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CORA'S LAST DAY By Dan Wilson Post-Crescent staff writer The last 24 hours before Cora Jones disappeared were spent in those youthful endeavors typical of children facing the waning days of summer. Cora liked to spend time at her grandmother's, whose name was the same as hers, as did all the other grandchildren. The old farmhouse on Rural Road with its overstuffed furniture and its proximity to the Crystal River made it a virtual garden of delights. Bicycles are piled against the outside wall and fishing poles are in the corner to be used by anyone anytime they choose and the refrigerator contains baked goods and snacks to enable visitors to make their own meals out of whatever they find. It was on Sunday, Sept. 4 when Cora's mother and father dropped her off. Grandma remembers it as early in the afternoon because the football game was on when they arrived and Rick Jones, Cora's father, "said he didn't want to hear or see the game because he was taping it at home and didn't want to know the score." Cora had a dollar in her pocket that her mother would always give her so she could buy some candy or an ice cream cone at the country store in Rural. Cora's cousins, Molly Danke, 13, Marci Block, 14 and Mary Jones, 12, came over but, because of the chilly weather, they just "bummed around town." For dinner they had ham and potatoes, "my usual Sunday night dinner," said Grandma Jones, and, after dinner, the girls channel surfed with the remote control on the cable TV. Mary went and spent the night at Marci's and Molly stayed with Cora. They "camped out" in the living room, sleeping on the overstuffed furniture. Cora and Molly got up around 7 or 8 a.m., according to Grandma "and Cora had a cup of hot chocolate which she always had for breakfast." Because Cora didn't want to fuss with her hair, she put it in a ponytail, instead of leaving it to cascade down her shoulders as it appears in her pictures. Mary and Marci returned in the morning and Grandma sent Cora to the store with some money to buy powdered sugar for two cakes she was baking that day. Cora got the powdered sugar at Weller's Store, the same store where she buys her candy and her favorite flavor of ice cream--Chocolate Chip Mint. She still had her dollar but didn't buy any ice cream on this trip and returned with the powdered sugar. Cora, Marci and Molly wanted to go fishing, "so they found a shovel and they went out back to dig some worms. That's the first time they have ever done that. Before they always got worms from Marci's grandma." They only found about two or three worms, said Grandma. About 10 a.m. they left on the bikes to go fishing and went to Sanders Bridge one half-mile away on Sanders Road. Sanders Bridge is a favorite place for area children to play and often they would like to play pranks on canoers on the Crystal River Canoe trips by dumping buckets of water or water balloons on their heads as they go by under the bridge. The kids also liked to jump into the water off the bridge on the deeper side. As they left, Cora took a second cup of hot chocolate and took it with her and grandma warned her, "you better bring that cup back." On this day the girls just wanted to fish and Marci caught the only fish, "a puny little thing," recalls Grandma, but they stayed there long past lunch time. When Molly's sister came around to pick up Molly around 1:40 p.m., the girl's hadn't returned yet, so she drove over to the bridge to tell the girls to come home. As the girls biked home they hadn't gone far when something eerie took place. According to Grandma, Molly told Cora "something bad is going to happen to you today, you better be careful." At the time she said that they were on Sanders Road, at the very spot where Cora's bike was later found. After their return, around 2 p.m., Molly and the other two girls went home, leaving Cora. Cora called her mother at 2:20 and Vicki told Cora she would be coming to pick her up that afternoon. Cora said "take your time mom," because she was having such a good time. That was the extent of the conversation. Grandma was in the kitchen, busy with the two cakes she was baking when she heard Cora announce, "I am going for a bike ride Grandma." and the door slammed shut. "There is a little boy up there by the bridge who she was a little sweet on," said Grandma, who speculated Cora was hoping to perhaps see the boy, 14, who was also the local paper boy, before her mother came to pick her up. Shortly after 3 p.m., Grandma grew concerned and called Marci's house and was told Cora wasn't there. Angie Peterson, 19, who lives with Grandma, said she would go out in her car and look for her. It was now 3:15 p.m. While all this was happening, a motorist came upon a bicycle in the roadway on Sanders Road that appeared to be scuffed up and the brake cable was broken. He was annoyed that someone would be so careless and went to the nearest residence to report he just put the bike in the grass alongside the roadway. The resident then called the Town Constable, Harlan Jensen Jr., and reported what he thought was an abandoned bicycle. Jensen made a note of the call which came in around 3:30 or 4 p.m. Meanwhile, Angie Peterson was out in her car and didn't immediately find any sign of Cora so she stopped and picked up Mary and Marci to go along. It was around 4 p.m. when "Marci saw one of the handlebars of the bike sticking up from the grass along Sanders Road." Marci picked up the bike and Angie said "put the bike down." Angie returned to Grandma's and reported what she found and her boyfriend, Michael Jones, joined in the search. They went and picked up the bike and brought it home. They returned to the area to begin a search for Cora, who, they believed, was probably in the river. Other relatives joined in the search and, knowing that Vicki Jones was on her way to Marci's to pick up Cora's brother, Zachary, they left a message for her there that they couldn't find Cora. At approximately 4:45, the resident who called Jensen about the bike called Jensen back and said the bike apparently belongs to a girl who is missing and several people are now looking for her. Jensen then called the sheriff's department to report a missing girl. It was 4:50 p.m. Cora had been gone for two hours. At 5:11, the first officer arrived on the scene. By this time, both Vicki and Rick Jones had arrived and Rick Jones, knowing his daughter had been missing two hours, said, "I faced reality immediately." Vicki shared the same sinking feeling. Grandma Jones said "my first reaction was she had been kidnapped." "Cora had been afraid for a couple of years that she was going to be kidnapped. She would see pictures of missing children and she would say "what if that would happen to me?" By 6 p.m., Pastor Jim Bump, an associate pastor at Trinity Lutheran, the family's church, lives in nearby Rural and learned of the incident, "so right away my wife started calling for searchers." At 6:23, the sheriff's department, now convinced that something was amiss, paged out the Waupaca Volunteer Fire Department to do a full-scale search of the area. The search, with firefighters and other volunteers, lasted until around 8 p.m. when darkness fell. Meanwhile, Pastor Bump had contacted church members for assistance and found one who worked for a print shop. He secured a photo of Cora and, by 9:30, he had 1,000 posters printed up in black-and-white with her picture on them. |
