MD MD - Judith 'Judy' O'Donnell, 19, Baltimore, 30 Nov 1980

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JeannieC said:
Very disappointing but just another detour in the road. When one door closes we just have to look for another! I wish we had someone from LE who could maybe offer some suggestions or throw out a few ideas...........

It has been a long time Maureen but don't give up now.

:waitasec:
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not only not disappointing -- I'm thrilled out of my mind right now - new leads, new energy, material evidence is short hairs away. I couldn't be happier than I am - no detour - people have been coming out of the woodwork to get to the library in Stanford!!
 
JudysSisterMaureen said:
not only not disappointing -- I'm thrilled out of my mind right now - new leads, new energy, material evidence is short hairs away. I couldn't be happier than I am - no detour - people have been coming out of the woodwork to get to the library in Stanford!!
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I'm so glad to hear that, Maureen!
 
JudysSisterMaureen said:
not only not disappointing -- I'm thrilled out of my mind right now - new leads, new energy, material evidence is short hairs away. I couldn't be happier than I am - no detour - people have been coming out of the woodwork to get to the library in Stanford!!
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These new leads are great and great news that there are folks able to go to the library at Stanford.

Just a question - have there ever been any missing posters of Judy placed in Greenwich village recently as it may jog some memories? A lot of folks who lived in Greenwich may not be there anymore but if they did have some good memories they now may be at the age where they want to revisit some of their old haunts? It may bring some more pictures and firmer dates to when Judy was last seen.

Just a thought that flashed across my mind.

eleph
 
elepher50 said:
These new leads are great and great news that there are folks able to go to the library at Stanford.

Just a question - have there ever been any missing posters of Judy placed in Greenwich village recently as it may jog some memories? A lot of folks who lived in Greenwich may not be there anymore but if they did have some good memories they now may be at the age where they want to revisit some of their old haunts? It may bring some more pictures and firmer dates to when Judy was last seen.

Just a thought that flashed across my mind.

eleph
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There have not -- are you on the ground in the City ? There is a missing persons poster on her namus page. The link for it is:

https://www.findthemissing.org/cases/poster/8051

I would love nothing more than for every "post no bills" spray painted sign littered with these. :)
 
Not on the ground in NYC but wish I were - the posters would be up in Greenwich for sure.
Will keep plugging away at trying to find the ABC sanitation video with Judy in it as that would provide a more definititive timeline.
 
elepher50 said:
These new leads are great and great news that there are folks able to go to the library at Stanford.

Just a question - have there ever been any missing posters of Judy placed in Greenwich village recently as it may jog some memories? A lot of folks who lived in Greenwich may not be there anymore but if they did have some good memories they now may be at the age where they want to revisit some of their old haunts? It may bring some more pictures and firmer dates to when Judy was last seen.

Just a thought that flashed across my mind.

eleph
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That's a good point, elepher! Actually, the same folks who had been in Greenwich during Judy's time there might still be living there due to rent control. I've heard that people in NYC will hang on to an apartment until they die if it's a nice apartment and due to rent control. I'd say the odds of all/most of those people leaving the village are pretty slim due to the crazy rent situation that has been a problem in NYC for a very long time.

Maureen, do you have any correspondence that is still in an envelope (with return address) from Judy? If you can locate a GV address that she might have used, it could be helpful as the residents might still be at that address.
 
http://www.artsandmusicpa.com/NYC/village1.htm

Homelessness in the 80's hit the village particularly hard, yet people felt sheltered by the famous tolerant attitudes of the Village community. The artists, writers and actors who could not afford the high rents in the West side, moved to the East Village. In the 90's, most of the color, style and culture shifted to the East Village. There are new rock clubs and oddball shops, used book stores, inexpensive thrift and second-hand stores, restaurants
 
JeannieC said:
http://www.artsandmusicpa.com/NYC/village1.htm

Homelessness in the 80's hit the village particularly hard, yet people felt sheltered by the famous tolerant attitudes of the Village community. The artists, writers and actors who could not afford the high rents in the West side, moved to the East Village. In the 90's, most of the color, style and culture shifted to the East Village. There are new rock clubs and oddball shops, used book stores, inexpensive thrift and second-hand stores, restaurants
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I remember reading about the homelessness issue in the village somewhere when I was looking for info about Judy. I wonder if anyone from the homeless assistance groups that were around in the late 70s-early 80s would know Judy? I know that in the case of San Francisco, the groups that work with the homeless (and there are a lot of homeless in SF) usually know nearly everyone who is homeless in their area.
 
Haven't been posting but have been looking at a lot of articles and pictures from the late 70's and 1980 trying to spot Judy. There was mention of the "mole people" in and around Greenwich Village during that time and that is interesting.

Judy you are not forgotten and am continuing to read and search for your whereabouts in NYC during that time period.
 
I'm still thinking about Judy too. I have tried various searches as well when I think of something random. Her sister's pain and her story have really touched me.
 
THERE are many paths into New York's little known netherworld. One of them is a metal door sandwiched between a grimy Midtown apartment building and a nondescript bodega.

Thousands of people walk by every day, never even noticing it. While millions of straphangers walk up and down the city's clearly marked subway entrances, only a handful know of the dangerous, harsh - yet surprisingly peaceful - world that lies on the other side of this particular door.

Call it a tale of two cities - and both are constantly changing.


http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/item_cBpY2m15R9J0ysIm58QK1M
 
elepher50 said:
Haven't been posting but have been looking at a lot of articles and pictures from the late 70's and 1980 trying to spot Judy. There was mention of the "mole people" in and around Greenwich Village during that time and that is interesting.

Judy you are not forgotten and am continuing to read and search for your whereabouts in NYC during that time period.
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Thanks Elepher! I remember seeing that on TV a long time ago. I believe they still exist today but not in the same way. Unless I'm mistaken the first mole people went into these underground RR tunnels to live when they became homeless. Some were Hippies. Some were drug users.

Today I believe they house a lot of people with mental problems.
 
The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City details Toth's early-90s encounters with several dozen of what she estimated at the time to be 5,000 homeless people living beneath the streets of New York, mostly in subway and railroad tunnels. Particularly large populations inhabit (or inhabited, anyway) the multilevel labyrinths beneath Grand Central and Penn stations. Many tunnel people are solitary loonies not unlike the guys you see living aboveground in cardboard boxes in any large American city. In a few cases, though--this is where it gets truly weird--sizable communities have coalesced, some allegedly numbering 200 people or more, complete with "mayors," elaborate social structures, even electricity. Toth describes one enclave deep under Grand Central with showers using hot water from a leaky steam pipe, cooking and laundry facilities, and an exercise room. The community has a teacher, a nurse, and scampering children. "Runners" return frequently to the surface to scavenge food and such, but others--the real "mole people"--routinely go for a week or more without seeing the light of day.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns...ple-living-under-the-streets-of-new-york-city
 
Filmmaker Mark Singer lived with his subjects to shoot the 2000 documentary Dark Days, which won an audience prize at Sundance.
 
http://old.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id350/pg1/

New York citizens are notorious for romanticising their metropolis, but the grim revelations that 5000 homeless people (1989 estimate) were surviving in the noir catacombs of 'Grand Central Station' and the subway tunnel system distressed even the most cynical.
During the 1980s, stories of 'Mole People' were regarded as urban legends. When 'Los Angeles Times' and Raleigh 'News & Observer' journalist Jennifer Toth published her landmark sociological study 'The Mole People: Life In The Tunnels Beneath New York City' (Chicago Review Press, 1993), she uncovered a more unusual phenomenon: an underworld society of tribal bands bonded by mutual alienation of 'surface dwellers'. The small communities and territorial networks survived, the loner 'crack' addicts often died within a few years. Displaced from conventional moral codes, the 'Mole People' emphasized kinship and proximity, living in a 'cyclical' perception of time that was closer to Joseph Campbell or Mircea Eliade than the Internet's Hyperculture.
 
I read a book review yesterday in the new york times. The author of the book was Wayne Koestenbaum and the title of the current book was Humiliation. The reason I'm posting about it is the article states that he is obsessed with Andy Warhol (and others) and has written a book about him:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/books/humiliation-by-wayne-koestenbaum-review.html

Also an article about the author:

http://www.pen.org/author.php/prmAID/35/prmID/1832

I also googled books about Warhol. And there is a book called Diaries of Andy Warhol that chronicles his life in "obsessive detail" in new york in the 70's and 80's.

Since earlier in the thread there was a discussion of the possible studio 54 connection and maybe a Warhol connection with Judy, does anyone think contacting this author to see if he has any knowledge, photographs or etc., would be worthwhile? Or possibly there might be something in the diaries that could help?

I was able to scan the index of the diaries online at Amazon and found no reference to a Judy O'donnell. I know from sister's facebook page that Judy sometimes used alias', so maybe, maybe, maybe...

What do other members think?
 
susanbray said:
I read a book review yesterday in the new york times. The author of the book was Wayne Koestenbaum and the title of the current book was Humiliation. The reason I'm posting about it is the article states that he is obsessed with Andy Warhol (and others) and has written a book about him:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/books/humiliation-by-wayne-koestenbaum-review.html

Also an article about the author:

http://www.pen.org/author.php/prmAID/35/prmID/1832

I also googled books about Warhol. And there is a book called Diaries of Andy Warhol that chronicles his life in "obsessive detail" in new york in the 70's and 80's.

Since earlier in the thread there was a discussion of the possible studio 54 connection and maybe a Warhol connection with Judy, does anyone think contacting this author to see if he has any knowledge, photographs or etc., would be worthwhile? Or possibly there might be something in the diaries that could help?

I was able to scan the index of the diaries online at Amazon and found no reference to a Judy O'donnell. I know from sister's facebook page that Judy sometimes used alias', so maybe, maybe, maybe...

What do other members think?
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Sounds like a good lead to me. It certainly can't hurt to try!
 
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