At first, it was just another normal, happy night that families remember for years. June 6, 1992. High School in Kickapoo. Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall, two girls, walked across a graduation stage in Springfield, Missouri. They smiled for pictures, made plans with their friends, and then disappeared before dawn. Sherrill Levitt, Suzie’s mother, walked off the same night. They haven’t been found at all after thirty years.
The case now has a name. This group is known to most people in Missouri as the Springfield Three. But names make things sound settled, organized, and put away. This one isn’t. The Levitt family is still out there. Janell McCall, Stacy’s mom, is still out there. Still not getting something that should have come.
It’s not just the fact that there are no answers that makes this case so unsettling right now. It’s the exact information about what was left behind. Everything was still there when Janelle Kirby went to Levitt’s house at 1717 East Delmar the next morning. Bags on the ground. There are cars parked outside. There were cigarettes on the counter, which was odd because people who knew Sherrill said she was a heavy smoker. When Levitt got home from work, she still had almost $900 in cash in her purse. Stacy’s clothes were folded up nicely. In the bedroom, Suzie had cigarettes and an unfinished Coke next to her. There was static on Suzie’s TV, the kind that happens when a VHS tape runs out and no one turns off the TV.
Sometimes people are in a hurry to leave. They don’t leave like this, though. A porch light globe was broken, which is a small thing that doesn’t seem important until you think about it for a while. The bulb was still whole. Only the shade was broken. Cinnamon, the family dog, is a Yorkshire Terrier. She was upset when Kirby came over, and she was upset again hours later when Janis McCall came looking for her daughter. Dogs pay attention. No one can give a clear answer to the question of whether Cinnamon’s pain means anything useful at this point.
The police were called by Janis McCall from inside that house. She checked the answering machine and heard what she thought was a strange message while she was there. Then, like most voicemail systems did in the 1990s, it deleted itself after playback. Later, the police said they thought that message might have had a clue in it. Something like that sticks with you—a fact that could have changed everything but was forgotten as soon as it was heard.
People heard from Robert Craig Cox in 1997 that he knew the three women were dead and that their bodies would never be found. Cox had already been found guilty of kidnapping and robbery. The police looked into Cox and didn’t believe what he said. That makes me not sure what to do. A man makes a claim, the police don’t believe it, and the families are stuck in the middle, knowing it’s probably not true but not being able to let it go either.
If you talk to people who follow these kinds of cold cases, you get the sense that the Springfield Three became a permanent part of Missouri’s history. It wasn’t because the case was solved, but because it wasn’t. A warm June evening was the big day for Suzie and Stacy. They were 18 and 19 years old. The next day, they were going to a water park. That did not happen.
Levitt was 47 years old. A beauty expert. A mother who raised her daughter alone and seemed to be close to her. Someone who takes calls and writes down messages. There were no signs of trouble in her home. Anything that happened happened quickly, quietly, or both.
Having doubts for thirty years is a long time. The Missouri family that is still looking for answers isn’t looking in a big or loud way, at least not in a way that makes the news every week. Most families search in this situation in the same way: slowly, carefully, and with a level of patience that seems like stillness on the outside but is really something else on the inside.
