Posted on 11/07/2007 11:31:44 AM PST by Luke Skyfreeper
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Rowan Ford, 9, has been missing from her home in Stella since Friday evening. If you have any information about her, please call the Newton County Sheriff's Office at 451-8300 or 451-4242. COURTESY PHOTO |
Foul play is suspected in the disappearance of a 9-year-old Stella girl who has been missing from her home since late Friday night.
Rowan Ford, 9, was reported missing at 6:50 p.m. Saturday by her mother and step-father Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland said Sunday afternoon. The girl was last seen at her home at 777 Grove St. in Stella at 10:45 p.m. Friday night.
Copeland said the mother, Colleen Spears, last saw the girl at about 8:30 p.m. Friday when she kissed her goodnight before leaving for work at Wal-Mart in Jane.
Copeland said the stepfather, David Spears, and two friends remained at the home until about 10:45 p.m. when they left the home after David Spears checked on the girl, who was still asleep.
"They leave the house unlocked and left a 9-year-old girl by herself," Copeland said. "They cruise around a while, then took one guy home in Wheaton. The other guy brought the step-dad back home around midnight. He failed to check on the girl at that time."
Around 1:30 a.m., Copeland said, David Spears called his mother to ask if he could borrow her car to go somewhere.
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"She comes over, gives him the car and goes into the living room, failing to check on the girl," the sheriff said. "About 7 he returns and again fails to check on the girl."
Colleen Spears came home from work at about 9 a.m. and notices something amiss. Usually, on Saturday mornings, the girl greets her mother. But this past Saturday, there was no hug or kiss, no shout of elation that Mom was home.
"She checked the girl's bedroom, and she was not there," said Copeland. "She woke her husband up - he's a very sound sleeper - and he told her she may have gone to a girlfriend's house in the night, he didn't know.
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"They hope she's at a girlfriend's house, and waited all day Saturday for her to call. She doesn't," Copeland said.
The couple then began searching for the girl, notifying the sheriff's department of her disappearance shortly before 7 p.m. Saturday night.
"The mother is extremely cooperative with us. She's real distraught over his missing daughter," said Copeland. "The step-dad, he's not cooperating very well. From our investigation, we have every reason to believe foul play is involved. We don't have a suspect at this minute, but we haven't eliminated anyone from being a suspect, either."
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Deputies and volunteers were out Sunday searching on foot and on four-wheelers. A group of volunteers were out on horseback looking for the missing girl, while Stella residents fanned out to help. A Missouri State Highway Patrol helicopter took to the skies to aid in the search, Copeland said. Tracking dogs were able to follow the girl's scent to outside the home, but the trail then stops, as if she entered a motor vehicle at that point, Copeland said.
"We started in the house and yard, then broadened our search to the city of Stella, then broadened it to other wooded areas," the sheriff said. "The helicopter was able to search a large, large area.
"We have no reason to think she's out wandering around. This little girl was asleep in bed and within an hour and 15 minutes later, she was abducted? The odds are big for that kind of stuff."
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The search was discontinued late Sunday because of darkness, and was to begin anew this morning. Copeland was in meetings this morning and could not be reached for comment. A sheriff's department spokeswoman saisd the search continues today for the missing girl.
Miss Ford is described as being 3-feet 11-inches tall and weighing 62 pounds. She has brown hair and brown eyes. Authorities are uncertain what she was wearing at the time of her disappearance.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Newton County Sheriff's Office at (417) 451-8300.
This makes me sick. Poor little girl. May she rest in peace. At least the mother knows what happened, and even though the outcome is the worst, not knowing must be excruciating. If the stepdad did this, I hope he gets life w/out parole at the very least.
How very sad!
When are these dumb women going to get some common sense when picking out a step-dad for their beautiful youngsters?
MONSTER!!!
Latest word is he is still not talking about where he was during the 5 1/2 hours he used his mom’s vehicle. Further (and this part is just local rumor) when they searched his mom’s vehicle, they found the missing pink sheet in the vehicle.
Will let ya all know when I hear more.
Local attitudes are more along the line of a good horsewhipping while we put a noose up in the nearest tree.
Thanks. I’ll be as surprised as most people if the stepdad isn’t guilty. His mother is looking like an accomplice in a coverup too.
What we suspected yet hoped not to be true has been confirmed. Thanks for the sad update. Prayers for the mother and other family members.
Well, there have been no arrests, but there are a number of developments today.
Rowan’s death has been confirmed as a homicide.
Spears claims he borrowed his mother’s Suburban because his truck was low on gas.
And from what she has said, it appears the mom blames Spears, although whether she thinks his responsibility was one of omission or commission is not clear.
Here are excerpts, mostly from joplinglobe.com:
Ford’s body was found in a sinkhole along a lonely gravel road that winds through wooded valleys east of Powell.
“If you didn’t know where the sinkhole is, you wouldn’t be able to see it even from the road,” said McDonald County Sheriff Don Schlessman.
NEOSHO, Mo. — Two McDonald County sheriff’s deputies found the body of a 9-year-old girl who disappeared last Friday night. At a news conference here on Friday morning, law officers said Deputy Mike Hall and Deputy Jake Boles took the initiative to search some areas that might make good hiding places for people or bodies. Boles knows the area and the sinkhole.
The deputies found the body of Rowan Ford about 8 a.m. Friday under a ledge in a 20-foot-deep sinkhole in eastern McDonald County. It was on private land near Powell, about 10 miles south of her hometown of Stella.
The Newton County sheriff says investigators are hoping to get an autopsy done yet today on the body of 9-year-old Rowan Ford, which was discovered this morning in a cave in McDonald County.
Sheriff Ken Copeland confirmed that the girl who disappeared from her home in Stella late Friday night or early Saturday morning was slain, although he has declined to say how, pending preliminary findings of an autopsy. He said the autopsy will be performed in Springfield.
The girl’s body had been removed by late morning from the place where it was found in a cave, or sinkhole, on Fox Road near Powell. McDonald County Sheriff Don Schlessman said two of his deputies found the body about 20 feet down in the hole on a ledge.
An FBI evidence response team has been processing the scene throughout the day.
“Everyone known to be in the house that day has been interviewed and given polygraph examinations,” Copeland told the Globe. “I can’t tell you the outcomes.”
He said those who took the exams were the girl’s mother, Colleen Spears; her stepfather, David Spears; his mother, whose vehicle he borrowed during the night; and the two male friends of the stepfather who were with him at the house Friday night. Copeland has described the stepfather as less than cooperative since early in the investigation but has declined to label him a suspect.
“She has never been, nor is she now, under any suspicion whatsoever,” Copeland said.
Both an old pickup truck belonging to David Spears, the stepfather of 9-year-old homicide victim Rowan Ford, and a Chevrolet Suburban belonging to his mother, were seized earlier this week and have been undergoing processing by crime-scene technicians at the Newton County Sheriff’s Department.
Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland declined to say what evidence, if any, has been recovered from the vehicles. But he said all evidence gathered in the case is being flown to the FBI’s crime lab in Quantico, Va.
Spears is known to have borrowed his mother’s Suburban to leave his residence about 1:30 a.m. Saturday. He was gone for five-and-a-half hours, during which time his mother reportedly watched television in the living room of his residence in Stella without ever checking on her step-granddaughter in her bedroom.
“He told us his truck was low on gas, which is why he called his mother to come over,” Copeland said. “He wanted to use her vehicle.”
The sheriff has declined to discuss in detail where Spears said he went or what he was doing all that time in his mother’s vehicle, except to say that he told them he took a drive “to clear his head.”
The mother of Rowan Ford said she is shocked by the discovery of the girl’s body today in a sinkhole in McDonald County.
“Grief is hitting. Anger is hitting. Everything is hitting at one time,” said Colleen Spears, Rowan’s mother.
Ford, 9, had been missing for nearly a week before investigators discovered her body early this morning near Powell.
“It’s unforgivable,” Colleen said, when asked about her husband, David Spears, Ford’s stepfather. “What he did cost her the rest of her life.”
Colleen Spears left home for work around 8:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 2. David Spears and two of his male friends reportedly were with Ford at the home until they left together around 10:45 p.m., leaving the sleeping girl unattended. David Spears returned to the house around midnight, but left again around 1 a.m. Saturday and was gone much of the rest of the night.
Newton County authorities said David Spears made a telephone call to his mother around 1 a.m., and she brought over a vehicle and stayed at the house while he was gone, but she said she never checked on the girl.
Colleen Spears found the girl missing when she returned home from work around 9 a.m. Saturday.
Hmm, wonder why he wanted the car? To bury a body maybe?
What an odd picture though. She looks either disgusted and not wanting to have this picture taken, or very troubled.
No, I felt the same way. It’s not a typical school picture where kids at least try to smile a bit.
A real bubba, isn’t he?
That first one actually doesn’t look like a school picture at all to me. The one in 169 does. Looks like she just got back from playing at recess and didn’t brush her hair.
If you are referring to the picture about 3 or 4 posts above your last.. that is the latest school picture... my kids just got theirs this week.
With the girl being hidden in a cave, they should be able to get some pretty good evidence. I have been thru most of the caves around here, and there are footprints in some of them that were made 40+ years ago. Even prints made in the muddier caves stay a LOOOOOOONG time. Given that this cave is on the east side of the county, there is likely to be very little in the way of footprints from past visitors. Tourists and spelunkers do not really get over to that side of the county much.. it is pretty much backwoods territory over there. If it were a cave on the western side of the county, it would be a different story as they get visited a quite a lot.
The pic that was posted at the start of this thread is about a yr old.
Latest school pics only became available this week.
That’s the way my granddaughters pictures look from school. They all have a nice background and well done. So it probably is a school picture or could be one taken at Wal Mart’s as well.
School pictures DO look that way now. I get them from my daughter in law and they use nice backgrounds now more than the regular ones we recognize as school pictures. They probably cost more, too.
I pray they find plenty of evidence to put the murdering SOB away forever and ever.
You know, thanks for posting that video. I’ve watched it a couple of times now.
I’m pretty slow to judge somebody just by the look on their face or the tone of their voice, because it’s extremely easy to misjudge. And it looks like he has a real tear rolling down his face, which is hard to fake. Basically, you have to work yourself up into some genuine emotion.
Having said that, and having tried to filter this video through my assumptions and prejudices, he still looks to me like there’s an act going on here.
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