Nobody seems to know. She went missing in April and they found her car off a little-traveled road in August.
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It's not that I don't care; it's just beyond my understanding to try and imagine what it's like for a 7 year old girl to be basically abandoned for three years because her mother has fallen in love and moved a long, long way away to be with her new boyfriend.
Oct 29, 2014
0
#5
It's not the once-abandonned little girl, but the missing 33 year old woman that demands some attention, I would think.
batgirl wrote:
Well, I guess it's true.... no one cares.
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Oct 29, 2014
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#7
Scottrf wrote:
batgirl wrote:
Well, I guess it's true.... no one cares.
These posts no longer appear on the recent posts on the right until they receive a certain number of replies.
Which is 4 replies is require to get to the Most Recent Posts.
What's the connection between this story and the world chess community?
Oct 29, 2014
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#10
It's a sad fact in America that people go missing every day. And no one seems to mind, at least not for long. Then they are mostly forgotten and it's on to the next story of another person that's missing. Some just run away, but many are either murdered or sold into slavery. Or in the case of three local girls here in this area, held hostage in a house in Cleveland for ten years....
Meanwhile, our government is so busy screwing around in foreign affairs they've allowed our own country to become a very dangerous place.
I hope they find this woman alive and in good health however unlikely that may be. Way too many people are going missing in this country and not a damned thing is being done about it....
In 1980 about 150,000 people were reported missing in the US. In 2013 this figure was about 900,000. Missing people in the US is like the common cold today...and maybe this is why it appears that people don't care. Some of them disappear on their own...while others are taken by serial killers, pedifiles, pimps and the like. The hard truth is if someone wants to kill you, take you, bomb your home etc. there is not much that can be done to prevent this. We live in a world today, where we hope that we are not the next target.
Oct 29, 2014
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#12
Lawdoginator wrote:
What's the connection between this story and the world chess community?
Donna Van Zandt is/was the daughter of Elena Donaldson, the 3 times US Women's Champion and former wife of IM John Donaldson who had died 2 years ago next month. I just wanted to bring this to people's attention hoping to inform, raise awareness and possibly elicit some sort of thoughtful response in the vein of Spiritbro77 (not that I think anyone here isn't thoughtful).
Of course it's tragic, but pretending to care about one person we don't know among millions of others dead or missing would be hypocritical. People who do care (besides those who know the person, of course) seem to fit into two categories: people who are ignorant that this happens all the time but are distracted by the latest interesting news, and the sort of people who rubberneck at car crashes.
I hope nobody says that's insensitive, because of course I'm empathetic enough to understand the heartbreaking tragedy of it, but I'm also enough of a realist to realize that I'd probably just kill myself if I was emotionally invested in every bad thing that happened to every stranger.
So don't be too exasperated that "no one cares." I've got about a half dozen friends who've died before they were 30, some with kids, and I'm sure you're not on the edge of your seat about each of them either.
I personally don't think being the relative of somebody famous makes a huge difference, but I sadly seem to be a minority in that opinion.
That's too bad. In all likelihood she was abducted. Yet another reason why law-abiding people should be allowed to carry concealed firearms. A 110 lb woman runs into the wrong guy(s) and she has no way of defending herself.
I agree that carrying concealed guns will offer some comfort to an intended target...I myself carry one, and I always have people around me who carry as well. But those who target you will observe you for some time...and no one is always vigilant. If you believe that "bad people" have a certain look...you will be surprised at the package serial killers etc. come in. The new MO for these stalkers...they pretend to be teenagers and try to leer your kids via the social media.
If this person was abducted on a remote highway (which is pure speculation), then I doubt it was by a social media stalker.
Captain_Coconut, I'm just talking generally here, with no special reference to the highlighted case. I have not heard about this case before...nor have any interest in this case in particular...but one must be careful in making assumptions without any facts.
I agree completely then.
In this case specifically, all we know officially is that her car was found in a remote area with the keys still inside. Not much to speculate about...since one can imagine a hundred scenarios which can have this ending. Only those who have investigated this case will have any additional info to piece together the story....and usually, law inforcement will not reveal all the evidence they have uncovered.
You do have to be careful of making assumptions, but there is a good probability a serial killer was involved. I know someone who lost her daughter in a similar manner. Not necessarily a serial killer, of course. It doesn't strike me as a likely kidnapping-for-slavery incident. I don't know for certain, but those perps probably target very young girls on the streets, at bus depots, etc.
"Serial murder is a relatively rare event, estimated to comprise less than one percent of all murders committed in any given year."
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder
"A very conservative estimate is that there are between 35 and 50 active serial killers in the United States" at any given time."
Oh, I think that is very conservative indeed, and I bet our "unsub" falls into this category.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/diane-dimond/serial-killers-how-many-are-there.html
A real shame.
I received the following message from a gentleman who joined chess.com yesterday apparently with the express purpose of messaging me after finding a tribute (not a obit or a reprint of one as he suggested) to Elena Donaldson which I had written shortly after she passed away:
Donna Van Zandt Missing
It would appear that you posted (or reposted) an obituary for Elena Donaldson. Her daughter's car was discovered in August and the local police think she's been missing out in the forest since roughly early April. Has anyone in the world chess community acknowledged her disappearance. I know personally that the relationship between Donna and her stepfather, Georgi, was horrible. They more or less kicked her out of the house as a teenager and made her live on her own as an emancipated minor. After Elena's death and her biological father's murder in NYC in the early 2000s (which no one seems to talk about), Donna's world more or less fell apart. I'm her first exhusband and, while our marriage was rocky and divorce was necessary, I know that deep down, no matter how troubled she was, she was still a good person. Very sad that the international chess community is not interested in the real and current story.
Because of her unassociated name and the fact that the news reports I have since read never made the connection between her and her mother, it's easy to see why nobody noticed this story.
Here is what the "Seattle Times" reported:
Missing Seattle woman’s car found in Grays Harbor County
by Paige Cornwell
The car registered to a Seattle woman who has been missing since April was found last week in a remote area in Grays Harbor County.
The vehicle registered to Donna Van Zandt, 33, of Seattle, was located by hunters scouting an area near Neilton on a remote logging road, according to the Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office.
A sheriff’s deputy determined the car likely had been there for several months because of the vegetation that had grown around it. The vehicle’s keys were still inside, but there was nothing to indicate what may have happened to the driver.
Investigators contacted Van Zandt’s family members, who said they had not had seen her or talked with her since April. Family members said Van Zandt’s father was murdered in New York in January and April marked the second anniversary of her mother’s death [Elena Donaldson died in November 2012, not in April].
Anyone with information about Van Zandt or her location is asked to call Sheriff’s Office Detective Keith Peterson at 360-249-3711.
The local radio station, KBKW, carried the story with photos on their website.