Which Missing People Are More Important? (2004)

Sept. 15, 2004 -- -- Based on national headlines, Lori Hacking was a much more important person than Tamika Huston.

Lori Hacking's name should sound familiar. When the 27-year-old Salt Lake City woman was reported missing July 19, the case generated headlines both in Utah and around the country. The national media followed the exhaustive search for the missing woman, who was said to be five weeks pregnant, the increased scrutiny on her husband, and finally, his arrest on a murder charge. Police believe Mark Hacking shot his wife after she discovered he had lied about his plans to go to medical school, but her body has not been found.

However, if you've never heard of Tamika Huston, don't feel embarrassed.

If you're not a resident of South Carolina — specifically, Spartanburg — you have most likely never heard of Huston. Only the local media and Black Entertainment Television Nightly News have covered her case.

Huston, 24, disappeared more than a month before police believe Lori Hacking was reported missing. Huston was last seen June 2 at a friend's house, and relatives believe she disappeared between that time and June 14, when an aunt in Florida reported her missing.

Investigators say they have few meaningful clues in Huston's case. Relatives — led by Huston's aunt Rebkah Howard, a public relations executive — have been trying to bring national attention to their search. Though America's Most Wanted has made plans to cover the case on an upcoming episode, the family's efforts have been mostly unsuccessful.

For the family, it's been especially frustrating to see Huston's case largely ignored while the Hacking case and the disappearance of Brigham Young University student Brooke Wilberger grabbed headlines.

"I'm very well aware of how the media operates and how to get their attention. I'm very keen on the fact that the media can't cover every story that comes down the pike," said Howard. "Unfortunately, there are thousands of missing persons throughout the country.

"If every case was covered as widely as Lori Hacking or Brooke Wilberger, quite frankly, I don't think there'd be room for anything else on our news broadcast or newspaper," Howard said.

"Unfortunately, what I find disturbing is that I think there's a trend," she said. "I don't think there's a fair representation of the missing person cases that are out there. I think the media hone in on specific cases and generally stay with a certain profile."

Empathy and Jealousy

According to the FBI, thousand of adults and children are reported missing every day in the United States. But only a select few generate the attention from television networks. Because news organizations cannot devote resources to all missing person cases they learn about, most families have to do without the extra help media attention might provide.

Howard was able to bring her niece's story to BET Nightly News, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and America's Most Wanted. But even her resources and professional skills have not been enough to bring national exposure the search for Huston.

"I am in public relations and I have the resources and the skills to pitch to the media, and I am still having a difficult time," Howard said. "It makes me wonder about the hundreds of families out there that don't have the resources and the skills that I have and they really must be up a creek."

Howard said she feels for the families of other missing people, but she can't help feeling a pang of envy at all the attention some cases get.

"You become familiar with other families who are going through the same thing you are going through," she said. "You have empathy, you have compassion for these other families who may be getting more attention than you do. But it's a sad situation because at the same time, you are almost jealous of them."

The Formula for High-Profile Case

Some believe media organizations follow a formula when they decide to give attention to a missing person case. Laci Peterson, Lori Hacking, Brooke Wilberger, former Washington intern Chandra Levy and University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin all seemed to fit a specific profile: young, attractive white women either in college or just a few years removed from college. All were from middle-class or upper-middle-class families who had the money and resources to keep their cases in the media.

Missing males and missing non-Caucasians in general rarely seem to attract the national attention that the Levy, Peterson, Sjodin and Wilberger cases received.

"There are at least three categories that determine whether your case will get a lot of publicity or not," said Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in Florida. "They are gender, race and class, in no particular order.

"In terms of gender, it just seems as if much more attention goes on to those cases where there are women who are missing and especially if they are young women, they are attractive, if they've left behind a archive of interesting photographs or better yet, videos," he said. "I think we still, in spite of all the reforms that feminism has introduced into culture, the damsel in distress is still a very compelling story."

Clark believes race and class may play a subconscious role when national media considers whether a missing person case merits coverage. To some TV executives, the disappearance of a young, white female from an affluent family may somehow be more of an appealing story than the search for a young, African-American female from a family that isn't very well-off.

"Race has always been a factor in crime coverage and most of the missing person case that we see sort of involve the suspicion of foul play," Clark said.

"And some old racist views of crime still influence subconsciously the decisions that we make. There was a time in American life that in big newspapers in big cities, the terrible distinction was made between good murders and bad murders. The bad murder was the poor gang member killed in the projects. The good murder was murder of the rich white socialite, or the murder of a debutante perhaps killed by her ex-boyfriend."

Initially, the Hacking case — with a young pregnant woman missing and her husband suspected in her disappearance — bore some resemblance to the Laci Peterson case. Clark acknowledges that the parallels and the ongoing trial of Peterson's husband, Scott, may have fueled national interest in the Hacking case.

In addition, Tamika Huston's disappearance may have suffered from unfortunate news timing. When she vanished, the Iraqi prison abuse scandal, the beheading of American hostage Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia, and the 9/11 commission hearings were dominating the headlines. New developments in those stories may have been exhausted by the time Hacking's case emerged.

"In all missing person cases, there is a basic engine that drives the story, and that is 'What Happened?' " Clark said. "There was much less coverage of these cases before the existence of 24-hour cables news networks. And these cases fit the perfect formula between the slowly evolving narrative of the cases and the insatiable appetite for content on these cable news stations."

No Closer to Solving the Mystery

Still, the lack of national attention given Huston's case seems almost as puzzling as her disappearance. She is young and attractive. Her family and friends have the resources to get media attention and have offered a $10,000 reward for any information that leads to her whereabouts. CrimeStoppers in Spartanburg has offered an additional $2,000 reward.

However, investigators say they have received relatively few clues and are no closer to finding Huston today than when she was first reported missing.

"We are really no further along in this case today than we were on day one," said Spartanburg Public Safety Department Capt. Randy Hardy. "Usually money is a motivating factor, but we haven't received a whole lot of tips, which is just baffling to me. It just leads me to believe that maybe no one has really seen this woman."

It took some time for family members to realize Huston was missing because she was single, lived alone and had recently quit her job as a waitress. Police investigators found Huston's cell phone, three uncashed checks and driver's license when they searched her home. Her pregnant pet pit bull Macy — who friends and relatives say Huston treated like her own child — had given birth and eaten most of its litter of puppies. Huston's car was found a week after she was reported missing, parked at an apartment complex where she didn't live.

Before Huston disappeared, she had filed domestic abuse charges against her former live-in boyfriend. Terence Moss has been interviewed by authorities but investigators do not consider him a suspect in Huston's case.

"He has cooperated with us. He has answered all our questions. We can get our hands on him whenever we want," Hardy said. "We don't have anything to suggest that there's been any foul play. That would change the complexion of this case significantly. … What's tough is that if she is someone who just doesn't want to be found, she can be anywhere with all the time that has passed."

'This Feeling of Emptiness, Loneliness'

Huston's relatives say she would not have just run away from her family.They say it wasn't unusual for her to spontaneously visit relatives and extended family in Florida and along the East Coast, but she would always tell someone where she was going. Huston's family insists she was happy before she disappeared.

"There was nothing wrong. She was fine," said her father, Anthony Huston. "We have the type of relationship where she would have told me if something was wrong."

Howard says her niece seemed to have reached a turning point in her life where she was looking forward to taking on new challenges, returning to school and perhaps settling into a career. Still, Howard said Huston had not told family members about the domestic abuse charge against her ex-boyfriend.

Huston's relatives say they are not accusing Moss of being involved in her disappearance. But they say they're troubled by the distance they say he has maintained from the family.

"No one is mad at him or accusing him of anything, but we just wish he'd talk to us," said her father. "We just want to find out what happened to her."

Moss could not be reached for comment. He is not listed in local telephone directories and has declined to talk about Huston's disappearance to local news outlets.

Anthony Huston said he last saw his daughter when he went over to her home to cut her grass. It has been a long summer for him, and the anxiety over not knowing where his daughter is, not hearing her voice, has weighed heavily on him.

"I just have this feeling of loneliness, emptiness," he said. "We have no idea where she is, where she could be."

A Disturbing New Lesson

And that's something that all families of missing persons have in common, no matter what kind of media attention their cases may receive: an irreplaceable void. Though the Chandra Levy, Laci Peterson and Dru Sjodin cases ultimately ended tragically, with the discovery of the missing women's remains, at least the respective families had some sense of closure.

The Spartanburg Department of Public Safety asks that anyone who may have information regarding Tamika Huston's disappearance to contact investigators at (864) 596-2035 or CrimeStoppers at (864) 58-CRIME. More information about the search for Huston can be found at two Web sites her friends and relatives have set up for her at www.tamikahuston.com and www.tamika.info.com.

No matter the ultimate outcome in the search for her niece, Rebkah Howard was learned another lesson in her training as a public relations executive.

"It's been very disturbing for me," she said. "Not only has this been a very personal challenge with my niece missing, but it's been a professional challenge: 'How can I get some attention from the national media?' Because it may be that attention that brings Tamika home, or worst-case scenario, the person who brought her harm to justice."