Missing Persons National Round Table Conference 2010
“EXPANDING THE VISION”
In March the CUE Center for Missing Persons will host its 6th annual “National Round Table Conference”, bringing people from across nation together once more to aid in national awareness of missing people.

Who Should Attend?

Families of the Missing
Non Profit Organizations and Organizations Alike
Advocates for Missing Persons and Crime Victims
Private Investigators
Law Officials
Coroners and Death Investigators
Search and Rescue/Recovery Teams
Public and Social Agencies
Counselor Services, Trauma/Grief
Volunteer and Community Leaders seeking professional training

The event will focus on improving communication among agencies, learning about each other’s services, exchanging ideas, and creating a unified support system for victims. The conference will also feature professional education/training/techniques, advanced technology, advocacy, investigation and exploring other aspects of missing person cases.

Our primary focus is to offer a safe place for those who suffer a missing loved one and educate those who work daily for missing persons, the search thereof. The conference promises all attendees to be informative, presenting new technology and offer ideas to make a difference in the way missing person cases are handled. Our main stream goal is to provide resources and technique in locating the missing and or lost.

All attendees will receive a certificate for each training session from various agencies and a plaque from the conference in general. Rooms and meals will be provided by the host “CUE Center for Missing Persons and covered by your registration fee. Transportation for arrival and departures from Wilmington airport will be provided. This event will be powerful and we hope you will make plans to participate.

Information will be updated often on training, speakers and other activities; please request a registration form; you can RSVP now with the online registration form, as space will be limited.

For more information please contact the CUE Center (910) 343-1131
Email CUE: cuecenter@aol.com

Thanking you in advance for your much-needed participation in this important event.

National Round Table Conference Goals:

• Sharing a trained and professional view for solving cold case and search there of; missing persons
• Understanding the resources available to be deployed when needed, what their capabilities are and how to obtain them.
• Exploring the relevant positive and negative experiences of people who have experienced a missing loved one.
• Creating new approaches to missing persons cases, and effectively deploying available resources; building communication and support
• Developing a high-level view of the modifications needed to our current resources and organizational community over the next five years.

Readers Digest

Thanks to all of our families who took part in the rally stop and all the families and volunteers who showed up in support of the tour effort. I hope in some small way it brings comfort to know their are people out in the world who do care; I pray the tour brings forth a resolve to another case. Again, thanks to all for the continual support.

ANDREWS, SOUTH CAROLINA RALLY STOP

AUSTIN, TEXAS RALLY STOP

BALMORHEA, TEXAS RALLY STOP

BOSSIER CITY, LOUISANA RALLY STOP

FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA RALLY STOP

HENDERSON, TEXAS RALLY STOP

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA RALLY STOP

 KILLEEN, TEXAS RALLY STOP

LAKE CHARLES, LOUISANA RALLY STOP

LAKELAND, FLORIDA RALLY STOP

LUMBERTON, NORTH CAROLINA RALLY STOP

MOBILE, ALABAMA RALLY STOP

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA RALLY STOP

MYRTLE BEACH, SOUTH CAROLINA RALLY STOP

NAPLES, FLORIDA RALLY STOP

PEACHTREE CITY, GEORGIA RALLY STOP

PELHAM, ALABAMA RALLY STOP

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS RALLY STOP

VALDOSTA, GEORGIA RALLY STOP

WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA RALLY STOP

Dear Families of the Missing and Supporters
It’s that time of the year again when we are preparing for the “ON THE ROAD TO REMEMBER TOUR”  and invite all of you to participate in this national awareness campaign for the missing, unidentified/unsolved homicide and cases fallen cold. Below you will find much needed information about the tour and history.. see you soon!

If you are a family of a missing person, law enforcement agency, organization/group or volunteer and you would like to host a rally stop featuring missing person – unidentified person – unsolved homicides, please contact our center.

The following states are the chosen ones we will travel through if you are in the tour path and want your case featured please at a hosted stop please contact us now. See below, states.

Promotional items will be distributed through the tour and at each rally stop
Tee Shirts and Bumper Stickers – Tour Graphic
DVD featuring all cases included in the tour
Complete Press Packets – Tour Information
Special Tour Booklet and other materials

WHAT DO I NEED TO SUBMIT MY MISSING PERSON
Photo
All vital stats on missing person
All agency and law enforcement contact numbers and web sites concerning missing person
Written consent for your missing person to be featured for CUE Center for Missing Persons
Video or other content to be included in the DVD distributed during the tour

WHO CAN HOST A STOP?
Family of a Missing Person
Law Enforcement Agency
Organization/Group
Volunteer/Concerned Citizen

WHAT ARE SOME IDEAS FOR A RALLY STOP?
Candle Light Vigils
Balloon Release
Display Board, Banners, Signs, Marques
Guest Speakers; law enforcement, town/state dignitaries, community leaders, pastor, etc.
Tribute Performances
Tables set up for displays of missing persons photos and information
Public event or safety activities
Invite the public, family, friends and media (our team will aid in media coverage)

WHAT TYPE OF LOCATIONS HAVE BEEN USED FOR RALLY STOPS?
Police – Sheriff Departments
Government Agencies, i.e. Mayor, Town Hall
Parking lots of stores that have frontage or businesses alike
Home of the families of the missing
Parks of any kind or large grassy areas
Local churches, Schools, Community Buildings

National Tour Purpose and Inspiration

The annual tour was created to generate new interest in cold cases of missing people across our nation. The inspiration came in 2004 from the case of North Carolina college student Leah Roberts, who had gone on a cross-country trip of self-exploration. Her wrecked and abandoned vehicle was found, but Leah is still missing. Leah’s case went cold and interest faded until CUE volunteers set out on a grueling 14-day trip to retrace her route and inform the media of all those who were missing in the path of the tour. In the years to follow, it only seemed right to keep hope alive after families across the country voiced the need for more help and supported the tour idea.

National Tour Objective

The national road tour, called “On the Road to Remember,” is an awareness campaign that focuses on missing persons cases that have gone cold or have not received appropriate media coverage on the local level – much less the national level.. The tour, which travels through many states annually, provides that attention.

In all cases of missing people, it is vital to inform the public of the missing person’s circumstances quickly and to disseminate that information to the media and the public. In most cases where details are released immediately to the public through an organized campaign, the public brings forth information that aids in the investigation and or the location of the victim. The media plays a significant role in getting the word out on the behalf of the missing person and should be recognized as a vital resource to any investigation.

Interest in many of the cases we have featured in previous tours has been renewed. The media has learned about local cases they were unaware of; case investigations have been renewed, and searches conducted. Information has resulted in new leads in some cases, and has even helped identify an unknown decedent and in 2008 solved a cold case of twenty eight years. And finally, each tour some of the missing featured have been found from various efforts, which is the main reason we conduct the tour despite the toll it takes on our all-volunteer staff.

It is the belief of the CUE Center for Missing Persons that all investigations, the public, volunteers and the media should work in collaboration on cases involving missing children and adults; until this happens, their will continue to be cases of the missing labeled “cold” or “inactive.”

About the Tour Honoree

In keeping the tradition of the tour – an honoree is selected each year, one who needs fair coverage of their disappearance. In 2010 honoree will be announced. See below for past tour honorees

2004 – Leah Roberts      2005 – Kent Jacobs      2006 – Molly Datillo      2007 – Anthony Allen

2008 – Jeremy Alex      2009 – Rachel Cooke

Article link

By Richard Jerome

When Someone Goes Missing and Clues Dry Up, Many Call in Monica Caison—a North Carolina Volunteer Sleuth Who Specializes in Cases Gone Cold

After her parents died, Leah Roberts felt lost. Inspired by the work of Beat author Jack Kerouac, the 23-year-old North Carolina State student hit the road to reexamine her life. In March 2000 she drove cross-country to Bellingham, Wash. There, that March 13, she bought a ticket to the movie American Beauty. Five days later her Jeep Cherokee was found in a park. “There was no body, no blood,” says her sister Kara, 31. “Her valuables were there—cash, guitar, my mother’s engagement ring. The car’s windows had been busted out and covered with blankets—like someone had been living in it.”

For months Kara prayed for a break in the case, but police had few leads. Then someone told her about Monica Caison, a mother of five from Wilmington, N.C, who has become one of the nation’s foremost citizen sleuths. In 1994 Caison launched the nonprofit Community United Effort (CUE) for Missing Persons. Her goal is to keep unsolved cases—even long cold ones—alive by any means necessary. With help from 5,000 CUE members, Caison prints up flyers, woos the media, raises money and pressures officials to keep the heat on. She also acts as a guardian angel to distraught loved ones. “My concern is what a missing loved one does to a family—it tears them apart,” she says. “Whether they need an aspirin or a call to the governor, I’ll stay with them. Whatever will help.”

She also organizes searches-trudging into remote areas with her German shepherd Heidi. Working with law enforcement, CUE helps in about 600 cases a year; in the vast majority the missing person—or body—is found. “There will be times when there’s a dead end, but Monica never stops,” says Sheriff Hubert Peterkin of Hoke County, N.C. “We can’t afford not to use her.”

Most of Caison’s work, which is funded by donations, centers on North Carolina. But she also travels the country to help in high-profile cases and appears on national TV shows such as Unsolved Mysteries. Still, she’s careful not to give families false hope. “I won’t tell them I will find their loved one,” she says. “I won’t tell them not to worry.”

It’s a lesson she learned in her first high-profile search: the 1998 case of Peggy Carr, a 32-year-old bride-to-be from Wilmington abducted in a carjacking. After seven months in a massive CUE-led search, a volunteer found Carr’s body in a field 50 miles from where she had been taken. Despite the outcome, Carr’s mother, Penny Carr Britton, is grateful: “Monica would sit for hours and just comfort me.” But the heartbreak takes its toll: The case of a 9-year-old boy found stuffed in a suitcase sent Caison to bed for four days. “I was asked to plan the funeral,” she says. “When it came to selecting the casket, I didn’t think I could do it.” She did.

Few would have predicted Caison’s calling when she was growing up, one of 11 children, in St. Petersburg, Fla. When her parents, John, a shoe salesman, and Irene (both deceased), divorced, Caison, who remained with her father, spun out of control. “I started running with gangs,” she says. At 15, though, she went straight after joining her mother in North Carolina. There she met her husband of 20 years, Sam, 40, a subcontractor, and settled down. In 1994 she volunteered for a safety-awareness group that fingerprinted local children. When the group’s director left, Caison took over, and CUE took shape. “I felt compelled to help,” she says.

In her first search Caison helped find a teen runaway in four days. But increasingly, she has specialized in adults like Leah Roberts-whose loved ones don’t have the resources available to families of missing kids. Five years have passed, but Caison has kept working the case, taking a caravan of volunteers on a Road to Remember tour last year to trace Leah’s route west. “She won’t give up until we find her,” says Kara Roberts. And no matter what happens, Caison says she’ll keep searching for missing persons. “We do it,” she says, “because everyone is someone’s child.”

Richard Jerome. Michaele Ballard in Charlotte, N.C, and Kristin Harmel in Charleston, S.C.

More From This Article

Looking for Leah

For five years Kara Roberts has held out hope that her little sister Leah will somehow return home. With Monica Caison’s help, she is still searching for her

When I think of Leah, I think of the bond we had growing up. We’re two years apart, and we took care of each other in difficult times. She blossomed into a beautiful young woman and talked of joining the Peace Corps. Leah could often be found in a coffee shop writing in her composition book, and I thought maybe one day she’d write the great American novel. Now, when I drive by a cafe, I think of her. In a weird way it’s a comfort, like when I hear the song “Circle,” by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, which she loved. Or when I see a bag of Cheetos and think how she loved them when she was little. Thinking of Leah also makes me feel lost. I always felt the need to look out for her-and it’s hard to know I can’t protect her now.

If you have information about the whereabouts of Leah Roberts, please contact the Whatcom County, Wash., Sheriff at (360) 676-6707, Det. Joseph, Ext. 50445 or CUE at (910) 232-1687.

Missing Since: 02/09/08

19 Years old – 175 lbs 5′ 11″ – Blue eyes Brown hair

Call Clinton Police 563-243-1458