'A black cloud settled in over us and the nightmare began'
In his last phone call to his mother, 19-year-old Jesse Ross' excitement spilled out in a tumble of words.
It was the day before he was to return home from a mock United Nations conference he was attending in Chicago with 13 other University of Missouri-Kansas City students. And a sponsor had just promised them a trip to Costa Rica.
It was the day before he was to return home from a mock United Nations conference he was attending in Chicago with 13 other University of Missouri-Kansas City students. And a sponsor had just promised them a trip to Costa Rica.
"Mom, aren't you excited for me?" Donna Ross' boy asked.
(Chris Cummins/For the Sun-Times)
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"Mom, aren't you excited for me?" Donna Ross' boy asked.
"Who's going to pay for this?" the Belton, Mo., mother of two wondered.
"Oh, Mom! We'll raise the money! Why aren't you happy for me?"
"OK, I'm happy," said Donna Ross, 59, an elementary school secretary. "We'll talk later."
They never got the chance. Early on Nov. 21, 2006, two days before Thanksgiving, Jesse Ross vanished while in Chicago. This past spring, the police formally suspended their search for him.
The number of people who go missing in Chicago and around the country staggers the imagination. In Chicago alone, 20,022 people were reported missing last year. That comes to 54 people, on average, reported missing here each day. Nationally, more than 800,000 people were reported missing last year.
A child outside the home. A college student. A spouse. An elderly Alzheimer's sufferer. The missing cut across a wide swath of society. But minorities account for a disproportionate number of the missing, according to a Sun-Times analysis that also found:
More and more adults are being reported missing. Yet experts say authorities generally are reluctant to dedicate the resources needed to find them.
Just 2 percent of missing juveniles have been abducted; most are runaways.
Law enforcement and hospitals face a growing and little-noticed challenge: identifying people who, for reasons of physical or mental ailments, can't say who they are. Sometimes, it's luck that these people are identified. Consider a recent instance involving a missing West Side man, whom detectives had searched for without success. He finally was identified and reunited with his family only because a Sun-Times reporter recognized his description as fitting that of a "found-person" report issued by a hospital.
In Chicago, all missing-persons cases aren't investigated equally. Police priorities: children under 10, the elderly and those deemed "endangered."
Most people who are missing do end up being found, usually safe. The police here "clear" about 98 percent of these cases, largely because so many of those reported missing turn out to have willingly gone, and eventually go home on their own.
But there are those, too, who ultimately are found to have been killed. Like pharmaceutical saleswoman Nailah Franklin, whose case gripped the public for weeks before the discovery of her body last month in Calumet City.
Their families and friends are thrust into a world of unimaginable grief.
In the cases that go unsolved, that grief is born anew each day.
"What? Where? How come? None of us have answers," said Donna Ross, fighting tears.
Don Ross last saw Jesse on Nov. 18, 2006.
He dropped off his son to board a van to Chicago. A communications major minoring in politics, Jesse, a sophomore, was attending his second model U.N. conference.
Don's freckled, red-haired son -- nicknamed "Opie" by friends -- was starting to find his social bearings. He'd run track and competed in Knowledge Bowls in high school, but blossomed in college, pledging Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and serving on the Student Activity and Program Council.
The March before, he'd landed an internship at Kansas City radio station 95.7, "The Vibe." He worked his way onto the popular "Shorty and the Boyz" morning show, and was to be promoted to a paid employee Jan. 1.
He was very excited.
Don, 59, was asleep when the call came. It was 1 p.m., but Don was napping, since he had been working nights at AT&T as a data processor.
A chaperone phoned to say that UMKC students were checking out of their hotel and Jesse was nowhere to be found.
Don called his wife, who left work early.
"Sometime later that day, a black cloud settled in over us and the nightmare began," Don said.
"At first, it's like, 'Well, he'll show up. He'll be there.' Kids do all kinds of things," his mother said.
Then the other 13 kids were in the van heading home . . . without Jesse. Police were involved. Fear set in.
Jesse had been called to attend a mock emergency U.N. Security Council meeting at the Sheraton, 301 E. North Water, between 2 and 4 a.m., and staff reported seeing him there. Students reported seeing him at a party held from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m.
Jesse never returned to his room at the nearby Four Points Sheraton.
The Rosses wanted to head to Chicago. But police said wait, that there was no reason to suspect foul play, and they wanted to finish interviewing conference attendees.
Over the next week, police searched the hotel and nearby alleys and trash bins. Divers searched Lake Michigan and the Chicago River where the body of a missing 31-year-old Massachusetts businessman was found the December before.
Local media and some national news shows covered the story.
A week later, police said it was as if Jesse fell off the face of the earth.
They asked his family: Could Jesse have just walked away?
"Not Jesse," said his mother. "Jesse had everything to live for, everything to come back to."
In December, Jesse's brother Andy, 23, and Don traveled to Chicago to ask the public for help. They held a press conference, announced a $1,300 reward and handed out fliers outside the Sheraton.
Then, police hit a wall.
"Unless a new lead comes in, there's nothing else we can do," Chicago Police Cmdr. Robert Hargesheimer said.
After hiking the reward to $10,000, tapping into the Internet and consulting a psychic, the family hired a private investigator earlier this month.
"I know police have got their hands full," said Don. "But we're not prepared to suspend anything."
"We have come to realize that we've become members of a club nobody wants to be in," he added. "It has a huge membership, and any member of this club will tell you we all only want one thing, to see that familiar face."
Just before Jesse left home, father and son remodeled a basement room for the teen. It's become a memorial to some, but his parents say it's just a room waiting for a boy.
| Year | Reports | Male/Female | Asian | Black | Indian | Unknown | White* |
| 1997 | 965,062 | 44% / 56% | 2% | 24% | 1% | 1% | 72% |
| 1998 | 928,220 | 44% / 56% | 2% | 25% | 1% | 1% | 71% |
| 1999 | 857,465 | 44% / 56% | 2% | 26% | 1% | 1% | 70% |
| 2000 | 855,464 | 44% / 56% | 2% | 27% | 1% | 1% | 69% |
| 2001 | 832,910 | 44% / 56% | 2% | 28% | 1% | 1% | 68% |
| 2002 | 812,811 | 44% / 56% | 2% | 28% | 1% | 1% | 67% |
| 2003 | 815,667 | 44% / 56% | 2% | 29% | 1% | 1% | 66% |
| 2004 | 823,745 | 45% / 55% | 2% | 30% | 1% | 2% | 65% |
| 2005 | 829,598 | 45% / 55% | 2% | 31% | 1% | 2% | 64% |
| 2006 | 833,171 | 46% / 54% | 2% | 32% | 1% | 2% | 63% |
| 2007 | 575,367 | 46% / 54% | 2% | 32% | 1% | 2% | 63% |
*Includes Hispanic. The FBI does not separate out Hispanic ethnicity.
**As of Sept. 19, 2007
Note: Some figures may not add up to exactly 100 percent due to rounding.
Sources: Chicago Sun-Times analysis of raw data provided by the National Crime Information Center, FBI, U.S. Justice Department
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
1-800-THE-LOST, or www.missingkids.com
National Center for Missing Adults
1-800-690-FIND, or www.theyaremissed.org