Press Release

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Cahners

Hillary Johnson was found at about 2 am, Saturday, December 4th. She was lying among corrugated metal and winter grass in a dump near Eads, a sleepy little town near Memphis.

The brutal murder of this 24-year-old University of Memphis graduate student tragically began the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Hillary's mother, Nancy, and stepfather, Charles McPike, knew from their Chicago home that something was very wrong that Sunday night in Memphis. Hillary had gone shopping at a store near her apartment in the early evening, had come back home and then decided to visit the library.

Hillary Vanishes

It was then that grad student Johnson and her car vanished. Ten days later, a hunter would find Hillary's white Hyundai near Ripley, Miss.

Four days after that Hillary Johnson's body was recovered back in Eads, Tennessee.

This isn't a tale of a desperate chase for a killer across three states, involving scores of victims and numerous stolen vehicles. Nor a story about how, facing the biggest and saddest challenge of their lives, the family called in private security executives who searched roads and online databases, spurred reluctant local police to action and shared tears with relatives and University students.

Though that all happened.

Instead, it's about how Hillary's family brokenhearted but unbowed, has established a national foundation to help others better cope when beloved adults go missing.

Such involvement by parents, who face extraordinary misfortune but commit to never having it happen again, has made an impression on the security industry, on college campuses and in government and business

There are the Clerys, for instance, whose daughter was murdered in a university dormitory. Their efforts led to passage of the federal Student Right to Know and Campus Security Act, which mandates collection and publication of certain campus crime statistics. There's Gene and Peggy Schmidt, the Kansas family that lost their daughter but lobbied for Stephanie's Law, the Kansas law aimed at sex predators.

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