Eleven years later, the SUNY Albany Police Chief retired without having solved the case. Clearly at that point SUNY Albany would have done well to hire someone with experience closing cold cases, solving missing person cases.
Instead, in 1996 SUNY Albany hired a man allegedly employed as a Baltimore schoolteacher, an ex-athlete and ex-coach and hardcore football fan: J. "Frank" Wiley. SUNY Albany was pursuing Division II athletics status with the ultimate goal of Division I athletics, so from an utterly perverse point of view the hire made sense.
Wiley did have some out-of-state, and thus to some extent irrelevant, experience working at police departments in Maryland. Did those departments have any experience with such cases? Did he?
Campus cops keeping disappearances a mysteryIf she was ever found, it seems not to have been reported. Wiley, as mentioned here previously, had claimed to be a UMBC police officer from 1980 to 1992 even though (as in the above article) he seems to have been a police department spokesman for much or all of that period of time.Wayde Minami
Retriever Staff Writer
Despite the rumors of murder and kidnapping running rampant on campus, university police have declined to release any further details of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of student Tu Thi Cam Tran or to comment on her possible whereabouts.
Tran, a 24-year-old Vietnamese female, was last seen leaving the Fine Arts building on Nov. 26, and has not been heard from since. Police are continuing to keep the investigation into her disappearance of [sic] tightly under raps. [sic] "It's an on-going investigation," said university police spokesman Frank Wiley. "We won't release any information on an active investigation."
Wiley would only reiterate the police department's official statement: "We do have an active missing persons investigation being conducted by our investigative section. There are a number of leads involving possible whereabouts and we are investigating all of them. At this point we do not suspect foul play."
In what was termed an "unrelated event," staff member Harry Siedeman was reported missing earlier this semester. Siedeman, who directed UMBC's "Upward Bound" program, vanished on Oct. 18 while off-campus. His case is being investigated by the Baltimore County Police.
Police are asking anyone with any information as to the whereabouts of either Tran or Siedeman to contact them immediately at [phone number].
The Retriever. December 11, 1990: 3.
UMBC student has been missing for two weeks
December 13, 1990|By Alisa Samuels | Alisa Samuels,Evening Sun Staff Richard Irwin contributed to this story. A 24-year-old information systems management student at University of Maryland Baltimore County has been missing since Nov. 28.
The brother of Tu Thi Cam Tran reported her missing to the school police, said Louise M. White, director of media relations for UMBC.
Tran lives with her brother and his family in Lanham, Prince George's County, White said.
A Baltimore County police spokesman said the case is being handled by the school since its police officers are fully certified to investigate incidents believed to have occurred on the campus.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1990-12-13/news/1990347221_1_umbc-tran-baltimore-county
Thus, when Mr. Wiley applied at SUNY Albany for employment after having been rejected by the University of New Mexico, by Oberlin College, perhaps by others, and evidently not wanted for further employment by the City of Baltimore, UMBC, or UMES, he had failed to solve one missing persons case.
Two years after Wiley was hired by SUNY Albany, the Karen Wilson case was still unsolved and SUNY Albany Student Suzanne Lyall disappeared. All cases are still unsolved.
Tu Thi Cam Tran http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/t/tran_tu.html
Karen Louise Wilson http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/w/wilson_karen.html
Suzanne Gloria Lyall http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/l/lyall_suzanne.html
Can you please e-mail missingminorityproject@gmail.com about the Tran case. Thank you.
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