Note: The Times is reporting that Mack Ray Edwards is a suspect in the 1961 disappearance of 7-year-old Ramona Price outside Santa Barbara. Here’s a 1959 column that Paul Coates wrote about one of Edwards’ victims. 

Today marks an anniversary that won’t be celebrated in a Redondo Beach home.

But I promised an anguished father that I wouldn’t let you forget it.

Two years ago today, 8-year-old Tommy Bowman ran down a mountain trail and vanished behind a curtain of secrecy which still defies all investigation.

Yesterday, Tommy’s dad called me. 

“I hate to be a bore,” Eldon Bowman began hesitantly. “But I thought maybe you’d write something about Tommy. I just can’t believe that it’s all over and done with. I just know that someone, somewhere has to know something.

“Somebody has to know where my boy is,” he added with emphasis.