# Three women, Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter, and Stacy McCall, vanished without trace from a Springfield, Missouri home in June 1992 in a case that remains unsolved

**No verdict.** The disappearance itself is documented and not in dispute: in the early hours of 7 June 1992, Sherrill Levitt, her daughter Suzie Streeter, and Streeter's friend Stacy McCall vanished from Levitt's home at 1717 East Delmar Street in Springfield, Missouri, leaving behind their cars, purses, money, keys, cigarettes, and the family dog. No trace of the three has ever been found. What is unproven is everything past that fact: how they were taken, where they went, whether they are alive or dead, and who was responsible. Police have publicly named at least one person of interest, Robert Craig Cox, but he was never charged, has denied any involvement, and a 1996 grand jury that heard evidence returned no indictment. This file treats the vanishing as an established event and every explanation for it, including the identity of any perpetrator, as unresolved. It does not assert or imply the guilt of Cox or of anyone else; no one has been charged, and the case is officially open.

Category: Unsolved Crimes & Disappearances · Era: 1990s · First circulated: From the first week of June 1992, when the three women were reported missing and local and national coverage began; theories about abduction, foul play, and specific suspects have circulated continuously since, without ever producing an arrest · Believed by: The conclusion that the three were abducted and met with foul play is near-universal among investigators, family, and the press. What remains contested and unproven is who was responsible and what happened to the women; no explanation has been established.
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/springfield-three-disappearance

## Summary
On the night of 6 June 1992, recent Kickapoo High School graduates Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall went to graduation parties around Springfield, Missouri, and near two in the morning drove to the home Streeter shared with her mother, the cosmetologist Sherrill Levitt. By the next afternoon all three women were gone. Their three cars sat in the driveway, their purses, money, and keys were untouched, the family dog was inside, and the only sign of anything wrong was the shattered glass globe of the porch light. There was no ransom, no struggle, no forensic trail, and, in more than three decades since, no body. The vanishing of the women who became known as the Springfield Three is one of the most heavily investigated missing-persons cases in Missouri history, listed by the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. This file separates the documented disappearance from the many unproven theories about who took the women and why.

## The claim
That Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter, and Stacy McCall did not leave voluntarily but were abducted from the Delmar Street home by one or more people, most likely killed, and that the case remains unsolved because early evidence was lost, leads went cold, and a person or persons known to investigators were never charged.

## Origin and timeline
- 1992-06-06: Suzie Streeter and Stacy McCall graduate from Kickapoo High School in Springfield in an afternoon ceremony and spend the evening at a round of graduation parties across the area. Sherrill Levitt, Streeter's mother, is at home; she is last known to have spoken by phone around 11 p.m. about refinishing a piece of furniture.
- 1992-06-07: At roughly 2:15 a.m., Streeter and McCall leave a party and, changing an earlier plan to stay elsewhere, drive to Levitt's home at 1717 East Delmar Street, intending to sleep there and travel to a water park the next day. This is the last confirmed sighting of either young woman.
- 1992-06-07: Around midday, friends who expected to meet the pair arrive at the Delmar house. All three of the women's cars are in the driveway; the door is unlocked, personal belongings are untouched, and the family Yorkshire terrier, Cinnamon, is agitated inside. The glass globe of the porch light lies shattered on the step.
- 1992-06-07: Before police secure the scene, friends and family move through the house; one sweeps up the broken porch-light glass, and a puzzling message left on the answering machine is played and inadvertently erased. Investigators later say the message and the glass might have been evidence. Stacy McCall's mother reports the three women missing.
- 1992-06: Springfield police and, soon after, the FBI mount a large search. There is no ransom demand, no sign of forced entry or struggle beyond the broken globe, and no physical trail. Thousands of tips arrive over the following months, but none locates the women.
- 1996: A grand jury is convened on the case. Prosecutors present, among other material, a subpoenaed interview with Robert Craig Cox, a man with a violent criminal history who had been living in Springfield in 1992. The grand jury returns no charges against anyone.
- 1997: Sherrill Levitt and Suzie Streeter are declared legally dead. Their case files, and Stacy McCall's, remain open. No remains have been recovered.
- 2018: In one of several later developments, investigators pursue a tip pointing to a Springfield parking structure as a possible burial site; the lead, like others before it, does not produce the women or resolve the case.
- 2020s: More than three decades on, the disappearance remains unsolved. It is listed with the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, carried by the Springfield Police Department as a cold case, and covered on each anniversary; a standing reward remains posted for information.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: The three women genuinely disappeared and never returned.
  Evidence: This is settled and undisputed. Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter, and Stacy McCall have not been seen since the early hours of 7 June 1992. Two of the three were later declared legally dead, the case is listed by the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and no verified sighting or trace of any of them has ever surfaced. Whatever the explanation, the vanishing itself is real.
- Claim: They did not leave of their own accord.
  Evidence: The physical picture strongly supports this and it is the near-universal view of investigators, though it is an inference rather than a proven fact. All three cars were left in the driveway, and purses, money, keys, cigarettes, and clothing were untouched. The women had plans for the coming day, the family dog was left behind agitated, and there was no note and no financial or other activity afterward. People who vanish voluntarily rarely leave every possession and every vehicle in place.
- Claim: The crime scene was contaminated before it could be properly examined.
  Evidence: Accurate, and it is one of the case's central tragedies. Because the house did not obviously read as a crime scene at first, friends and relatives entered and moved through it. Broken glass from the porch light was swept up, and a strange message on the answering machine was played and then lost when it was erased. Investigators have said both could have mattered. The early loss of evidence is documented and widely regarded as having damaged the case.
- Claim: Police identified a strong suspect but simply failed to charge him.
  Evidence: This overstates a real but limited fact. Police named Robert Craig Cox, who had a violent record and was living in Springfield in 1992, as a person of interest, and reporting notes that an alibi account tied to him was later called into question. But no physical evidence has ever linked him to the women, he has consistently denied involvement, and a 1996 grand jury that reviewed evidence brought no charges. Investigators have described him as a suspect they could neither rule out nor charge. Naming a person of interest is not proof of guilt, and this file does not treat it as such.
- Claim: A specific man's later statements amount to a confession.
  Evidence: They do not. In interviews over the years, Cox stated that he believed the women were dead and would never be found, while denying that he harmed them; asked directly in 1996 whether he abducted them, he called the question frivolous. Investigators have publicly questioned his credibility and treated his claims as uncorroborated. An assertion that the women are dead, from a person who denies involvement and against whom no evidence has been produced, is not a confession and cannot be reported as one.
- Claim: Other local men were the real culprits.
  Evidence: Over the decades, detectives have looked at several other people, including at least one local man later convicted of an unrelated 1985 Springfield-area murder. In that instance and others, police have said they found no evidence connecting the person to the three women, and the individuals denied involvement. None has been charged in the Springfield Three case, and each of these leads is an unproven line of inquiry, not an established answer.
- Claim: There is a large body of physical evidence pointing to what happened.
  Evidence: There is strikingly little. Beyond the circumstances at the house, the shattered porch globe, and the erased message, no bodies, weapon, vehicle, ransom, or forensic trace tying the disappearance to any suspect has ever been publicly confirmed. The absence of hard evidence, rather than a surplus of it, is precisely why the case has stayed open for more than thirty years.

## Why people believe it
- The scene is uniquely eerie. Three women gone from an ordinary suburban house, every car and purse left behind, a dog shut inside, and a single broken light globe as the only mark of disturbance: it reads like a locked-room mystery, and that vivid, unresolved image keeps drawing people back to the case.
- The lost evidence invites a sense of a solvable crime that was fumbled. The swept-up glass and the erased answering-machine message make it easy to believe that the answer was briefly within reach and then slipped away, which turns the case into a story about what might have been.
- There is a named person of interest with a violent past who has made provocative statements. When someone police could not rule out also tells reporters he knows the women are dead, the combination feels, to many, like a solution hiding in plain sight, even though no evidence has ever backed it up.
- The scale of the search and the silence that followed feel disproportionate. A case this large, this covered, and this thoroughly worked, ending in no trace at all, seems to demand a hidden explanation, and the vacuum is filled by theories.

## Open questions
- What was on the erased answering-machine message. Investigators have said they were very interested in a call left the night the women vanished, believing it might have contained a clue, but it was played once and lost. Its content is unknown and may never be recovered.
- How three adults were removed from a house with almost no sign of struggle. The near-absence of disturbance, one broken light globe aside, is hard to reconcile with the forcible abduction of three people, and no confirmed account explains it.
- Whether any of the people police examined over the years was in fact involved. Persons of interest have been named and questioned, and at least one alibi has been challenged in reporting, but no physical evidence has tied anyone to the case, and no charges have been brought.
- Where the women are. No remains have ever been found despite decades of searching and numerous tips pointing to specific sites. Without a recovery, even the basic question of what happened to them stays formally open.

## Sources
- The Springfield Three, Springfield, Missouri, FBI, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP): https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/vicap/missing-persons/the-springfield-three---springfield-missouri
- Springfield Three, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Three
- Three Women Vanished. More Than 30 Years Later, No One Knows What Happened, Newsweek (2025): https://www.newsweek.com/springfield-three-suzie-streeter-stacy-mccall-sherrill-levitt-what-happened-2057246
- Three Missing Women, City of Springfield, Missouri (official website): https://www.springfieldmo.gov/2498/Three-Missing-Women
- 30 years later, family still seeking answers in the disappearance of three Springfield, Missouri women, NBC News (Dateline) (2022): https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/30-years-later-family-still-seeking-answers-disappearance-three-springfield-n1296285
- Missing women: Theories and investigations into The Springfield Three cold case, Springfield Daily Citizen (2023): https://sgfcitizen.org/springfield-culture/missing-women-theories-and-investigations-into-the-springfield-three-cold-case/
- The Springfield Three: What we know about the cold case 31 years later, KY3 (2021): https://www.ky3.com/2021/06/07/springfield-three-what-we-know-about-cold-case-29-years-later/
- The Springfield 3: June 7 marks 34 years since the disappearance of Suzie Streeter, Sherrill Levitt, and Stacy McCall, KY3 (2026): https://www.ky3.com/2026/06/08/springfield-three-june-7-marks-34-years-since-disappearance-suzie-streeter-sherrill-levitt-stacy-mccall/

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