The Springfield Three: Missouri’s Haunting Cold Case That Still Screams for Justice



📁 I Started Digging in August 2025

I didn’t mean to fall into this case the way I did. But by the first week of August 2025, I was fully submerged reading old police notes, comparing podcast interviews, and staring at a porch light globe that should’ve changed everything.

They’re known now as the Springfield Three.
Sherrill Levitt (47), her daughter Suzanne “Suzie” Streeter (19), and Suzie’s friend Stacy McCall (18)  three women who vanished without a trace from a neat little house on Delmar Street in Springfield, Missouri. No broken glass. No forced entry. No screams. Just a porch light in pieces, an unanswered phone, and three lives swallowed by the dark.

I’ve read thousands of theories. I’ve spoken to old-timers who remember the posters taped to every storefront. And still, I keep coming back to one question who was the intended victim?



❓ Who Was the Intended Target?

Was this a plan gone wrong, or a precision hit?
Did the killer come for one of them… and find three?

Some believe the target was Suzie, who had testified against local car thieves and reportedly had run-ins with dangerous men. Others point to Sherrill, a woman trying to rebuild her life after a divorce, recently moved, possibly followed. And then there’s Stacy, the bright-eyed friend who simply went to a sleepover and never came home.

Who opened the door that night and why? The answer might be in the silence itself. The house wasn’t ransacked. The dog wasn’t disturbed. Which means someone came to that door with a face one of them trusted. That’s not random. That’s personal.

👤 The Brother in the Crosshairs: Bartt Streeter

In the early days, suspicion fell quickly on Bartt Streeter, Sherrill’s son and Suzie’s older brother. At the time, he was estranged from both. Arguments had driven a wedge between them, and he’d left town not long after the women disappeared a detail that lit up headlines and whispers alike.

But the facts are clear. Bartt cooperated. He sat for a polygraph. He was ruled out.
The Charley Project, KY3, and Springfield PD all confirmed it: he wasn’t their suspect. Still, like so many who are touched by tragedy, his name resurfaces again and again including after a 2019 arrest unrelated to the case.

In a raw 2021 interview for The Springfield Three podcast, Bartt shared what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a city’s suspicion a man grieving two women he couldn’t reach in time, now forced to defend the one thing he couldn’t control: the past.

🧪 A Botched Crime Scene

Let’s be clear the case was fumbled from the beginning.

When police first arrived at 1717 E. Delmar, they didn’t seal it as a crime scene. They thought the women would come back. That decision let friends, family, and neighbors walk in and out of the house all day. They answered phones. They swept up a broken porch light. They erased a voicemail that may have held a clue.

Evidence vanished before it was even labeled.

Inside the department, things were no better. Then-Chief Terry Knowles was criticized for releasing too much information to the public and for failing to coordinate his own team. Some detectives believed their pride kept them from accepting federal help. And when a grand jury met in 1994? Eight months of testimony ended with no indictments.

The investigation wasn’t just broken. It was scattered a puzzle dumped onto a floor, only half the pieces ever found.


🧨 Serial Shadows: Monsters Were on the Move

In June 1992, Springfield wasn’t alone. It was part of a corridor hunted by predators.

  • Robert Craig Cox was in town. A former Army Ranger with a record of kidnappings and murder. He later told reporters he knew what happened, saying the women were “dead and would never be found.”
  • Larry DeWayne Hall, a drifter tied to dozens of disappearances, was near Springfield for a Civil War reenactment. He once hinted about “three women.”
  • Gerald Carnahan, Kenneth McDuff, and Tommy Lynn Sells all convicted killers were active in the region.

These men weren’t boogeymen. They were real, and they moved through towns like Springfield without resistance. If you believe the Springfield Three were taken by strangers, you don’t need to look far to find the kind of evil capable of making people disappear.

💥 The Green Van Or the Ghost With Wheels

Then there’s the van.
Always the van.

A mossy green Dodge. Seen by one witness idling near Delmar Street. Inside? A terrified blonde at the wheel. A voice barked from within: “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Another man saw a similar van in a grocery lot and jotted down part of the plate… then threw it away. By the time he realized what he’d seen, the trail was gone. Police hypnotized him, but it wasn’t enough. The van became mythic a vehicle without a driver, a clue without a handle.

Was it the killer’s transport? A false sighting? Or something far more sinister a detail remembered too late to matter?

Whatever the case, the image lingers: a girl, a glare, an engine humming toward nowhere.

📚 Theories, Theories, and Silence

Two theories have dominated the last 30 years.

Targeted Abduction by a Familiar Face:
An FBI profiler backed this one. Someone they knew. Someone who knocked gently. No struggle. No noise. Maybe more than one attacker someone to control each woman. A plan that became a massacre.

Random Predator, Crime of Opportunity:
In 1995, a task force concluded the women were likely taken by a stranger someone with a weapon, or a ruse. Someone who got inside and subdued them quickly. Someone who’d done this before.

Both theories make sense. Both explain the quiet.
But only one truth exists. And it’s still locked in a house that no longer talks.

🔍 My Theory: The Familiar Face and the Silent Entry

If you’re asking me?
This was targeted. Personal. Known.

The women let someone in because the face looked safe. Maybe it was a friend. An ex. A man who once laughed in their living room. He wasn’t alone. He brought muscle, control. Maybe rope. Maybe a gun.

They were taken alive in that green van.
Driven to a second location.
Murdered in hours.
Buried somewhere no one thought to look or under something that no one can move now.

And the worst part?
I don’t think they screamed.

🕯️ A City in Grief

Springfield didn’t just lose three women.
It lost its breath.

Neighbors still avoid that block. People still stop and stare at old posters. Candles still glow at the Victims Memorial Garden every June. The city’s rhythm changed a whisper that lingers.

But the people endured. They organized vigils. They educated others. They taught their children to listen to their instincts. And they kept the names alive  Sherrill. Suzie. Stacy.

Because silence is brutal. But forgetting is worse.

🌌 The Weight of Unknowing

There’s a grief that comes with absence.
A weight that has no tombstone.

That’s the weight Springfield carries. The questions swirl, and the facts get older, and the trail fades like chalk in the rain. But behind every blog post, every podcast, every tear at a vigil, the truth remains:

They were loved. They were taken. They deserve to be found.

Until someone brave enough turns the last page.

By RICHIE D. MOWREY
For The Sassy Gazette  Dicking Around With Richie: A True Crime Feed

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