___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Reconnecting can lead to connection in case"
By James Roth
The Carrollton Leader
July 16, 2010
http://www.courier-gazette.com/articles/2010/07/16/carrollton_leader/news/78.txt
A 1988 missing persons’ case involving two popular Carrollton girls is drawing new attention because of modern technology.
On March 19, 1988, Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley were two normal girls who attended Newman Smith High School just months away from graduation. However, after that night, the city of Carrollton was changed forever.
That evening, Madison and Smalley traveled to many locations across the Metroplex. According to police, the girls went to the mall, then to a friends party in Arlington and then to a Steak and Ale restaurant in Addison where Smalley worked.
"It is hard to know exactly every spot they stopped at that night. If this were to happen today we would have been able to pin locations using cells phones and other technology," said Sgt. Joel Payne, lead detective on the case. "We talked to people at the party that took place in Arlington and found nothing there."
Payne said that once the girls left the restaurant their whereabouts and location are unknown. He said the next day phone calls were made by both Madison and Smalley’s parents but the police were not notified.
"This was Carrollton in 1988, bad things did not happen in this city," Payne said. "Both girls were very responsible, so the red flags of something horribly wrong did not go off in either household."
The following Monday, Madison’s father went to Newman Smith High School to see if the girls were in school. After talking to a security guard, Madison’s father found out that the girls were not at school and notified the police.
Madison’s car, a 1967 Ford Mustang, was found in the parking lot of the El Fenix restaurant at the intersection of Webb Chapel and Forrest Lane.
According to Payne, in 1988 Forrest Lane was a very popular place for people to drive around and hang out. He said once people became aware of the situation, leads began to come in from everywhere.
"We had all sorts of leads, from psychics calling in to people saying they saw them on a bus in New Mexico," Payne said. "Unfortunately nothing solid came in until that summer."
That summer, an ex-boyfriend of one of the girls admitted to his new girlfriend that he was involved in the disappearance of the girls. According to Payne, that lead was looked into but nothing conclusive was found.
As time went on, the months and years passed and the case became cold. Payne said while leads are continually worked, there is not enough evidence to figure out what actually took place.
Interest in the case was renewed when Carrollton resident Shawn Sutherland wrote the book This Night Wounds Time: The Mysterious Disappearance of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley, telling the girls story.
Payne said that the book did not provide any new evidence on that night but it did make him think differently about how the night progressed.
"In talking to the author and looking back over everything I began to make different connections that were not there before," Payne said. "I began to start the whole investigation from scratch. I pulled in some of the original witnesses and began to verify things."
According to Payne, he was amazed at the memory that many people still had of that night.
"The disappearance of these girls is a benchmark for an entire generation of Carrollton residents," Payne said. "People know where they were and what they were doing. They are connected to that moment in time."
Payne said because so many people from Carrollton are connected to that moment in time, the conversation about the girls disappearance has never gone away. He said new forms of communication such as social networking has helped police bring in new witnesses to gather information about the girls.
"Facebook groups are huge," Payne said. "There is a Facebook group about these girls and people post information about them all the time. We are able to contact them and make connections."
Payne said that individuals who were friends with Madison and Smalley are now adults with children who are 17 or 18 years old, and they do not want another incident like this to occur.
"People are coming forward now and talking more openly about details that night," Payne said. "Back in 1988, someone we questioned might not have said something because they did not want there friend to get in trouble with their parents, or get themselves in trouble."
Payne said the culmination of technology and friends of Madison and Smalley now having children of their own are sparking interest in this case once again.
"We have been able to get a better feel for what took place that night because of things like people talking on Facebook," Payne said. "The better the description we get and the more people we talk to only help us."
Anyone with information about the disappearance of Madison and Smalley can contact the Carrollton Police Department at 972-466-3335.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "'88 case of missing teens gets jump-start: Book spurs investigators to re-examine episode that shook Carrollton" A dozen tiny pinpricks above the words "MISSING PERSONS" mark where the flier has been tacked and retacked onto a bulletin board in the Carrollton Police Department lobby. Thousands of Carrollton residents remember the days and weeks after the teens vanished. They remember the posters scattered about the city and in the windows of businesses up and down Forest Lane, a popular teen hangout where the girls disappeared. Time passed. The headlines subsided. As Carrollton grew, the memory faded until a full-time paralegal decided to write a book that reignited the investigation. Sutherland, who was 24 in 1988 and had grown up in Carrollton, was haunted for years by the girls' disappearance. Then, one night last year, Sutherland awakened with this phrase racing through his mind: "Tell their story." Carrollton police had never closed the case. It sat inactive, like a jigsaw puzzle missing pieces, until Sutherland wrote his book. "I was thinking I was going to write a book that maybe stirred citizens up. ... Maybe that would force police to do something," Sutherland said. Stacie had endured the SAT earlier that Saturday and was waiting at home for Susan to drop by. Ida Madison, Stacie's mother, permed her daughter's shoulder-length blond hair as they waited. After Susan arrived, the teens pranced out the front door to Stacie's pristine yellow 1967 Mustang convertible. As they headed to the car, Ida reminded them about her midnight curfew. "How will you know we'll be in?" Susan joked. "You never know when I'll call," Ida said. The girls planned nothing that night. In typical teenage fashion, they wandered around town. They went to the mall, dropped by Susan's house, and then went to a friend's party in Arlington. They didn't stay at the apartment long, left about 10 p.m. and returned to Susan's house in Carrollton. They called the Arlington apartment again at 12:01 a.m. Between 12:30 and 1 a.m., they went to a Steak and Ale restaurant in Addison where Susan worked. Susan talked to a boy whom she wanted to date, and then the girls left in the Mustang, the convertible top down. It was the last time they were seen alive. Police discovered Stacie's car at Webb Chapel Road and Forest Lane the following Tuesday. The doors were locked, the convertible top fastened shut. It was about 45 degrees the morning of their disappearance, but the girls' jackets were found on the car's floorboard on top of Stacie's boombox. The girls' families never thought that the teens would have run away. Susan's mother is sure something sinister happened that morning. "There's a chance they might walk through the door. In your mind you think that might happen," said Carol Audett, Susan's mother. "But I know my daughter. She wouldn't have just left." Sutherland, who has a stubbly salt-and-pepper beard and an arch of baldness across his head, binged on sandwiches and Pop-Tarts. The diet added about 20 pounds to his already husky frame. For nearly eight months he wrote, researched and interviewed everyone from the original case detectives to the girls' high school teachers. The book didn't reveal new details about that night in 1988, but it came at a time when Carrollton police were re-examining cold cases. His efforts prompted investigators to take a closer look. "What this book did was push the full reset button," said Carrollton police Sgt. Joel Payne. "We threw out all the assumptions, and we started from scratch." With the case revived, investigators are re-examining theories dismissed long ago. There's a heightened urgency to get anyone with information about the case to come forward. Some who have remained silent for 22 years are providing information about the night the girls disappeared. Detectives won't reveal what that information is, but they say it's credible. Payne said they need more. "What I need is something somebody's been holding on to for 22 years," Payne said.
By Jon Nielsen
The Dallas Morning News
July 6, 2010
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/carrollton/stories/070610dnmetmissing.20496b1.html
The poster is from another generation.
Below the block text pounded out on an old typewriter are pictures of the two teens missing since 1988.
Stacie Madison and Susan Renee Smalley stare back from their senior class photos. Their smiles, frozen in time, express youthful optimism.
'Tell their story'
The case invaded Shawn Sutherland's sleep.
Sutherland, now 46, spent much of his free time studying and writing articles about cults. After his epiphany last spring, he put a project about a California cult leader on hold so that he could write the tale of the missing teens. He called the book he self-published last fall This Night Wounds Time: The Mysterious Disappearances of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley.
2 months from graduation
Stacie, 17, and Susan, 18, set to graduate in two months from Carrollton Newman Smith High School, were determined to make the last night of spring break count. They planned a sleepover at Susan's place and were determined to find a good party. It was March 19, 1988.
A fresh start
Sutherland began working on the book in April 2009. After his daylong shifts as a patent law paralegal in a downtown Dallas high-rise, he stayed up as late as 2 a.m. pecking the pages out on his keyboard in his Richardson home.
The department and Payne, the lead detective, are throwing new resources into the case. The Denton County district attorney's office also assigned an investigator after learning of a connection in its county.
"Somebody knows something out there. Good, bad, rumor, we don't care. We just need to put some pieces together," said Denton County investigator Jerry Pomposelli.
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"Shawn Sutherland publishes book to reignite interest in decades-old Carrollton mystery"
By Kara Koloini
NeighborsGo - Carrollton
June 4, 2010
http://neighborsgo.com/stories/55589
From his office on the 71st floor of Bank of America Plaza, the highest point in the city, Shawn Sutherland has a clear view of everything in Dallas.
But it's an event that occurred more than 22 years ago, in a location still unknown, that Sutherland is most concerned with today.
Sutherland is at the center of a media blitz promoting his new self-published book, This Night Wounds Time, a methodical look at the 1988 disappearance of Newman Smith High School seniors Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley, the subsequent investigation, and its status as one of North Texas' most infamous unsolved mysteries.
"Anyone living in or around the area in the late '80s remembers the story, and they know what’s meant when someone mentions 'those two girls'," Sutherland said.
Exactly where the story of "those two girls" ends is yet to be determined. What is known is sparse: Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley, two high school students quickly approaching graduation, went out in Dallas one night and never returned.
Stacie’s yellow Ford Mustang was found parked on Forest Lane, with the girls' belongings locked inside, and was returned to her family without being fingerprinted or searched. The spring break timing of their disappearance left the Carrollton Police Department doubting foul play until nearly a month later, and after two decades, not a single arrest has ever been made.
This may soon be changing. According to Sutherland, with the publication of his book, a number of people have come forward with new information and in some cases, startling revelations. One particularly substantial development: The Denton County District Attorney's Office has become involved with the investigation after a possible link to the area was revealed in the book.
Sutherland has also confirmed that he has been working with Carrollton police as a consultant — giving him access to the case files and new evidence, including a renewed focus on specific leads generated in 1988.
Sutherland said he is pleased with the increased attention his book, which he is selling at cost, has brought back to the girls' story, and the enthusiasm of the Carrollton Police Department in investigating the case.
But he won't be fully at peace until the case is solved, and the Smalley and Madison families know what happened to their daughters that fateful night.
"When Stacie and Susan first disappeared, I was haunted by the idea that they disappeared like that, just vanished into thin air," Sutherland said. "Today, I’m haunted by the fact that there hasn’t been closure — that there has never been justice."
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"Unsolved disappearance of two girls detailed in new book"
By Jason Whitely/WFAA-TV
December 2, 2009
http://www.wfaa.com/news/Unsolved-disappearance-of-two-girls-detailed-in-new-book-78381357.html
DALLAS - For Ida Madison, the passing of time hasn't helped.
"My daughter still has not been found and I can't stop looking for her," she said.
Madison just wants to know what happened to her oldest daughter, Stacie.
As their classmates from Carrollton's Newman Smith High School started Spring Break, Stacie and her friend, Susan Smalley, disappeared March 20, 1988.
Volunteers passed out hundreds of fliers with the girls' pictures on them at shopping centers, but the two high school seniors seemingly vanished without a trace.
With no credible leads and a stalled investigation, their story soon faded from the headlines.
"I think this case has languished for too long," said Shawn Sutherland.
Almost 22 years after Stacie and Susan disappeared, Sutherland has revived their case.
As a 1982 graduate of the same high school, he was drawn to their story. Sutherland briefly met Susan before she disappeared when she worked as a hostess at the Steak & Ale Restaurant in Addison.
Over the last seven months, Sutherland, who is a paralegal, has spent his own time and money conducting an independent investigation that he recently self-published in a book titled This Night Wounds Time: The Mysterious Disappearances of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley.
In the book, the original Carrollton Police detectives working the case, who have since left the department, admit Stacie's boyfriend was never entirely cleared in the case.
"As far as they know, his family and friends were never pressed and they should be," Sutherland said.
Her boyfriend, who is not mentioned by name, confessed to his new girlfriend that he killed the two girls and then immediately recanted. Investigators stopped pursuing him after he passed a polygraph.
Madison thinks Carrollton police did the best they could with the knowledge they had in 1988. But, she isn't convinced her daughter's former boyfriend had nothing to do with the disappearance until he's finally cleared.
"Maybe he did exactly what he told that girl he did do - that he hit them both over the back of the head and killed them, then he buried their bodies and took the car back," she said.
Madison doubts Stacie or Susan are still alive. Their disappearance remains one of the oldest unsolved cases in Carrollton. It's still classified as missing persons since there is no evidence of a homicide. Their missing poster still hangs inside the Carrollton Police Department.
Sgt. Joel Payne said the case remains active, is assigned to an investigator and leads still trickle in. But, detectives wouldn't reveal whether they're still following up with Stacie's former boyfriend or taking any other steps for investigative reasons.
Payne and Madison hope Sutherland's book, which he is selling at cost, generates new leads in the unsolved mystery.
For now, more than two decades later, it's still a story without an ending.
Anyone with information in the case is asked to call Carrollton Police at (972) 466-3290.
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"New book delves into mysterious disappearances of two teenagers"
By Senitra Horbrook
The Carrollton Leader
October 6, 2009
http://www.scntx.com/articles/2009/10/06/carrollton_leader/news/70.txt
Shawn Sutherland's chance restaurant encounter with Susan Smalley in early 1988 left a lasting impression. Little did he know, she would turn up missing with her best friend just a few months later, never to be seen or heard from again.
“Mention those two girls and anybody here in 1988 knows who you’re talking about,” Sutherland said.
Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley, seniors at Newman Smith High School, disappeared March 20, 1988. Sutherland, a paralegal who lives in Richardson, delves into the story of their disappearance with his book This Night Wounds Time: The Mysterious Disappearances of Stacie Madison and Susan Smalley.
“I have never felt called to preach, but I just felt called to tell this story,” Sutherland said. “By getting it back out there, somebody might offer what they know.”
Sutherland, a 1982 Newman Smith graduate, was home on break during his last semester at Abilene Christian University and heard the police were reaching out to the community for two missing Newman Smith students. At first, he assumed the two friends may have headed to South Padre for the weekend as so many high school students did back then.
“As I got ready to drive back to school, they still weren’t back,” he said. “After that, I got on with life.”
When he returned home from Abilene again a few months later he saw one of the many missing posters plastered all over Carrollton and realized Smalley was the restaurant hostess whose smile and friendly conversation made him forget his worries about grades, tests, graduation and the hope of finding a job.
“Staring back at me from that piece of paper was a blonde I did not recognize. The other face, though, I knew instantly,” Sutherland wrote in the first chapter. “The smile was unmistakable. It was the same one that had lifted my spirits that freezing cold night earlier in the year.”
It has been reported Madison and Smalley were last seen in the parking lot of Steak and Ale in Addison between 12:01 and 12:45 a.m. On Monday, March 21, Madison’s 1967 Ford Mustang was discovered in the El Fenix parking lot on Forest Lane, near Marsh. At that time, the area was known as the hot spot for teenagers cruising in cars and hanging out with friends.
“Nobody knows what their plans were - if they were meeting anybody,” Sutherland said. “Prior to that they’d done teenage stuff, gone shopping, visited friends in Arlington and came back.”
In his book, Sutherland details numerous interviews, including those conducted with family members, friends and officers who worked the case at various times.
“I don’t claim to have solved the mystery,” he said. “I explore probably what’s more realistic. They met up with somebody they knew or trusted or the other possibility is they were abducted by a complete stranger.”
When Sutherland decided to write this book, he was apprehensive about approaching the girls’ relatives.
“The scariest thing was approaching the people out of the clear blue saying ‘I want to write a story about two of your beloved that vanished and never appeared again,’” he said. “There were also some people who were friends of the girls that were a little suspicious, wondering why this guy is so interested.”
Sutherland said the police were also a little apprehensive about speaking with him.
“The Carrollton police have sort of got a bad rap over this over the years. They didn’t take it seriously at first,” he said. “When they found one of the girls’ cars a few days later, it wasn’t fingerprinted.”
When it came time to publish his findings, Sutherland knew it would be nearly impossible to sell the book to a mainstream publisher because the girls were never national news or household names.
“A bigger obstacle, though, was that, since it is the story of a cold case, the book would be minus an ending. And the public, or so I am told, is prone to avoid reading about unsolved mysteries unless they are of the most garish sort, such as the Black Dahlia, Jack the Ripper or the Zodiac,” he wrote in the preface. “I would later learn that the higher profile television programs devoted to capturing criminals had also declined for years to broadcast the details of the Madison/Smalley case because police lack a suspect whose photograph they can publicize.”
Sutherland went the self-publishing route and is selling the book at cost, meaning he will make no profit.
“Somebody out there knows what happened to these girls. Somebody knows where they are. I think it’s obscene they’ve been missing this long,” he said. “My thoughts are parallel with the officer I interviewed. He would just like to have a little closure for the family. That would be my reward.”
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Persons with any information regarding the Stacie Madison/Susan Smalley case should contact the Carrollton Police Department at 972-466-3300.
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