_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
Damien got his tongue pierced. And Damien, I wouldn’t say he had a lisp, but he had something. His one lip had this blah part underneath and just like to hear his voice and to hear him say “Dana,” and I always made him say “Aunt Dana.” I always pushed that, “Aunt Dana.” Yeah. So he got his tongue, pierced, and his tongue was just blah blah, he couldn’t talk.
“Aunt Dana. Aunt Dana.”
And even when the swelling went down. He didn’t. He couldn’t talk, he just couldn’t. I don’t know if it wasn’t back far enough or what, but it just didn’t work. And when he was trying to talk, he could, you know, so in one night, apparently in the middle of the night, he swallowed it. And I said something, like, “you took it out.”
And he’s like, “no, I swallowed it,” he says. But he didn’t get paid … for another week, week and a half? And he was gonna go buy a new tongue … tongue ring. I knew. It would close up in that time. Didn’t say shit. Did not say shit.
He did not need to have his tongue pierced. I just kept telling him, “just dig through, find that one and boil it up.
You’ll hear a clink.
Just dig through your little poo poo and find it. He’s like, “oh, you’re gross.”
But.
So I never said nothing and he never put it back in again.
Was he pissed?
I don’t remember, but …
I could see him making people laugh. Feel like probably liked to make people laugh?
I guess …
He liked to piss people off too. He liked a little of both. But … there’s some good … I’ll think of some more and if I can find that video …
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From Your Daily Local and Two Moms Media in Warren, Pa., this is Smoke: The Disappearance of Damien Sharp. We’re your hosts, Brian Hagberg, and Stacey Gross.
Damien Sharp graduated from Warren Area High School in 1998. There, his reputation was multifaceted. He was a goth kid, but also a wrestler. When he graduated, he went to the Army – the 10th Mountain Division – and served in Bosnia before returning home. Once he got home, people in the town where he lived – the City of Warren, Pa., with a population of around 9,000 – knew him as the guy who wore all black and had some kind of affinity for a rubber chicken.
That rubber chicken has run like a thread through the past year of my life, which is constructed mostly of scraps of stories about Damien from more people than I can name off the top of my head.
Almost all of them had a rubber chicken story.
He’d hang it off his backpack. The black backpack featured in his missing poster. He’d wrap it around his shoulders like a mink stole. He’d have it on him a lot of the time, people say, because it got a reaction. And Damien was all about a reaction.
He’d even walk that rubber chicken down the road on a wire leash, like a dog, his Aunt Dana Kibbey told me a few weeks ago. Dana and I connected last fall, and have been in contact since. When I sat down to record her, it was almost a formality.
We met at a local coffee shop and she just started talking about Damien as if we’d met through him or something.
until we met, I couldn’t have told you who she was on the street. I knew the name. Even before the podcast, I’d read what was easy to find, on an off, through the years.
The names, alone, were what stuck with me.
Mostly because they felt fraudulent. Like they weren’t really connected to anything.
I spent probably an entire weekend this winter just staring at the pages of newspaper articles, laid out on my table in patchwork, finding myself more drawn to the pictures than to the words. Janeane – Damien’s mom – holding a portrait of Damien as a soldier. Janeane telling a crowd about Damien after she became a caseworker for the CUE.
The family, meeting with other families of other people missing in the region. Divers. Searchers. Damien’s driver’s license photo.
His hair was black in that photo. The naturally blonde, naturally pale, 5’7” wrestler, and soldier, and brother, and son, and nephew can’t be captured in a million driver’s license photos or ten million feature stories for a local newspaper.
Damien was not a person you could categorize easily.
His aunt told us that himself.
Damien lived with his aunt Dana in seventh grade. Already raising her own son, Thomas, she said it was awkward stepping into the role of helping Damien with his homework and trying to keep him moving forward on the fly.
But, Dana said, over that time Damien started to grow into the wrestler he’d become.
It was hard for me, at that age, to be two things at one time. It was hard for me to even acknowledge that two things could be true at one time. I could either be a hippie or a smart kid. I could either be a bad kid or a good kid.
Damien fascinated me because he seemed to be able to be two completely opposite things at one time.
Here’s Dana, to talk about Damien as a wrestler, and how he became one, as she saw it.
_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
… and he would take it over town. On a leash on one of those leashes with like the wire in it, you know, so you would pretend like you were walking a fake dog and with the chicken on it and people just looked at him like he was crazy and he … to him, that was funny. To do that to people, to make people look at him that way, you know, to get a response just to get it, you know. You know, he … he loved that and I think it was a lot like the nails.
Painting his nails black. Now, he did that in school when he was wrestling and he was doing very well. I mean to come from where he did to get into this, you know, being an athlete, you know and and Letterman jacket type of thing, you know, for Damien to go to that it was you know and he had his black nails and he told me. That when he was in a stance and ready, he made sure his palms were up, you know, he made sure not palms were up. That the top of his hands were up. So they could see his nails, he said.
“And I watched their eyes look down at my nails and look back up, look down at my nails. It was distracting them. So you know, when the whistle blew or whatever. I could catch ’em,” he said. You know, I’d move my hands. Anything to make them notice ’em,” and they would and …
He was psyching them out.
Yes, and he was psyching them out.
You know, like getting them ready for that, you know, so that was …
He was good at reading people, wasn’t he?
Um. The ones he cared to, the ones he cared to, I think … He’d would go out of his way sometimes, to piss me off. And he thought that was funny. You know, he would think that was funny to do, you know, goofy little things. And then other times he didn’t want to, you know what I mean …
When he lived with me, he was in 7th grade. And I was. I went to the school. I went to Beaty every day and there was an understanding that they were to bring … have his stuff ready. They can’t bitch that he wasn’t getting stuff done and handing it in if they didn’t get it to me and I knew what had to be done. You know, so we would work with that and then they would come back with paperwork that said, well, he didn’t show how he got the answer.
We didn’t have Internet. Then you know what I mean. If you get the answer, there’s nobody in my house smart enough to come up with this shit, you know. But you know, so trying to get him. OK, now we’re doing the same thing, but we’re gonna write it out on how you did it and …
It’s really hard to deal with. I can’t say that Damien was ADD, but I know that my younger children were and now I’m going to the school. Dealing with the school with ADD because I’d get there, the teachers didn’t hand in the work that he had to do or nothing was in the office some days and then other days there’s two or three things.
And but the teachers wanted him to do it. So I’m trying to, you know, step up in the role of, you know, a parent when I was a parent, but only to a small child, you know to step into, you know, his 7th grade and the school just wasn’t doing it, you know? So for him to get to where it was in high school to the point that he was at actually doing athletic stuff. But he felt good about it and he was good at what he did, you know. And it was kind of like. Jujitsu, or whatever it was that he got into as …
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Damien always had a tendency toward a fight, Dana said, and that likely came from the way he grew up, but it showed itself in the way he interacted with peers.
_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
I don’t know. He just. Wanted to be accepted. You know he wanted to be loved and …
His dad was … different. He was … all about the boys. Skip was all about the boys. But boys don’t cry. You be a man. Stand up. You take it. You know he was very. He was hard on them, you know. He loved them. Very proud of them. But he. He was part of that
… like a man’s man?
… man’s man. And you stand up. You don’t take any shit, you just, you know. That kind of thing.
So any sensitivity that Damien would have would have been kind of … weeded out a little bit? You think?
I don’t know how he grew up to be so sensitive because he was very sensitive and you can tell that by the female friends that he had, you know, the girls in school. I work with a woman by the name of (removed) and she said, and, that they’re redheads, which being a redhead and younger. Easy target to pick on. And she said, you know, when she was younger, you know, little, you know, little fool kid, you know. And then the kids would pick on her, you know, and she says she remembers Damien stepping right up and sticking up for her.
And she says just thinking, she says, “I think back at, you know, at that age. For somebody to stand up to other kids, you know, even peers, even friends, and say that how uncool that was,” that’s pretty unheard of. You know …
… it’s a pretty strong personality.
Yeah. And that peer pressure that we all fall to. And you just couldn’t stand and I can’t even say that I haven’t done that. You know, there’s a few times I should have stood up, but you don’t, you know …
But Damien did. And I’ve heard that more than once from several people saying … you know mostly girls you know just they …
I believe he had a soft very soft inner side. He had to, to have the female friends that he had they had respect for him, I think, because he treated them with respect …
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Today, you technically can’t find a county in Pennsylvania without a mental health facility. They exist, in the most rural of places, but even in relatively populated areas it’s difficult to find a mental health facility that both takes Medicaid – which 22 percent of Warren County residents are eligible for as of 2019; up from 16.2 percent in 2002, according to the Center for Rural Pennsylvania’s statistics – and has a wait time for an intake appointment less than six weeks long.
Since the 1966 MH and MR Act, each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties are required to provide mental health and developmental services to the 12.81 million total of the commonwealth’s residents as of 2018.
Theoretically, it works.
In actuality, most rural counties like Warren experience exceptional difficulty in recruiting and retaining the prescribing psychiatrists, licensed therapists, and other professionals required to staff the commonwealth’s rising mental health needs.
Some 2017 research for the USC Schaeffer Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics backs that up. If you’re interested in how mental health, social programming, crime, recidivism, and issues like generational poverty intersect, you should read that presentation. There’s a link in the show notes, and it’s from 2017, but it’s recent enough you can extrapolate out with further research into trends in your particular area.
Those intersections – between crime, social, and family issues, as at the heart of Damien’s story.
Janeane Shanahan, had Damien – her first child – when she was fifteen years old.
She and Damien’s dad Skip moved into a trailer and started raising Damien.
_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
Funny thing is, it just got a camper, just took it up to Red Oak, and I remember when I was a kid going with a friend of my mom, they had a camp up there and going up there with them. We were never in a financial place to do that kind of thing. You know, we didn’t have those. My mother was a single mother. And …
I was at Red Oak Campground when I found out Damien was born. My mom’s friend went to work. Excuse me, went to work and came back up and told me that he was born.
Were you so excited?
Just, you know. Yeah, well, I don’t know. Well, actually, to tell you the truth, I don’t know how excited I was like 13. I guess I really didn’t know anything from …
“Yeah. Whatever, Janeane gets all the attention now …
… right, and that was her first? Was she excited to have have him or was it kinda scary?
I don’t. I don’t know. I think. What was she, Janeane’s two years older than me. So she was 15. She was 15. And I think it was. “Stick it to my mom. Skip, you know, and I are having this baby and Skips, you know, Mother Rose was all, yeah” type thing.
But I was only 13, so it was so different. You know, we there was us three girls. At home and we’re all year apart, Janeane and Bobbi and I and we just want to have fun, you know, and I just wanted … and now Janeane was stopped. You know, she was an old hat…
But they had bought that trailer down in the trailer park and they’re fixing it up.
Yeah, I’m like, “I’m 13 who wants to do that shit,” you know? Yeah. So. But she had her last one at 19. And she was done. She had three of them by 19 and …
I was terrified at 29. I was 29. Like, I don’t know.
I was 19. And I remember thinking, “eh, you know kids are cool I’ll have one.”
See how this turns out.
See how this turns out.
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Damien’s family had issues but within the context of family issues present in Warren County at the time, but they weren’t outliers. Families had issues in Warren County in 2002. And, because it was still a little too spicy to have significant mental health issues 20 years ago – as opposed to today, when I can jump on Facebook and let everyone know my exact score on the Beck Anxiety Inventory if I want (27 and ¾, it’s fine, everything is fine) – people tended not to talk about them.
We wouldn’t want to cause a scene.
I wonder how much of Damien’s shock value aesthetic was a reaction to that repression of emotion and authenticity. I grew up in a world where “what would the neighbors think” was still sufficient to justify all manner of what today would amount to parenting sins.
You did not, under any circumstances, come home and tell your parents you thought you might be transgender and want their help in exploring that.
Unless you wanted to be homeless.
I mean, I can’t speak for every parent in Warren County in the 1980’s and 90’s but I’m pretty confident here. If your mom or dad was the exception to that rule please reach out because, honestly, I’d love for you to just tell me more about your fascinating life. I don’t mean that facetiously. I’m serious. I don’t know a single kid whose mental health was at the forefront of their parents’ conscious awareness growing up.
I don’t think you can really understand the stones it took in 2002 to walk down the street in black nail polish as a man in Warren County unless you lived here, or I do a good enough job describing it that you can recognize a place you do know in it.
Dana talks about how Damien was a deep guy. He thought deeply. When he cared about things, or people, he cared deeply.
_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
… but Damien had a mother and a father, and I’m not going to take anything away from either one of them. But I am gonna say that Damien … Has been searching for love and acceptance from the time he was young. And. Unfortunately. He has a brother and sister that knew him well. You know, because they were all so close in age. Jamie and and Steven. Now he has two younger he has younger sister and younger brother, and unfortunately, Mandy and Brian were very young. You know when …
Yes, like, they knew him. They lived with him, you know? But you know, they they didn’t get to be in their 20s and know their their brother, you know,
…as an adult.
So. Which, I don’t think any of us really knew him as an adult? Who’s 22, yeah …
… that’s not, uh, walking chickens down the road. So, yeah …
… I’m gonna be 40 in a couple years and I still don’t think I’m entirely an adult.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it is a different experience, you know, knowing someone as a kid and growing up together and then going through adult … adult experiences, adult traumas, like, just having children and stuff.
I wonder now. You know, and I. As sensitive as he is. And I and I he had this thing for his mom. He he just wanted his mom to love him so much that he he tried him over backwards he you know. And sometimes she was busy and had other things on her mind and um, but he was always searching for that. And now that Janeane’s in the position that she is. I believe myself wholeheartedly that he would be there for her. Like this, you know what I mean? And I think it would really tear him up to see his mom like this.
Janeane and I, like I said, being sisters didn’t get along a lot of the time because we had, you know, different parenting thoughts. But she was a mother so much earlier than I was. I think Damien is 6 years older than Thomas. Yeah, he was 42 and Thomas … just turned 37. So yeah, you know, he’s gonna be turning … So …
You know, they didn’t really grow up together and we moved away and everything like that, but I think. You know, we we parented differently. Um. But I also got to have a bit more time …
… I had I had Damien … I had Damien, I didn’t have Damien. I had Thomas when I was 18, 19, you know, and she was 15, so that did make a big difference. You know, I got a couple more years partying and that she did and. So I understand, you know that she needed to know what life was, but.
And Damien hated that Damien hated that we didn’t get along.
He wanted peace? He wanted a family that …
He loved his mom. He wanted me to love his mom. He wanted me to see his mom the way he did.
He…would he defend her?
Oh yeah, and so I would find myself … So, Damien, you know, if he was upset that his mom was unable to meet with him and very, very mad about it, saying mean things, I would get ahold of my sister Anziette and say “hey,” you know and Anziette would call Janeane and say, “hey,” and then pretty soon Damien would say to me, “Aunt Dana my mom called me,” and I’d be like, “wow that’s great…”
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Ultimately, Dana told me, Damien spent his entire life searching for love and acceptance and it’s because he adored the living hell out of his mother Janeane so much that, she says, she found herself trying to smooth over issues between the two of them for him. Dana loved Damien, she said, and Damien loved his mom.
I think Damien liked getting reactions, as Dana said about his rubber chicken walking days. But I think – and this is straight speculation on my part, but I just get the sense that – what Damien liked about those reactions is the fact that he was watching people being challenged to do the same.
His style was confrontational. Younger kids described his apartment, and him in a first impressions situation, as “kind of scary.”
Damien seemed, early on, to respond to a cultural tendency to repress, typical of our time and place in the world, by acting out in a way that demanded the issue be dealt with, and would not allow for it to be ignored.
Dana’s son, Thomas, was young when Damien lived with them his 7th grade academic year. Thomas is now the Chief County Detective for the Warren County District Attorney’s Office, Thomas is actually who encouraged me to reach out to his mom in the first place, after Brian and I made the podcast public on social media last August.
“I’m in an odd situation,” he said back then. As the chief detective he can investigate Damien’s case, but because Damien is his cousin, he said, “as a conflict I don’t get involved.” But, Thomas said, “I’m going to give you my mom’s number. She’s the one that found Damien was missing.”
We gotta take a quick break, but when we get back, we’ll jump straight back to Dana, because it was around this point of the conversation that she started talking about how the family found out something was wrong. We’re going to start laying out the timeline of the investigation, which started nearly two weeks after Damien’s last known day alive.
Hang tight.
MIDROLL
So if you’re just jumping on board and aren’t familiar with the night Damien went missing – or if it’s still just super confusing…trust us, we get it – let’s recap that weekend.
Friday, May 24, 2002, Damien had a party at his apartment, 19 Cedar Street, in Warren. Damien’s friend since childhood, Dave, was there that night.
Dave said that a bunch of people were over, and he couldn’t remember if Damien’s brother Steven was there or not, but he does remember that someone the police eventually questioned in the case – the last person known to have seen Damien alive until about a month ago, actually – was there. That person actually spoke with us, and we’ll dive deep into what he remembers of that night too, but for now we’re sticking to the broad strokes, because this case is rabbit hole after rabbit hole, and it’s easy to get lost. For now, know that Damien had some friends over to drink that Friday night. He, Dave, and a half dozen or so others were drinking. Dave chose not to go on tape for this podcast, but had a vivid memory of Damien from that night.
He didn’t know at the time it would be, as he said, one of his last clear memories of Damien.
Everyone was drunk, Dave said. It was late. Damien was cooking chicken.
Always with the chicken.
Some of the chicken fell into the sink, filled with dirty dishes, and Damien was upset he’d wasted the meat, but long story short, the chicken got rinsed and eaten anyhow, because fuck it.
It’s a really simple memory. Almost nothing to it at all. But that, Dave said, is probably the last clear image of Damien he can recall before he went home that night.
The next morning, Damien’s friend Danica said, she picked him and maybe a couple others up for a high ride. I sat down with Danica for this podcast a week or so before Dana. Here’s Danica to describe that morning, and give a little more detail to the picture of Damien that’s developing.
_____________________ DANICA STEC_____________________
… really, that’s all like. I just remembered we went for high ride. It was. It was me, him and like. Maybe like two other people, like, can’t remember who it would have been. It could have been like maybe his brother or it could have been (removed).
I get the sense that they were going to hanging out from the night before and picking him up in the morning?
Yeah … Of course, there was supposed to be a party Memorial Day that weekend, right? There was always a party. Every Memorial Day weekend. And it was like not one spot on Brown Run. It was all of it.
Everybody like. Different cliques would have like different areas and like it would be all up and down. So, like, who knows what party you would end up at. You could walk up and down that road …
… Now is it on Brown Run itself or is it on 160?
All of them, all of it.
OK. All like all up in there?
Yeah. All of it. Yeah. All of it was, like …
all along Brown Run, like, on 160 to the upper reservoir?
Yep.
There’s 160. And then there’s 160 that goes down and back out to f204our. I think that goes that.
Yep. I think all that, and then that goes out to Ludlow, one of them goes out to Ludlow …
… 259 I think goes to Ludlow, which is right behind 160.
Yeah. And then. It was like all sorts different places up and there was all sorts of different like areas, people like go to all sorts of different parts.
So who gravitated to where up there?
Never knew, they just found their spot when they got there. I mean, like, you know, like there could have been like a group that went up. I didn’t go to that one that year because I ended up having to work or something. I. Like like we would all go as like a group. Like say like I’d meet somebody at one party. And the other people didn’t like it. They would just leave me there and go to a different party.
Yeah, like that. Did you ever witness any altercations up there or…
I mean like, there were altercations and some dude hit on some dude’s girlfriend or whatever but
You never felt like you were in danger up there?
No, no, no, no. Not like that. No. NO.
Do you feel like he went to the woods that night, or do you feel like something happened in town? Like, just your personal …
My personal …
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Either way, Danica said, she dropped Damien back off at his house and all seemed well.
_____________________ DANICA STEC_____________________
How did he seem that day?
Happy!
Happy he was in an good mood and …
Yeah he was happy we were going to a party everybody was thrilled about going to that party. That and I’m sure Gibstock, but he didn’t go to Gibbstock that year, I don’t think. So I think it was that year though, or a different year. But he was pretty happy.
I mean, of course we were driving around doing stuff we weren’t supposed to because we were kids. You know, we would have been like 21. Um. Like the fresh, newbie drinkers, after a huge hangover, let’s pick people up and for a high ride, go smoke a bunch of weed and woods, come back and whatever.
We split ways and …
and that’s what it was.
Yeah, that’s what it was. That’s kind of. I remember I remember waving, doing, saying, see you later, you know. And he was walking up the hill is going to his house. That’s it.
It just sucks …
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It occurs to me now, as I sit pulling pieces here and pieces there from each person’s interview these past few weeks, that a collection of essays just about the last clear memory Damien’s friends and family have of him could be written. If you knew Damien, we invite you to reach out and leave us a message that we’ll air in an upcoming episode. Tell us your last clear memory of Damien Sharp, in your own words. Visit the link to our Anchor page in the show notes, where you can leave that story in our mailbox right from your phone. Easy as voicemail. But way less annoying.
Anyhow, what Damien did leading up to that Saturday evening, May 25, is a weird story.
First, Steven told us, Damien stopped at Masterskater to discuss their plans for the evening. Earlier in the week, before Damien hurt his knee, Steven said the crew – Dave, Damien, Steve, and a handful of other regular friends planned to camp at a spot picked out by Steven’s friend, “Castaway” John.
We reached out numerous times to Castaway to see if he’d tell us his memories of Damien. So far, no response.
Steven said that the plan had been to drag a keg out into this spot of Castaway’s, and party. Woods parties, if you’re not familiar have a traditional template.
Basically, someone procures a keg of beer, and hopefully remembers to also grab something to tap it with, someone secures use of either a farmer’s fallow pasture or a section of forest, and folks are invited. This is not glamping. This is a canvas pup tent slung between a couple of oak trees situation, the only busted ass lawn chairs your mom would let you bring because she knew what you intended to do to them out there, and as much Cheetos and Mountain Dew as you could afford and pack in.
Fire ring made of scavenged rocks. Firewood…literally everywhere around you for mile upon unpopulated mile. Tarps hanging from trees if rain was coming, or being hastily tied to trees if it showed up unannounced. Trying to stay dry was part of the adventure, after all.
But, Steven said, the knee was a problem. The spot they’d chosen was around a one-mile hike off the roadside, and Damien was struggling enough with curbs and steps – it wasn’t impossible for him to get around, according to Steven, especially if he was motivated – but the rain had made mud, and the mud was the ultimate problem.
They’d decided instead to just basically repeat the Friday night party at Damien’s place again, Steven said. That’s why Damien came to the skate park that afternoon. Being 20 years old, Steven was too young to purchase alcohol, so he was giving Damien a few bucks for a bottle, maybe a cut of an ounce of weed.
Party favors.
Then, Steven said, a friend drove Damien to another friend’s house where, according to statements provided to police at the time, one of Damien’s friends gave him $900. People told police at the time, and this person verified to us directly last fall, that he gave Damien that money so he could pick up a pound of weed while he was picking up those party favors.
It gets sticky here, because we’re at the edge of a rabbit hole. Two roads diverge, as they say. There are two belief systems when it comes to how Damien made his money in Warren after coming home from the Army. Dana says Damien was living on unemployment, and when he got paid he spent it up quick and wound up scrounging by Wednesday or Thursday of week two before the next check hit his account. Others say Damien was selling. And he wasn’t just selling pot, some of them say.
We’re going to break this entire topic of conversation wide open for you in a later episode, so we’re not going to get too deep into speculation on Damien’s “door dash of marijuana” CV or lack thereof here. Just know, Damien was running errands that afternoon looking for something to liven up whatever party he intended to head out to that night.
Which party that was, it turns out, is yet another fork in the speculative last road Damien took that weekend. But again. Let’s try to stay basic here or I promise you’ll be lost like Jack Torrance in the hedge maze.
Damien stopped at Water Street, where he picked up money and an order, and then the friend who’d driven him there drove him from Water Street to the home of a relatively new friend. At the corner of Dahl and Prospect Streets, Sam dropped Damien off and he crutched it, presumably, up to a large apartment building – 332 Prospect. “The Mansions.”
There, in apartment 12, Damien would have his last known face-to-face interaction with another human being that anyone knew of until earlier this year. At that point, everyone agrees, Damien hung out for about an hour.
What precisely went on inside that apartment according to its occupant will be the focus of an upcoming episode also so, again. We’re going to keep it basic and say that at 6 p.m., this person told us, the two parted ways outside the apartment building, with plans to meet up later that night for a party.
And, then, in the words of the investigator who took over Damien’s case in 2003, “it’s like the world just opened up and swallowed him.”
It would be another week – not until June 3 – that Dana and Janeane would show up at the City of Warren Police Department at 11:30 p.m. to report Damien missing, for the first official time.
But that’s because, Dana says, it wasn’t until around Saturday, June 1 – a full week after anyone stopped seeing Damien around – that anyone called the family to let them know.
_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
What was it like going into the apartment after ’cause? It was a few days, you know, it was about a week, and then …
… it was about a week that Stacy. Someone had reached out to Stacy, his stepmother. And asked her, “hey, you see, Damien has he been around,” and this was his very, you know, his closest friend. So she stopped at my house. I was out front working. She lived up the road from me and said, “hey,” you know, and his dad Skip was out of town. Or busy or something and she said, “would you line running down with me,” and I said “no, no problem,” you know?
So we went down and. Obvious nobody there. But there was like dishes in the sink, you know, and they’re getting kind of slimy, you know it, you know, it was obvious nobody had been in the house for a little while.
Some time.
Yeah.
Did he still have his car? But it just wasn’t running or …
I don’t know where his car was. He didn’t have it. It blew up. And I think it was might have been at his dad’s or something. He didn’t have it down where he was living. That’s why my mom was taking him to put in applications. He had put one in at Whirley and stuff like that. But that’s one of the reasons he got the apartment. You know where he did it? Cedar St. Because the Y was right there. So. And the Y was such a big part. Yeah, you know he was there every day.
That Thursday I know is last time he checked in.
Yeah. And when this went in front of Art Zerbe because at the time he’s the one that had to. Sign the missing persons paperwork and stuff, part of it or whatever. We had to go in front of him, and he had told me as soon as he heard about this. You know, he knew Damien, at the Y, you know he. Went down and. Went to see and went through the books when Damien and he said I was sure I had seen him since then. He said, but no, he hadn’t been in since then.
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I asked Dana to describe the actual first experience when they got to the police station that night. The issue of “did the police do enough,” or even just “did the police take an interest from the beginning,” is another of one of those rabbit holes. You can find any answer you like depending on who you ask. Some people say yes, others say they did nothing. The truth, probably – as with most things – lies somewhere in the middle of those two extremes, and even Dana herself offered a caveat or two as she talked through the issue of the family’s rapport with the department, and vice versa, over the years.
_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
So you guys got there. Did you feel like …
Well, no, because you know. It’s like, we felt like, “we need to do something,” ’cause. When we got to his house and there was notes there, there was a few notes and it says, you know, just I don’t even remember word for word. But something like “hey, dude. Hope everything is OK, but you know you better make this right.” So just different things like that. A couple of people were trying to reach him.
And when we got in the apartment, the phone rang. I answered the phone. So I’m … someone asked for Damien. I said no, he’s not here. I said. May I ask who calling and he said, “oh no it’s just a friend looking for him,” and I said, well, I told him who I was and said. Actually we’re looking for him.
Nobody, you know, he wouldn’t give his name, but he said you might wanna check the jail. I don’t know if he suggested hospital to or not, but he said you might wanna check the jail. And I said OK. But I did give this this person my number and asked if he would call me if he hears anything or anything like that. And I did talk with him again. I believe his name is Albert.
And he just said nobody had heard anything or nothing like that. And everybody, everybody wondering where he was from what I remember, you know …
Yeah, and that’s kind of what was going around. Danica said the same thing. And I know somebody who hung out with (removed). He was saying, you know, it kind of was like. Where is he? But nobody wanted to talk about it, you know. And it’s still to this day it’s it’s kind of impossible to find out who was riding with that night or, you know …
… well, that wasn’t the night. The first time we went into the house. That was not the night that we went … OK. Stacy went home and told his dad Skip. And. Skip says he’s 22. He’s he’s fine quit being girls. And. So then I think it went … It was after that, anyways, I contacted a state trooper that I knew just personally and said, hey, you know, this is kind of going on. Can I file a missing persons conference because Skip wasn’t interested in, you know, he he had no reason to think something was, you know. He just thought we were overreacting at the time.
I was not talking to Janeane. Damien, you know, sisters, we fought all the time, you know, and. So. He told me no. I can’t do anything it it has to be a parent so. I reached out to Janeane and it might’ve been, I can’t remember the day. Maybe it was Monday or something like that, or the following weekend. I can’t remember, but it was within days there. I reached out to Janeane and said hey, have you heard from Damien yet? And she said no. Why? What’s up? I have been trying to reach him. What’s going on?
And I told her what happened. Stacy and I, you know that we. Janeane and Stacy didn’t get along. You know the ex wife and the new, like. So. And I told her I can’t file a missing persons without a parent. Everything like that. And what we found … so…. Janine didn’t drive, didn’t like driving or whatever, so I had to go pick her up. She lived in Celoron (N.Y.). Get her back here. We got to the Police Department. It was late.
I’m not sure the time it was like 9, 11, somewhere in there. And the doors were closed. And so, you know, something around the back. So we went around to the back. I don’t know if we beeped, buzzed, knocked, whatever and, you know, they said, you know, OK, I want to talk about a missing person.
Well, you know, they just didn’t seem interested at all, you know? Well, they probably seemed. It’s 11:00 o’clock at night. Someone didn’t come home, you know. How old is he? 22. OK, whatever. And then finally said well we think maybe drugs were involved, you know, ’cause, we seen those notes at the house, you know?
OK, then they would talk a little bit, but it ended up being. We thought we filed a missing person. And we didn’t. Apparently it wasn’t till like 2 weeks later that they had a us go in front of Zerbe, and then to find out that this was the official one, which we thought we had filed. But I don’t know how to. You know, I thought just telling them was filing it. Well, we went to the house that night. We took them to Damien’s apartment and that.
At first I can tell you things were not good with the Police Department. I just didn’t feel they were listening to us at first. It was taken a little bit serious, but then they weren’t doing anything which. I’m going to say now, right, years later, and now that I have a son in law enforcement and a little bit older and you know, know the way of life a little bit more, of course, they’re not gonna tell us everything …
…and, at one point though, they would tell Janeane something and say don’t tell them and then you know or Janeane could tell me but wouldn’t this one …
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We’re going to look more at that relationship between the police and Damien’s family in the next two episodes, when we take a closer look at this case from the law enforcement and media angle. For now, though, I want to draw your attention to the way perception played a part in this case.
_____________________ DANA KIBBEY_____________________
… ‘course, you know, they’d probably never been up against this type of thing either and … Nobody knew how to take Damien.
You think that perception played a part?
I do believe that perception played a part, you know, even though, like I said, I believe Damien had the respect of Art Zerbe. Because Art seen him as a person … down there at Y working out. Hey, how you doing? You know, locker room chatter, type of thing. But these guys just, you know, they had a perception they see, you know.
Oh, when I heard the line, somebody can be missing if they want to. It’s not illegal to be missing. If you want to. But you know, they knew. He hadn’t touched his account and he had money in there and that was, you know, that was the big thing was …
I know it sounds stupid. But waiting for his next unemployment check to come in. And it wasn’t touched. He didn’t go draw money out from a Northwest anywhere. To me, I know he was gone, then you know. And as I was saying, a lot of people you know, saying, oh, I think he’s dealing drugs, dealing drugs to kids and stuff like that.
Damien was living on his unemployment check because he was in the military. He did three years in military, you know, he was deployed. He was a veteran and he didn’t get that respect. He had a short haircut, he didn’t have his nails painted. He would have had that respect. But because he dyed his hair black or you know. He didn’t have it. He you know. But he was living on that and like I, you know, I’d say, you know, paycheck come in on Friday, unemployment come in, it’s like every, you know, two weeks later we’re eating Oodles of Noodles.
I mean, he didn’t have any money, you know, he had just applied for a job at Whirley. My mom took him down. He applied. You know, he was looking for work, and he wasn’t … Unemployment was running out. He got a free year after he got out of the military … And it was about that time. It was about that time start looking two months its gonna be running out you know so
Were you ever given any. Like you were told to believe this because it’s easy. You know, when I’m …
… at one time, there’s a gentleman (removed) didn’t know who he was. I wouldn’t know if I seen him, you know, and. I don’t know. I don’t remember where it came about and how it came about. If it was the police or rumor or what. You know that or one of, maybe his friends said. You know, Damien had said, but we knew this supposedly was the last person to see him.
Alive.
Someone dropped him off there and like a half block away, Damien was on his crutches, you know? And never seen again. So of course we were just like I said, wanted something so bad. So we believed that. This (removed) got in some trouble. It was actually? From what I understand, his girlfriend was pregnant at the time and I kept on getting mad at the police saying what’s his girlfriend saying, what’s his girlfriend saying? What does she say?
You know and they’re saying, well, he’s not talking. He says he doesn’t know anything. You know, we can’t tell you everything that, you know, he’s told us and I’m like question the girlfriend question the girlfriend and then they said. You know … and then they hit on this on our humanity side and said. Dana, you know she’s pregnant and if he’s capable of hurting Damien, you know … What do you think and I’m like … OK. Yeah. I don’t wanna put this woman in any kind of thing. You’re right. I understand what you’re doing. So we back off then …
And you never even think about it. And boom,
I think about it way too much.
Now. But but things are so much different. I mean, honestly, in 20 years and so much has changed just in how cases are handled, you know? Yeah. And being in a small town like this, I mean. But now we’ve had a few cases since then. You know what I mean? All being women, you know, that are more known that you hear about how there’s been a gentleman from Jamestown, but you don’t hear about the men.
And I believe the reason for that is because nobody’s keeping a man alive. I mean, not not to be crude, but there’s always a chance this child was kidnapped. ’cause. Somebody wanted to be a parent or even to the worst extreme. Somebody is doing a sexual thing, you know, with them or something. And same thing with women. They’re being, you know, prisoners for 20, 30 years. You hear about, you know. They really are being kept around that long.
OK, come on. You know he was. He’s a guy.
He was a handful.
Yeah, you know. Well, he was a guy. You’re not getting anything like that out of, you know, so. And a few years ago the CUE did, that was one of their campaigns and actually came to Warren and spoke in front of the jail. And everything right in front of … Sorry, the Police Department. Did a press conference and everything, which Janeane became a part of them and represented this part of the state and actually went on tours with them. To do those type of press conferences and one was based on men, you don’t hear about them. ’cause you don’t hear about that, you know what I mean?
You hear about that young, beautiful blonde girl in Aruba. But if that was a boy, would we have heard? We we don’t hear about the poor. We don’t hear about the males. We don’t hear about. you know …
… yeah it’s, and that’s cultural thing …
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In the next episode, we’re going to hear from the original investigator in this case, Tony Chimenti. Brian and I reached out to the City of Warren Police Department in August of last year, to let them know what we were planning to do, and to introduce the project, and ourselves, to them.
Brian and I have both worked as reporters in Warren with the current group of officers and administrators at Warren PD, but we wanted to establish an open line of communication, one we’d initiated, to let them know that we weren’t planning to just drop a big old bomb on the county.
We were able to sit down for an on-tape interview with Tony on his last day of work – he retired on Jan. 9 of this year, so Tony: I’m sorry I made myself a feature of your last day. But thank you for sitting down with us.
And we’re going to hear a lot from Tony, but after he speaks, you’ll hear the current Chief of Police in the City of Warren, Joe Sproveri, weigh in on what he’s learned about Damien over his 16 years in law enforcement.
Chief Sproveri was in high school when Damien went missing, but his work in the Warren County Drug Task Force has brought him Damien’s way more than once.
_____________________TONY CHIMENTI / JOE SPROVERI_____________________
They started land searches I believe on the 14th. Or the 16th of June. It was the third full week. Down …
Morrison Run.
… Morrison Run and then other areas of the ANF. What other areas?
So we were in. We got more strong. Went to. We just. Over the. Course people. The search dog there was actual group search dog k-9 group found that they had dogs. It was a group for Warren County that for missing persons. They had all kinds of dogs that were trained. It was after 9/11. So there were a lot of people that were involved in that kind of stuff that had dogs that work at that. Cadaver dog trained and all kinds of stuff like that.
We’re getting more, but they had. There was a lot of dogs training back then. There was sheriff’s office, all kinds of stuff. So there was a different officers that came up. We all concentrated in the woods where known areas where he would go and camp.
So all that came from the interviews then?
It did areas that he would go and camp on that weekend Morial Day weekend. Areas, that was one whole day search. Then we went to another area, Rimrock area?
So they switched to water searches on the 23rd. I believe it was the following Thursday, and Rick had said in the paper it was from information that came in, but he wouldn’t elaborate. Do you know about what? What might have led them because they switched from the land searches to more water based searches around the Devils Elbow bridge and the Morrison Run Bridge.
So that was from. Possibilities of where someone might be actually dumped into the water, where it would be. Deep areas.
What about as tips came in? Do you have any kind of timeline on like did it take a form? Almost? Did people have a narrative and then the narrative changed as the tips were coming in? Or was it just convoluted from the beginning?
It was very very. Yeah, very circly. If I can use that word, it’s it’s a very, very poor word to use, but it was very … there was a lot coming in and. You know, there was a lot of different agencies that. You know, everybody wanted to get the tip. Officers, state police. Everybody was getting. It was hot. It was a hot item at that time. You know what was the hot thing that everybody wanted to be involved with? You know what I mean? Not saying that anybody wanted to be the hero or anything like that, but everybody wanted to help. Everybody wanted to find him.
So, you know, there was tips coming in, this, of course Rick Hernan had. It was a task force that Rick Hernan actually created at that time. So. It was a good thing, you know, that we all were working together and then that’s when Officer Brecht took it over because it was getting bigger so. Yeah. And then the news media got involved in Chief Poorman said. Yeah, I think this needs to be going to a different officer.
So which whenever it is what it is, I was still a junior officer still new.
Yeah. For whatever reason …
They gotta do what they gotta do. They gotta do it. You know, I’m still. I was still, you know, making my way through starting here. So I mean, if you have to do what they do
What did you learn about Damien over the course of the investigation, just as a person, what did you learn about what kind of person he was?
You know, I mean (He was mysterious). Yeah, I learned a lot of things, a lot of different things. He was different. He was like, definitely a loner. He was definitely someone that could just just do his own thing. Some people did like him, some people didn’t. He was. Somebody that just just existed on his own little plane.
I guess the biggest thing that I took away. From just the folklore of all this, in the perception of people that you know, they actually went to school with them, that are or interacted with him out in public, he was he was the dark type Gothic figure, but at the same time. All of the females that he was friends with, they always felt safe with them. You know, even if they were out partying that they knew that if they were with him that, you know, they let good hands and people, he went to school with they, you know, they would speak on, Damien, regarding him sticking up for others. If somebody was getting bullied. Damien would be one of the first ones to stick up for him, and obviously, you know, he was into the drug scene and and … and that’s not good, but he had a lot of good characteristics about him. Somebody had said to me, just as I was talking to different people. You know, Damien didn’t deserve whatever might have happened to him. But Warren is safer without him like. How does that hit you guys…
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“Smoke” is a production of Two Moms Media and Your Daily Local.
Created, written, and told by Stacey Gross.
Executive Producers are Stacey Gross and Brian Hagberg.
Our theme song is “Ditty 6,” written and produced by Bob Gross.
Voice acting by Frank Williams and Adam McCoy.
Audio production, transcription, and cover art by Stacey Gross.
Our guests in this episode were Dana Kibbey, Danica Stec, Tony Chimenti, and Joe Sproveri.
Thanks to Steven Sharp Junior and Dana Kibbey, for their help in providing family-specific information, and to Ellen Paquette, for her amazing feedback as I crafted, wrote, and curated these episodes over the course of several tense monts.
Check out the show notes for links to our website, sources we used, and a full transcript of each episode.
Visit us on social media @letsfinddamien.
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Smoke: The Disappearance of Damien Sharp 