From a young age, thirteen-year-old Ilene Misheloff of Dublin, California, loved figure skating. She won several skating contests around suburban San Francisco throughout the late 1980s.

The Bay Area has produced two of America’s most accomplished figure skaters: Brain Boitano and Kristi Yamaguichi. Ilene had trained at the same gym as Boitano, the gold medal winner at the 1988 Olympics, and she had competed against Yamaguichi, the gold medal winner at the 1992 Olympics.

The odds of Ilene Misheloff her becoming another Brian Boitano or Kristi Yamaguichi were small, but, given her love of her craft and her drive to improve, they were probably greater than those of most who grace the ice. If skating stardom was not in her future, Ilene planned to become a pediatrician.

Perhaps Ilene’s dreams would have changed as she grew into a young adult. Sadly, we will never know.

Ilene Misseloff has not been seen in thirty-four years. The girl who had dreams of becoming another Bay Area skating phenom is instead the figure in a Bay Area mystery.

Ilene Misheloff

Dublin, California, is part of suburban east San Francisco.

Shortly after Wells Intermediate School ended at 3:00 p.m. on January 30, 1989, several classmates saw Ilene walking home. She was alone, taking a shortcut through an alley near the Shamrock Shopping Center.

Ilene Last Seen

Ilene crossed the boulevard and walked through John Mape Park along a dry creek bed. Somewhere in the park, she vanished.

Several days after the area was searched, Ilene’s backpack was found in the park’s creek bed. Authorities are certain it was placed there only after her disappearance and after they had searched the creek.

Few other clues were found indicating what may have happened to Ilene.

Entrance to John Mape Park

Ilene was a good student and had a good home life. She had never been in trouble or shown any signs of wanting to leave home. Investigators quickly concluded she had not run away and was a kidnapping victim.

Presumed Kidnapping

Police identified several persons of interest in Ilene’s presumed abduction.

One was Timothy Bindner, a married sewage treatment worker. He had sent birthday cards to several young Bay Area girls in the months preceding Ilene’s disappearance. Bindner said he sent them because the girls were lonely. Ilene was not one of the girls, however, to whom he had mailed a card.

Bindner allowed police to search his van, which was covered with pictures of children. He said he collected the photos because he enjoyed looking at them and referred to all of the kids as “beautiful.” I could not find anything stating whether or not Ilene’s picture was among those in his van.

Bindner had previously been arrested for trying to lure two young girls into his van, but the charges were later dropped. Conversely, he was also given a heroism award by the California State Patrol for assisting victims of the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake during the World Series.

Most investigators believe Bindner has a strange fascination with missing girls and is not psychologically sound, but they doubt he is responsible for Ilene’s disappearance. No evidence has been found suggesting he has any involvement.

Timothy Bindner

Though no evidence links them to Ilene’s disappearance, James Daveggio and his girlfriend Michelle Michaud are also persons of interest. They were convicted in the mid-1990s of several counts of sexual assault and, in 2002, of the 1997 abduction, rape, and murder of twenty-two-year-old Vanessa Samson, who lived in Pleasanton, only six miles north of Dublin.

The killing couple remain on California’s death row.

                                James             Michelle              Vanessa

                             Daveggio          Michaud               Samson

Former Bay Area taxi driver Curtis Anderson is another person of interest in Ilene’s disappearance. In 2000, he was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of eleven-year-old Xiana Fairchild and the kidnapping and sexual assault of eight-year-old Midsi Sanchez.

Both abductions occurred in Vallejo, California, thirty-five miles northwest of Dublin.

Curtis Anderson

On December 9, 1999, Xiana Fairchild was abducted from a bus stop while waiting for the school bus. In January 2001, her remains were found at the bottom of an embankment in Los Gatos, seventy-five miles south of Vallejo.

Anderson boasted of drugging her to death after weeks of holding her captive and molesting her.

Xiana Fairchild

On August 10, 2000, Anderson abducted eight-year-old Midsi Sanchez as she was walking home from Vallejo’s Highland Elementary school. After spending two nights shackled to Anderson’s car, she found the key to unlock them and escaped.

Midsi Sanchez

Police searched Anderson’s mother’s home in 2001 in hopes of finding evidence linking him to several area missing girls, including Ilene Misheloff, but found none.

Anderson hanged himself in his prison cell in December 2007. In total, he claimed to have murdered eleven young girls, some of whom he named and whose remains have not been found. Police and the FBI are trying to connect him to the crimes.

 

Commits Suicide

In 2009, police announced that a month before he committed suicide, one of the murders to which Anderson confessed was that of Amber Swartz-Garcia. The seven-year-old had disappeared from Pinole, California, forty miles northwest of Dublin, on June 3, 1988, just under eight months before Ilene Misheloff disappeared.

Anderson told police he abducted Amber and suffocated her to death at a motel and left her body near Benson, Arizona. Although her remains have not been found, police believe the confession is credible.

Amber Swartz-Garcia

Anderson has also been proclaimed a suspect in the disappearance of seven-year-old Karla Rodriguez of Las Vegas, Nevada. She was last seen playing outside her neighbor’s home on October 20, 1999.

Karla Rodriguez

Curtis Anderson is a person of interest in Ilene Misheloff’s disappearance, but she was not one of the girls he claimed to have killed, and nothing has been found linking him to her abduction.

Where Went Ilene?

Ilene Beth Misheloff has been missing since January 30, 1989, when she was thirteen-years-old.  At time of her disappearance, she was five-feet-three-inches tall and weighed one-hundred-thirteen pounds. She had brown hair and eyes, and wore braces on her teeth. She had freckles on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, and a small lump on the inside of her left ankle.

Ilene Misheloff would today be forty-eight-years-old.

Computer-Aged Images of Ilene Misheloff

A $95,000 reward is offered for information leading to Ilene’s whereabouts.

If you have any information on the disappearance of Ilene Misheloff, please contact the Dublin, California, Police Department at 925-833-6670 or 800-635-6306.

Substantial Reward Offered

SOURCES:

• Charley Project
• Done Network
• East Bay Times
• FBI
• Los Angeles Times
• San Francisco Chronicle