Hello friends! I am updating two sections in the timeline post for Hope. Today I realized the school districts rule outs were not as straightforward as they could be, and I think it might not be apparent in current research and investigation.
The original detectives spent years and years tracing and retracing school children lists who fit the demographics as possible matches for Hope. They ruled out thousands and then went back through and re-ruled them out. Later they included new lists of children who fit the demographics and were on welfare. That list was checked two times! This job was so tedious that Detective Bender contracted severe migraines that he was hospitalized.
https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/the-case-that-haunts-2460475
During the tracing of the children, at one point, the detectives asked for help from the public, finding twenty-two girls. The girls had been withdrawn in 1982-1983 from schools in St. Louis or the Normandy School Districts and had no records of transfers. That list was narrowed to seven girls only briefly after a flood of tips came in to help rule out many.
These seven were;
Antonia May
Shernita Adams
Sherita Hall
Jalita S. Johnson
Tania Johnson
Kathryn Moody
Jacqueline Taylor
I am still seeking a news source that explicitly rules out the seven. However, it can be concluded the following mentions ruled them out.
April 28, 1984
Detectives nearly exhausted the list of possible victims in the metropolitan area. Det. Burgoon and Det. Bender spent the year tracking schoolgirls who transferred or dropped out of St. Louis area schools before the discovery of Hope's body. They checked records for more than 1,000 children. The work is carefully organized in a file as big as a box.
"We have accounted for all but two girls, and one of them was in school when the body was found."
They begin to check elementary schools in East St. Louis, Ill., and Det. Burgoon said that he and Det. Bender would be calling the schools in the area to create a list from which to trace and check.
Det. Burgoon said four checks of a national list of missing persons compiled by the FBI have not turned up any results of victims that fit Hope's profile.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-american-republic-the-list-of-scho/128413214/
June 10th, 1984
The detectives are re-checking the lists.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/st-louis-post-dispatch-unsolved-murders/97441198/
Then lastly, in 1991, Adkins tells the papers that law enforcement had concluded that Hope was from out of state.
"She probably was from out of the state, " he said. "We checked school records around here very, very thoroughly."
https://www.newspapers.com/article/st-louis-post-dispatch-conclusion-to-th/98066151/
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