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Andrew Gaug
St. Joseph News-Press

4/11/11

Ten years ago today, a then-20-year-old Skidmore, Mo., man went missing from his parents’ home. One suspect, thousands of man hours and many searches later, he still has yet to be found.On an afternoon similar to today, the thin, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Branson Perry vanished with no notification, known witnesses or evidence. Despite the effort spent finding him, officials remain stumped.“We haven’t received any tips lately, not since last year.

Every now and then we’ll get something,” Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White, a deputy at the time of Mr. Perry’s disappearance, said.It’s not for lack of trying. Residents in and around the Skidmore area perform searches for Mr. Perry on an almost annual basis.“Around town, we searched every oil well, every outside toilet. We searched everywhere that was possible for us to think that something could be there,” Jo Ann Stinett, his grandmother, said.

While the location of Mr. Perry is uncertain, it is commonly accepted that he has died sometime in the past 10 years.During the continuing investigation, both of Mr. Perry’s parents have died, with his mother, Rebecca Klino, passing away in February. Offering the first confirmation by Mr. Perry’s family of his assumed death, Ms. Klino’s obituary stated she was preceded in death by him.“Obviously, (Ms. Klino) faced that he wasn’t alive. I think she knew he wasn’t alive, but she always wanted to continue to look for him either way,” Monica Caison, founder of the CUE Center for Missing Persons, said.

Despite large-scale searches, the closest the case came to a suspect or evidence was in 2003. That’s when a chatroom conversation discovered on the computer of Jack Wayne Rogers, a man charged with 11 counts of child pornography, allegedly found the man bragging about abducting, raping and murdering a blonde-haired male from Skidmore.In addition, Mr. Rogers allegedly admitted in the chat that he saw a missing person’s poster for Mr. Perry at a gas station in the town and said police would never find the body because of how he disposed of it.Sentenced to 30 years in federal prison on the child porn charges, Mr. Rogers has never been charged with a crime in connection with Mr. Perry.

With Mr. Perry’s assumed death, the lead activist in his search passing away and a trail gone cold, thoughts of the investigation coming to a close have been doused by Ms. Klino’s close friends, including CUE spokeswoman Linda Stovall, Sgt. Roger Phillips, an investigator for the drug and crime control division of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and Ms. Caison.“(Ms. Klino) made me promise … just to continue to fight for Branson,” Ms. Caison said. “She wanted Linda, Roger and I to promise, and we did, standing on a dirt road.”As the weather warms and the rain stops, plans for another search for Mr. Perry’s body are coming together, just like they always have, Ms. Caison said.In addition, Bob Fessler, vice president/general manager of the Lamar Advertising Co. in Kansas City, said he will put Mr. Perry’s missing person’s report and picture back up on the electronic billboard on the Belt Highway

.“Just because (Ms. Klino) is not here doesn’t mean this train is not going to keep moving,” Mr. Phillips said. “It’s about getting to the truth.”Any tips concerning Branson Perry’s body or whereabouts can be submitted confidentially by calling the CUE Center for Missing Persons at (910) 232-1687 or visiting http://www.bransonperry.com/submit-confidential-tip.

Andrew Gaug can be reached at andrew.gaug@newspressnow.com.

News article link= http://www.newspressnow.com/localnews/27498475/detail.html

February 27, 2011

On her deathbed, the mother of a missing Skidmore, Mo., man was promised that the search would not stop with her passing.On Feb. 14, Becky Klino, the mother of Branson Perry, died at her home after a long battle with cancer.

A vocal activist in the pursuit of her missing son, she never saw him again after his disappearance almost 10 years ago.Shortly before her death, Monica Caison, founder of the Community United Effort , and an active supporter of the search for Mr. Perry, told her she would not quit looking for him.“I promised that we would return to the area and we’d continue looking for Branson,” she said.On April 11, 2001, Mr. Perry mysteriously disappeared from his family home in Skidmore.

Despite some clues in the case — such as a suspected necklace and pendant of his being found at the home of a man convicted of multiple counts of child pornography — he was never seen again.

With Mr. Perry’s 30th birthday passing on Feb. 24, Jo Ann Stinnett, his grandmother, said she still thinks about him frequently.“When I see somebody doing something he loved, or especially when I make cream puffs (one of his favorite foods) … I think of him,” she said.Despite the fact that she and other residents have looked almost everywhere in the area for him, Ms. Stinnett said she always feels a sense of incompleteness.“You always think, in your mind, there could be some other place you didn’t look,” she said.A deputy when the case began, Nodaway County Sheriff Darren White watched the story unfold and was hoping to see it solved before Ms. Klino’s death.“I think everybody wanted the case to come to some kind of conclusion for her before that happened,” he said.Currently, Mr. White said, the case has gone without any tips for the past year, but that doesn’t mean his department will stop looking.“It’s still an important case to us. Nobody deserves to just have vanished from our community,” he said.An investigator and close friend of Ms. Klino, Sgt. Roger Phillips, an investigator for the drug and crime control division of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said the case won’t close until it has been solved.“We’ll relentlessly pursue all leads, even after Becky’s death,” he said. “We will never close this until there is some resolution.”Despite the looming grimness of the case, a silver lining outlines it, as Ms. Klino’s suffering has now ended.

Usually the first to receive tips in regard to the case, Ms. Caison said Ms. Klino joked with her that the tables would turn once she passed on.“She was kind of funny. She said ‘Whenever I get to where I’m going, I’m going to finally know something before you do,’” Ms. Caison said.

News Source: http://www.newspressnow.com/localnews/27019260/detail.html#comments

Andrew Gaug can be reached at andrew.gaug@newspressnow.com.