On February 5, 1981, Dean Marie Pyle Peters attended a wrestling clinic at Forest Hills Central Middle School in Cascade Township, Michigan, with her mother. She told her mother that she had to use the restroom and would be right back. She walked across the gym, exited and has not been seen since.
NOTE: I had originally written that it was a spur of the moment decision for Deanie and her mother to attend the clinic. It was not. I received a comment from what I am guessing is Deanie's stepfather, who pointed out my error.
Deanie was 14 years old in 1981. She had moved to Michigan from California with her mother, brother and step-father a year or so earlier. At first, it seemed Deanie was having difficulty adjusting to the move; she often spoke of missing her biological father, who still lived in California, and a boyfriend she left behind. Gradually, she found her footing in her new home in western Michigan.
She was an excellent student and exceptionally attractive. She had dreams of becoming a model one day. Her mother and stepfather were less than thrilled with this decision and were understandably a bit protective of their lovely daughter. Words were exchanged, but nothing out of the ordinary for a teen-age girls and her parents.
Clues were scare in Deanie's disappearance. It was quickly determined that she was a very unlikely candidate to run away; she had left behind several hundred dollars in Christmas money and her make-up. Deanie never would have gone anywhere without her make-up.
There was speculation that instead of going to the restroom, she was slipping out to have a quick cigarette or was going to visit a friend who lived nearby.
In addition to law enforcement efforts, searches were organized by local volunteers. Deanie's mother and step-father offered a reward and and gave an emotional plea. Nothing, no clues, no body, no sign of foul play.
Some suspects were questioned. Among them was a school janitor who admitted that he knew who Deanie was but had never spoken to her. He was jailed overnight and testified before a secret grand jury who determined he was telling the truth. Speculation had been rife that he had burned her body in the school incinerator but the police ascertained that the incinerator wasn't hot enough to burn old textbooks, let alone a body. The janitor did add the tantalizing fact that during the wrestling clinic, three older boys, one with a Forest Hills letter jacket on, had pounded on the locked doors to the school. He didn't let the boys in since he didn't recognize them.
More speculation centered on a young man who lived in nearby Lowell and was 17 at the time. This young man claimed that he mental telepathy in his teens and had dreamed about Deanie, although he didn't know her. He dreamed that she had been hit by a vehicle . Adding to this was a rumor that persists that Deanie had been struck by a car or truck during a kegger held in a field near Lowell and was buried on the Young Marine Camp, which is privately owned now. A psychic has told the current owners that a body was stored on the grounds before it was buried elsewhere. Searches around Lowell and on the former camp property have yielded nothing related to Deanie's disappearance.
A man on death row in Florida for the murder of his wife and child who originally was from Michigan was also questioned. Only problem was that he didn't live in Michigan at the time of Deanie's disappearance.
Deanie's parents now live in Arizona. They were granted a presumptive death certificate in 1992 that sadly states the cause of death as unknown and the place of death as unknown.
If you have any information regarding Deanie Marie Pyle Peters' disappearance, please call the Kent County Sheriff's Department at 616-774-3113.
I light a candle for Deanie.
