Unsolved missing person cases show disparity in media coverage

If not for the media's obsession with a missing white mother, police in Joliet might never have identified the 14-year-old black girl whose burned body was found in a park in May.

In the hours after the girl's body was found by horseback riders, all police knew was that the victim was female. Media immediately speculated the body was that of Lisa Stebic from nearby Plainfield, whose disappearance in April prompted widespread searches by hundreds of volunteers.

Authorities soon discovered it wasn't Stebic, but news coverage lingered long enough for a digital rendering of Haqikah Suggs to air and for her family to come forward to claim her.

While Stebic's disappearance and that of a second missing Will County woman, Stacy Peterson, have continued to grab headlines and air time, Suggs' story has all but vanished -- as have those of four other black female slaying victims found in the same county since 2004.

"These poor women do get lost in the shuffle of everything," said Pat Barry, spokesman for the Will County sheriff's office, which is investigating three of the five cases.

One reason their cases might not have drawn the same attention: Not even Suggs, the 14-year-old, had been declared missing, so no search parties were ever formed before their bodies were discovered. Joliet Police Chief Fred Hayes said that the "added drama or mystique" of Stebic's and Peterson's cases also help keep them in the news.

Both were pretty mothers of two who vanished without a trace from comfortable middle-class homes and both apparently had rocky marriages.

"Does it play well for a TV audience? Yes it does," Hayes said. "(They've got) characters that play well on TV. People are murdered every day and it's just as tragic, it's just as serious."

Suggs, a seventh-grader at Hufford Junior High School in Joliet, was the youngest of the black victims, all of whom were found in public places. Two were found in lots: Tongula Yvette Jackson, 38, in 2004 and 49-year-old Brenda Shaw in December 2006. Suggs and another teenager, 16-year-old Kaylor Spells, were found in parks. Spells' body was spotted by a jogger at Dellwood Park in Lockport.

The latest victim was Sandra Poston, a 46-year-old Joliet woman whose body was found floating in the Des Plaines River late last month.

Authorities are quick to note they haven't found any evidence linking any of the cases, but there are similarities. Jackson, Shaw and Poston all were around the same age and all had a history of prostitution arrests.

But the media's focus on the Stebic and Peterson cases has raised concerns about disparity in coverage and the false impression it creates.

"If we cover the stories of attractive white women who are missing and do not even point out that the majority of people who are missing are people of color, or men, then we're creating a misimpression with the coverage," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Stacy Peterson's disappearance, in particular, has become a media sensation and Illinois State Police have assigned 64 agents to her case -- the state's No. 1 priority, according to police spokesman Mark Dorencz. He said the intense focus on the Peterson case isn't drawing resources away from other investigations.

Longtime Joliet resident Willie Sellers speculated that the black women's killings haven't attracted more media attention because people assume they were up to no good.

As if the women "probably had it coming," he said. Or "probably were tied up into something illegal." In contrast, few would assume Peterson and Stebic had been involved in drugs, gangs or prostitution.

Barry said the homicides are the county's three most important cases.

"It doesn't matter what they did in a prior life, they had families. To us, they're just as important as everybody else," Barry said, adding that authorities are "diligently working to solve these things."

Lockport, a city of 25,000 about five miles from Joliet, is throwing all of its resources at the Spells case, its only open homicide, said detective Sgt. Dave Draksler.

Herbert Brooks Jr., a pastor at St. John M.B. Church in Joliet and a school board member, attended two memorial services for Suggs. He said he doesn't doubt law enforcement officials are doing all they can to solve the cases, but he is disappointed in the media coverage.

"I want to be careful to use the word unfair because crime is crime and I feel bad for all of the families involved," he said. "But I think that these particular cases ... have not gotten the media coverage as did others, and I think in that (sense) it would be unfair."

Rosenstiel said aside from any racial implications, there are other explanations for why cases like Stebic's and Peterson's endure.

"One of the reasons that these stories play so well ... is the dearth of facts," he said. "You could go on vacation for a month and come back and the basic outline of the story would not have changed. You can plug right back in, just as you can with a soap opera."