On this date, April 3, 1997, Laura Kate Smither was abducted and went missing in Friendswood, Texas. In loving memory of her, Comrades of Unit 1012 will endorse the Laura Recovery Center that was founded by her parents, Bob and Gay Smither. We will post information from Wikipedia and the official website.
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Laura Kate Smither
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The Laura
Recovery Center exists to prevent abductions and runaways and to recover
missing children by fostering a Triangle of Trust among law enforcement,
communities and a missing child's families. The center is headquartered in
Friendswood, Texas, United States. The center was founded by Bob and Gay
Smither in response to the murder of their daughter Laura Kate Smither
(April 23, 1984 - April 3, 1997).
Laura
Smither was abducted near her Friendswood, Texas, home on April 3, 1997 while
she was jogging. A volunteer ground search, which consisted of more than 6,000
volunteers and covered over 800 square miles (2,000 km²), was organized by
her community. The search for Laura Smither quickly spread across the nation.
Her murdered body was discovered April 20 in a regional water retention pond 10
miles from her home.
The person
who abducted and murdered Laura has not been charged.
The Center
focuses on Education, Search, and Prevention related to child abduction and
child safety.
Resources
for families with missing children are offered on the center's website,
including a free on-line Flyer Creation page, a free on-line Child ID kit, and
on-line access to the LRC Search Manual.
When the
center accepts a case one of the first actions taken is to post a flyer with
information about the missing child. The flyers are posted to the Center's
missing child page. Once on-line, the missing child flyer can be e-mailed and
faxed by any visitor to the site to help distribute information about the
missing child. The Laura Recovery Center began adding Quick Response Codes to
its flyers in October 2010. The QR Code will direct users of smart phones to a
page where they can help distribute the missing child's flyer.
The Center
has organized numerous community led searches for abducted children, including
those for Danielle Van Dam and Morgan Harrington. Danielle's was the
group's first out-of-state effort. The police search for her concentrated on
places their only suspect had been. The Center-organized search found her far
from where police had focused.
A map
showing the locations of Laura Recovery Center open cases, organized searches
and other Center information is available on-line.
To learn more, please go here: http://www.lrcf.org/
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