In mid-April, Miss Cookie finally sat down with the new police leadership team. They informed her that Sage’s case had been assigned to a new detective, Regine Wright-Settle, that she was working solely on Sage’s case and had undergone training in homicide and cold cases to prepare for it. She is also approaching the case with new eyes, reinterviewing witnesses rather than relying on Mooney’s and Stayments’s notes.
When Miss Cookie asked why it had taken four years for Sage’s case to be classified as a homicide, the new investigation team blamed the old, saying they could not speak to frustrations with actions in the past nor disclose details of what specifically the new detective was doing due to the case being an ongoing criminal investigation. CPD leadership agreed that it was suspicious that Erik McFadden continues to be missing and that his family in Maryland has not filed a missing persons report.
“So y’all gonna bring the FBI in or what?” Miss Cookie asked. “What is being done to find this man?”
A captain told her that Sage’s case now being classified as a homicide gives them the ability to bring in the FBI “if and when” they are needed.
But the family and police leadership still struggle to work together. Lieutenant Joseph Hatter asserted that it was necessary for CPD to continue to refer to Sage by her birth name in order to get the best information from the public, and Chief Thomas said that in the eyes of science, the department was still looking for a male (Sage’s birth mother agrees). Plans for the Charlottesville Police Department to undergo transgender sensitivity training may be in the works, but nothing is definitive yet.
At a recent vigil, Miss Cookie appeared in a wheelchair, wearing a huge faux-fur coat, a loan from a supporter to block out the freezing wind in Lee Park.
“We need some closure,” she said in front of the small crowd, who stand holding balloons marbled pink and purple. “What makes one life more valuable than another? That’s how it makes our family feel, that we don’t matter.”
Dean Smith was there, too. His face and beard were buried into the collar of his North Face jacket, and he was stamping his feet to shake off the cold. His voice was clear and loud. “I miss my child,” he said. “I’ll be sitting at home eating and I stop eating and think, is my child eating? I don’t sleep. Never cut my phone off. I haven’t changed my number. I usually change it every couple of years. Sage was taken from me just as we were getting to know each other. I’ll never get to truly know my child.”
The CUE Center for Missing Persons was there to support the family. They even had a bench made in Sage’s honor. Miss Cookie asked the city if she could place the bench in a city park and plant a tree in Sage’s memory.
“They told us, ‘Sure,’” Miss Cookie said, “but that it would cost us $1,000.”
Originally published by Splinter News, July 2017