Glad Stewart can go home to his family. So sorry for their loss.
vermontaigne; awesome match! You've given Stewarts family their son back.
Victim of 1982 homicide identified A son, identified
While Bill and Joanne Simmons admit it is difficult to learn the circumstances of their son’s death, the couple is relieved that, after 32 years, he will soon return home.
“We will be eternally grateful to Det. Barter for the work that he did,” Joanne Simmons said.
According to Simmons’ parents, now in their early 70s, their son was a smiling, hardworking, motivated young man who joined the U.S. Navy after deciding college was not right for him.
“He was literally the apple of my eye,” Joanne Simmons said of her son.
Following boot camp, Simmons was set to be in the Navy’s nuclear program.
But, after arriving in San Diego, perhaps faced with the idea of being away from home for the first time, Simmons went AWOL (absent without leave). Despite that misstep, a Georgia congressman wrote a letter on behalf of Simmons and he was accepted back into the Navy.
Upon his return to the Navy, Simmons accepted responsibility for his mistake a few months earlier and faced punitive action for his disappearance — the brig. On his way to the brig in June 1982, Simmons was allowed to relocate his motorcycle, and he again went AWOL, this time for good.
A few weeks later, Simmons’ ID was used on the military base to check out camping equipment.
“Stewart was a big camper,” Bill Simmons said. After learning about where their son’s body was recovered, the couple was not surprised. “If he walked out of that school bus and saw those mountains, he was headed in that direction.”
The couple also noted that Simmons had mentioned meeting a woman, a waitress known as Margo, shortly before leaving.
A search for Simmons - “When the days went by and went by … I knew in my heart something had happened,” Joanne Simmons recalled.
The family hired a private detective, then a retired FBI agent in attempts to determine if their son’s social security number or other personal information had been used to report income.
“This was about all you had available to you back then,” Bill Simmons said.
Despite having full-time careers and two other children, the couple also traveled to San Diego and Mexico, searching frantically to see if anyone had seen their son.
“We were just aimlessly driving around as though something were going to appear,” Joanne Simmons recalled. “It was just a nightmare; it truly was.”
Over the years, Simmons’ parents never stopped looking — tracking down dental records from a deceased dentist, poring over unidentified persons across the U.S. and religiously watching cold-case and unsolved case shows on TV, finally filing an unofficial missing persons report in Georgia in 1999, submitting personal items owned by their son for DNA as technology advanced — and always made sure their phone number remained the same and that their home had a place for their son should he turn up.
“We just never stopped looking. Ever,” Joanne Simmons stated.
Returning home
Now, almost 32 years after he initially disappeared, Simmons will return home in the coming months.
“We are anxiously awaiting his arrival home,” Joanne Simmons said, noting that their younger daughter will escort Simmons’ cremated remains home, where the family will hold a memorial service.
“He was loved. He was very loved, and he has been painfully missed for 31 years.” Joanne Simmons said.
Of Barter, she said, “He has given us a gift that nobody else in this world could have given us. … We will be eternally grateful for that.”