The Times

St. Louis - The St. Louis Police Department, in conjunction with the local office of the FBI and the Orlando, FL Police Department, has reopened a 27-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of seven persons who were reported missing when they failed to appear in St. Louis after boarding their Trans World Airlines flight in Orlando. 

 

The initial investigation was triggered when a missing persons report was filed by Terre Nouveau Ventures, Inc., an investment firm based in San Jose, CA. The firm claimed executive vice president Stockton Tealhouse, 36, failed to return from a Florida business trip on Aug. 7, 1997. Airline reservations records showed that Tealhouse boarded TWA Flight 327 the evening before, but did not report for his connecting flight in St. Louis.

 

At the same time in 1997, Orlando Police opened an investigation into the disappearance of Mitchell Burke, 49, when a parole officer could not reach the recent parolee from state prison after repeated attempts. Investigators tied Burke to the same TWA flight after determining Burke’s only known relatives lived in St. Louis. Records later showed he had purchased a one-way ticket to St. Louis with cash. Both cases remained unresolved after no further evidence was ever produced.

 

“The few facts we have of these cases make it sound like a ghost story,” commented XXXX of the St. Louis Police Dept. “It’s as if they got on the airplane and never got off. And no one saw or suspected a thing was wrong. It’s as if they had disappeared in mid-air.”

 

Adding to the mystery is the fact that two of the five missing people were members of the flight crew. Dennis Fassburg, one of the pilots, was not reported missing until his daughter requested he be declared missing and presumed dead five years later. The other crew member, flight attendant Cynthia Burnett, was reported missing in 1997.

 

New details were unearthed after the recent passing of former TWA captain and St. Louis resident, Malcolm Marsh. Apparently, Marsh had made an informal investigation into the matter in 2018 after uncovering a misplaced aircraft logbook containing loose papers with handwritten notes that included the names of the seven missing persons. The notes and the aircraft logbook, which once belonged to a Trans World Airlines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar jumbo jet, were turned over to police by Marsh’s family.

 

More information on the mystery of Flight 327 can be found here https://www.edwardbcarr.com/