The Springfield Three

THE SPRINGFIELD THREE

Suzie Streeter, Sherrill Levitt and Stacy McCall went missing on June 7th, 1992 in Springfield, Missouri. Suzie was the daughter of Sherrill; the duo lived on 1717 E Delmar St, Springfield, MO 65804. Suzie’s best friend, Stacy McCall was with the mother and daughter at the residence when the trio disappeared. The disappearance remains unsolved with no promising leads for over thirty years.

Stacy and Suzie were 18 and 19 years old, respectively, at the time of their disappearance. The duo had graduated from Kickapoo High School on June 6th, only a few hours before they went missing. Suzie and Stacy had attended multiple parties that night celebrating graduation, the last of which being ended by police around 2:30am. One of the duo’s friends, Janelle Kirby was also partying with them that night. The friends went to Stacy’s friend’s house for another party when it was broken up by the police. This caused Janelle, Stacy, and Suzie to drive over to Janelle’s house to relax for the rest of the night. This was faulted when the friends realized Janelle’s house was filled with friends and family from out-of-town to celebrate Janelle’s graduation. Due to the crowds, Stacy and Suzie left Janelle at her home and went over to Suzie’s house for the night.

The friends were supposed to join Janelle at her home to go to a waterpark called White Water in Branson, Missouri the next day.

Sherrill Streeter, Suzie’s mother, was 47 at the time of her disappearance. She worked at a hair salon and had over 200 different clients during her time there. She had been divorced twice, the most recent one causing her to move to Springfield from Washington State. Sherrill was last heard from around 11:15pm on June 6th when she was on the phone with a friend talking about staining a dresser.

When Stacy and Suzie failed to arrive at Janelle’s house by the morning of June 7th, Janelle and her boyfriend, Mike Hanson, drove over the Suzie and Sherrill’s house on East Delmar Street. The couple was greeted with the three women’s cars parked in the driveway, a broken porch light and the front door unlocked. Janelle was barefooted, so Mike swept the broken glass off the porch to protect his girlfriend (police later stated this action likely destroyed evidence of what happened to the women). Inside the house, the couple found no sign of the women but Sherrill’s dog, a Yorkshire Terrier named Cinnamon, was inside the house appearing agitated. Before the couple left the house phone rang. Janelle Kirby answered the phone and was greeted with a unidentified male who made “sexual innuendos” and sounded “teenish”. Kirby hung up on the man but immediately received another call, again of sexual nature, but again hung up the phone. Kirby passed these calls off as prank calls, as Suzie had been receiving them ever since they moved into the residence. When Janelle and Mike saw no sign of the three women they decided to go another waterpark called HydraSlide that was closer to them instead of going to White Water.

Stacy McCall’s mother, Janis, also drove to the residence when Stacy had failed to answer her calls all day and friends that worked at White Water confirmed that Stacy never arrived there that day. Janis stated that when she entered the house, Cinnamon came “barreling towards” her. Janis noticed that all three women’s purses were sitting in Suzie’s bedroom. Sherrill’s purse was found to contain an $800 cash deposit from the hair salon. Stacy’s clothes, from the night before, were folded in the bedroom. Recently-used make-up wipes were found, presumably Suzie and Stacy’s. Cigarettes and lighters were found near the women’s purses. This fact concerned family and friends because Sherrill and Suzie smoked; Sherrill was described as a chain-smoker. An unfinished can of coke was also found near the lighters and cigarettes. Janis found that the TV in Streeter’s room was on but was showing snow, suggesting the women had been watching something but failed to turn the TV off.

Janis called the Springfield Police Department to report the women missing. She checked the answering machine and listened to a “strange message” but it was deleted after being listened to. Police were interested in that call because they believed it was not related to the prank calls that had received earlier.

Janis contacted the police over 16 hours after the trio was last seen. Other friends were known to have visited the residence after they, too, received silence from the women. Springfield police estimated that the house, now a crime scene, was entered by 10-20 people. Officers found no sign of a struggle except for the broken porch light. They noted that Sherrill’s bed looked slept in and all personal belongings were left in the house like keys, money, purses, cars, cigarettes and Cinnamon. Sherrill had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for June 8th, McCall was scheduled to work that day as well. Streeter was scheduled to work on June 9th. None of the women showed up for their scheduled meetings.

Cinnamon was likely the only key witness to the disappearance but one neighbor came forward to state they saw Suzie driving a van, looking distressed, as she took orders from a man in the backseat, around 6:30am on June 7th. Other witnesses came forward stating they also saw the van but none of the witness could remember more than 3 numbers of the license plate. Another neighbor said they saw a “transient man” around the neighborhood but the neighbor could not pick the man out of a line-up. Police are not sure if the man is related to women’s disappearance.

In December of 1992, man called the “America’s Most Wanted” hotline with information about the trio’s disappearance, but the call was disconnected when the switchboard operator attempted to link up with Springfield Investigators. Police said the caller had “prime knowledge of the abductions” and appealed for the man to contact them but the man never did.

Levitt and Streeter were legally declared dead in 1997 but the case files remain open under “missing”.

Investigators received a tip that the women’s bodies were buried in the foundations of the south parking garage at Cox Hospital. In 2007, crime reporter Kathee Baird invited Rick Norland, a machinal engineer, to scan a corner of the parking garage with Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). Norland found three anomalies around the same size that he said were consistent with a “grave site”. Two of the anomalies were parallel and one was perpendicular. The SPD spokesperson Lisa Cox said that the person who reported the tip provided no evidence to prove that the tip was reliable. She also said that the parking garage began construction in September 1993, over a year after the women disappeared. She stated that digging in the area to search for any evidence is costly and since there was no evidence to support beliefs that there would be anything located there, and that the SPD does not intend to dig up that area or do anything around the property.

There are three main theories about what happened to the Springfield Three.
1. Dustin Recla and Michael Clay. Dustin Recla was a former boyfriend of Suzie Streeter. Dustin and Michael broke into the Springfield Mausoleum a few months before the women vanished and stole $30 worth of gold fillings from a skull. Police looked Recla because of his former relationship with Streeter and because Streeter gave a statement about the break-in and was rumored to be a witness against Recla in court. Two of his friends, one being Michael, were known to be with him on the night the women were last seen. Eventually, Michael and Dustin were only sentenced to probation for the break-in. Police never had enough evidence to support the theory that Dustin and Michael were associated with the women’s disappearance.
2. Robert Craig Cox. Cox was imprisoned in Texas for kidnapping and assaulting two girls and was also suspected in a murder in Florida. He had worked with McCall’s father at some point before the disappearance. Cox told journalists he knew where the women were murdered and buried and that the bodies were never be found. He was interviewed by the SPD stating that he was with his parents the night of June 6th; his parents confirmed this. He stated he was a church with his girlfriend the morning of June 7th. His girlfriend originally corroborated this story but later recanted stating that Cox asked to say that they were together. Police didn’t have any evidence that he was responsible for the disappearance and were unsure if he was stating this information about the women for attention.
3. Bartt Streeter. Sherrill’s son, therefore Suzie’s brother, was immediately polices’ man suspect because of his multiple encounters with law enforcement. He passed a polygraph test, had an alibi that his girlfriend and neighbor confirmed, so police removed him from their suspect list. Interestingly though, he was arrested for attempted false imprisonment (among other crimes) in Tennessee in 2019. He also a first degree attempted kidnapping by coercion or force charge in 2000 in Las Vegas.

A reward fund of $43,000 has been established for the location AND prosecution of the people responsible for the abduction of the three women.

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