Ten years before the Sena children disappeared from Albuquerque, a little girl named Patricia Joan Chesher disappeared. Patricia Joan Chesher was only twelve when she apparently disappeared into thin air. This sad case has several persons of interest, indicating the dangerous life this little girl was forced to lead. However, no one has ever been declared an official suspect.
On June 17, 1969, Patricia Joan Chesher was selling raffle tickets for the Elks Club to radivorise money for her brother, Steven, to go to Dallas with his unicycle club. She left her white tennis shoes on the porch and walked barefoot to her next door neighbor Kyle Benton’s house and sold him a ticket for fifty cents. He gave her a dollar, so she ran home to get change. Her brother Steven and two older sisters were home and noticed her. She returned to the neighbor’s, gave him his change, then returned home yet again to get her small brown coin purse. She took off again, still leaving her white tennis shoes on the porch.
One of Patty’s friends, a thirteen-year-old babysitting in the neighborhood, saw Patty walking by with her coin purse. She called out hello and Patty waved.
A woman named Mrs. R. C. Clark, who apparently wrote children’s books, walked behind Patty and an older girl down Bell SE from San Pedro SE around 6 that evening. She said that both girls were barefoot and talking animatedly. Patty talked with her hands, and didn’t appear to be carrying the coin purse. The girls turned down Arizona SE.
Patricia Joan Chesher was never seen or heard from again.
Her family reported her missing when she never showed up for dinner or the shoe shopping outing her mother had planned that evening. Her family and police searched for her high and low, without finding a single trace. Her brother, Thomas Chesher, aged 20 at the time, was given emergency leave from Vietnam to help find her.
The family believes she was abducted and probably killed. There are multiple persons of interest in this case. But very few answers. Nobody really knows what happened to Patricia Joan Chesher to this day.
Well, somebody knows, but they have never come forward. They are quite possibly dead now.
Who Was Patricia Joan Chesher?
Patricia Joan Chesher was the youngest of eight children. She was attending the sixth grade at Whittier Elementary School. She lived at 821 San Pedro SE, Albuquerque. Her mother, Elizabeth Chesher, was divorced and worked as a nurse at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital. She had moved her children from Indiana to escape abuse from their father, who was an emotionally unstable alcoholic. While their home life may sounds rough, Patty’s sister Sharon reports they actually had a very happy childhood and their mother was very protective and doting of them.
Patricia was very outgoing and had many friends. She had average grades at school. Described as an eager-to-please puppy by her sister, Patty always had a cheerful disposition. Her family says she knew better than to hop into cars with strangers. Her brother Steven sent her out to the sell the tickets that day because it was uncomfortably hot, and she was more than happy to do so, being a very friendly and perky kid.
Her aunt’s ex-husband, Lenville Fey, had been accused of molesting Chesher and her sisters in the past. He is one of the many persons of interest in this case. After Chesher disappeared, he injected himself deep into the investigation and helped canvas the neighborhood for her. He even offered a $300 reward for information leading to her discovery. However, he failed to disclose the molestation accusations to police and he refused to take a polygraph.
Other Persons of Interest
Another person of interest is the neighbor to whom Chesher sold a raffle ticket, Kyle Benton. He was one of the last known persons to see her alive on June 17. He bought a raffle ticket from her around 3 pm that day. During the investigation, he broke down crying and seemed extremely emotional. He kept asking how the investigation might affect his retirement plans. He apparently had zero concern for the little girl. He did not have a criminal history.
Yet another person of interest would be her mother’s live-in boyfriend, Frank, who had been Elizabeth Chesher’s patient at the VA hospital. He claimed that he had been at the Chesher home at 3:30 pm the day she vanished, but family members in the home say he did not get there until 5:30 pm or later. Why would he lie about this and what happened during those two hours he was unaccounted for? He showed little concern for Patricia Joan Chesher and did not help search for her. The day after she disappeared, he proposed to Chesher’s mother, who refused him, hopefully because he was so cavalier about her missing daughter.
Not long after Chesher vanished, “James” (last name withheld) had a mental breakdown and checked himself into a mental hospital. He claimed that he could not handle his recent break-up with Patricia’s sister, Barbara Sue, or Patricia’s disappearance. However, he had never actually been with 16-year-old Barbara Sue, and instead had fantasized about their relationship. Barbara Sue couldn’t stand James.
Later, when police tracked his family down, they asked “What took you so long?” His family reported that James had confessed to the little girl’s murder years ago. They did not have any proof nor did they know where the girl’s body might be located. When police tried to talk to him in the mental hospital, they found he was incoherent.
People with mental illness are more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators. But given James’s unhealthy obsession with Barbara Sue, it could very well be he did something to this little girl that fateful June day.
Fey, Frank, and Benton are now dead. James is apparently still in a psych ward.
Did Patricia Joan Chesher Run Away?
Police believe that Patricia Joan Chesher ran away of her own accord. This is due to two tips.
The first tip is from a girl who claimed Patty and her sisters had been at a hippie enclave in Taos a few weeks before Patty vanished. The tipster claimed Patty gushed about going back.
The second tip came from a seventeen-year-old girl named Babette Renfro. Renfro said that she had picked up Patricia Joan Chesher and an older hippie boy with long hair just 3 days after Chesher disappeared. The two were hitchhiking to Taos together, with the end goal of going to Canada. Renfro drove them as far as Santa Fe. When Babette talked to the girl, the girl said that her mother granted her permission to go to Taos. Later, Renfro’s friends discredited her story.
I am curious who this Babette person is and if she was thoroughly looked into. After all, how reliable was she as a witness, and did she have cause to give the police false information? Apparently, Babette Renfro knew Patty’s sister. I am curious why she gave them this story and how her friends discredited it.
Also, did the police ever look into whether or not Chesher associated with an older boy? I didn’t come across anything about Chesher having run away before. If Babette’s tip was true and the girl she saw really was Patty, then Patty is still likely a victim of a crime. She was possibly groomed by the older boy and who knows what happened to her after she left home. She probably would have contacted her family eventually, but the fact she never did suggests the worst. What if she and the older boy caught a ride with the wrong person between Santa Fe and Taos? What if she made it to Taos but and then something terrible happened to her while she ran with rough hippies?
There were other sightings of a girl matching Patty’s description that support the runaway theory. For instance, one tip claimed that she was at a local bowling alley with two other girls, wearing a bathing suit under her clothes and trying to make change for a $5 and $10 bill. Another tip places her hitchhiking along I40. Yet another claimed she was at a rock festival in Taos. Her sister reviewed video of the rock festival and did not spot Patty anywhere in it.
Patrica Joan Chesher’s family never bought the story that she ran away. They don’t think Chesher had any reason to run away, plus she was barefoot and broke when she disappeared. She was also looking forward to an upcoming trip to Indiana to see family, scheduled two weeks after she disappeared. She was excited to go shoe shopping with her mom and a few of her siblings later the evening of the 17th, too.
Unfortunately, due to the runaway theory, police never took Chesher’s disappearance as seriously as they should have. They seemed to get their minds stuck on the hippie theory. Given how police and hippies were at sharp odds the summer of 1969, this made them biased toward helping Patricia. Disturbingly, Patty’s sister recalls police asking her mother, “Aren’t you glad you have one less mouth to feed?”
Where the Case Stands Now
Patty’s case is officially cold.
The Chesher family never stopped searching for their little girl, who is not so little anymore. In desperation, her mother even turned to psychics, who didn’t provide much clarity in the case. The famous Ed Snedeker, who had located two missing Indiana boys via clairvoyance, believed that Patricia Joan Chesher had been murdered and taken to the Sandia Mountains. He indicated where her body was buried and where her killer lived in the North Valley. Police followed those leads without success. An Acoma seer also meditated on Chesher’s case and said that she had been taken to the Sandia Mountains, then returned to a house near her home, where she was held by someone she knew in a long room or corridor with other stolen girls and women. Psychic Jean Dixon held a small pillow made of the same fabric as the plaid dress Patricia Joan Chesher was wearing when she vanished and said that Patty was in a house near her own home, though she couldn’t ascertain if Patty was dead or alive.
Her mother eventually remarried and moved to Big Spring, TX, where she passed away in the 80s. But other family members are still alive, looking for her. Her sister follows the case closely, though new clues are slow to emerge. She says that she has a hunch based on original clues, and I want to know what that hunch might be.
This is an age-progressed photo of what Chesher might look like now:
When she originally vanished, she was a tiny thing, at four foot tall and 86 pounds. She had short brown hair with distinctive blunt bangs, brown eyes, and no distinguishing birthmarks. The Charley Project and most write-ups on the case say she was wearing sneakers and a multi-colored plaid dress, but original newspaper reports from the 60s say she was barefoot and wearing a denim skirt with white and red stripes. She likely had her little brown coin purse and a dollar on her person from selling the raffle ticket. Her birthday is February 17, 1957, and she went by the nickname Patty.
Related Cases?
I think it is highly suspicious that other children disappeared from Albuquerque in the same general time frame. Other people noted the strange rash of child abduction cases. The police say that the cases did not appear to be related. But I think that the disappearance of the Sena children just might be related. The Sena children disappeared just ten years after Chesher from the same relative area. They also vanished without a trace. You can read about them in my post.
Then there was the tragic abduction and murder of 13-year-old Veronica Jackson. Veronica Jackson was abducted on June 25, 1980, around 11:00 pm. She went for a walk along Lead St. with her 8-year-old sister, Lisa. A man with short brown slicked-back hair and no facial hair called to the girls from a window. Lisa crossed the street and asked him what he wanted, and he replied that she should send Veronica over because he wanted to talk to her. The two girls were creeped out and decided to keep walking.
The man then came outside and confronted the girls, circling his arm around them and saying everything would be all right. But nothing would be all right. This strange man forcefully led the girls up an alley between Lead and Silver Street SW, all the way to the 300 block of Ninth Street. He forced Veronica into a gray car with front-end damage and red primer spots on the rear and left sides and then sped off, leaving Lisa behind. Lisa ran crying to a neighbor’s, who flagged down police for her.
The gray car may have been spotted the next day en route to Raton. Other cars like it were stopped without finding anything. Veronica Jackson was later found dead in an irrigation ditch in the Isleta Pueblo on July 1, 1980. Her cause of death is unknown. There was a hole in her back from possible bruising, but she was so decomposed that it may have been caused by the decomposition process. Police stated that it was not a bullet hole. She could easily have been dumped in the location from Hwy 85. Her case is now cold.
Also in 1980 was the abduction of Christine Serna, though this one has a happy ending. Christine Serna was snatched in an Albuquerque park in 1979. She was only 1 and a half and still in diapers when she was kidnapped. The only witness to her kidnapping was a four-year-old girl, who reported she had been taken by a tall, thin, black-haired man in his 40s and a large woman with white hair in a red and silver pickup. Serna and the four-year-old had been with a babysitter when the four-year-old’s mother took them both home with her, unbeknownst to Serna’s mother. The children then left the mother’s home to play in a nearby park. They were crossing the street when the abduction happened. Claudia Serna arrived at the babysitter’s from work and learned her daughter had been snatched. She frantically searched for Christine Serna everywhere, to no avail.
Then, in 1982, Serna was found abandoned in a Kingman, AZ, fast food restaurant. She was returned to her family, alive and now 5 years old. She knew her abductor as “Daddy” and did not believe that Claudia Serna was her mother. She asked for Santa Claus to bring her daddy back. I hope she was able to overcome that trauma and accept her real mother.
Her abductor, Wiley Gene Wilson, said he had been abused as a child, so he felt bad for Serna and stole her with the help of his wife to raise her as his own. He renamed her Kim, and called her his princess. She came to know him as her father and had no memory of her life in Albuquerque. When Wilson sensed the FBI was on his tail, he ditched the little girl at the restaurant. He received 20 years for the kidnapping.
Bucky Kephart also vanished from Albuquerque 3 years after the Sena kids. However, his disappearance is believed to be at the hands of his parents. Thirteen years after he disappeared, his sister reported that his father, Barry Kephart, had given him a severe beating over a chicken. Then his parents claimed he left a note saying he was going down the block to play with a friend. Since Bucky had severe dyslexia, his sister does not believe he wrote that note. Police think he might have been dumped in a landfill, much like Robbie Romero. But what if Bucky did run away, as his parents claimed, and he met the same end as Chesher and the Senas?
Was there a predator picking off children in Albuquerque in the 60s-80s? The Veronica Jackson case is likely not related to Patricia Joan Chesher because her murderer is described as young, and so he would have been a child or not even born yet in 1969. But he might have been responsible for the Sena children’s abductions and Chesher’s.
It is worth noting that Patricia Joan Chesher lived near Kirtland Airforce Base and the fairgrounds, where lots of people came and went. On top of that, you’ve got all of the people in Chesher’s life who are considered persons of interest. So you’ve got a rather large suspect pool. But I think we need to look beyond the four persons of interest and consider the possibility of a predator targeting vulnerable children walking around the southern side of Albuquerque in the 60s and 70s.
Nevertheless, people are usually murdered by those closest to them. An example from that time period would be Eva Jean Melton, age ten, who vanished from Albuquerque in 1962 and was found buried beside her family’s home. Melton was the tragic victim of homicide at the hands of her mother and stepfather. She doesn’t get any of the attention Chesher does, possibly due to the fact she was black.
Other 1960s cases include the double murder of Mattie and Patty in Carlsbad and the disappearance and murder of Sharon Lee Gallegos. Then there was the 1960 disappearance of Carmella Aragon in Cheyenne, resulting in her being found dead near a reservoir, sort of like Veronica Jackson. It is unclear if foul play was involved in Carmella’s case, but it cannot be definitely ruled out. While I am not saying these cases are related, I do think that they indicate possibilities of the evil that may have befallen Patricia Joan Chesher.
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[…] wonder if this case might be related to the disappearance of Patricia Joan Chesher ten years prior. The newspaper in Albuquerque noted that an unusually high number of kids […]
[…] the skull ever compared to dental records or DNA for Patricia Joan Chester, Bucky Kephart, or one of the Sena […]