Monday, January 16, 2017

Carousel of Progress C.S.I.: The Missing Person Case

Reported Crime:  Missing Person
Location: Magic Kingdom's Carousel of Progress
First Officer on Scene: Tom Morrow

This is a Case I was given by Capt. Capos, that I thought right off, Open and Shut.  There is no way the Disney Imagineers and storytellers could make a mistake in leaving no reference to identify a character in an attraction, but I was oh, so, wrong.  The crime was a missing person, a child no less.  From this point forward we are referring to the victim here as Jane Doe.  According to Officer Morrow, "She was there in one scene and gone in the next.  And for the rest of the show for that matter."  I told Tom to slow down and start from the top.

He glanced down at his pad and began.  "It appears our Jane Doe was seen in the very first scene of the Hit Disney show Carousel of Progress."  He went on, "I'm sure you've seen the show, it's been going on for over 50 years.  It has those four scenes that follow a family through time."  He looked up from his notes, "Here's where it gets odd.  They start out in the first scene with a family of 5 and an older family member.  You know, each scene it's the family and like a grandmother or grandfather or even an uncle.  This time it was the Grandmother, The Father, Mother, Little Girl (our Jane Doe), the Son, James, and the older Daughter, Patricia.  And then as soon as the 5 hours of wash was done...BAM... the little girl is gone.  They never see her again.  She never makes it out of the 1900's"

Morrow continues, "We have a picture of her from a witnesses phone and as you can see all looks normal.  No stress in the house, all seems calm.  There might be an issue with son viewing risqué material over in the parlor, but otherwise, normal."

I asked Officer Morrow why the other children had names yet this little girl has none?  He just laughed, "I've been asking all the witnesses the same question, but no one knows.  All of the members of this show have a name, all except that little girl.  Those futuristic looking cast members that direct people to sit down and stand up have name tags, and even that bum Uncle of theirs, Orville, has a name.  S%*T, even the dog, Rover has a name."  I told Morrow to calm down and watch his language on the job.  He had nothing else so I released him from the scene.  I took a couple more pictures and headed to the lab.

Some things to note, our Jane Doe looks to be dressed properly for 1900 and as they had not developed life-like Animatronics at that time, she has to be a real girl.  After checking many sources including Disney Wiki, Wikipedia, WikiLeaks, (side note, WikiLeaks auto-corrected to the way it looks here.  Can you say it is here to stay?) and a lot of Disney attraction information sites.  The father, mother, son and older daughter appear in all scenes as themselves and not as other families as it was thought early on in the investigation.  So now we are at a great big Nothing and it looks like we have an open case that needs more research.  Could it just be an oversight on the Imagineers side and the girl was just put in there to turn the washer crank?  I hope not.  It seems so cruel.

Do you have any ideas?  Leave any tips below in the comments!  We'll talk reward after I see the tip...