The Disappearance of Toni Sharpless

By Pete Dove

Toni Lee Sharpless stares out from the picture her mother holds. At the time it was taken, Toni was in her late twenties. She is dressed all in white, the uniform of a nurse topped off with a neat squared cap. Her smile is genuine, her teeth at least as bright as the uniform she wears. Her eyes, too, glow.  
By contrast, her mother looks strained. Also smartly attired, her short grey hair and glasses make Donna Knebel look business like. But the neatness of her appearance fails to hide the stresses and strains her face displays. This is not surprising. Her daughter has been missing for eleven years. 'You can't imagine it until you go through it. It's like a void, a big hole you're falling into and can never touch any sides or reach the bottom,' she said, referring to the unimaginably difficult decade she has just lived through.
Toni was a young woman who had her fair share of troubles. They were not her own fault. But she had found the strength to make the courageous and impressive effort needed to put her life back on track. It seems, though, that everything went wrong once more when she decided to let her hair down after a long spell on the wagon. Then, something took place that led to her disappearance. As to what happened in the early hours of August 23rd, 2009 – well, nobody is completely sure. The possibility remains that they never will be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Poche
• Release date: Jul 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201136321

Book preview

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TONI LEE SHARPLESS

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PETE DOVE

table of contents

TONI LEE SHARPLESS

DONNA YAKLICH

KELLY GISSENDANER

WENDI ANDRIANO

SHAREE MILLER

JENNIFER MEE

Lost, Found and Lost Again

Toni Lee Sharpless stares out from the picture her mother holds.  At the time it was taken, Toni was in her late twenties.  She is dressed all in white, the uniform of a nurse topped off with a neat squared cap.  Her smile is genuine, her teeth at least as bright as the uniform she wears.  Her eyes, too, glow. 

By contrast, her mother looks strained.  Also smartly attired, her short grey hair and glasses make Donna Knebel look business like.  But the neatness of her appearance fails to hide the stresses and strains her face displays.  This is not surprising.  Her daughter has been missing for eleven years.  ‘You can’t imagine it until you go through it.  It’s like a void, a big hole you’re falling into and can never touch any sides or reach the bottom,’ she said, referring to the unimaginably difficult decade she has just lived through.

Toni was a young woman who had her fair share of troubles.  They were not her own fault.  But she had found the strength to make  the courageous and impressive effort needed to put her life back on track.  It seems, though, that everything went wrong once more when she decided to let her hair down after a long spell on the wagon.  Then, something took place that led to her disappearance.  As to what happened in the early hours of August 23rd, 2009 – well, nobody is completely sure.  The possibility remains that they never will be.

On that night she and a friend, Crystal Johns, had been out enjoying the bars and clubs in Philadelphia.  The first places the pair visited were a couple of nightclubs – Ice, and G Lounge. It was from there that the couple made their way to Willie Green’s home in Gladwyne, where they stayed until Toni’s behaviour, fuelled by the combination of her medication and alcohol, became too much.  It is believed that the couple left at around 5.00 am.  It is, though, a little unclear how they had ended up at the home of a former Philadelphia 76er, a basketball player as well-known as Willie Green, since he has not discussed publicly what took place to earn them their invitation, and nor has Crystal.  It may be that Crystal had a friend who was dating a friend of the sportsman, or perhaps they met by chance in one of the clubs.  Whichever circumstance was correct, his comfortable home on Bobarn Drive, Gladwyne, was playing host to a small gathering of friends and acquaintances.  It was too small an affair to be called a full-scale party, just drinks and fun in the luxurious setting of a professional sportsman’s home.

But the visit had not gone well for Toni.  She had previous issues with alcohol and suffered from mental health illness which was made worse by the effects of a few drinks.  Her behaviour was becoming erratic and it seems she was attracting the derision of some of the guests.  Sometime in the early hours, while Crystal was taking advantage of the basketball player’s swimming pool, Toni lost control.  According to Willie Green, she poured champagne on the floor of his kitchen and started kicking things around.  The sportsman, understandably enough, wanted his guests to leave.

‘Your friend is freaking out,’ he told Crystal, ‘and you both need to leave.’  They had arrived in Toni’s car, a seven-year-old black Pontiac Grand Prix.  But neither were fit to drive, as Crystal told police later.  However, since she had consumed less alcohol of the two, Crystal insisted that if either of them was to drive, it should be her.  Toni, though, was too far gone.  The two got into an argument, Toni refusing to hand over her keys. Their dispute continued as they drove away from the star’s home. In fact, it was the shortest of journeys they shared together.  Just five hundred feet, it is believed, before Toni ordered Crystal to leave her vehicle, her mood remaining as alcohol-fuelled  and destructive as it had been at Willie Green’s place.

It was after Crystal telephoned Toni’s sister, Candy, the next day to tell her that she was upset to have been left behind, but she would drop around the things her friend had left at her house that Toni’s family realised something was very wrong.  Toni had not yet arrived home.

Although the early hours of August 23rd were the last time anybody has reported seeing Toni Sharpless, it was not the last time her black Pontiac was spotted.  Two weeks after she was lost, an electronic licence place reader recorded her vehicle in Camden, which lies a short distance from her home in West Brandywine Township. But after that, nothing more has been seen of the vehicle.

Eileen Law is the Kennett Square private investigator who has been working on the case of Toni Sharpless, on a pro bono basis, from just six weeks after she disappeared.  In that time, the matter has become a key part of her life.  She has got to know Donna well, and frequently meets up with Toni’s daughter – just eleven years old when her mom went missing half her lifetime ago.  Now the girl is a young woman, a person Eileen describes as ‘beautiful, intelligent, funny.’  She is also a keen and talented dancer.  Eileen recalled a time when she attended a recital given by Toni’s daughter.  It was wonderful to see the girl at ease, doing what she loves, but the occasion was also bittersweet.

‘I shouldn’t be sitting in that seat, it should be her mom,’ Eileen recalled.  ‘It pains me to know that her mom isn’t there.  I’ve come to love them like my own family, and I want closure for all of us.’

Eileen’s experience as a private investigator tells her that whatever happened to Toni that night happened in Camden.  ‘I always have thought that’ she said recently.  ‘All I care about is finding answers about Toni.  I will never give up on the case as long as I have a breath in my body.’

As we have said, Toni endured a challenging life.  She was born in 1979 in the borough of Downington, which lies a little more than thirty miles west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is a historic place, settled by Europeans – including a number of early Britons who moved across the Atlantic – just after the turn of the eighteenth century.  Like many such places, it has enjoyed a number of name changes over the years.  Firstly, it was Mill Town –  named for the number of mills that were found on the East Branch Brandywine Creek.  It adopted the name Downingtown during the period of the American Revolution, paying respects to the English Quaker (he was from the county of Devon) who owned most of the mills, the ‘w’ of ‘town’ being dropped in 1812, creating the common English short form of the noun – ‘ton’.  Its history is important to the town, it is that kind of place. Comfortably off, but with its poorer quarters, the eight thousand people who live there enjoy their association with the past.  Although, perhaps sadly, it is equally well known for being the location in which the 1950s bubble gum sci-fi movie ‘The Blob’ was filmed.  The famous diner from the movie can still be found.  Sort of.  The original moved to a different state but was replaced with a – now quite rare – replica.

All in all, therefore, Downington is a pretty nice place to grow up.  Toni stayed around for most of her life, taking up residence in the beautifully named and nearby West Brandywine Township when she was older.  But as pleasant as her childhood surroundings were, life was tough.  Toni’s father died when she was just six, and she found school hard.  However, Donna married, and Toni had the support of her new stepfather, Peter Knebel, who treated her like his own daughter.  Which, in time, she became.

However, life continued to be hard for the young girl, and it was only when she was older that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  This condition, about which still is little known, has only recently been recognised as the damaging illness it is.  It causes people to suffer from wild mood swings; a person can be full of the joys of life one day, and genuinely suicidal the next.  In the worst cases, people’s moods change in moments.  However, having finally discovered what it was that was causing her so many difficulties, including spells of alcohol and drug abuse, she finally found the right combinations of medicines for her individual circumstances.  By 2009, with a month in rehab behind her, she had got