Shawn Patrick Raymond was 19 years old, freshly graduated from Algonac High School and planning to start at Macomb Community College that fall when he vanished on July 21, 1983. He was last seen getting into his own car and driving away from Menjo's, a gay bar in Detroit's Palmer Park district, and neither Raymond nor his 1981 Chevrolet Citation has ever been found intact. Forty-three years later, no one has been arrested in his death, and his surviving siblings say they are still waiting for someone to come forward.
Raymond's remains sat unidentified for more than a decade after workers dredging the Clinton River near Mount Clemens discovered a human skull in September 1992, according to ClickOnDetroit | WDIV Local 4. The recovered cranium held only a few remaining teeth and two missing bicuspids, and it was determined to belong to a white male between 18 and 40 years old. The discovery came roughly 25 miles from Raymond's hometown of Algonac in St. Clair County, according to Michigan LGBTQ Remember.
A Forensic Breakthrough Two Decades Later
The case broke open in October 2003, when Michigan State Police forensic artist D/Sgt. Sarah Krebs began a 3D facial reconstruction of the unidentified skull, as reported by the Detroit Metro Times. Krebs borrowed a mandible from a Michigan State University skeletal remains collection to complete her reconstruction, and it was her first skeletal case. In early 2004, a fellow Michigan State Police sergeant recognized the facial reconstruction as resembling Shawn Raymond, and Krebs confirmed the identification using dental records that March. The station's report notes that identifying Raymond's remains became, in Krebs' words, the course of her entire career — she went on to found the nonprofit Missing in Michigan, and per the earlier account, still retains Raymond's case folder after retiring.
Retired Michigan State Police Detective Lieutenant Patrick Young investigated Raymond's disappearance as a homicide once the skull was identified, and he ruled out accidental drowning early in the investigation. Young has said he believes more than one person was involved in Raymond's death because the missing car has never turned up — not the vehicle, not even its license plate, according to Uncovered: Cold Case. Investigators built a timeline of Raymond's final days from historical records and re-interviews, and created a whiteboard mapping potential witnesses, friends, locations, and dates in the case.
A Case the Family Says Was Never Taken Seriously
Raymond's family has said the investigation was not taken seriously from the start, and that the case was allegedly referred to, per family, as “the fairy case.” His mother, Shirley, called police after he disappeared, but she died years ago without ever getting answers; one of Raymond's older brothers has also since died, and another brother now has dementia. Raymond's youngest sibling, Kit Raymond-Reiter, remembers him as a great big brother, and she and her sister now live in Florida, still hoping for resolution.
“Someone should come forward to give the family peace,” Raymond-Reiter has said, per the same account. Raymond had come out as gay to his mother before his disappearance, and he was the second-youngest of five children who worked at a local restaurant before he vanished. The case remains open with the Michigan State Police Lapeer Post.
Investigative Gaps That Slowed the Search
Part of what stalled the case early on was a bureaucratic failure: about six months after Raymond disappeared, the Detroit Police Department ran his license plate through the Law Enforcement Information Network, but the record was never flagged as connected to a missing person, according to the Detroit Metro Times. That gap meant a potential lead sat dormant in a database for years before the Clinton River skull identification reopened the case.
Between 2004 and 2010, Michigan State Police detectives conducted extensive re-interviews with dozens of Raymond's former friends and associates, but no significant new leads have emerged since 2010. Some potential witnesses have declined interviews outright or retained attorneys, and others began cooperating before later stopping discussions of the case altogether.
No Statute of Limitations, No Closure Yet
Under Michigan law, there is no statute of limitations for murder, meaning prosecutors can still bring charges in Raymond's death no matter how much time has passed, according to the Neumann Law Group. That stands in contrast to standard felonies in Michigan, which typically carry a six-year statute of limitations. Legally, at least, the door to prosecution remains open even 43 years on.
Raymond's case fits into a much larger statewide picture. Michigan State Police maintain records on more than 4,000 active missing persons cases and over 300 sets of unidentified human remains, according to data reported by WDIV Local 4. The Missing in Michigan initiative that Krebs helped launch — which held its first DNA-collection event at Ford Field in Detroit in May 2011 — has since assisted in resolving more than 100 missing persons and unidentified remains cases across the state, according to NAASCA.
Menjo's, the bar where Raymond was last seen, opened in 1974 and remains one of Detroit's longest-running LGBTQ+ nightspots, anchoring what was then a major social hub for the city's gay community, according to BridgeDetroit. Michigan State Police are asking anyone with information about Raymond's case to come forward. Tips can be submitted by email at [email protected] or by phone at 855-642-4847.
