Springfield police use billboards to crack cold cases

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

Michelle Rice, Amanda Ward-Romine and Amber Whitmer are names burned into Detective Shelly Pergram’s mind.

“I have my missing ladies’ pictures in my office. I mean I look at them every day,” she said.

The Springfield Police Division is continuing its initiative to crack cold cases by taking out billboards in different parts of the city.

All three women featured on the billboard heading south on Spring Street are considered missing. Rice was last seen at her workplace in 2009, Whitmer in 2016 and Ward-Romine was last seen by her family in July 2013, but was reported missing a month later.

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Years have passed, but time stands still for their families.

“I still talk to the families on a regular basis,” Pergram said. “They want to know where they went — it’s their loved one.”

Amber Whitmer’s sister, Brandi Whitmer, said she was supposed to meet her sister at Snyder Park the day she went missing. She said there’s been a lot of dead ends in the case — and not knowing what happened only adds to the regret she has for not spending more time with her.

“Amber is my baby sister,” she said. “We were supposed to be best friends.”

She said she hopes the billboard initiative puts her sister’s case at the forefront of people’s minds, just like it is for her.

Whitmer applauded police for their efforts to not let her sister’s case become just another number.

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“I just want people to know she was a person, a sister and a daughter and she’s missed and loved,” Whitmer said. “We’re not gonna stop looking.”

Each billboard is paid for by the Clark County Prosecutor’s Office and each police detective chooses a location in Springfield that has relevance to the case. The initiative’s first billboard went up in August to find answers in the case of James Mundy, who was killed in 2015.

Another billboard was also put up this week going the other direction on Spring Street asking for information related to the unsolved homicide of Candance Prunty.

If you have any information about any of the cases, you’re asked to contact the detective located on the billboard or the Springfield Police Division at 937-324-7680.

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