VA VA - Marcus Sesrell Barrell, 22, Virginia Beach, 10 Dec 2001

[ChatteringBirds]

Marcus Barrell has been missing since 2001. He is believed to be a victim of foul play. More information in next post.

Info. from:
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)


Missing Person / NamUs #MP7824

Marcus Sesrell Barrell
Male, White / Caucasian
Date of Last Contact: December 10, 2001
Missing From: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Missing Age: 22 Years
Current Age: 42 Years
Height: 5' 9" - 6' 0" (69 - 72 Inches)
Weight: 140 lbs
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Hazel
Eye Description: Fingerprint report has blue eyes.

Circumstances of Disappearance:
Last known alive 12/10/2001.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

All info. from
Marcus Sesrell Barrell – The Charley Project

Classification: Endangered Missing

Details of Disappearance:
Barrell was last seen in Virginia Beach, Virginia sometime in early December 2001. He lived with a roommate, C Ellison, in an apartment on 22nd Street. Barrell, a construction worker, had never had a steady job and frequently had financial problems...

He maintained regular phone contact with his father in Louisiana. The last call was in the first week of December. Barrell told his father he had given his Social Security number to a man he'd worked for, and he was concerned about it.

At 1:00 a.m. on December 9, Ellison called Barrell's father and said he was worried because he hadn't seen Barrell all week. The police took a missing persons report on December 10, but they were initially unconcerned because Barrell's thought he might simply have gone to visit friends in Florida or in northern Virginia.

In early January 2002, Barrell's father still hadn't heard from him so he contacted the police again and urged them to investigate.

About ten days after his disappearance, a neighbor and friend of Barrell's noticed his car, a champagne Nissan Sentra, was missing also.

Ellison had dropped out of sight by the end of the December; investigators believe he fled the country.

Barrell's neighbor witnessed people she did not know go and clean out Barrell's apartment. When she asked them what was going on, they refused to tell her. Barrell's drawings, keyboard, furniture and pet iguana all disappeared.

In April 2002, T. Baudoin purchased a house in Granite Falls, North Carolina under Barrell's name. Authorities discovered he had stolen Barrell's identity. Baudoin, an insurance adjuster, had once hired Barrell to do some work on his home in Norfolk, Virginia. He was fired from his job with the insurance company in November 2001 after the company discovered he had stolen more than $200,000 from their accounts.

Baudoin fled the area and assumed Barrell's identity to avoid prosecution. Between December 2001 and January 2002, he got three identity cards in Barrell's name from the state Department of Motor Vehicles. He also got a copy of Barrell's birth certificate, renewed Barrell's passport using his own photo, and got some credit cards in Barrell's name.

Baudoin, under Barrell's identity, got a job with an insurance company in North Carolina and began embezzling from them as well. The FBI knew he was using the alias name but didn't realize he had stolen a missing person's identity.

In May 2002, after the FBI tracked Baudoin to North Carolina, he returned to Virginia Beach to work out a plea deal with them. When one of his girlfriends told him the police had questioned her about Barrell's case, Baudoin took his own life at his room at the Days Inn on Bonney Road. He didn't leave a note.

Authorities believe Baudoin killed Barrell and concealed his body. They think Ellison may have information about the case, but they have been unable to locate him.

Barrell was declared legally dead in 2009. His case remains unsolved.

Investigating Agency:
Virginia Beach Police Department 757-385-4023

 

[smollily]

Someone from the area mentioned this to me in passing the other day. This case gets even stranger.

From this article:
(The article mentions the name of the folks who bought the house at the time, but I removed their names in the following quote.)

In January 2002, new home-owners [removed] noticed a pungent odor in the basement, which seemed strongest in a room with a hole in the wall that led to a dirt area. Eventually, the smell spread through the entire two-story home. Flies swarmed to a spot in the basement, the warrant states.A few months later, the couple cleaned the basement floors and walls, and added a new sealant to the concrete floor, the search warrant states. The owner and a friend started to dig into the dirt floor to try and find the source of the odor but stopped before they got too deep.
Virginia Beach police came to the home, and the couple asked them to search the property, the warrant states.

Before the search could be completed, Norfolk police questioned the authority of the Virginia Beach police to search the home. So Beach police halted the search, the warrant states.

Months later, Norfolk police and a former federal agent were allowed to probe the basement with ground radar. Investigators discovered an "anomaly," as they called it, in the unfinished room, the warrant states.

After that discovery, the homeowners denied authorities permission for additional searches, the warrant states. The case went cold.

That article is from 2011 and I can't find anything more recent on this case, which is really surprising. As of the time of that article, which was over a decade ago, Marcus Barrell's father was still in contact with the police trying to find his son. Absolutely heartbreaking.

 

[renaebri]

A different detective, Angela Murphy, recently became head of the Virginia Beach police’s department of missing persons, police spokesman Jimmy Barnes said. Murphy went through the department’s cold cases, and a review of the Barrell file prompted the search warrant, Barnes said.


This month, police and rescue workers from Norfolk and Virginia Beach conducted the search, aided by trained dogs and specialized equipment, Barnes said. No evidence was found, Barnes said. The owners were “extremely cooperative,” he said.


Sheppard, in a brief interview at his house, said he has always cooperated with police on the case. He declined to comment on the search warrant but said there was never a body in the house.


The story has frustrated Sheppard, too, he said. He would like everyone to “just leave it alone.”


Barnes said the key piece to the mystery was Baudoin. “A whole lot of answers died with him,” he said.

The end of the same article. So strange.

Also there has been a search in September 2023 for the car mentioned in his case!