Farren Stanberry

Date of last contact: 26th April 1980
Missing from: San Francisco, California
Date of Birth: 26th August 1961
Age at time of disappearance: 18 years
Height: 5’10
Weight: 165 lbs
Distinguishing Characteristics: Appendectomy scar on abdomen, previously broken both wrists, “dirty blonde” hair, Hazel eyes
Investigating Agency: Grant County Sheriff’s Office, Oregon

Basic Case Facts

• 26th April 1980 Farren makes his last call home from San Francisco, where he was living in a hotel
• 16th June 1980 Farren is reported missing by his grandmother in John Day, Oregon
• The other people living at the hotel claimed Farren went to work and never returned
• A decade later a worker at the hotel claimed Farren was visiting a gay man

Farren Wade Stanberry was last heard from when he called home from San Francisco on 26th April 1980. He has never been seen again.

Farren is one of my pet cases and I have spent alot of time researching about him. I can’t claim all the credit for this. I have worked with a fantastic and dedicated group of people who all felt a deep connection to this young man . Over the years we have spoken to some of his friends and neigbours and developed an idea about him.

First a note on accuracy. For some reason most of the missing person resources online state that Farren went missing on 1st May. This is not accurate. After speaking to the detective in charge of Farren’s case, Farren was in fact last heard from on Saturday 26th April. The second piece of misleading information regards the hotel that Farren was staying at. Most places list this as The International Hotel. It was actually The National Hotel as evidenced by the details on his bank account which is held by California Unclaimed Property and where he lists his address as 1139 Market Street – which is the address of The National Hotel.

Farren’s Story

Farren was born in Montana on the 26th August 1961. When he was only 3 years old his parents seperated. Although his father, Melvin, was awarded custody he gave it up and handed Farren and his baby  sister to their mother, Carolyn; who had previously abandoned them. They ended up living with Carolyn in the small town of John Day, Oregon, where Carolyn was raised and family still lived. Farren’s mother had some issues; she was a heavy drinker and had problems with her temper and was thus unable to care for her children. Farren and his sister, Peggy Sue, ended up in the care of their grandmother and aunt. Farren was essentially raised by his grandmother, Beulah and his Auntie Sandy in the little two bedroom family home and he had an extremely close bond with her.

1977 Yearbook photo from Grant Union High, John Day, Oregon. Farren can be seen at the back by the windows.

Farren attended Grant Union High School in John Day, where several of his classmates remember him as a quiet and nice boy, with a small group of close friends. He didn’t play sports or get involved in school activities, but he did like to bowl and read. His childhood friend told me that they spent a lot of time at the town roller skating rink and they would float miles along the river on their inner tubes. His aunt described him as loving, saying he would always do what he was asked. One of his classmates mentioned how he was quite accident prone and often told funny stories about his various misadventures including falling from the rafters of a barn and crashing his bike into a fence. Another of his classmates I spoke to used to have the locker next to Farren’s and remembered Farren’s freckled face always having a smile, but he did say that he had noticed Farren had become somewhat sad and withdrawn towards the end of his Freshman year, though others had not noticed this. One of his best friends from this time told stories of how they would hang-out under the bridge behind the school and smoke and ride their bikes around town. At some point Farren had almost been caught trespassing in a barn by the landowner, after jumping down from the roof he broke both of his wrists!

Farren in the 1977 Grant Union High yearbook

By the start of his Sophomore year in September 1977 Farren had moved. Although the reason is unclear, it seems that he and his sister had moved to Medford, Oregon to live with their mother and her new husband.

Farren as a Sophomore in the 1978 Medford High Yearbook

Farren’s mother, Carolyn, had some problems. When I spoke with an old neighbour from John Day I was informed that she was an alcoholic and had anger issues, especially towards men. By this point Carolyn was already on her third husband and fourth marriage (one of them she had married twice!) and the divorce records give the various reasons as “abandonment” and “cruel and inhuman treatment”. Farren attended Medford High for his Sophomore year 1977-1978. Although I have tried to reach out to his former classmates there I only ever managed to find one person who even remembered his name, so I’m guessing he went under the radar.

He kind of disappeared from the radar after this, but one thing is certain, he dropped out of school as he doesn’t appear in any yearbooks after his sophomore year. Did he work? Did he travel? Nobody seems to know. He next shows up back in John Day in August 1979. It was his 18th birthday and at some point not long after he told his family that he wanted to see the world. He bought a little backpack, hopped on a Greyhound Bus and headed East.
Despite trying, we were never able to discover which places he travelled to, but according to a later interview given to the Oregonion newspaper, his aunt said that he just kept travelling but would always call home whenever he reached a new city.

San Francisco

At some point in 1980 Farren ended up in San Francisco. His family believes it was after about 8 months of travelling, meaning he arrived in April. There is a question mark regarding this time frame or even if he ever travelled east at all or headed straight to California. It is not known how long he had been in the city, but he had managed to get himself a bank account with Wells Fargo Bank, which gives evidence of his address, the contents of which are now held by California Unclaimed Property:

A snapshot of Farren’s unclaimed Wells Fargo account, holding $42.45, and giving his address.

With this address we know that Farren was living at 1139 Market Street, apartment 218. In 1980 this was The National Hotel, but don’t be fooled by the name “hotel”, this was a seedy Single-Room Occupancy. (more on the hotel later).

Farren’s Last Call Home

On 26th April 1980 Farren made a call to his mother. He explained to her that he had lost his job and requested that she send him some money she had been keeping for him. His mother refused. Now, bear in mind that this was Farren’s money she refused to send him. He then called his beloved grandma. She asked him to return to Oregon but Farren refused, saying he was living with some other young men in a hotel and he liked it in San Francisco and he’d “work something out”. He told his gran he loved her.
That was the last time any member of Farren’s family ever heard from him.

This phonecall provides us with two pieces of information. Firstly Farren had lost a job. Secondly he felt his financial situation was in a bad way. This is interesting, because when later questioned the young men he was staying with claimed he left to go to work. This suggests he managed to find another job before he disappeared. We can also see that Farren still had money in his account at the time he disappeared. Might this suggest he remained alive for some time after that that last phonecall?

The Search

It is sad to say that there was no search…at first. On 15th June Farren’s grandma called the hotel as she hadn’t heard from him in 6 weeks. She was told by hotel staff that “he had left, leaving an unpaid bill and all of his posessions behind”. She asserted that this was very out of character for her grandson and she reported him missing in John Day the next day.
The detectives in 1980 assumed that Farren had disappeared by choice and there was very little investigation. The detective in charge of the case told me that his missing person report is very incomplete! Apparently the original detectives never bothered to write up any notes in the casefile. One thing they did do was to call the hotel and speak to the young men who knew Farren who asserted that Farren “left for work one day and never returned”. This tells us one important thing; by the time he disappeared Farren had presumably managed to get himself a new job. Despite trying, we haven’t been able to establish where or what this new job was. But there is one clue; on the California Unclaimed Property there is an unclaimed paycheck in the name of F Stanberry. The paycheck was issued by the Marriott Corporation. I contacted the archivist from Marriott hoping she might help. She suggested Farren may have been selling tickets to Mariott’s theme park located in Santa Clara and she also informed me that Marriott didn’t actually have any businesses in San Francisco in 1980, so if this was Farren’s paycheck, where was he working? Another mystery. After looking into every other F Stanberry living in California at the time, we have managed to exclude all but Farren.

The original detectives did check and note that Farren’s social security number was last used in San Francisco at about the time he went missing . However, they failed to note down the exact date or where he was working when it was used.

Nothing happened for a decade. His family periodically asked police for updates and were told that San Francisco police were looking for him. They weren’t, they’d never heard of him. By the late 80s Farren’s aunt had married, her new husband, despite having never met Farren, took on the search with gusto. He spent years on it, contacted thousand of people…but he didn’t get a single lead. In fact the only information he was ever able to get was from a worker at the National Hotel who told him that Farren had been visiting a gay man, but that man had since died of AIDS. I’ve never been able to establish whether he was visiting a gay man at the hotel, or had gone to meet him elsewhere or even if this story is credible.

Worse news was to follow for Farren’s family. In the early 1990s it was learned that San Francisco police had no idea who Farren was! The original detectives had seemingly never shared Farren’s file with them. That means nobody had ever been looking for him and worse still; if his body had turned up, no one would have realised it was him! I have since tried to reach out to all the medical examiners and coroners in the Bay Area in the hopes they would have any unidentified bodies that match. As of writing this, a body found in San Mateo County in 1985 is still being tested to see if the DNA is a match. He has also been ruled out as a match to several other John Does over the years. Farren’s DNA is on file.

The National Hotel

The National Hotel was an SRO, meaning that it catered to a mainly transient population. It tended to have more long term tenants who called the place home. The important thing to mention about this hotel is that in 1980 it catered to a solely gay clientele. The hotel was in a prime location on Market Street, the main thoroughfare in the city, and was right behind the Greyhound Bus Station. This hotel had a reputation; it was sleezy, dirty and awash with drugs and sex. The rooms were small and meant for just one occupant. Farren lived in Room 218 which was on the top floor.

The National Hotel can be seen in the centre of this photo. It is the building with people sitting on the roof. This photo was taken during the Pride Parade in June, 1980 – only 2 months after Farren’s last phonecall.

I managed to speak to two people regarding the National Hotel. The first was a man who moved there in October 1980, coincidentally into Room 218! He had never heard of Farren but told me that the hotel was “very gay”. He also mentioned how people made friends and the older men would often look after the younger ones and help them. He had many happy memories from that time.

Left: A hallway with rooms at The National Hotel. Right: a room in the National Hotel. The rooms were small with a single bed, sink and drawers. Photos from circa 1980s.

The second man worked at the hotel in 1983 and was able to give me some further information about the workings of the hotel. He indicates that it was a very common occurrence for men to skip out on paying their bills and even leave their belongings behind. At this time the bill was usually paid at the end of the week, not in advance.When this happened the room would be padlocked for one month until the bill was paid, if it wasn’t then the posessions were donated to charity and any ID was thrown out. So this raises the question; did Farren choose to leave of his own accord because he was unable to pay his bill? Or was his bill unpaid because something bad had happened to him? Farren did still have $42 in his bank account, the room was about $40 so he could have paid his bill and stayed a further week. He told me there were usually 80 residents of which 40 usually had normal jobs and the rest were either drug dealers or sex workers.

One other important thing he told me was that he was adamant that no member of staff from 1980 remained into the 90s and even if they did there was no way they would specifically remember Farren; who’d they see as just another guy who skipped on his bill. This raises the question that his uncle’s story about him visiting a gay man is a mistake or a misunderstanding.

Was Farren Gay?

There has been much speculation as to whether Farren was gay and whether this may have been a factor in his disappearance. I personally believe that he was. There are a number of things that make me think so:

• San Francisco itself. At the time San Francisco was a mecca for young gay men, they arrived in droves from across the states to a place that was well-known to have an active and more accepting gay community.
• Of all the hotels in the city Farren chose to stay in one which advertised itself as a specifically gay hotel.
• Farren may have been visiting a gay man at the time he disappeared.
• I spoke to one of Farren’s best friends from John Day, who is himself a gay man. He described Farren as “queenie” when young and another said that looking back he thought Farren probably was gay.
• By the 1990s Farren’s family was advertising in the San Francisco gay press, begging him to call them. In a later newspaper article they were asked whether Farren was gay, they responded “Possibly, we wouldn’t care either way”.

Farren’s family placed this ad in the Bay Area Reporter, an LGBTQ publication for him to call his grandma. Sadly, it was surrounded by erotic adverts.

The Theories

There are various possibilities of what happened to Farren which I will lay out below. But first I should mention what his family, friends and the detective handling his case believe. His family believe that Farren is dead and and that he is buried somewhere in the California landscape. They say that Farren was a naïve country kid who wouldn’t have been able to vanish without a trace. The detective believes that Farren was killed in 1980 and they weren’t able to identify his body. His friends however believe that he took himself away somewhere and probably had a great life. In an odd twist, when I first contacted and old friend and a neighbour they were both under the impression that Farren had gone to live in either Louisiana or South America!

In one more odd twist when I was reaching out to people in San Francisco I happened to contact a psychic who used to own a yoga studio in the vicinity of The National Hotel. He informed me that Farren had moved to New York City and died unexpectedly in 2010. Make of that what you will!

Suicide

Did he kill himself? Many believe so. The Golden Gate Bridge was perhaps the world’s suicide hotspot at the time. It has also been pointed out that he seemed to have both financial and family problems at the time. I have personally never favoured this idea. There is evidence that he found another job and began earning money. I also think he could have returned to his grandma’s house, he hadn’t argued with her. She stated that in his last phonecall he sounded normal and was enjoying his life. We must also consider that his body has never surfaced. I cannot wholly discount this idea, but I think it is unlikely.

He died of AIDS

This theory can be excluded. The AIDS epidemic did not begin until after he disappeared and there is no evidence of anyone unidentified dying from the disease.

He changed his identity

His family believe he wouldn’t have had the knowhow to do this, but he may have met others who did. It was incredibly easy to live under an assumed identity in 1980, however I have researched this and you never lose your old identity. At some point his old identity would have caught up with him. I must also factor in that I do not believe he would have ceased contact with his beloved grandma by choice. His mother, yes, but never his grandma.

Considering that he was 18 and technically he had already left home, what reason would he have to change his identity? He never had to return to his family, but he could have called his grandma occasionally. I see no reason for this drastic action.

Accidental death

After scouring news reports from the time I can’t find any evidence of an accident involving an unidentified individual. I assume he had his ID on him at the time so he should have been identified.

Serial killer

Although there were active serial killers at the time, such as Randy Kraft, they were mostly operating in southern California. I haven’t found any mention of serial killere operating in the Bay Area while Farren was there, of course that doesn’t preclude the chance there was an, as yet, unidentified killer active.

Killed by “The Gay Man”

According to his uncle, he was told by a hotel worker in the 90s that Farren was visiting a gay man at the time he disappeared but that this man had died of AIDS. We did reach out to the uncle in the hopes of learning more details but he did not respond. Therefore we’ve never been able to verify if there was a gay man. If he did indeed exist then he was well known to the hotel staff who knew he had died. My feelings on this is that Farren may have been specifically visiting this man at the hotel and it was someone he had previously met on his travels. If this man existed then obviously he would be a significant person of interest. Important to note, the official case file contains no information on this man, in fact the uncle never passed it onto law enforcement. This theory doesn’t square with the next one:

Killed by someone he knew

If his friends from the hotel were right then Farren went to work one day and never came back. I personally believe them. That leads me to conclude that Farren was either killed by a co-worker, a colleague or someone he encountered on his way to or from work; ie – someone who offered him a ride. Since his body has never been found then we can conclude that it was hidden. When a murderer hides a body it suggests that they know the individual and isn’t a random murder. That’s one reason we have desperately tried to find out where Farren worked, if we know where he was going, we’ll likely identify his killer. But to no avail so far.

This is my personal preferred theory. I believe that someone at his workplace made a pass at him, or got fresh, or offered him a ride home after his shift or a combination of all three. Whatever happened resulted in Farren’s death and his body was hidden, where it still remains.

Sources

Living Downtown The History of Residential Hotels in the United States Paul Groth

Bay Area Reporter

The Oregonion

Personal recollections of friends and neighbours

Grant County Sheriff

Grant Union High and Medford High Yearbooks