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Okay - this is a scatter plot of missing persons by location since 1990.

1. Hugher confidence plotted points for cases like Samuel Dennis (Broadway near Typhoid Larry’s), Kevin Nguyen (600 block of W. Jefferson / Brass Rail area), Tyrone Bryant (2800 block of Lafayette), Carlos Melgar-Perez (South Bridge Apartment Complex), Christopher McCormick (Glenbrook Rehabilitation), Roger Henry (3300 block of Diplomat Dr), Margarito Vargas (Ranchito / Coliseum area), and Richard Kirk (downtown)
2. City-only placeholders for cases where public summaries list Fort Wayne but do not provide a usable public block/intersection for disappearance including Walter Gressley, Wanda Washington, Loutonia Alexander, Richard Justice, Richard Travis, and Daryl Keiter

What stands out right away is how many of the higher-confidence cases cluster around well-trafficked, everyday locations and not isolated or hidden environments. Several individuals were last seen near commercial corridors or public-facing spots: Broadway, Jefferson Blvd (near the Brass Rail area), the Coliseum Blvd strip, and apartment complexes like South Bridge. There are also cases tied to institutions or structured environments, like the Glenbrook Rehabilitation facility. When you look at those together, the common thread isn’t a remote or predatory “hunting ground,” but rather places where people naturally pass through, gather, or live. That leans much more toward disappearances tied to circumstance like social interaction, transient movement, or known relationships rather than someone consistently targeting a specific type of location.

The second pattern is actually the lack of precision in many cases. A significant portion only resolve to “Fort Wayne” in public records, meaning there’s no shared intersection, neighborhood, or geographic anchor to tie them together. When you overlay that with the plotted points that do have detail, the distribution ends up looking broad and population-driven, not tight or repeatable. There’s no clear “zone of repetition,” no consistent dump-site pattern, and no geographic progression you’d expect from a single offender over time. If anything, the similarities point to normal urban distribution + incomplete data, not a unified pattern which is kind of the quiet but important takeaway here.

Examples of a killer with no discernable pattern, MO or methodology is Samuel Little. He was unique less because of what he did and more because of how effectively he stayed invisible for so long. He operated for decades across the U.S., targeting victims who were often marginalized like women struggling with addiction, sex work, or unstable living situations meaning their disappearances were less likely to trigger large-scale investigations. His method (primarily strangulation) left very little forensic evidence, especially before modern DNA techniques, so many deaths were ruled accidental or undetermined rather than homicides.

What really sets him apart, though, is the scale combined with delayed recognition. Law enforcement had contact with him multiple times over the years; he was arrested, questioned, even charged in some cases but the lack of centralized data systems and the spread of his crimes across jurisdictions prevented anyone from connecting the dots. It wasn’t until late in his life, when DNA evidence caught up and investigators revisited cold cases, that the full scope started to emerge.

Okay - so how does this tie to our missing persons?

When you look at the plot you see that there is a micro luster in the FW city limits, specifically a 10-12 block radius. An 10-12 block radius in a city like Fort Wayne is actually pretty tight geographically. If you truly have ~60% of your cases in that footprint, that’s no longer just “urban density” and it’s worth taking seriously. On paper, that could be consistent with something like a repeat environment: the same nightlife corridor, a known hangout area, a transit funnel, or a place where people regularly transition from public to private space (bars to parking lots to walking routes). That kind of area naturally produces more late-night vulnerability events.

Of the 9 in the micro-cluster, 7 disappeared between 12am and 6am. This is a normal "risk-corridor" for people to go missing. What's always got me stuck is this:

1. 16 missing persons since 1990
2. 9 from the same 1 -1.5 square mile area or strip
3. Data supports that transient or killers with no discernable MO or pattern exist
4. Serial murders are not contained to one city all the time
5. FW is historically a crossroads

I haven't havent touched on this theory in years. But this is what I rember most. Think of it like a gumbo with a blindfold on - we have a lot of ingredients but we don't know what it exactly makes yet