The Bizarre Disappearance of The Springfield Three
What happened to Stacy McCall, Suzanne Streeter, and Sherrill Levitt?
A Puzzling Mystery
In the early morning hours of June 7th, 1992, 18-year-old Stacy McCall and 19-year-old Suzanne “Suzie” Streeter went to Suzie's home to sleep after an evening of partying. The following morning, it was discovered that the two teenagers, along with Suzie's mother Sherrill, were missing.
The three women were inexplicably gone, but their cars and purses were still there. There were no signs of a struggle inside the home, but the front porch light had been broken. Additionally, there was reportedly a disturbing message on the answering machine. No other clues as to what had happened to the missing women were found.
To this day, answers to this bizarre mystery remain elusive.
What happened to Suzanne Streeter, Stacy McCall, and Sherrill Levitt?
The Springfield Three
Stacy Kathleen McCall was born on April 23rd, 1974, to parents Janis and Stu. Stacy loved fashion and music. She worked part-time as a receptionist for Springfield Gymnastics, as well as occasionally modelled for a local bridal shop.
Suzanne “Suzie” Elizabeth Streeter was born on March 9th, 1973, to parents Sherrill and Brentt. Suzie was said to be sensitive yet bold, with an edgy style. She enjoyed hanging out with friends and loved bowling. She was very close to her mother.
Suzie’s parents divorced when she was a child and her father didn’t have much involvement in her life. Her mother Sherrill (born on November 1st, 1944) went on to remarry a man named Don Levitt.
They were happy together for a time, but Don eventually accumulated a significant amount of debt and then abandoned his family. Sherrill, now a single mother, worked as a cosmetologist at New Attitudes Hair Salon. She and her daughter had lived in the home they’d mysteriously vanish from for only two months.
Sherrill had a contentious relationship with her oldest child, Suzie’s brother Bartt, who was now an adult and living elsewhere. The two were said to periodically cease contact with each other following arguments.
Their last falling out reportedly had to do with both Bartt’s outspoken disapproval of an ex-boyfriend of Suzie’s—a man named Mike Kovacs, who had allegedly abused Suzie and slashed her tires—and an argument he had with Suzie over loud music, which had devolved into a shoving match between the two siblings.
By the time Sherrill and Suzie went missing, 27-year-old Bartt hadn’t been on speaking terms with either of them for months.
Graduation
Friends Suzie and Stacy graduated from Kickapoo High School in Springfield, Missouri, on June 6th, 1992.
Their celebration plans included attending multiple graduation parties that evening, after which they would stay the night at a hotel in Branson. The following morning, they intended to head out to a water park with a group of friends and fellow graduates.
By 10:30 p.m., however, they no longer felt like making the drive to Branson and decided they’d go the next morning. They thought they’d stay the night over at their friend Janelle Kirby’s house instead. (Side note: Stacy and Janelle were best friends and had known each other since early childhood.)
Stacy made a call to her mother, Janis, to check in and let her know about their change of plans. This turned out to be the final time Janis would speak to her daughter.
Fateful Change of Plans
Suzie and Stacy then went to a party at the home of one of Janelle’s neighbors and stayed there until well after midnight. By around 2 a.m., the girls were ready to go to bed, but Janelle’s house was too crowded with visiting family members for them to sleep over.
At this point, the friends decided that they would spend the night at Suzie’s house, at 1717 East Delmar Street.
Suzie and Stacy assured Janelle that they’d come back in the morning and that the three of them would still go to the water park together.
A Strange Scene
When Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall did not show up at Janelle’s house the next morning, Janelle called them multiple times but received no answer. Initially, she wasn’t worried, believing that the two had likely slept in after their late night.
But as the hours passed with no sign of them, Janelle started to think that she should go over to East Delmar Street, just to check things out.
Janelle and her boyfriend Mike went over and found something odd right away: The front porch light was broken and glass was all over the porch. Specifically, the globe encasing the bulb was damaged, but not the bulb itself. They didn’t find this concerning, however, and Mike even swept the glass up, thinking no more about it.
The cars of each of the three women were parked out front, although it was notable that Suzie's car—which she parked in the exact same spot every day—was in a different location. Had someone else been parked there when Stacy and Suzie arrived?
Janelle and Mike found the front door unlocked, but no one was inside. They assumed they had just missed them and that their friends had already left for the water park. However, as they were about to leave, the phone rang. Janelle picked it up and was greeted by an unfamiliar male voice saying lewd things on the other end of the line. She hung up.
Suzie had been receiving prank calls recently, so Janelle wasn't particularly disturbed or surprised by this incident. Oddly, nothing at all about the scene or circumstances struck them as worrisome initially, and she and Mike left.
Missing
When Stacy and Suzie didn't show up at the water park, Janelle felt that they should return to the house to see if the girls were back yet. But when she and Mike arrived, the only person they saw was Janis McCall, Stacy’s mother, who was hoping to find her daughter there. But the home was still empty and eerily quiet.
They investigated further and found, bizarrely, the purses of the three women lined up on the floor in Suzie's bedroom. Sherrill and Suzie’s dog, a Yorkie named Cinnamon, was in the home as well and appeared to be anxious. Nothing seemed to have been stolen and there were no signs of forced entry.
Janelle also discovered that a message had been left on the answering machine in their absence. When she listened to it, she heard the same male voice from the earlier call, once again making crude remarks. Unfortunately, she accidentally deleted this message.
Finally, they called the police. While waiting for them to arrive, Janelle made the questionable choice to clean the house, thus contaminating what was likely a crime scene.
A missing persons report was filed with the Springfield Police Department and within days, the FBI showed up join the investigation. During the first two weeks, law enforcement and local residents launched multiple community-wide searches, which included divers looking for bodies in Lake Springfield and the James River. They turned up nothing.
More than 20,000 missing-persons posters, some of which still remain in storefronts today, went up throughout Springfield during this time.
The case also received a large amount of media attention, with coverage on shows like 48 Hours, America's Most Wanted and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Suspects
Mike Kovacs was looked at as a person of interest early in the investigation. Suzie had broken up with him in September 1991 and had a temporary restraining order against him in October of that year. However, investigators quickly ruled him out as he had an alibi for the night in question.
Another ex-boyfriend of Suzie’s, Dustin, was considered a suspect as well. He had recently been arrested for being part of a grave-robbing gang and this was allegedly the reason why Suzie broke up with him. Additionally, she had reportedly given a statement to police implicating him in the crime and was going to be testifying against Dustin in just a few months.
Although none of the men in this gang—including Dustin—had a solid alibi for that night, there was nothing to definitively link them to the disappearance of Suzie, Stacy, and Sherrill, and, for whatever this is worth, each passed a polygraph test.
Bartt Streeter was also a person of interest to law enforcement, due to his history of alcoholism and aggression, as well as the falling out he'd had with both his mother and his sister.
Bartt's alibi was that he had been drinking and then went home and passed out. Yet, since he had been alone, no one could corroborate his story. But there was no evidence to connect him to the disappearances either. He also passed a polygraph test.
In February 2019, Bartt was arrested on suspicion of public intoxication and disorderly conduct, in addition to attempted false imprisonment, from an unrelated incident in Tennessee. Police once again investigated him for possible involvement in the Springfield Three case and eventually ruled him out as a suspect.
As Suzie and Stacy weren’t originally supposed to be there that night, some have speculated that Sherrill Levitt might have been the true target of the assailant(s) and that the two teenagers were collateral damage.
Conversely, it was theorized that the girls may have been followed home. Although this wouldn’t explain why Suzie had parked in a different place than she typically did, which seems to indicate that someone else was already parked in her usual spot.
The Mysterious Green Van
A witness in the neighborhood reported having seen a green van in the area just two days after the three Springfield women went missing. Supposedly, a blonde woman was driving and the witness heard an aggressive male voice tell her, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
The eyewitness pointed out a picture of Suzie Streeter to the authorities, claiming that this was the person she'd seen driving the van.
In 2002, the police investigated leads about a suspicious green van that belonged to a group of men working at a concrete company in Webster County. Investigators brought in cadaver dogs and recovered bones from the site. The skeletal remains were tested but deemed too old to be connected with the case.
Robert Cox
Robert Craig Cox, a convicted murderer who lived across the street from Suzie and Sherrill at the time of their disappearance, was questioned by Springfield Police several times over the years in connection with this case.
In 1996, investigative reporter Dennis Graves interviewed Cox in a Texas prison and asked him about the Springfield Three. The following exchange took place:
Cox: “I know that they are dead. I’ll say that. And I know that.”
Graves: “That’s not a theory?”
Cox: “I just know that they are dead. That’s not my theory. I just know that. There’s no doubt about that.”
Cox failed to provide additional information, though he was later quoted as saying that he would elaborate on what he knows once his mother has passed away.
Later that year, the interview was subpoenaed by authorities and submitted as evidence to a grand jury. However, no charges were forthcoming.
Possible Remains in a Parking Garage
In 2007, a tip provoked a local writer to hire an engineer and use ground-penetrating radar to scan a parking garage at the Cox Hospital South in Springfield. The engineer said he picked up on three distinct shapes that were consistent with human remains.
However, the parking garage in question was built a year after the disappearance and police felt it was unlikely that the bodies wouldn’t have turned up during its excavation.
Lisa Cox, a spokeswoman for the Springfield Police Department, stated:
"Digging up the area and subsequently reconstructing this structure would be extremely costly, and without any reasonable belief that the bodies could be located here, it is illogical to do so, and for those reasons SPD does not intend to. Investigators have determined this lead to not be credible."
Current State of the Investigation
As of yet, there have been no further developments. In the absence of hard evidence or viable leads, the case has grown cold.
Former Springfield Police Detective and current Bolivar Police Chief Mark Webb said the case changed the way local authorities look at crime.
"They started looking for computer programs. What are we going to do if we get another case of this magnitude?”
Still haunted by the cold case, Webb questions himself and his department.
“Is there something more we could have done? Is there another question we could have asked? Was that person lying to us? Could we have dug deeper there? Just those questions of how could we have done better.”
In 2021, journalist Anne Roderique-Jones, who grew up in Springfield, launched a podcast about the disappearance, The Springfield Three: A Small-Town Disappearance.
More than 30 years later, the bizarre disappearance of Suzanne Streeter, Stacy McCall, and Sherrill Levitt remains unsolved.
Additional Sources
"Springfield Three," Wikipedia
"The Springfield Three: 30 years since the disappearance of Suzie Streeter, Sherrill Levitt and Stacy McCall," KY3 Staff, KY3, June 6, 2022
"30 years after The Springfield Three vanished, here's what we know," Greta Cross, Springfield News-Leader, June 3, 2022
(This article was originally published on HubPages)