BETTY MCCULLOUGH -- from SILVER CREEK FALLS,OR 6/21/41 Betty McCullough
Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance
Missing Since: June 21, 1941 from Silver Creek Falls, Oregon
Classification: Endangered Missing
Age: 10 years old
Distinguishing Chracteristics: Caucasian female.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A man's shirt and her sister's shoes.
Medical Conditions: McCullough was deaf and mute in 1941 and frequently suffered sudden bouts of illness. Doctors believed she would not live past her late teens.
Details of Disappearance
McCullough was last seen at her family's Silver Creek Falls, Oregon on June 21, 1941. She woke up early in the morning before her sisters were awake, dressed, and took a bucket outside to get water from the nearby pump. McCullough never returned home and has never been heard from again.
Other individuals had disappeared in the same area before. An adult man, Herbert Brown, disappeared from the vicinity six years prior to McCullough's disappearance, and was never found. Photographs and vital statistics for him are unavailable. Early in the century another person also disappeared from the Silver Creek Falls area.
McCullough's family members were migrant workers in 1941, and were picking berries at the time she disappeared. Few details are available in her case, which is now long being investigated by law enforcement due to the passage of time.
PHOTOS AVAILABLE AT LINKhttp://charleyproject.org/cases/m/mccullough_betty.html
lostwithoutyou- 03-17-2007
Angel in the Wind Oregon Cold Case From 1941
Tim King Salem-News.com Video Report
The story of a little Oregon girl who vanished without a trace in the early 1940's.
(SILVER FALLS) - The family of Lela Taylor experienced the worst kind of change in 1941 when her aunt Betty, a ten-year old girl who could neither speak or hear, went missing in the Silver Falls area.
After many decades the story of Betty, someone she missed knowing by just a year, is an active part of Lela's life. And it was one year ago when Lela asked me if I would assist her in doing research on the long lost child, and possibly creating a television documentary.
She hopes such a program could shed light even after so much time has passed, and how could I say no?
So rather than pursue the traditional television documentary format, we decided that we would deliver the research as it happens here on Salem-News.com.
So here is the first part of Angel in the Wind. We hope that as people watch it, they comb the farthest reaches of their minds for any sort of a clue. Perhaps Lela and I will miss things along the way, maybe there are sources we aren't thinking of.
The comment section exists for feedback and we would like to hear anything that a visitor even remotely thinks would be interested to us.
Lela thinks that Betty could have been located in later years too, by people who weren't familiar with the story, and that her remains await identification in a morgue or box somewhere. Thanks to DNA, these things can now be determined.
It is assumed that she probably fell into harm's way, perhaps a predator or a wild animal?
Or maybe Betty was picked up by a family who thought she was lost. She could never have given them the information they would have needed to leave her alone. Maybe, just maybe, Betty is still alive today. At this point, only time can tell.
But there is more... Lela and I have learned another fact that is a little unsettling; that six years prior to Betty's disappearance a man named Harold Brown who lived nearby went for a walk and never returned. Earlier in the century, there was another missing person case involving more than one person.
And today, locals tell you that things aren't always predictible there; strange people, large animals, and thousands and thousands of acres of the most remote land in the Willamette Valley. http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august202006/angel_wind_1_82006.php
Little Girl Lost in Silver Falls Area
Salem-News.com
Cold Case from June 21, 1941 Silver Falls Area.
All photos courtesy: Lela Taylor
(SILVERTON) - The pain of losing a child never goes away. This case of ten-year-old Betty McCullough is a story passed on to family members since her disappearance in 1941.
Early morning, on June 21, 1941, little Betty woke up, slipped on a man’s shirt, put on her sister’s shoes, took a water bucket and quietly slipped by her two sleeping sisters. She was going to get water from the water pump outside. She was never seen again. No sign of her, no clues, nothing left behind.
She just disappeared in an area where previous disappearances have occurred. Six years prior to this same area, a man named Herbert Brown went for a walk and was never seen again, and earlier in the century there was reported another mysterious disappearance in the same area.
Little Betty’s parents were picking berries in a nearby berry field in an area located by the old Methany store outside of Silver Falls, now referred to as Silver Creek Falls State Park.
Days following her disappearance, her father, other family members, neighbors and police scoured the area, searching for signs of her. Nothing was ever found. It is feared she may have been picked up by a passing motorist. This little girl was subject to sudden bouts of illness and was also unable to hear or speak. She was diagnosed as only having a few years to live, possibly to her late teens, so, her survival to a long life was not an option for this little girl.
Her sudden disappearance, though, left a tear in her mother’s heart that would never mend, and a hole in the family that continues to be dark.
A niece, Lela Taylor, who grew up hearing about this story, became curious as to what could have happened. The story haunted her. Upon returning back to the Salem area in 1992, she went to the archives at the library and found only two related stories in the Capital Journal (now The Statesman).
She has been slowly gathering the little information she could find. Through the years, immediate family members who lived though this tragedy were reluctant to talk. When they did, tears would flow, or anger would rise up, as they felt being poor migrant workers that not enough time was given by the authorities to continue the search.
Lela has been fortunate enough to have met Tim King, of Salem-News, who became intrigued by this story and has offered to help her search for information on this 65-year-old cold case. Maybe somewhere in some morgue or law enforcement basement there are some unclaimed bones of a small child lying in a box.
Maybe Lela and Tim can find them. Until then, the little angel in the wind at Silver Creek Falls will have to gently soar over the hills and sigh as she waits to be found.
FAMILY PHOTOS AND PHOTOS OF BETTY AVAILABLE AT LINK
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august062006/little_betty_8206.php
