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| Ridinger, Simone S September 2,1977; Massachusetts 17 YO | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 6 2006, 10:14 AM (840 Views) | |
| oldies4mari2004 | Aug 6 2006, 10:14 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/r/ridinger_simone.html |
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| oldies4mari2004 | Dec 20 2006, 04:27 PM Post #2 |
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Simone Stephanie Ridinger Above Images: Ridinger, circa 1977 Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance Missing Since: September 2, 1977 from Sherborn, Massachusetts Classification: Endangered Missing Date Of Birth: January 5, 1960 Age: 17 years old Height and Weight: 5'2, 120 pounds Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair. Ridinger at the time of her disappearance liked to wear lots of jewelry, including rings on every finger. Details of Disappearance Ridinger was last seen on September 2, 1977, when she left her job at a Natick cafe to hitchhike from Sherborn, Massachusetts to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She may have been dropped off at the Hyannis rotary near the airport, but this has not been confirmed. She has never been heard from again. Few details are available in her case. Investigating Agency If you have any information concerning this case, please contact: Sherborn Police Department 508-653-2424 Source Information The Doe Network Charley Project Home |
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| oldies4mari2004 | Dec 20 2006, 04:28 PM Post #3 |
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| monkalup | Dec 31 2006, 11:06 PM Post #4 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightUSA/...opic=8025&st=0& |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| monkalup | Mar 20 2008, 08:57 PM Post #5 |
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The Old Heifer! An oxymoron, of course.
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Jane Gregg Barrett BOSTON -- Jane Gregg Barrett, 58, of Berkley and Crooked Island, Bahamas, died Tuesday, Oct. 21, 1997, at Massachusetts General Hospital after a brief illness. Ms. Barrett had a minor cerebral hemorrhage on Labor Day. Embolization treatment was unsuccessful in stabilizing a complicated aneurysm, and a catastrophic hemorrhage occurred the night before her death. She was born in Chappaqua, N.Y., the daughter of the late Joseph Russell Barrett and Evelyn (Page) Barrett Hartell. Ms. Barrett attended Oberlin College. She was a real estate broker with CRS and GRI credentials, working at 3 Main Street Realty, Lakeville. She previously owned and operated a dressmaking enterprise and continued those activities periodically in the Bahamas. She was a licensed airplane pilot and enthusiast and participated in the antique and homebuilt aircraft and banner-towing activities at her home at Myricks Airport. She maintained a lifelong passion for classical music, performed in summer theater, and wrote, produced and performed amateur light theater. She was an imaginative gourmet cook, devising her recipes from an extensive collection of ethnic and regional cookbooks. Her winters were devoted to out-island beach activities in the Bahamas. Survivors include a daughter, Elizabeth Ridinger Bailey of Holliston; a sister, Anne Passarelli of Seattle; two brothers, Joseph R. Barrett of Cotuit and Thomas P. Barrett of Edgartown; two grandchildren; and her devoted longtime companion, Murray Randall of Berkley and Crooked Island. She was the mother of the late Simone Ridinger. A memorial service will be held at noon Tuesday, Nov. 4, at Myricks United Methodist Church, 93 Myricks St., Berkley. Arrangements are by the Egger Funeral Home, 61 Pearl St., Middleboro. |
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Lauran "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. | |
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| Ell | Sep 13 2009, 07:55 AM Post #6 |
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Heart of Gold
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Unsolved: Simone Ridinger New England's Unsolved Updated: Saturday, 12 Sep 2009, 9:23 PM EDT Published : Saturday, 12 Sep 2009, 10:34 PM EDT Bob Ward SHERBORN, Mass. - In the town of Sherborn, police are taking a new look at a mysterious case involving a teenager who disappeared after work during September 1977. Seventeen-year-old high school student Simone Ridinger was supposed to meet her mother at a relative’s home on Cape Cod. That’s where she told her coworkers she was going. But she never showed up. Police still have the handwritten police report from more than 30 years ago, on the day when Simone’s mother reported her missing. ”They put out a teletype message at the time. We probably contacted the state police in Framingham and surrounding towns saying there's a missing person,” said Det. Richard Crosson with the Sherborn police. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EXCERPT FROM BOB WARD"S BLOG "On the surface, Simone's case is all too familiar: young person hitchhikes and disappears. Small town police department conducts search, sends out teletypes, but after a few years case grows cold. But there's a lot more to Simone's case." Read more and respond here -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crosson is one of many detectives to take over the case. Simone worked in Natick at a place called the Rainbow Restaurant on Natick Common. For years, the Rainbow Restaurant was the last place anyone had reported seeing her. But then in 1986, a witness emerged with a strange story. An elderly man told police that he picked Simone up at the intersection of Route 128 and Route 109 in Westwood a few days after she disappeared. He said he gave her a ride all the way to Hyannis. But the man said Simone wasn’t hitchhiking. He said he picked up Simone from a trooper who had her in the back of his cruiser. “He said he had been driving to the Cape, and he got stopped by a state trooper for a violation in a rest area. And the trooper asked him if he would give this young woman a ride to the Cape,” Crosson said. The man gave a detailed description of what Simone was wearing, down to her “grubby sneakers.” He even said she smelled like she needed a bath. The man told police he dropped her off at the Hyannis Rotary, near the airport. He last saw her walking toward a restaurant. Crosson says he doesn’t know if he can put a lot of faith into the man’s account of what happened. He is now sending Simone’s dental records to a national database. “There's been approximately 4 or 5 detectives who had this case over the years. Everybody put their time into it. And we still don't have closure,” he said. Through the National Center of Missing and Endangered Children, he hopes to commission an age progression drawing of Simone, to give an idea of what she would look like now at 49 years old. http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/crime_...ridinger_091209 |
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Ell Only after the last tree has been cut down; Only after the last fish has been caught; Only after the last river has been poisoned; Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten. | |
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| Ell | Sep 25 2017, 08:18 PM Post #7 |
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Heart of Gold
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Sherborn teenager Simone Ridinger hasn’t been seen for 40 years since heading to the Cape for a holiday weekend. SHERBORN — On Sept. 2, 1977, Simone Ridinger disappeared. It was Friday of Labor Day weekend and Ridinger had just finished her shift waitressing at the Rainbow Restaurant, a spot on South Main Street in Natick that was popular with the locals. Family members say she was headed toward Cape Cod to catch a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, where she was excited to meet at the family’s Chappaquiddick home. Her stepsister, Betsy Bailey, stopped by the restaurant to see if she wanted a ride to the bus station. “She said she was all set and didn’t need a ride,” Bailey said. Ridinger was 17, just over 5 feet tall with brown eyes and wavy strawberry-blonde hair. To those who knew her, Ridinger was fiercely independent, a free spirit, a gifted pianist who was working to earn her GED. In a 1986 newspaper article contained in the police files, her high school assistant headmaster said she was “a delightful girl” who “wasn’t fond of school, and seemed to be rebelling against something.” Bailey said her sister wasn’t shy about talking to strangers and it’s believed she planned to hitch a ride to the Cape. “It doesn’t surprise me that she would have hitchhiked,” she said. But Ridinger’s family and co-workers never saw her again. On Sept. 11, 1977, Ridinger’s mother, Jane Barrett, walked into the Sherborn police station and reported her daughter missing to Officer George Stevens, according to police reports. Barrett had been in Chappaquiddick on the Vineyard for Labor Day weekend and figured Ridinger just didn’t make it to the island. The home didn’t have electricity or a phone, so it wasn’t strange that she hadn’t heard from her daughter. Back on the mainland, Bailey didn’t think much of not seeing her sister, either; she thought she was on the Vineyard. After Ridinger was reported missing, police issued an alert in the area. But that alert was at least nine days after she left work. At the time, Barrett was living in Sherborn, and Ridinger had just moved into an apartment in Framingham. It’s unclear why Ridinger wasn’t reported missing until Sept. 11, but it is believed her family was on the island for an entire week, not just for Labor Day weekend. Stevens, now 69, is believed to be one of the last surviving members of the department who worked there when Ridinger went missing. “I knew her family,” he said. “I thought she was a great kid.” Stevens said he would get breakfast at the Rainbow Restaurant almost every day. “Basically, she waited on me every morning,” he said. Stevens was working the 4 p.m. to midnight shift when Ridinger’s mother came in. At the time, the case was assigned to another officer. Police went to the restaurant in Natick to investigate and talked about the case with state police, he said. On Sept. 17, police visited Ridinger’s boyfriend, who was in the Billerica House of Correction at the time. He told them Ridinger had stopped writing to him and he sounded concerned, police said. Ridinger had special visitation privileges at the jail the day police talked to the boyfriend, but she never showed up, according to police reports. On Oct. 4, nearly a month after she was last seen, police opened a full investigation into Ridinger’s disappearance, sending out flyers to area police departments, but there were never any real leads in the case, Stevens said. Stevens took over the case from another officer a few years later. Ridinger was known to wear rings, sometimes two per finger, and other turquoise jewelry, Stevens said. He brought pictures of the jewelry to area pawn shops, but no match was found. “We had witnesses that said she walked out of work and walked to the bus stop,” he said. “Whether she got on the bus or hitchhiked, we’ll never know.” There was no place to start, Stevens said, and the feeling at the time was that she would return home in a few days. But she never did, and by the time her disappearance was reported to police, the trail wasn’t just cold, it was “frozen,” Stevens said. “She just disappeared,” he said. New leads explored The Sherborn Police Department was small at the time of incident, with just a handful of officers. Missing children normally ended up being runaways who eventually came back. After 40 years, not much has changed. Ridinger’s bank accounts haven’t been touched since her disappearance, her Social Security number never used. Sherborn police Detective James Godinho transferred to the department in 2010 and reopened the Ridinger case in 2014. He said some things in the original police report struck a chord with him, such as a reference to a Sherborn police officer’s daughter, who was said to have given Ridinger a ride to Framingham “two days prior to this date.” But it is not clear if the reference is to two days before Ridinger was reported missing, or two days before the entry in the Sept. 17 report. If it were the latter, the ride would have occurred more than two weeks after anyone had seen her, but there is no follow-up reference or more details. Godinho tracked down the officer’s daughter, who says she doesn’t remember giving Ridinger a ride at that time. Another question is a reference to a Daniel Newbert. Newbert sent the family pictures of Simone around the time of her disappearance. The pictures were used on many of the missing-person flyers. Police talked to Newbert, who said he once gave Ridinger a ride and asked if he could take photos of her. Newbert gave the negatives to police. They also investigated another man who was allegedly into the “drug scene” and trying to court Ridinger. Reading the reports gives Godinho pause, but it’s difficult to Monday-morning quarterback, he says. Reports then were not as meticulously kept as they are now, and Godinho says some of the leads may have been pursued, but not recorded. Things were different in the 1970s when someone went missing, Bailey said. “It wasn’t quite the same as when someone goes missing now,” she said. There was no massive police presence, helicopter searches, or urgent updates on the nightly newscast. But local groups were organized, and they searched the highways down to Woods Hole. “We did anything we could possibly think of,” Bailey said. “We just started knocking on doors of places she would go. We just kept looking.” The family hired a private investigator and visited a psychic. But, it turns out, the description of the outfit Ridinger was wearing when she was last seen might have been wrong. The original description of her clothing posted by police was of an Indian print skirt, a broadbrimmed leather hat, brown boots, and silver and turquoise jewelry. Another flyer had her in purple boots. “I honestly have no idea where that description came from,” Godinho said. As Godinho reviewed the case, he realized waitresses who worked with Ridinger at the Rainbow Restaurant were never interviewed by police at the time of her disappearance. He talked to them in 2016 and they gave a very different account of what Ridinger was wearing Sept. 2. They said she was in blue jeans, a white shirt and white sneakers. Ridinger had a small, gray duffel bag containing a blue polyester vest and skirt— her uniform for the Rainbow Restaurant. The co-workers said most of the waitresses hated the uniform, and it was so uncomfortable that nearly everyone brought a change of clothes for after their shift. When Godinho found out that the original description of what Ridinger was wearing was suspect, it sparked a memory of a previous police interview. Witness recounts trip to Cape On April 24, 1986, a 70-yearold man called Sherborn police after reading a story about Ridinger’s disappearance. “He came in and gave this pretty detailed account of his interaction with this girl,” said Godhino, who did not want to release the man’s name. The man said that on Saturday, Sept. 3, 1977, at about 6:45 a.m., he was driving to the Cape along Route 128. He said he was pulled over by a state trooper near the intersection of routes 128 and 109. After interacting with the trooper and explaining that he was on his way to Cape Cod, the man said the trooper told him he had a girl in the back of his cruiser who was also trying to get to the Cape. The man said he drove her to Hyannis. They swapped small talk. He told her he was from Framingham, and the girl said she lived in a neighboring town. The man told police he dropped her off near the rotary at the Barnstable Municipal Airport and she started walking off near a Howard Johnson or a Ground Round restaurant. The description given by the man, according to police documents, was almost identical to the one the waitresses gave Godinho in 2016. At first, Godinho was worried the waitresses had read the description in a news report somewhere. A story had been published, but the details of the description were never released. Police showed the man a photo of Ridinger and he said she was the girl. “No question in his mind that girl was Simone,” Godinho said. The man also mentioned she was wearing ‘gaudy’ jewelry, which jibed with Ridinger’s reported penchant for turquoise, silver and rings on every finger. But nothing ever came of it. Godinho has yet to find documentation in state or local police records of the man being pulled over, and there is no record of an officer or trooper picking up a girl that fit Ridinger’s description. There was also no mention of why the man was pulled over in the statement taken by police. “I’ve been trying like a son of a gun to try and confirm this guy’s story,” Godinho said. “There are so many questions.” The man has since died, but Godinho tracked down his son, who would have been 31 at the time. The son said he never remembered his father telling him the story of giving the girl a lift. The man’s story doesn’t pass muster with Stevens. “I don’t believe that,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think Ridinger ever made it out of the Natick area. “I don’t think she made the Cape,” he said. “I have nothing to base that on. It’s just a gut feeling.” Stevens said he continued to follow the case even after he left the department, going as far as North Dakota to see if she had joined a motorcycle gang. “For years I tried to find her,” he said. “This (case) is going to hang around my neck until I die.” ‘It really needs to end’ Godinho has tried to keep the case relevant and in the public’s mind with the help of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Last fall, he reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and found several key people who had not been previously interviewed, he said. “He’s looking into a lot of things,” Bailey said. “He’s done more than anyone on the case.” On the 40th anniversary of her disappearance, Godinho hopes that if he keeps the conversation going, more people who may have seen her, knew her, or remember bumping into someone of her description on the Cape and Islands will come forward. Police have Ridinger’s DNA and have tried matching it to 25 unidentified bodies. Nothing has come back positive. Ridinger was also thought to have friends on the Cape, another reason her mother wasn’t immediately worried. “Her mom had suspected she got sidetracked on the Cape prior to heading over,” he said. “Unfortunately, no one back then ever identified who these friends were that her mom was referring to. However, I am hopeful that maybe a newspaper article would motivate a former friend to call Sherborn PD.” Foul play is suspected, and Bailey doesn’t have much hope her sister is alive. Her parents are dead, as are most of Ridinger’s friends. Bailey hasn’t been to the Vineyard since her sister disappeared. She works only a block from where the Rainbow Restaurant was located. The property has changed hands several times over the decades. Over time, Ridinger seems to have faded from the community’s memory. “You mention her name now and no one knows her,” Stevens said. The family will get calls every now and then, but there is no closure. “It’s a story that needs to be finished,” Bailey said. “It really needs to end.” That is one of the reasons she does interviews. Any time a story is published, people call, she said. “It’s worth a try.” http://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20170924/...simone-ridinger |
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Ell Only after the last tree has been cut down; Only after the last fish has been caught; Only after the last river has been poisoned; Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten. | |
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9:27 AM Jul 11