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THE MESA TRIBUNE | SEPTEMBER 26, 2021

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Not enough attention paid to all the missing

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ

Tribune Columnist

There’s no telling what seizes our population’s collective imagination on any given day, what generates news headlines and clicks by the million.

But one topic remains a sure bet: An attractive young white woman gone missing.

The latest such tale, the disappearance of 22-year-old Gabby Petito, came to the saddest end imaginable Sept. 19, when investigators found her body in Wyoming’s Teton-Bridger National Forest. On Tuesday, the Teton County coroner ruled Petito’s death a homicide.

The news media’s Petito obsession will likely continue for some time: The deceased’s travel partner and �iancé, Brian Laundrie, is still missing at press time.

Authorities are combing a swampy 25,000-acre nature preserve in west Florida searching for Laundrie, who could hardly look guiltier in Petito’s death. In July the pair went off to explore the American West by van. It was set to be a four-month trip, but Laundrie reportedly came home on Sept. 1, solo and mum about Petito’s whereabouts. The girl’s family reported Gabby missing 10 days later.

A national whodunit erupted that has stretched for weeks. In its wake trail the names we all have heard: Jon Benet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, Laci Peterson, Natalee Holloway, Caylee Anthony.

All white, all female, all gone, all the subject of intense fascination.

Which leads to my point: I’ve read often about “missing white woman syndrome,” a media reality that has been the subject of academic research. Many who cite it complain that the Gabby Petitos of the world don’t deserve such attention. That sounds small to me, petty.

Instead, I wish that every missing person – skin color, age and gender aside – would receive some level of national attention, with the resources that scrutiny brings.

Because for every Gabby Petito, there’s a Daniel Robinson and a thousand more cases like his.

Robinson, a 24-year-old African American male, went missing in the far West Valley near Buckeye on June 23. Three weeks later, a rancher found the geologist’s Jeep upturned in a ravine. Twelve days after that, searchers found a human skull near the vehicle, but police say those remains are not Daniel.

What happened to Robinson is still a mystery, despite Buckeye police using off-road vehicles, cadaver dogs, a drone and a chopper to search 70 square miles of desert.

For every Gabby Petito, there’s also a Jhessye Shockley. The 5-year-old Glendale girl with the big smile went missing in October 10 years ago. Police have never found her body, which they believe was forced into a suitcase and abandoned in a Tempe trash bin. A month after the little Black girl vanished, cops named her mother a suspect.

Today, Jerice Hunter is serving life, convicted of murder and child abuse despite no eyewitnesses and no body. The case is closed beyond a reasonable doubt, but I still wonder about Jhessye every year about this time.

I think about Mikelle Biggs, too, every January. The Mesa 11-year-old went missing the day after New Year’s 1999. One minute she was riding her bicycle on El Moro Avenue, the next she was gone. It has been nearly 23 years.

I wonder what becoming a national obsession might have meant for Mikelle, Jhessye and Daniel. I wonder about the 600,000 Americans who go missing yearly and about the 970 Arizonans currently listed in NamUS, the national missing persons database.

Some blame racism for our fascination with Gabby Petito. That’s part of it, but hardly the major felony at hand here. These are kidnappings, traf�icking cases, homicides.

We should pay as much attention as we can to as many of the disappeared as we can, for as long as we can. Ignorance is not bliss, not when lives hang in the balance. ■

Biden immigration plan destroying America

BY JD HAYWORTH Tribune Columnist

You may not recall the name Paul Greenberg, but you certainly recall the nickname he bestowed on a politician who became President.

Greenberg, in his newspaper column, concocted the sobriquet “Slick Willie” to describe then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who cast himself as a progressive reformer in a speech to the 1980 Arkansas Democratic Convention.

Greenberg disagreed, calling Clinton a false reformer and making up the memorable monicker. “Slick Willie” stuck to Clinton and contributed to his defeat by Republican Frank White that November.

When Clinton in 1992 decided to run for president, Greenberg made a move from the Pine Bluff Commercial to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock. From that newspaper’s editorial page, he made another prescient pronouncement. “When it comes to the Clintons,” he wrote, “don’t listen to what they say… watch what they do.”

Actually, that’s good advice for evaluating anyone in public of�ice.

But in the case of Joe Biden and his cabinet, the advice should be modi�ied in this fashion: Listen to what they say…at least, what they say again and again and again.

In a recent appearance before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas could not give Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) a speci�ic count of the number of Haitians encamped under a border bridge in Del Rio, Texas – the total of Haitians who had already been admitted to the U.S. illegally from that location.

Nor did Mayorkas provide the committee with updated information on the Afghan evacuees awaiting resettlement here, though he did apologize to Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), saying, “You’re entitled to that information.”

But perhaps the most memorable moment in the hearing came when Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) confronted the secretary of Homeland Security, pointing to more than 200,000 “border encounters” over two straight months.

“Are you happy with what’s happening at the border now…is this success?”

Mayorkas responded, “We have a plan. We’re executing on our plan and we will continue to do so.”

That is the response that the HHS Secretary always offers – and that part is true.

The Biden Administration does have a plan. It is a plan to fundamentally change America and the way it will be done is by fundamentally changing who is American.

Illegal aliens are pouring across our southern border, though it may be inaccurate to even call it a border any longer. Our Border Patrol has been turned into a taxpayer-funded “Welcome Wagon” and babysitting service.

Incompetence? No.

Intentional? Yes.