Kristin David, Christina White, Steven Pearsall, Kristina Nelson, Brandy Miller.Photo: National Center for missing and exploited Children; Asotin County Sheriff’s office
Steven Pearsall was a homebody who loved to make people happy, especially children. He was also a talented artist who specialized in drawing cartoon characters.
“He was a very good artist, and so he would draw pages of cartoons to try to cheer you up, or he’d make up a cartoon of you and draw things of you as a cartoon,” his younger sister Rhonda Albright tells PEOPLE. “He was always trying to make people happy.”
When 35-year-old Pearsall vanished without a trace from Lewiston, Idaho on Sept. 12, 1982, his family was stunned.
“I just remember being heartbroken and seeing my dad heartbroken,” Albright says. “He would search every day. He would get in the car and drive, and search in ravines and ask people if they’s seen anything or heard anything.”
Steven Pearsall.Asotin County Sheriff’s Office
On the night of Sept. 12, Pearsall, who worked at the Lewiston Civic Theatre as a janitor, had gone to a retirement party before he was dropped off at the theater so he could use the laundry machines and practice his beloved clarinet.
“It was around 12:15 a.m., and the theater was dark,” Asotin County Sheriff’s Office detective Jackie Nichols says. “[Steven’s girlfriend] watched Steven unlock the door, enter the theater, and turn on a light.”
He was never seen again.
Kristin David.Asotin County Sheriff’s Office
After police began investigating, they found Pearsall’s clarinet at the theater, but his laundry was missing.
Police searched his apartment and found that “nothing was in disarray, but also nothing was like he was planning to move out or go somewhere,” Nichols says.
Pearsall was one of five young people who went missing — three of them found murdered — between 1979 and 1982 in the Pacific Northwest’s Lewis Clark Valley, which straddles Washington and Idaho.
Christina White.National Center of Missing and Exploited Children
The disturbing case remainsunsolved, and is the subject of tonight’s episode ofPeople Magazine Investigates. Titled “Valley of Death,” the episode airs at 9 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery and also streams on discovery+. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
The first disappearance happened on April 28, 1979 when 12-year-old Christine White vanished in Asotin, Wash. after going to the county fair and later to her friend’s house.
Kristina Nelson.Asotin County Sheriff’s Office
They never made it.
Brandy Miller.Asotin County Sheriff’s Office
On March 19, 1984, the remains of both Miller and Nelson were discovered down a hillside off Highway 3, about 40 miles outside of Lewiston. The coroner ruled their deaths homicides.
Albright hopes one day she will find out what happened to her brother.
“You want that closure, just to know where he is,” she says.
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Before her heartbroken father died, he gave her Steven’s clarinet.
“It’s the last thing I have of his,” she says.
If you have information that could help the investigation into any of these cases, please contact 800-call-fbi, tips.fbi.gov or the Asotin County Sheriff’s office at 509-243-4717.
See more on the disturbing mystery of five disappearances along the Snake River onPeople Magazine Investigates (“Valley of Death”), airing tonight at 9 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery and also streaming on discovery+.
source: people.com
