A new break has come in the missing person case of Rene Escobar Sanchez, Odessa Crime Stoppers Executive Director Susan Rogers said.
After consulting with Detective Angie Reyes with the Odessa Police Department, Rogers said the department found that another person besides his common-law-wife, Ester Armendarez, saw him before he went missing July 12, 2008.
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Rogers said she doesn’t have any further details, but that Reyes is excited about the case and it is “very much active.”
“The thing about those kind of breaks is you never know when they’re going to happen,” she said. “Any time you have that kind of information, that’s a big break.”
With Crime Stoppers keeping the public interested in old and cold cases, Rogers said the Odessa Police Department has been using new technologies to open up cold cases and try solving them.
Although it was not a missing person case, Rogers said the conviction of Johnny Lee Wells is an example of how the technology works.
Wells was convicted March 25, 2011, of capital murder in connection with the August 1990 stabbing death of Virginia Washeleskey, which was a cold case until forensic evidence resurfaced in 2007. He was sentenced to life in prison.
But for her part with missing people, she said it’s all about making it stick in the minds of those who have information.
“It’s not unusual for us to put a case out there and not hear anything for several weeks,” she said. “I may run a cold case and not hear anything about it when I’m running it (on TV), but three or four months later somebody will come up with information about it.”
Rogers said because many of the people who have information on these cases take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach when thinking about the missing person, they don’t think to give tips until the story is presented to them again.
Jackie Kemp-Jones is the sister of a woman missing for almost 31 years, Judie Munguia.
Munguia was reported missing May 28, 1981 when she left to visit a friend in Oklahoma City, Okla., and law enforcement officers believe foul play was involved.
Kemp-Jones said her family all but lost hope when the woman’s vehicle was found abandoned at an Oklahoma City airport parking lot six months later, but even now reports of found bodies rekindle the possibility that she will be found, dead or alive.
“We’d much rather know than wonder. Know where she was at so we could actually bury her in a place where she belongs. Not in a ditch or in cement or wherever she may be,” Kemp-Jones said. “There’s a huge possibility that she may never be found. Ever. And that hurts.”
Until that time, Kemp-Jones said she still becomes nervous when a body is found, such as the remains found in Big Spring in March.
Rogers said most families still keep an active watch for tips and come to her office at least once a year.
“Every family member I’ve spoken to about a missing person, regardless of how old that case is, has hope,” she said.
