I have done alot of investigating on this case for months now.I have worked with an investigative reporter from Whitecourt on this.The following is a news story in which I was interviewed for.
Family and friends of a Whitecourt man missing for almost five months have not given up hope of seeing him again.
Peter Kory Butler, also known as Pablo, 23, was last seen leaving Riders nightclub in the early hours of March 15, said Cst. Devon Bateman with Whitecourt RCMP.
Bateman said the RCMP’s major crimes unit is still investigating and could not provide any further details about the case.
He added a recent rumour that police are close to laying charges in Butler’s murder despite the fact that no body has been found is “not accurate.”
In the meantime, people who knew and loved Butler have created a Facebook group in his name, to share fond memories of a young man who one friend said always spoke from his heart and had a gift for helping people through hard times.
In an emotional letter to Butler posted on the group’s message board, Stacey Letendre, the group’s co-creator and a close friend of Butler, wrote that she thinks of him every day and has made it her mission to bring him home. Letendre did not want to conduct a phone interview with the Star but instead referred the reporter to the Facebook site.
“I wake up every morning in hopes to find out more about all this so we can find you and bring you back to be close with your mom, as well as the rest of your family and friends,” she wrote. “I know wherever you are you’re missing her as much as she’s missing you.”
Letendre said Butler helped pull her out of a “deep black hole” following the death of another close friend.
“You helped me through all my toughest times,” she wrote. “I hate not being able to see your face or hear your voice … It feels like there’s a huge part of me missing.”
An RCMP press release issued on March 28 and published in the Whitecourt Star on April 2 said Butler was “known to use drugs and alcohol,” but members of the Facebook group say that’s not relevant to the person he is.
Letendre said Butler’s lifestyle shouldn’t excuse the actions of the person or people who might have taken him.
“It doesn’t matter who you are or what your past (or) reputation was based on,”she wrote. “It’s too bad those select few who judge you by your past didn’t have the privilege to know … the real you.”
Christine Price, an Alberta woman who runs a website about missing persons in Canada and an online forum connecting the families of missing people from around the world, has been looking into Butler’s case and said she doesn’t believe “high-risk” cases like his are treated seriously enough by police.
“I think they think that these people have gone off on a drug binge somewhere or that they’ve gotten (into trouble),” she said in a phone interview recently. “(But) even if they’re in trouble they’re going to contact somebody. Even if they’re in hiding, there’s going to be somebody in contact.”
Price said missing men in particular tend to be quickly forgotten about by the media, and that’s part of why she keeps missing persons cases on her website long after their trails have run cold.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of lifestyle you have, everybody’s a person, everybody deserves to be treated the same way, no matter what,” she said.
Price became interested in missing persons cases in 1984 when a classmate from her Peace River high school, Caroline Pruyser, vanished “into thin air” one night while home on a visit from university.
In the 90s, Price bought a computer and began doing Internet searches for any information on Pruyser’s whereabouts.
Frustrated with “putting her name out there and having nobody listen,” Price developed her website. The forum followed a few years later.
Today, the forum has members from across Canada and the United States, and even one family from the United Kingdom, Price said.
She gets no monetary compensation for her efforts, and hasn’t solved any cases, but it’s enough just helping families know their loved ones haven’t been forgotten.
“They know they’re not coming home … but they just need some place to vent, and if they can’t have a body, they need to have some form of closure,” she said. “I listen to them, I try to be a friend.”
Visit Price’s website at
http://www.freewebs.com/missingcanadians, or visit the forum at
http://chriscrimeforum.freeforums.org.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Peter Butler is asked to call Whitecourt RCMP at 780-778-2238 or CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
http://www.whitecourtstar.com/ArticleDi ... ?e=1165242
