By KARA MURPHY
kara.murphy@timesnews.com
ALBION -- In the photos, one woman is wearing a floral blouse. Another has blue eyes that sparkle. A third, his red hair cut short, is wearing a suit and tie for his class photo.
They're all smiling.
They're all missing.
"They've all got a heartbreaking story," said David Lohr, 34, who is surrounded by posters of missing people at his office in Albion.
Lohr writes from his office about the missing and the dead on a blog called "Criminal Report Daily" for ID: Investigation Discovery, a 1-year-old digital cable channel that features true crime programs.
He spends his day researching and investigating unsolved cases.
Many of the stories catch at his heart. Which is why he's taken his interest in writing and researching crime a step further to involvement with the group Texas EquuSearch, a team that has aided in high-profile searches for missing teen Natalee Holloway and, more recently, for toddler Caylee Anthony, whose remains were recovered this month in Florida.
Lohr traveled with Texas EquuSearch to Florida to aid in the search for Caylee.
He was among the searchers who came close to the little girl's body, only to be turned away by knee-high water that had covered the wooded region.
"She was just 300 feet to the left of us," he said.
His interest in crime dates back to childhood.
"When other friends were buying GI Joe magazines, I was buying True Detective," he said.
After graduating from Northwestern High School, Lohr joined the Army. When he was discharged three years later, he returned to Albion and began his own Web site featuring serial killers.
In 1999, the Web site caught the eye of Marilyn Bardsley, then the executive director for Court TV's Crime Library. She asked him to write for Court TV's Web site. He worked for the Web site until 2007.
"He's a very good researcher," Bardsley said. "He's smart, he's determined, and he's clever. Plus he's good at writing. It's a good combination."
On some days, Bardsley said Lohr could ante up 300,000 hits on his blog.
"He's just good at getting people engaged," she said.
Lohr said some of his favorite subjects are the missing people that don't garner the attention of the likes of Nancy Grace and the morning news shows.
"A lot of them don't get the ongoing attention, the publicity that keeps their cases alive," he said.
That's why he keeps the pictures of Corrie Anderson, Jesse Ross, Linda Little, Ahren Barnard, Carlos Diaz, Brandy Hanna and Branson Perry posted in his office.
They remind him of who is still out there.
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