Hello again,
Sorry about my delay in posting. I've been giving the OPP and Russell's family a chance to wrap up the case officially. Here is a note posted by Russell's neice which was posted on the icare forums over at:
http://icaremissingpersonscoldcases.yuku.com/topic/600/master/1/?page=1
"I am the niece of once missing man, Russell Pensyl. Russell has been found, he had been an unidentified body in Toronto since May 1993. I want to thank the person responsible for connecting the information posted here by his sister to the OPP Missing and Unidentified Persons page on that website to help us finally know his fate and have this closure. Thank you, to J.D.
Russell was 35 years old at the time of his death on May 15, 1993. He was preceded in death by his loving mother, Dana Pensyl, his father Russell 'Red' Pensyl, and a brother, John C. Pensyl. Brother of surviving siblings Louise, Sue, Cindy and Elwood.
Rusty, as he was called, loved to hunt and fish. He was never without friends and was loved by all who knew him and his family.
I, as well as my family, will remember a good-hearted man, though plagued with mental health problems that made life a struggle for him. We will remember his mischievous laugh, a laugh that made everyone in the room laugh, too, regardless of whether or not they got the joke. We, his nieces and nephews, will remember his tickle tortures and 'lick treatments'. Most of all, we will remember the man he was despite his mental health problems.
While he is loved and missed, our family is at peace knowing now that he has not suffered all these years both physically and mentally, as he had in life. We know he is at peace now."
I will write a bit more about this this afternoon but first I wanted to stress the importance of colaborating with other message boards and websites. I've seen some political, personal and even copywrite issues going on between some boards and that is a huge shame. These inter-website battles are potentially hindering cases. These are a lot of the same communication problems that police departments have and part of the reason why some cases will never be solved.
Russell here had no case information posted on ANY police site which was due to a missing persons report never being filed. That being said, his family was able to anonymously log onto the icare board and post this seemingly simple post:
"missing brother niagarafalls lockport
russell a. pensyl , mentally ill, red hair , missing a pinky finger please contact niagarafalls police with any assistance in missing persons case that is over ten years old"
But that's all it took to spark a memory in my mind of an OPP case of an unidentified man missing a pinky with red hair. 2 simple clues. If it wasn't for the ability to anonymous post on icare then Russell might still be unknown.
Now I would LOVE to see a part/forum on this board where one could log in as a guest and post about missing loved ones. I had problems having my account validated here and waited a few weeks before it went through. That's no fault of the website but rather a matter of being short staffed and having lots of requests.
If we had a guest forum for posts like this, could we help find more people?
Lets open dialogues between sites and mend some of the bad feelings with other boards. It's for the greater cause of helping so many families like the Pensyls.
More later...