Christie Farni

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2:01Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics, including violence, abuse, and murder. This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney and this is Voices for Justice.

2:34Today, I'm discussing the case of Christy Farney. In 1978, 6-year-old Christy testified in front of a grand jury to describe the abuse she suffered from her father. Just hours later, she was reported missing to the Medford, Oregon Police Department. Her case is now the oldest unsolved case of a missing child in the entire county. This is the case of Christy Farney. It's Thursday, December 14th, 1978 in Medford, Oregon, and Christy Farney already knows that it's going to be a very hard day. Really an impossible day for anyone, let alone for a six-year-old. That's because today is the day that she has to testify in front of a grand jury about the physical abuse she suffered from her father, Kenneth Ray Farney.

3:27Last year, Christy's mother tragically passed away in a motorcycle accident, so it's already been a rough year. And just three days ago, Christy and her 13-year-old brother James were removed from their father's care after Christy reported being physically abused by him. The exact details about the abuse are unclear, but it was enough to remove both kids from their father's care and place them into a foster home. Luckily, they were placed together. It's a small comfort, but Christy's in a brand new environment, and now she has to go into a courtroom and relive the abuse that she suffered. It's just something a child should never have to do, but Christy does it.

4:07Her caseworker picks her up from her foster home, takes her to court, and Christy gives her testimony. I'm sure she's thinking that the worst part of her day is finally over. Now she just has to go to school, which you might be thinking would be something she would try to avoid. I think most of us have been there. You miss school for something in the morning, and you're begging that you don't have to go all that day. But Christy is actually looking forward to going to school that afternoon, not just to get away from everything for a while. but today in particular was a very exciting one for her and her fellow kindergarten students.

4:41Today was their gift exchange, and Christy was ready to go with her wrapped present, ready to give. School and her brother James were really the constants in her life at this point. Luckily, her foster family lived just a few blocks away from her father's house, so she's in a new neighborhood, but at the same school. So I have to imagine that after such a stressful few days and an especially stressful morning, Christy's just looking forward to seeing all her friends at school and participating in the gift exchange, really just getting her mind off of what she had to do that morning. But there was a slight change in plans that really changed everything.

5:18According to statements from her brother James, from here, Christy's caseworker is supposed to drop her off at school, Jackson Elementary, but for some reason, she's dropped back at home with her foster family. And this wouldn't normally be a big deal, but her foster mom is recovering from surgery, and her foster father was at work and couldn't come home to take her to school. So despite Christy being brand new to this neighborhood, she has to walk the few blocks to school alone. Just to set the scene a bit, the foster home is at about 5th Street and Peach, and the school is a few blocks north closer to 7th.

5:53It's about a mile away, so it's not like it's insanely far, but it's also not right around the corner. There are also quite a few turns on the route. Now, Christy has walked it before. She usually walks with her brother James. So she knows the route, she's just never done it alone before. But her foster mom is confident that she can make the trek by herself. So at about 12 p.m., she makes sure that Christy has everything she needs for the day, walks to the sidewalk with her, watches her walk down the street and turn onto 4th Street, and finally out of her sight. When the final bell rings for the day, James waits outside in the cold for Christy as he normally did, but she never shows.

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9:18When the Medford Police Department gets the call that there's a missing six-year-old, they really make it an all-hands-on-deck situation. The searches have been described as frantic, and officers go door-to-door asking everyone they can if they've seen a little girl with brown wavy hair wearing a dress and parka jacket with a hood. They also retrace every possible route from the foster home to the school, and even routes from the school to her father's house. But there's just nothing. Not her parka, not a shoe, not a hair from Christy's head is found. There also aren't any witnesses. I mean, not a single one to this day, which I think is one of the most detrimental details of Christy's case.

10:03Officers from the Medford PD have gone on record many times to say that it's one of the hardest parts of this case. Detective Brandon Amaya told Kobe 5 News, quote, sometimes in other cases there may be a witness that saw someone luring the child into a vehicle or into a house, and in this case there were zero witnesses that saw what happened to her, or even gave a lead to where she potentially might be, end quote. No one heard a child scream, heard any type of a struggle, no one saw a suspicious vehicle or person, it's like Christy vanished into thin air. Or that something about this story just isn't adding up.

10:43Now, there were more searches into the weekend. I could see a scenario where Christy may have been overwhelmed from that morning, and now the responsibility of walking to school alone for the first time. Maybe she went and hid somewhere to feel safe. Maybe she tried to find her way back to her father's house. Maybe something happened on that walk to deter Christy from going to school. Obviously, we just don't know, but investigators don't find anything to point really in any direction. Another hurdle in this case is the timeline. In addition to trying to narrow down exactly which block Christy went missing from, they also weren't able to narrow down the exact time when Christy went missing.

11:24And there is quite a bit of conflicting information about this. In one set of reporting, it said that the school called Christy's foster family around 1.30pm to let them know that she never showed up for school. But in most reporting, it says that the family didn't know until she failed to return home from school. One report even says that there was one witness who saw Christy leaving the house alone. Unfortunately, reporting is limited and often conflicting, but this is the reality of what we know about Christy and her case. So all investigators can do at this point is start with Christy's inner circle and work their way out.

12:01They begin with the last person to see her, her foster mother. But she and Christy's foster father are questioned and cleared. It also seems that James stayed in their care during this time, so it doesn't seem that there was anything really pointing to the foster family being involved with Christy's disappearance. Or at least it wasn't enough to remove James from their care. Of course, they looked at Christy's father and stepmother, I mean, she went missing right after testifying about the abuse she suffered from her father. Investigators absolutely explored the theory that her father might have hurt her in an act of revenge for that testimony.

12:36But according to investigators, there's no evidence to point that way either. They say that Kenneth Ray Farney took and passed two different polygraph tests. And because we're in the 1970s, I have to imagine that a lot of emphasis was put on these two tests. But to be fair, I did not find that in the reporting on this case. Detectives really just say that Kenneth was investigated, passed the test, and was cleared. So like I always say, take that for what you will. Both Kenneth and Christy's stepmother are consistently described as being cooperative with police, and for the record, the abuse charges against Kenneth Varney were eventually dropped.

13:14However, it is unclear if that's because there wasn't enough evidence to move forward, or because Christie was no longer available to testify. I will say that one of the investigators has gone on record to say that the charges against Kenneth Farney appeared to be discipline that may have gone too far. Detective Brandon Amaya with the Medford Police Department told NBC5 News, quote, it appeared that both parents loved Christie Farney, loved their kids, and it may have just been a little disciplinary issue that may have gone too far, end quote. I will also say, I think especially back in the 1970s and 80s, adults looked at child abuse charges very differently than they do today.

14:00Normal discipline gone too far could look very different to a lot of different people, and what exactly Christy was accusing her father of, again, is unclear. I know, it's not a satisfying answer, and while I don't think any physical abuse of any child is acceptable, we do sometimes have to look through the lens of different generations to get a better understanding of why they may think the way they do or say what they do. But in short, all the major persons of interest we first think of in this case were all cleared. Now, it does appear that Christy and James had some extended family that cared deeply for them, but they lived on the East Coast at this time.

14:41And while investigators did explore the possibility that Christy was taken by a family member, they never found any evidence to point to that being the case either. Again, it's like they're hitting wall after wall in this case. The searches come up with nothing, it doesn't appear that there are any witnesses to say what happened to Christy after leaving her foster home, and her entire inner circle was cleared early on. The holidays came and went without any new information about Christy, and in January 1979, 1979, investigators with the Menford PD announced a$100 reward in the case for anyone with information that may lead them to her.

15:22Now, if that number sounds a little low to you, you weren't alone. Adjusted for inflation, it's less than$500 today. And even in that small snippet I found about the reward, investigators say that they were hoping for more contributions to the fund. But as far as I could find, that never happened. Really, the world just kept turning without Christy being found. James went back to live with her dad after the abuse charges were dropped, and in time, they moved away from Oregon to California. From there, really not much happens for years. Then, in 1983, a 47-year-old man in Texas named Henry Lee Lucas confessed to killing Christy Farney.

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17:05Henry Lee Lucas was a truly disturbed and violent man. He killed his mother in 1960 and served 15 years for it. So he was a free man in 1978 when Christy Farney went missing. Lucas stayed out of prison for a few years, and really, 1983 is the year when everything started to heat up for him. Police began investigating him for the murders of his teenage girlfriend, Becky Powell, and his landlord, an 82-year-old woman named Kate Rich, he quickly confessed to killing both. Then he began confessing to killing dozens, and then hundreds of people, including Christy Farney. At this point, Lucas had already been formally charged with 10 murders in the state of Texas, and he was serving 75 years in prison.

17:52So while his confession seemed a little outlandish at times, he was a convicted murderer, and in a case with next to no leads, investigators really had nothing to lose. So in the midst of dozens of detectives fighting for time with Lucas, the Medford PD managed to sit down with him and get a location of where he says he buried Christy. Initially, he told them that she was buried in the mountains near the Oregon-California border, but after searches of the area didn't produce any remains or anything linking Christy to Lucas, investigators pushed him further. This is when Lucas told them that Christy was buried north of Medford, so they conducted a search in an undisclosed area, telling the public that they were trying to prevent them from disturbing the site.

18:37But all of a sudden, thanks to Lucas creating this media circus, the press was interested in Christie's case again, and her story began appearing in local papers for the first time in years. Police Sergeant Tom Levine spoke about Lucas to the Oregonian, quote, he admits to being in the southern Oregon area, and based on that, we're looking into a location where he may have been. At this point, that's all we're doing is looking, end quote. When asked about Lucas giving conflicting locations, he said, quote, it's hard to say. The guy's been implicated in over a hundred murders and suspected of over 200, so it's hard to say why we've gotten two different stories on the suspect, end quote.

19:20So Christie's name is back in the news, there's this renewed interest, the second search was conducted, and nothing was found. Now, the reporting around this time does say that the Medford PD planned to approach Lucas for a third time with maps. That way, he could give a more accurate location of where he says he buried Christy. But as far as I could find, that never happened, and there was never a third search. If Henry Lee Lucas did kill Christy Farney, No evidence was ever produced to point to that conclusion. According to reporting by Time magazine, Lucas confessed to killing upwards of 600 people when all was said and done.

20:04Many journalists and members of law enforcement quickly wrote him off as just seeking attention, which he was, but some investigators jumped on these confessions and began closing cases left and right. Really, Henry Lee Lucas threw a huge wrench into the justice system that was kind of unprecedented at this time. But with a bit of legwork, it was easy to see that Lucas was clearly lying about the amount of people he killed. His stories were inconsistent, and things like work records easily discredited many of the confessions. In the end, he was only convicted of 10 murders, and in 1984, he was sentenced to death for the 1979 murder of Deborah Jackson.

20:46Now, that sentence was later commuted by then-Texas Governor George W. Bush in 1998, and Lucas died in prison just a few years later in 2001 after suffering a heart attack. So by 1984, investigators were back to square one. Nearly six years into investigating Christie's disappearance, they had almost nothing, and her case just sat. There were no developments and really no media coverage. But eventually, another name came across the desk of investigators, one that, in my humble opinion, seems like much more of a match to this crime than Henry Lee Lucas, and that was 25-year-old Manuel Cortez. In 1975, he attempted to abduct a 17-year-old girl in California, but he was promptly arrested and later placed on probation.

21:38In 1976, he was arrested twice for attempting to kidnap and rape two teenage girls in two separate incidents. In 1977, he did successfully kidnap a 16-year-old girl, but she later escaped and turned him into the police. When he caught wind of this, he fled California and moved to Oregon, where he continued harming children. He was finally arrested and eventually convicted of killing Rachel Isser and Deanna Jackman in Oregon in 1979. Both girls were only 11 years old. They were last seen on December 27th going to play tennis near the Southern Oregon State College Stadium. When Cortez was questioned, he confessed to murdering both girls, saying he didn't know what made him do it.

22:25He was also linked to the crimes using physical evidence. They linked his thumb and palm prints on a knife and tennis racket found at the scene. So Cortez has a long history of harming girls in horrific ways, and he killed two girls about a year after Christy went missing, just 20 minutes away from where she was last seen. It seemed like a pretty obvious fit, but investigators couldn't find anything to link him to Christy Farney. And as of recording this episode, he's never confessed to being involved in her disappearance, despite making public appearances where he is open about his crimes. Despite so many aspects of his crimes being a fit, it was another dead end in Christie's case.

23:08And in 1994, Kenneth Ray Farney died in a car crash at the age of 47, leaving Christie's brother James as really the only family she had left. In 2008, her case was reopened by the Medford Police Department. At this point, her case was, and still is today, the oldest case of a missing child in Medford and all of Jackson County. It really seemed that investigators were just trying to get some more traction with a bit of media coverage. But again, her case just sat. But that didn't stop Christy's brother James from speaking out about the case. While there hasn't been a lot of media coverage, especially recently, James has done some interviews.

23:51They're really nothing short of heartbreaking. But I do want to play some clips for you, because really, he's the only family representative Christie's ever had. So here is James speaking with Crystal Henderson for KTVL 10 News in 2013. This has been a long, long, hard, treacherous journey. You know, it's been devastating, you know, to the fullest extent. She was my friend. She was my buddy. She was my sister. You know, we did everything together. We were inseparable. We had so much going on in our life at the time. We were inseparable. I protected her. I defended her. She was supposed to be taken from the court to school where I would have met up with her.

24:36And we would have walked off from school together like we did every single day. Christy was loving. She was caring. She loved to play. She loved to laugh. Why would you want to take that? Why would you want to hurt that? What was it like the first days after she vanished? Hell. It's still hell today. There's no reason why a family should go through what I've went through and still going through today. Again, it's heartbreaking. That interview took place about 35 years after Christy went missing. And you can hear how fresh it still is for James. He really is a secondary victim in this case. During that interview, James was very clear that Christy was abused by their father, the same father he had to go back to after the abuse charges were dropped.

25:29It seems that, like for so many siblings living in abusive households, Christy and James really clung to each other for safety and comfort. Six years after that interview, James spoke with Newswatch 12 in 2019 and said a part of him died when Christy went missing. I was angry. I'm still angry. That was my sister. She was everything to me. To lose her, it killed a part of me that will never return. I'm afraid that the day I get the answer is the day I die. And that hurts. She was my best friend. James died by suicide not long after that interview, never knowing what happened to Christy. The specifics of his death are unclear.

26:22It's mostly just a small snippet in articles about Christy. But what is clear is that her biggest advocate is now gone. Michelle's mother, Lisa McDaniel, has managed to keep her past buried. You said nobody wants to believe there's a monster in their family. You think she's a monster? I don't want to. But I don't know how else you describe somebody who does those things to children. Michelle has lived in the shadow of her family's dark past for decades. But now she's ready to bring it into the light. Neither one of those children were suffering because of a disease. Season six of Nobody Should Believe Me is out now.