Sunday evening around 5, we arrived in Watson reported to the fire department. Buses of searchers had just got back from searching, and there were hundreds waiting to go back out. They didn't have enough firefighters to lead crews, a bunch of us got on the phone with our FF friends from several different towns to get them there. I learned from the LE in charge that all the FF's had to be voluntary, they couldn't send a "tone" out for their help, that's why they didn't have enough. Within an hour the place was overran with FF's! They the. Put us in groups of 10 with a FF in charge of each group. At this point most of the effort was placed north of town, we were told bc the dogs had tracked her going north before loosing her trail.
We searched several square miles, until 2 am. (My last bus ride back was on a bus being driven by willows bus driver, so many cute stories from him, he also had to be up at 4:30am to start his bus route, but there he was volunteering his time to drive the buses to help find her!)
When we got back to the fire dept we learned they were going to be using the heat seeking planes, that's why they needed the volunteers out of the fields.
My husbands best friend, who is a FF was there until 7am, they would use the FF's on ATV's and send them out whenever they got notice of a possible hit.
Sunday, those in charge seemed to be the Watson fire dept., and the county police. Everything was organized beautifully, we would get in a group, get a number on our hands, go search, come back get another number, go search, it was an easy flow.
This part maybe deleted for hearsay, my friend works with JD at Starbucks and worked with him Sunday night, she told me Monday morning that she thought it was odd that 1) JD came to work and wasn't searching, and 2) they needed someone to deliver coffee to the searchers, and he flat out refused to be the one to deliver it. That was Monday morning when I talked to her, now she's not allowed to say anything else about the case, so I don't even ask. Before she wasn't allowed to talk about it I asked her what she thought of him and if he was being weird on Sunday. She said he was always a pretty quiet guy, kept to himself most of the time. On Sunday the only thing she found odd was the two things I mentioned above and when she tried to engage him in conversation about willow being missing he would either change the subject or ignore the question with a shrug.
Monday morning- we were there shortly after dropping our own children off at school. We brought our ATV's this time, where we were directed to park with our trailers was buy the RR tracks, very close to her house. We met at the civic center this day, on our way up there we noticed two extra "officials" tents, where the night before was only 1 tent, and the one trailer. The county and state police were everywhere. People were saying the FBI was there, but I personally never saw any. They had stopped the searches with the firefighters at 7am, we were told they would start with volunteer searches at 8:30, busses from unit 40 schools, and central il public transit were lined up and ready by 8:30, over 50 atv's were lined up and ready, at least a dozen horses were ready. We all sat there, police included twirling our thumbs until 11am. There was a lot of talk in that time, but I'll chalk 90% of it up to rumors. When they were finally ready for us to search they had decided to not use the ATV's just yet. So we boarded busses with other searchers, everything was headed south. Our group started out on the street directly infront of willows house (I'll address my observations of the home in a bit), there's a beanfield, and a treeline just south of her house, just west of the tracks. We could tell the field had already been searched but they had us there, instead of like on Sunday when we stretched our arms out and kept that far apart in our search, they had us shoulder to shoulder (IMO they knew we were looking for a body at this point and not a live child). We walked that beanfield and along the tracks for about a mile and a half, going into other fields and properties. This was the heat of the day and it was hot!! People kept leaving the search effort due to the heat and our group of 200+ dwindled down to 50, there was only a few civilians left, most of that was FF's and LE. Finally at a frontage road, they had us stop and took us back to recovery at the civic center. It was about 1 at this time. After recovering and having lunch people were milling around again, ready to go back out and search. We waited until 3 when they said they were suspending the search until 6, be back to be registered at 5:30. A lot left, but some of us went out on our own, we mainly just went on the back roads looking in culverts and yelling for her. At 5:30 the place was packed with volunteers! My FF friend was back as well as most of those FF's that were sent home at 7am (some had never left bless their hearts). Out of all the buses and all the people there, they only took out 3 buses, so maybe only 150-200 ppl?? They told us they wanted everyone else to go home, and after these search busses were back only trained officials would be searching. We waited a little bit on our ATV's talking with FF friends and basically not wanting to leave, we all wanted answers and wanted to find her (at the point there were rumors of foul play, because mom's story had changed, but must of us were praying and hoping those rumors were wrong and she had still just wandered off) those 3 buses came back a little after 7, and again LE stressed that civilians needed to leave. So we headed out, searching the backroads on the way home before loosing daylight (we live north of Watson).
We knew they had either found her, or a body by 8:30 that night. Our FF friend hand been out searching (the river actually, but farther east) when they called all personnel back in. They only told them that they were putting a halt to the search efforts and everyone was to head home. When he told me this at 8:30 we just knew something had happened, but thought they were waiting until her father finally got to Watson to break the news.
We were all heartbroken when we heard the news the next morning. I didn't quite understand my own grief, I never met this child, didn't know her loved ones, yet I cried so much at the news.
When the news of the uncle came out, I headed here for some answers. I was on the FB groups, but they were and are out of control, and I knew this was monitored very well. Thank you for that mods!
Several ppl on here have commented on the brush pile in the back of the video of the grandma. In Greg Sapp's (the reporter in the video) defense, that whole property is covered in brush piles, at least 5 that I saw. Someone on here mentioned those aren't brush piles, that's what we call them. Piles of trimmed of fallen branches, roughly about 4'x4'. All these piles are pretty scraggly though.
Idk why/where the upstairs downstairs comments are coming from, this house is not a two story, and if there was an attic loft it would be to tiny for an adult to use, it's not an overly tall house, it's obviously on a slab, there aren't even a set of steps coming out the front door. IIRC, there's one step, and then you're on a little patio.
Everytime I have seen CD she is with the same two people a male and a female, idk who they are, but if I saw their picture I could ID them. The male is not the little boys father.
My mom wanted to help with the effort, but instead kept my children and my siblings children so we could help. Wednesday we were going to Effingham to do our grocery shopping and she wanted to see the area and where me and my family members had searched. (Some might find this odd, but when I went to Joplin, MO to help with the cleanup, my mom asked me to take her there a year or so later to show her the things I helped with and saw. So I didn't find this request odd) this was after 1 on Wednesday, so we were listening to the presser, looking at the places i helped, and stopping to cry a few times. after showing her everything north of Watson and the civic center and fire dept. I told her we probably wouldn't be able to go on the street where we started the search Monday bc I figured the police would have the home and that road taped off. Well they didn't, not one police car on the street or at the Deryke home, in fact CD and the two other people were standing out by the car listening to the radio, just like the rest of Effingham CO. I finished by showing her the rest of the field and where we went to the south, and then we went to the rest area to leave a stuffed animal.
We returned to Watson one last time Wednesday night to be part of the vigil. Someone had planted a willow tree and we all gathered around that. Whoever put the vigil together didn't think to set up a microphone or even get a bullhorn, so unfortunately we didn't hear much, even though we were only 4-5 people back from the center of ppl. There was over 500 ppl there, probably more. Her great uncle spoke(I think her grandmas brother because after speaking he went to hold the gma), her father spoke, and then several friends & loved ones. I only really heard the bus driver because he spoke very loudly. The grandma and grandpa were there, grandpa had to leave after her father spoke, the poor man looked like he was about the have a breakdown
I didn't see CD at the vigil itself, however after the vigil was over they wanted us to all carry our candles and momentos to willows house, so the huge group of over 500 people trek to her house, as we were coming up on the tracks, just past the firedept, we saw CD and her friends heading to the house from a different direction, so she had to of been at the vigil. We all pooled on the property, we were pressed to the patio. The male I saw with CD those two times sat on the swing on the patio, the grandma and great uncle stood on the patio accepting hugs and love, you could see the grandpa at the kitchen table in the house, his head buried in his arms, I never saw the father again after he spoke.
The visitation in Effingham was very lovely! At first I didn't want to go, but I've felt at peace since then so I think it gave me the closure I didn't know I needed. The weird thing about the visitation, all the LE that were there, not the ones paying their respects, but the ones patrolling. Another weird thing IMO, was near the casket they were playing the movie the princess and the frog. I thought it odd because of the possible lies surrounding that movie, but several people said it was her favorite so they played it. The fathers family asked us how we knew willow, after telling them our story an aunt said most of the long family has stayed off the Internet (with the exception of the dad and his sister), so they could bury willow in peace. I thought that was probably for the best. The poor grandma and grandpa just looked wrecked, I don't even want to try to imagine what they are going through.
Everyone keeps saying how the never see CD in tears, well according to my observations I never saw TL in tears either. Lack of tears doesn't point to guilt for me. When my own grandmother passed I didn't cry until the casket was being lowered and then it all hit me.
I don't think we should judge the mom on her mourning process. That being said I do think she should be judged on her lying and any involvement she may have had in said lying.
Of course this is just what I observed, or are MOO. If anything I said shouldnt be posted, please snip it sorry to write a novel, and please excuse the spelling errors I'm writing for my phone and autocorrect is sometimes a pain.
