Happy Birthday Bob! I still miss you!

In a few weeks it will be what would have been Bob Harrod’s 85th birthday. I have not written or talked about Bob for a long time. It is not that I have forgotten him or don’t care. I think of him every day. It’s just there is nothing left to say. A couple of years back, someone told me I was being discussed on one of those forums about missing people. I decided to check it out. I did not hide who I was. I offered to answer any and all questions if I could. I found another one and joined it as well. Since the Placentia police were not interested in what I had to say, these people were. I was actually naive enough to believe this was about helping to solve the mystery of what happened to Bob.

 After a few weeks I noticed a trend. These people are trying to play CSI or Columbo. They think the answer is very simple and will be revealed in the next half hour to an hour. It’s not. This is real life. There are no easy answers or even answers at all sometimes. I also discovered there were people directly involved in the case who were pretending to be objective observers. They were able to sway most people into thinking along with them. They would try to convince people they did not know what they knew or did not see what they saw. Eventually, it got so bad, if I said anything they did not agree with, I was shouted down. Being loud and intimidating does not make you right. It makes you a bully. The truth is the truth. So, I gave up.


Everything was pretty quiet until the show “Missing” on the ID channel did a show about Bob. I watched it. It took a while. I had to stop it now and then to try to comprehend what I was seeing. Afterward, someone wrote me to ask what I thought about it.

Here goes… It was a great piece of fiction. If you think omitting is the same as lying. I could see the attorney’s fingerprints all over it. I saw the Placentia police try to portray themselves as a legitimate law enforcement agency instead of the bumbling idiots we all know they are. I watched people say things I knew were completely not true. I saw high drama and emotion as people pretended to be who they were not. If I did not know the players and was Bob’s closest friend at the time, I would have thought it was a good show. Otherwise, it was a farce. It also makes me wonder if all these shows are like this. They show one side and just enough details to make it interesting enough for people to watch.

 They filmed parts on location. I was very sad to see my old house and the memories that are now gone. I saw parts of Bob’s house and it made me miss him even more. It also made me angry. I remember the Placentia police trying to pass this off as some demented old fool who wandered off. Then, they said he got cold feet. The truth is, they were just trying to close the case so they would not have to do any real work. The shameful part is they wasted so much time people had a chance to get their alibis and stories straight. By the time they pulled their collective heads out of their collective rectums and investigated the case as a kidnapping and murder, it was too late.

At this point, here is what I feel. Bob Harrod is dead. He was kidnapped or coerced out of his home and murdered. We will never know who or how. We will never know where his body is. We will never know what happened. This is not TV or a movie. This is real life. R.I.P. Bob.