Thoughts of Randy Wayne Leach Again Rise to the Surface

 

by Rocky Macy

Over the years I have written about Randy Wayne Leach several times in this space.   He was an 18-year-old high school senior from Linwood, Kansas, who left his parents home on the evening of April 15th, 1988, to attend a "pre-graduation" party at a friend's house.  Several members of the Linwood High School class of 1988 were at the poorly supervised party, but Randy, who had driven his mother's car to the party, was the only one who didn't return home after the party ended.  At daylight the next morning, Randy's parents, Harold and Alberta Leach, set out in search of their missing son.  Today, more than thirty years later, Randy Wayne Leach remains missing.

My youngest son, Tim, and I became acquainted with Harold and Alberta in 2006 when Tim, then a graduate student at the University of Kansas, was writing a play about Randy's disappearance.   We spent a full day with the couple discussing various aspects of Randy's life and the investigation that had been carried out by local authorities and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and Harold even took us on a guided tour of all of the local stops that Randy made on the night he disappeared.   Tim's play was presented that fall to three packed houses at a college auditorium in Lawrence, one performance of which the entire Leach extended family attended, and the resulting publicity helped to spur a renewed interest in the case.

But today Randy, who would now be fifty-one, is still missing - and his parents are left with a hole in their lives.

In 2013 I revisited the Leach case a couple of more times when two sunken cars were located in Foss Lake Reservoir in Oklahoma.    The two cars contained a total of six decomposed bodies.  It was confirmed the following year through DNA testing that the six were two separate groups of individuals who had disappeared in 1969 and 1970, and the cars had happened to settle next to each other near a boat ramp at the reservoir.  They were located with the relatively new technology of sonar.

A week after the discovery of those two cars in Oklahoma, a fisherman on a creek near Beresford, South Dakota, came across a car that had been submerged for what appeared to have been a long period of time.  Two tires from the car emerged after the area had sustained a prolonged drought that significantly lowered the creek's water level.  The skeletal remains found inside of the car turned out to be those of two seventeen-year-old girls who had gone missing forty-two years earlier in 1971 while on their way to a party.

Both of those cases from 2013 had me thinking of Randy because northeastern Kansas, where Randy lived, contains a multitude of big farm ponds, lakes, and rivers, places that a drunken or stoned youth could accidentally drive into and disappear for years, or places where scared kids could hide the body (and the car) of a friend who had died - or even been killed - at a party.

Today there was a story on the internet about another submerged vehicle that had been recovered, again with skeletal remains inside.   The car, a blue Ford Tempo, was pulled out of Lake Dardanelle in Russellville, Arkansas.  It is believed to have belonged to Samantha Jean Hopper who was reported missing along with her 22-month-old daughter more than 23 years ago on September 11th, 1998.  Hopper, who was eight months pregnant when she disappeared, had been enroute to take her daughter to a sitter's and was then going to a concert in Little Rock.

This latest case, that of Samantha Jean Hopper, was solved through the efforts of a national "cold case" search group calling itself "Adventures with Purpose."  The group credits itself with having solved 16 "cold case" disappearances since 2019.    They are currently on a "fall road trip" in which the group will be spending 44 days visiting 19 states - and where they will attempt, using sonar technology, to solve 27 cold cases that involve 36 missing persons.  That is quite a tall order, but the group has apparently already solved one of the 19 - that of Samantha Jean Hopper and her daughter.

The list of people whom "Adventures with Purpose" are trying to find this year include:

Richard Stanley Meyer, Frank & Mary Olivia, John Steven Conaway, Paul Joseph Knockel, Sandra Eckert, Nadine Moses, John Hall, Janet Walsh, Mark Seelman, Douglas Goodwin, Donnie Messier, Leslie, Julie & Timothy Guthrie, Danielle Imbo, Richard Petrone, Toni Lee Sharpless, Michelle Lyn Hundley Smith, Jeff Anthony Shepherd, Martha Sue & Claude Shelton, Bob Estep, Van, John & Kristina Nguyen, Jeffrey Hayes Pottinger, Bonnie Lee Schultz, Donnie Erwin, Carey Mae Parker, Roszan Jean Payne, Earnest Lee Franklin, Michael Kenneth "Kenny" Stricklin, Samantha Hopper, Courtney Holt, and Cheryl Denise Cottrell.

I have signed up for their newsletter and intend to begin following their efforts.  Maybe soon "Adventures with Purpose" will include Randy Wayne Leach in one of their searches.   Harold and Alberta Leach deserve to know what became of their only child.

And this tired old typist would like to know, too.