KS KS - Jeremy Ray Coots, 4, Atchison, 18 Feb 1977

[Moonwalker9]

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
Jeremy Ray Coots – The Charley Project

No thread for him either...

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• Missing Since02/18/1977
• Missing FromAtchison, Kansas
• ClassificationLost/Injured Missing
• Date of Birth10/30/1972 (46)
• Age4 years old
• Height and Weight3'0, 40 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry DescriptionA blue coat with patches of blue and purple plaid and a hood tied with orange string, one red mitten hanging from his coat sleeve by an elastic band, a blue shirt, light-colored pants, and square-toed brown cowboy boots with a bird design.
• Medical ConditionsJeremy suffers from severe hearing loss. He wore a Maico brand hearing aid with the serial number 41076 at the time of his disappearance. He can make out voices when he wears the hearing aid, but is almost entirely deaf without it.
• Distinguishing CharacteristicsCaucasian male. Brown hair, blue eyes. Jeremy has a half-inch scar on the upper left side of his forehead and a three-quarter-inch scar on his lower jaw.

Details of Disappearance
Jeremy was last seen in the Potato Hill area of south Atchison, Kansas on February 18, 1977. He was at a babysitter's home and she allowed him to play outside in the yard with her own four-year-old son.

This was the first time the babysitter had let Jeremy out to play alone. He wandered away, walking east, and has never been heard from again. A five-day search of the area turned up no sign of him.

Jeremy's babysitter's home was about 400 yards from the Missouri River, and dogs tracked Jeremy's scent to its banks; authorities believe the child fell into the river and drowned. His body has never been recovered, however, in spite of a massive search.

At the time of his disappearance, Jeremy lived with his parents in the 200 block of north Eleventh Street. His family held a memorial service for him two weeks after he was last seen. His mother, Melodye Hathaway, published a book about her son's disappearance called In Search of Jeremy: A Mother's Story.

 

[glamourkitty1922]

How sad. I wish the babysitter paid more attention. He was just a 4 year old baby! Her book is available on Amazon and it has 5 stars.

 

[CastlesBurning]

I know the other child was only four, but certainly LE must have asked him about what happened...what did he say? Were he and Jeremy playing a game? Did they argue about something, and Jeremy wanted to go off on his own? etc.

 

[JerseyGirl]

Melodye Hathaway thinks her 4-year-old son, Jeremy Coots, likely died Feb. 18, 1977, in the cold waters of the Missouri River near Atchison. His body was never found.

"Part of me thinks he's still alive, but the rest of me knows better," she said Friday.

In wake of Gabby Petito tragedy, Kansas missing persons highlighted

Temperatures reached 60 degrees, uncharacteristically high for that time of year, on the Friday afternoon that Melodye Hathaway's 4-year-old son, Jeremy Coots, vanished on Feb. 18, 1977, she said.

Hathaway was 22 years at the time and in her ninth month of pregnancy with her second child. She was working as a clerk/typist at Atchison City Hall.

Jeremy had a serious hearing impairment and used a hearing aid.

He was at the home of a babysitter, whose husband was an ironworker who worked with Hathaway's then-husband, Rick Coots, Hathaway said.

The babysitter lived at a site about two miles south of Atchison known as "Potato Hill," and had a son who was about Jeremy's age, Hathaway said.

Jeremy vanished after his babysitter let both boys outside to play, she said.

more…

 

[Pennysmom1]

Missing in Kansas: Jeremy Coots cold case

A boy disappeared while at his babysitter’s decades ago in northeast Kansas.

www.kake.com

On Feb. 18, 1977, Jeremy Coots was taken to his babysitter’s house. The community was expecting a blizzard, but the weather turned out to be nice. Jeremy and the babysitter’s son, both 4, went outside to play.

“They supposedly got into a fight, and Jeremy went into one direction and Jimmy tried to follow him and he couldn’t find him,” said Jeremy’s mom Melodye Hathaway. “So he went back home and told his mom that Jeremy had went over the hill and well, that meant towards the river.”

The babysitter, then, ran out to look for Jeremy, who is also deaf, near her home about a mile south of Atchison, Kan. The babysitter put a call out on the CB radio. Jeremy’s dad rushed from work to the babysitter’s house. He called Hathaway, who was nine months pregnant and at work.

“He said don’t’ worry about it Melodye,” she said. “It’s 3 o’clock now. Finish your other two hours, come home at 5, and Jeremy and I will be sitting there waiting for you. I said ‘I’ll be right there,’ and that’s where the nightmare began.”

The search turned massive, with hundreds of people searching the area. They did everything they could to bring the brown-haired, blue-eyed boy home. From the sheriff’s office to the Kansas National Guard to a specialty search team from Florida – many offered their services.
Still, no sign of Jeremy.

Search dogs kept looking in the wooded area near the babysitter’s home. The county sheriff put an end to the search, believing Jeremy had fallen into the Missouri River. Crews dragged the river but did not find anything.
Jeremy’s mom said though it’s likely that her boy did drown, there were railroad tracks nearby. A child’s footprint was found near there. She wonders if a person kidnapped her son. If alive, he’d be 50 years old – just having a birthday in late October.

“So we waited, and waited and waited, and we still don’t have closure. I don’t know. I’m a mom, so part of me wants him to be alive, Hathaway said. “Maybe someone on the railroad did get him, maybe his is somewhere. But, he probably went into the river. “

“I would like some sort of closure before I die,” she said. “I bought a grave and a gravestone because I didn’t want to have to do that when they found him. I wanted to have that done. I would like to put him in there.”

In the decades since his disappearance, Hathaway does everything she can to pay tribute to her son. She has photos, a stuffed teddy bear and a Raggedy Andy doll of Jeremy’s. She had three children after that winter, and has brought them to Jeremy’s grave to pay respects to their older brother.

“I’ve tried really hard to keep Jeremy alive for my children so they would know him,“ Hathaway said. “That was really important to me that they knew him and could love him. The other day, my third child Jillian, she said, ‘I never thought Jeremy was dead all these years. You made it seem like he was in France or something,’ so I’ve done my job. They know him.”

Though she’s just about lost hope at times, Hathaway stays strong for her husband, kids and seven grandkids.

Hathaway wrote a book about life after losing Jeremy. She said it’s been therapeutic for her and other families grieving a loss.

She also contributes to the Kansas Missing and Unsolved page on Facebook, aimed at finding missing people in the state.

“A mother’s love is pretty strong and we’ll cling onto anything, anything,” she said. “So that’s the part of me that wants him to be alive, and if you think about that, he’s a man now and just doesn’t know how to find us. Somebody could have taken him and told him whatever story. I like to think of that instead of him being in the Missouri River. It’s a hard one, a real hard one.”

 

[Megsc]

bump!
Jeremy Ray Coots – The Charley Project