Post by hi224 on Aug 11, 2019 1:57:58 GMT
Unresolved Murder
Today is the 15th anniversary of the disappearance of Yolanda Bindics.
Yolanda was a 25-year-old mother of four living and working in Jamestown, New York, about an hour and a half south of Buffalo and the Canadian border. On August 10th, 2004, Yolanda closed the Fluvanna Avenue Family Dollar with a coworker and called her brother, who was babysitting her little girls, to tell him that she was stopping to pick up some milk before she came home. That was about 8:30 PM. No one has heard from Yolanda since.
Yolanda's brother reported her missing when she didn't come home. Police found her car near a local fast food restaurant less than half a mile away from the Family Dollar less than 24 hours later, but no Yolanda. That Saturday, August 14th, a volunteer search party combed the area, and by Monday there had been multiple searches, with police calling the disappearance "suspicious."
Nine days after Yolanda disappeared, an officer with the Jamestown Police Department, Michael Watson, was put on paid administrative leave after admitting to being romantically involved with Yolanda. At first the JPD downplayed this, saying it was simply to avoid a conflict of interest, but within the week Watson was being questioned as a person of interest (I know that term doesn't have any legal meaning, but that's how police reported it at the time). Watson had been assigned to the case at the beginning of the investigation and had not informed his superiors about their connection.
18 days after Yolanda's disappearance, her ex-husband and the father of her youngest daughter, Carl Carte, was arrested on unrelated charges. Carte was looked at as a possible suspect, as he had been seen at the gas station near the Family Dollar on the day of her disappearance, but police cleared him within two days.
20 days after Yolanda's disappearance, police searched the Chautauqua Gorge, acting on the knowledge that a person of interest - not Carte, they clarified - had visited the gorge soon after Yolanda vanished.
In early September, investigators recovered some personal effects of Yolanda's, including her purse, in the storm drains of Jamestown. The items were retained for DNA testing; investigators reported they had been disposed of days earlier. Police later determined which drain they had been dumped in, and that they had been dumped around the night of August 10th.
In early October 2004, Michael Watson was arrested for stalking another woman. Eventually he would have 12 charges related to harrassment and stalking of multiple women piled against him, as well as accusations of inappropriate on-the-clock behavior and dereliction of duty. The Chatauqua County DA's office attempted to move the case to another county to avoid more conflicts of interest. Watson initially pled not guilty to all charges - six of them were dropped in 2005 and he attempted to sue Chautauqua County for slander for calling him a person of interest. Chautauqua countersued, claiming he had failed a polygraph about his involvement with her disappearance. As of 2007, he had six misdemeanor harrassment and stalking charges pending against him. He was eventually fired from the police force.
In November 2004, a local news station reported that Yolanda had gone to Niagara Falls with Darien Thomas, the father of her 5-year-old daughter, two weeks before she disappeared, and that they were looking to patch up their relationship. The weekend before she disappeared, she had been with Watson. Several of her family members reported that she had been planning to tell Watson something important the day she disappeared. In 2005, Darien was arrested for threatening to stab several police officers after being interrupted in a suicide attempt.
In September of 2006, hunters in Charlotte, a small town 16 miles north of Jamestown, found human remains on state lands (I'm not sure if said state lands were Boutwell Hill or Hatch Creek). Charlotte is about 30 minutes away from Chatauqua Gorge, an early target of the search. These were positively identified as belonging to Yolanda. Yolanda's death was officially declared a homicide in December of 2006. Her body was released to the family in November 2007. She was buried in a family plot in Lackawanna.
And...that's been just about it for the last twelve years, looks like. Yolanda's youngest daughter is now 17 years old; her oldest is 23. I went to middle school with a relative of Yolanda's and remember this case being incredibly well known all around Western New York, to the point where whenever new information came out there'd be parent panics at our school about girl students walking home unsupervised. I had no idea the murderer hadn't been found, and it's really sad to know that there's been no movement. Yolanda's mother Patricia died last year without knowing what happened to her daughter. Yolanda had a big family - she was one of eleven siblings - and they're all still waiting for answers.
Links:
www.findyolanda.com/
charleyproject.org/case/yolanda-a-bindics
www.wgrz.com/article/news/unsolved-15-years-later-yolanda-bindics-disappearance-still-haunts-her-family/71-f336fc3c-51b0-4cf6-8952-83517ef59330
Today is the 15th anniversary of the disappearance of Yolanda Bindics.
Yolanda was a 25-year-old mother of four living and working in Jamestown, New York, about an hour and a half south of Buffalo and the Canadian border. On August 10th, 2004, Yolanda closed the Fluvanna Avenue Family Dollar with a coworker and called her brother, who was babysitting her little girls, to tell him that she was stopping to pick up some milk before she came home. That was about 8:30 PM. No one has heard from Yolanda since.
Yolanda's brother reported her missing when she didn't come home. Police found her car near a local fast food restaurant less than half a mile away from the Family Dollar less than 24 hours later, but no Yolanda. That Saturday, August 14th, a volunteer search party combed the area, and by Monday there had been multiple searches, with police calling the disappearance "suspicious."
Nine days after Yolanda disappeared, an officer with the Jamestown Police Department, Michael Watson, was put on paid administrative leave after admitting to being romantically involved with Yolanda. At first the JPD downplayed this, saying it was simply to avoid a conflict of interest, but within the week Watson was being questioned as a person of interest (I know that term doesn't have any legal meaning, but that's how police reported it at the time). Watson had been assigned to the case at the beginning of the investigation and had not informed his superiors about their connection.
18 days after Yolanda's disappearance, her ex-husband and the father of her youngest daughter, Carl Carte, was arrested on unrelated charges. Carte was looked at as a possible suspect, as he had been seen at the gas station near the Family Dollar on the day of her disappearance, but police cleared him within two days.
20 days after Yolanda's disappearance, police searched the Chautauqua Gorge, acting on the knowledge that a person of interest - not Carte, they clarified - had visited the gorge soon after Yolanda vanished.
In early September, investigators recovered some personal effects of Yolanda's, including her purse, in the storm drains of Jamestown. The items were retained for DNA testing; investigators reported they had been disposed of days earlier. Police later determined which drain they had been dumped in, and that they had been dumped around the night of August 10th.
In early October 2004, Michael Watson was arrested for stalking another woman. Eventually he would have 12 charges related to harrassment and stalking of multiple women piled against him, as well as accusations of inappropriate on-the-clock behavior and dereliction of duty. The Chatauqua County DA's office attempted to move the case to another county to avoid more conflicts of interest. Watson initially pled not guilty to all charges - six of them were dropped in 2005 and he attempted to sue Chautauqua County for slander for calling him a person of interest. Chautauqua countersued, claiming he had failed a polygraph about his involvement with her disappearance. As of 2007, he had six misdemeanor harrassment and stalking charges pending against him. He was eventually fired from the police force.
In November 2004, a local news station reported that Yolanda had gone to Niagara Falls with Darien Thomas, the father of her 5-year-old daughter, two weeks before she disappeared, and that they were looking to patch up their relationship. The weekend before she disappeared, she had been with Watson. Several of her family members reported that she had been planning to tell Watson something important the day she disappeared. In 2005, Darien was arrested for threatening to stab several police officers after being interrupted in a suicide attempt.
In September of 2006, hunters in Charlotte, a small town 16 miles north of Jamestown, found human remains on state lands (I'm not sure if said state lands were Boutwell Hill or Hatch Creek). Charlotte is about 30 minutes away from Chatauqua Gorge, an early target of the search. These were positively identified as belonging to Yolanda. Yolanda's death was officially declared a homicide in December of 2006. Her body was released to the family in November 2007. She was buried in a family plot in Lackawanna.
And...that's been just about it for the last twelve years, looks like. Yolanda's youngest daughter is now 17 years old; her oldest is 23. I went to middle school with a relative of Yolanda's and remember this case being incredibly well known all around Western New York, to the point where whenever new information came out there'd be parent panics at our school about girl students walking home unsupervised. I had no idea the murderer hadn't been found, and it's really sad to know that there's been no movement. Yolanda's mother Patricia died last year without knowing what happened to her daughter. Yolanda had a big family - she was one of eleven siblings - and they're all still waiting for answers.
Links:
www.findyolanda.com/
charleyproject.org/case/yolanda-a-bindics
www.wgrz.com/article/news/unsolved-15-years-later-yolanda-bindics-disappearance-still-haunts-her-family/71-f336fc3c-51b0-4cf6-8952-83517ef59330
