Steve Crump, formerly of Jefferson County, hopes his mother’s body has finally been located, after she disappeared more than 42 years ago.
Geneva Adams, who lived in Festus, was 53 when she vanished July 24, 1976, after visiting the old Artesian Lounge in Herculaneum and then accompanying a man she met there to an after-hours club 40 miles away, in East St. Louis.
A body that authorities say might be hers was scheduled on Monday to be exhumed from an unmarked grave in Greenwood Cemetery in Fairview Heights, Ill., and then sent away for identification, Herculaneum Police Chief Mark Tulgetske said.
Based on Illinois police records and a newspaper report, it’s possible the Jane Doe buried in that grave could be Adams, said Crump, who grew up in Festus and lived in unincorporated Fenton before moving to Ozark in 2003.
“This sure sounds like her with the things that they have,” Crump said. “If it is not her, we will be disappointed. I’ve had several police say they think this is her.
“It gives me a little excitement and encouragement that it may be. We are closer than we ever have been, at least that is what it feels like.”
Missing
The day she went missing Adams had gone to the Artesian Lounge with her daughter, Sheila, who was 24 at the time and is now 66 and lives in Ohio. Adams was last seen dancing with Jimmie Lee Mills, who has been a person of interest in the case ever since he told police that after he met Adams at the Artesian, they went to a club in East St. Louis and then he dropped her off at a doughnut shop in Crystal City.
Mills, who is now 76, is serving a 10-year prison sentence at Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina for possession of a firearm. He is scheduled to be released on Aug. 12, 2019.
Crump said he and his sister confronted Mills outside his home near the Herculaneum night spot the morning after their mother didn’t return home.
“My sister and I knocked on the door and his wife came to the door,” Crump said. “He then came out and closed the door and said, ‘What do you want?’ He recognized my sister. My sister asked, ‘Where’s our mom?’ He said, ‘I dropped her off at the Crystal City doughnut shop this morning.’ We asked, ‘What time?’ And he was like, ‘I don’t know. Four, five, six in the morning.’ He was really vague.”
Crump and his sister then went to the doughnut shop, and no one there reported seeing their mother. They then went to the Festus Police, who referred them to Crystal City Police, who sent them to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
“(Former Sheriff Walter “Buck” Buerger) told us not to worry about it,” Crump said.
He said Buerger also said, “Your mom will come home.”
After 48 hours, Buerger “put a detective on the case,” Crump said.
“I kept thinking every day she would show up,” he said. “We really didn’t get excited until about four or five days later when the detectives showed up and wanted to know more about the story.”
Adams had 10 children with her first husband, Harold Crump, who died of cancer in 1970. Later she remarried, but even though they divorced, she kept his name, Adams, Crump said.
Six of Adams’ children survive, Crump said.
Finding a body
Six weeks after Adams went missing, a body was found in a brushy area off St. Clair Avenue in Washington Park, Ill. That body, which was never identified, eventually was buried in a pauper’s grave in Greenwood Cemetery.
No possible connection between the Festus woman who went missing and the body found in southern Illinois was made, at least not until 2014, when Illinois State Police Sgt. Abigail Keller started reviewing the old case about the Jane Doe buried in the unmarked grave.
Keller came across information about Adams going missing around the same time and made the possible connection.
According to information from the coroner’s report after the body was found in Illinois and an article in the now defunct East St. Louis Journal, a naked, decomposed body was found in the vacant Washington Park lot and was taken to Kassly Funeral Home in Fairview Heights. There was an autopsy the next day.
The inquest records noted the body appeared to have been left in the lot about three weeks earlier. The woman had false upper teeth and natural lower teeth with fillings. The autopsy notes also found the woman was white, with auburn hair and was between 35 and 55 years old.
The dental description and hair color are similar to Adams, Crump said.
According to the 1976 news story, St. Clair County Deputy Coroner John Kassly said a state pathologist’s X-ray report didn’t show any evidence of gunshot wounds or “other marks of violence.”
A cause of death could not be determined.
After checking local missing persons without a match, the body was placed in a metal box called a “Ziegler Case” and buried in Greenwood Cemetery where she lay in an unmarked grave for more than 40 years.
Finding the unmarked grave
After Keller made the possible connection between Adams and the body found in Illinois four years ago, police began working to locate the unmarked grave in the cemetery, which was difficult because it is in a grassy field, Tulgetske said.
Crump said Festus Police Officer Brad Tinker had been researching his mother’s case and was able to locate the grave.
“(Tinker) said he was the one who found it,” Crump said. “I said I appreciated it and thanked him. I said you don’t realize what you have done for us, if this turns out to be my mom.”
A St. Clair County judge signed an order on Dec. 4 to allow the body in Lot 77, Grave 1, Section B in Greenwood Cemetery to be exhumed. After the body is removed, it will be sent to the University of North Texas, which specializes in human identification, and the DNA from the body will be tested to see if it matches Adams’ DNA.
The family is hoping a tooth Sheila kept that provided Adams’ DNA sample will match that of the body.
“It was a miracle we had that (tooth),” Crump said. “Everything is there for this to match.”
Crump said this is the third time a possible location for his missing mother has been identified. The first was in 1985 when authorities searched property Mills leased in Perryville for a possible burial site. In the mid-2000s, a body was found buried along Joachim Creek near where the Artesian Lounge was located, and initially people thought it might have been Adams.
Both officials and Adams family members hope this time will be different.
“Circumstances seem to indicate that the time frame is good. The physical description that was noted by the coroner’s office in Illinois at the time seems to be similar,” Tulgetske said. “Our optimism is always cautious, because there is no guarantee in anything.”
Tulgetske said he hopes to be able to return Adams’ body to her family, but he isn’t sure that will answer their questions about what led to her disappearance and death.
“According to the information we have in recovering the police reports in 1976 from Illinois, at that time there was no determination of what the cause of death was,” Tulgetske said. “That will still be undetermined unless they find some other factors this time. If they cannot assist in any determination, then what we have done is hopefully recovered Geneva Adams for her family, but it would not further a criminal case.
“We want to get her back to her family. We want to begin to understand what happened to her. We have been working on this case for a long time. I have been involved in this case for 15 years, even before I worked for Herculaneum.”