"The Mystery: They Left Their Home, Disappeared" by Joe Holleman Of the Post-Dispatch - St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO), July 29, 1995 | Online Research Library: Questia
On an overcast, muggy Wednesday morning 20 years ago this summer - so the story goes - Jack and Patricia "Patsy" Girou dressed in their Sunday best. Jack loaded a pistol and stuck it in his pants. A Cadillac drove up.
They vanished.
Police flushed out sewers near their home on La Bonne Parkway, near Missouri Highway 141 and Big Bend Boulevard. They dug up the back yard. They tested bones found over the years. They monitored the Girous' bank accounts.
Without a trace.
The couple ran away from two jobs, two cars, two uncashed paychecks, four children and 10 acres they had just bought for their dream home.
Or did they?
Michelle Sheehan, a niece of the Girous, said the case comes to mind every summer. She says her mother, Patsy's sister, and other relatives simply want to know what happened.
"That's what we want. I think we all believe something bad happened, but we'd like to know what," she said. "There was no ending."
St. Louis County homicide detective Thomas Deakin also wants to end the mystery - ever since the case fell in his lap 10 years ago.
"There's nothing in this case that says this couple would just . . . walk off the face of the Earth," Deakin said.
On June 16, 1975, Edward Girou, then 25 and living on his own, reported his parents missing. Edward was supposed to have dinner with his mother and father that night. He had tried unsuccessfully to reach them by telephone over the weekend to get a time for dinner.
He figured they might have been camping on the 10-acre plot they had bought near Cedar Hill in Jefferson County. They were planning to build their dream house there.
On the afternoon of June 16, he finally talked to the only Girou child living at home - 17-year-old JoAnne. She told police the following story:
JoAnne, who became JoAnne Altman and is last known to have lived in South Carolina, said she and her father had quarreled on Tuesday night. He was unhappy about her lifestyle, including her drug use and her choice of boyfriends. JoAnne said he had told her he wanted her out of the house. She said her parents then went into their finished basement and began drinking. She went to bed.
The next morning, she got up and saw Jack putting on a sportcoat and loading the revolver he kept in his nightstand. Patsy looked out the window and told Jack, "He's here." Jack stuck the revolver in his waistband. He turned to JoAnne and said that they had to go away for awhile but that he would call as soon as he could with a number where they could be reached in an emergency.
Then he added that he still wanted JoAnne to be out of the house when they returned Sunday.
She said her boyfriend had come up from Louisiana on Thursday and helped her pack up her belongings. On Friday, she called her sister, Kathleen, and asked if she could stay at her apartment for the weekend. Kathleen agreed.
Finally, on Monday, JoAnne told Edward that their parents had left and not returned. Edward went to the house. He saw that the windows and garage were unlocked and that the family dog had not been fed for several days - behavior that would have been unacceptable to Jack Girou. …
"The Mystery: They Left Their Home, Disappeared" by Joe Holleman Of the Post-Dispatch - St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO), July 29, 1995 | Online Research Library: Questia