Today would have been Doug Ringler's 37th birthday

It was December 28, 1993, when word spread around Carthage that Douglas Ryan Ringler, 8, a second grader at Hawthorne Elementary School had disappeared.

He was the little boy with the cherubic smile who always rode his bicycle up and down the streets. The people in his neighborhood all knew him, but he had vanished, and Carthage residents feared he had been taken by a stranger.

It was a time when Carthage parents held tight to their own children and feared for the boy whose photo (the same photo that accompanies this post) was on the flyers that were being distributed and posted all over town.

One of those distributing the posters was the man who had already murdered Doug Ringler, Terry Cupp- a family friend.

Shortly after the new year began, Doug Ringler's burned body was found in a field near Fort Scott, Kansas. Terry Cupp eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison, where he remains today.

It seems hard to believe that nearly three decades have passed since those days when the most horrible kind of violence, the murder of a child, happened in Carthage, nearly three decades since Doug Ringler brought the joy of childhood to the halls of Hawthorne Elementary, a school which fell victim to the wrecking ball a few years later.

Today would have been Doug Ringler's 37th birthday.

***

Lost Angels: The Murders of Rowan Ford and Doug Ringler, is available locally at Always Buying Books, The Book Guy and Changing Hands Book Shoppe in Joplin and can be purchased in paperback and e-book formats from Amazon.