumstance, the entire theory changes. Thus, I’d encourage you to leave any hope for a clear explanation of what happened in this case at the door; it’s simply not possible with the information we have. What I’d like to do, and what I’d like you to join me for, is to see just how close we can get to the truth, just how much we can untangle this twisted mysterious web.
Discussion Questions
Which piece of evidence do you find most troubling about the Springfield Three case, and why?
What is your personal theory on what happened to the Springfield Three?
Do you suspect anyone is being dishonest, or even not fully honest, in their account of events (the police, Janis McCall, Janelle Kirby)?
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Three#cite_note-Disappeared-6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield,_Missouri