What happened to Kortne Stouffer? Kortne was last seen at 3:45 AM on Sunday, July 29th, at her apartment 810 W. Main St.) in Palmyra, Pennsylvania by a police officer answering a disturbance call. Palmyra is a small town that’s 17 miles east of Harrisburg, Pa., in case you’ve never heard of it, such as myself. Harrisburg is the location of the Hardware Bar, where Kortne Stouffer had been that Saturday night (July 28th).
I just heard about (and became familiar with) her missing person’s case Thursday evening when her story was the headliner on Jane Velez-Mitchell’s HLN talk show. I thought to hit the record button, but had some some other things going on, so I was only picking up bits and pieces of what developments were presented. My main impression, however, comes from the pix of Kortne dressed up as a Flower Child (yea, I know, a hippie chick) from the late 1960s era.
Being an old timer who fares from that era (as I do), I processed some data in my head, made some mental notes about what her appearance and garb might mean, then carried on with the drudgery of my usual prosaic duties, with some very interesting questions toying around in the back of my mind. My process is to let it ferment (sorry for the odd word usage, but I’m a recovering alcoholic) for a while in my head, until engaging in my research in ernest.
The hard work kicked in for sure this morning, when I printed out a half-dozen (maybe more) articles from the internet, covering Kortne’s case and reviewed the JVM tape at least twice, giving every word, every soundbite careful consideration, thinking the plethora of evidence might lead me to righteous proclivities or trends, ie a resolution. I mean, of course, a viable (or logical) scenario of what really happened to Kortne two weeks ago.
I noticed that after Jane’s show was broadcast, quite a few more stories appeared on Kortne’s case, but many of them simply parroted what was already said on Jane’s show, when she had a most telling interview with Kortne’s parents, Scott and Wendy Stouffer. We have a great deal more information to work with, as far as the timeline goes for that harrowing Saturday night when she goes missing.
The fact that a police officer (Patrolman Timothy Lengle) was the last person to see Kortne in the flesh adds a wildcard to the final scene, and is a little hard for me to process (while knowing it’s true). Then to think the police were called out a second time (at 4:12 AM), after a downstairs neighbor had been upset by a ‘stomping and banging’ noise emanating from Ms Stouffer’s apartment, is even harder to process.
Well, what I mean more specifically, is that the police didn’t notice anyone was home, so they simply left. Were’nt they a little bit more curious about what looks like evidence that some kind of violence had occurred there, then suddenly, out of nowhere, total silence? Yea, I know, they would need a warrant, but still it’s weird! Okay, by now you know about this unnamed young man who was staying overnight with Ms Stouffer that night. Boy, does he have some explaining to do!
As I open a file on 21-year-old Kortne Stouffer, I have to pull back in the ways I process all this information, so as to not make a hasty call or misplace the significance of any one piece of data. (An example would be) how does her dog Sheba fit in here? What about this irate neighbor who was so down on Sheba?
Okay, there were two dogs present the night in question, but Chelsea Hoffman (at Gather) has put to rest the rumor the dogs were missing. And I’m curious, what’s this Hardware Bar all about? And finally, *(Don’t want to ruffle any feathers), but where did Kortne get this ‘Flower Child Reincarnated’ trip from? The answer to some of these questions will help to tie-together much of what is lost here.
Kortne Stouffer Shocking Updates: Bad Crowd and… | Gather