Playing With A Full Deck...

Carole Moore
Missing Persons Contributor
Officer.com

Just might bring someone’s child back home. Here’s an interesting idea: Make decks of cards with the names and faces of the missing and information about cold case homicides and distribute them in prisons. The inmates play with the cards and maybe, just maybe, a memory is triggered or somebody gets a case of guilty conscious. Sounds like a home run to me. Apparently, others think the same thing. The Web site for the Center for Hope, www.hope4themissing.org, says the idea originated with the Heartland Crime Stoppers in Central Florida. The playing cards, which are distributed in a couple of states prison systems now, put the faces and facts surrounding 52 unsolved cases in front of hundreds – even thousands – of prisoners, many of whom are career criminals. Officials say they’ve solved cases this way. I say it’s a great idea. The founders of both the Web site and the Center for Hope, Doug and Mary Lyall, recently announced plans to distribute decks of cards in the New York state prison system. The Lyalls are the parents of Suzanne Gloria Lyall, a college sophomore who disappeared on March 2, 1998, in Albany, NY. The Lyall family has dedicated itself to helping the families of other missing persons, while looking for answers that will solve their daughter’s disappearance. Here’s a link to their site, with information on Suzanne Lyall. Take a look; see if she or any of the others on this page look familiar: http://www.hope4themissing.org/missing.asp