In the cards?

By Jake Palmateer
Staff Writer

May 17, 2008 08:47 am

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The parents of a former SUCO student who disappeared 10 years ago are hoping playing cards in the hands of county jail inmates can help solve cold cases.

Center for Hope, run by Doug and Mary Lyall of Ballston Spa, and the New York State Sheriff's Association are teaming up to give decks of cards to county jails across the state.

The cards are similar to the ones U.S. troops used during the invasion of Iraq.

But instead of generals and scientists, the cards feature the missing, the murdered and the nameless from across New York state, including a Chenango County man gunned down in 1999 and a woman who was last seen more than 20 years ago in Schoharie County.

The 10 of clubs features the Lyalls' daughter, Suzanne, who vanished March 2, 1998, after leaving her part-time job at Crossgates Mall in Guilderland.

The idea is that by using the cards, inmates might recognize a face, a name or a detail included in a small narrative on each card. A toll-free tip line is listed on each card, which will enable the caller to make an anonymous report. Rewards funded by the Sheriff's Association would also be available if there is a successful arrest.

The playing cards are in use at the Delaware County jail and are expected to soon be available at the Otsego County jail.

"It's a good idea," Otsego County Sheriff Richard Devlin said Thursday. "You get a lot of people inside these facilities that talk and travel around."

Inmates at county jails have often served time in other facilities.

"They live within that element of society that just might have information about missing people or homicides," Delaware County Undersheriff Douglas Vredenburgh said Thursday.

When inmates are sequestered together, they converse as part of an underground network, Doug Lyall said.

"Inmates have a lot of time on their hands, and they are in a unique position to know, see and hear things that may not reach the eyes and ears of law enforcement," he said. "The cards are a way of tapping into that _ or tapping into a conscience."

The decks have been distributed to most of the counties in the greater Capital District region, and it is hoped jails in each of the state's 62 counties will have them, Mary Lyall said.

"We're aiming for all of them," she said Thursday.

If just one case of the 52 featured in the deck is solved, it will be worth it, Doug Lyall said.

As for his own daughter, a new tip occasionally surfaces from someone who believes they may have seen her, but so far none have panned out, Lyall said.

Suzanne Lyall transferred from the State University at College at Oneonta to the University at Albany for her sophomore year. She is believed to have last been seen getting off a Capital District Transit Authority bus only a few hundred yards from her dorm room.

Lyall attended SUCO during the 1996-97 academic year.

In the years after their daughter's disappearance, the Lyalls founded Center for Hope, which has a mission of providing support and information for those who have loved ones missing under suspicious circumstances.

Doug Lyall said they became aware of an initiative in Polk County, Florida, that used playing cards in jails to help generate new leads on cold cases.

"That seemed to be successful so we followed up on it," Lyall said.

Their inquiry included a trip to Florida to meet the organizers of that effort.

Unlike the Florida initiative, which focused on one county, the Center for Hope's deck includes cards representing cases from throughout the state.

Coordinating which cases were to be featured took time.

"It took almost a year to get the 52 cards that we did get," Mary Lyall said. "Sometimes you get permission from the family, then all of a sudden they change their mind."

One of the oldest cases featured in the deck is that of a girl of about 14 years of age who was found face down in a Livingston County cornfield Nov. 10, 1979, Lyall said.

The girl, who had two gunshot wounds, was found by a farmer checking his fields in the town of Caledonia, according to the Livingston County Sheriff's Office.

She remains unidentified.

Other cards in the deck include the queen of spades, Erica Jane Franolich, who was last seen Oct. 13, 1986, on Main Street in Middleburgh. The mother of two would now be 47 years old.

Another Schoharie County case is that of Katherine Kolodziej, a SUNY Cobleskill student who went missing Nov. 2, 1974, in Cobleskill and who was found dead later that month in Richmondville. Her card is the four of clubs.

The homicide of Thomas "Tomcat" Lee Francisco in Chenango County is also among the featured cases.

Francisco, represented by the four of hearts, was found shot to death in his Pharsalia home July 7, 1999. His killer or killers have never been found.

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