Annually, an indeterminate number of individuals vanish within the borders of the United States. In certain instances, investigators speculate that these disappearances are linked to acts of homicide, notwithstanding the absence of a physical corpus.
Herein lie some of the more renowned cases from Arizona, where exhaustive searches of landfills were conducted in pursuit of missing persons, coupled with investigations into criminal homicides where the victim's remains remained elusive.
Christine Mustafa
Christine Mustafa, a mother of two from Phoenix, was last sighted in 2017. Her absence was noted after she failed to present herself for duty, an unprecedented occurrence in her thirteen-year tenure at Walgreens.
For close to three months, authorities scoured a landfill in Buckeye in search of Mustafa's remains to no avail. Prosecutors posited that Robert Interval Jr., her paramour and father of her youngest offspring, orchestrated her demise in a bid to obtain custody of their child. Interval was subsequently convicted of second-degree murder.
In 2011, Jerice Hunter reported her five-year-old daughter, Jhessye Shockley, missing after purportedly leaving their Glendale residence momentarily for an errand, only to find the child absent upon her return. Law enforcement suspected Hunter of perpetrating the child's demise and disposing of her remains in refuse before notifying authorities. Despite combing through the Butterfield Station Landfill, the child's body remained undiscovered. Hunter was sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder in 2015.
Jeremy Bach
Jeremy Bach, then thirteen, confessed to police that he inadvertently shot Brad Hansen, also thirteen. A two-month search of the Butterfield Station Landfill ensued at a cost nearing $100,000 in pursuit of Hansen's remains. Bach was convicted of second-degree murder and served a 22-year sentence, being released in 2018.
Cookie Jacobson's husband reported her absence upon his return home, finding her whereabouts unknown. Their sixteen-year-old son recounted discovering his forty-nine-year-old mother deceased in bed, prompting him and his thirteen-year-old sister to dispose of her remains in a garbage receptacle out of fear of retribution. Despite an exhaustive two-month search of the Butterfield Station Landfill, Jacobson's body remained elusive. While the two teenagers were apprehended, the case never proceeded to trial, and no charges were laid in connection to Jacobson's demise.
Charles Russell
In 2002, Charles Russell and Catherine Nelson, a couple from Phoenix, were reported missing after embarking on a journey to procure a motorcycle in Tuscon, never to return. Although their truck was discovered outside Tuscon within a week, the couple remained unaccounted for. Brian Ferry was arrested for their murders in 2012 following a reopening of the case. He was convicted by a jury but was found deceased in his Pima County jail cell a month later while awaiting sentencing.
Elizabeth Johnson
Elizabeth Johnson left her abode in Tempe with her eight-month-old son Gabriel in 2009, ostensibly bound for Texas. According to law enforcement, Johnson confessed to the child's father that she asphyxiated the infant and disposed of him in a Texas waste receptacle. Despite a thorough search of the landfill, Gabriel's remains were not located. Johnson was apprehended in Florida and extradited to Arizona. However, she subsequently claimed to authorities that she had relinquished custody of her son to an unidentified couple in Texas. She was convicted in 2012 on charges of unlawful imprisonment, custodial interference, and conspiracy to commit custodial interference, ultimately being released in 2014.
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