Runaway Train
Where Are They Now?
Dear Gen Xer,
Dave Pirner thought he was going deaf.
The prospect of losing his hearing, coupled with the fact that his band had recently been dropped from their label, threw the singer of Soul Asylum down a well of despair.
Pirner’s condition forced him to write on an acoustic guitar, something he’d never done before. One of the first songs to spill out of him was Runaway Train.
The lyrics explored the pain that Pirner was suffering, likening his depression to sleepless nights on a train that was rolling in the wrong direction.
Soul Asylum recorded a demo and shopped it around to various labels. Columbia Records liked what they heard and signed the band to a deal.
Runaway Train was released on June 1st, 1993. It was the third single off Soul Asylum’s sixth album, Grave Dancers Union.
The song became the band’s biggest hit, reaching #1 in Canada, #5 in the US, and winning the Grammy for Best Rock Song in 1994.
But it’s not the song most people remember.
It’s the video.
Tony Kaye moved to Los Angeles in 1990.
He was fresh off directing a string of award-winning commercials in the UK and was looking to expand into music and film. Kaye had already directed videos for Roger Waters and XTC when he got the gig for Runaway Train.
He was on the way home from his office one day when he noticed a poster by the side of the road. On it was a milk carton with a missing kid’s face. That’s it, he thought, and put in a call to Pirner.
Kaye met the singer and pitched his idea.
Pirner didn’t get it.
Runaway Train had nothing to do with runaways. But he warmed to the idea as Kaye kept talking. The video would show missing kids, Kaye explained, just like they did with milk cartons. “We’ll try and find them,” he said.
The idea of using the $100,000 slated for the video to create something more than a promotional tool appealed to Pirner and the rest of the band. So Kaye got in touch with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who in turn sent him pictures of the kids they wanted shown.
The video begins with the message above.
As the video rolls on, shots of the band are interspersed with dramatizations of life on the streets. We see an act of domestic abuse, an underage girl working the corner, another girl tossed into the back of a van, a baby being kidnapped from its pram. Between the band and dramatizations flash photos of the runaways.
The video caused a sensation.
Nobody had seen anything like it. Runaway Train got people talking. It made them look a little closer when passing by the homeless.
Three different versions, showing a total of 36 runaways, were filmed for the American market alone. These were soon followed by videos for Canada, Germany, Australia, and the UK.
The impact was immediate.
One month after the US video premiered, Elizabeth Wiles, who’d run away at the age of 13, saw herself on MTV while staying with a friend in San Diego. “I just kind of freaked out,” she said.
Elizabeth called her mother one week later. They spoke and wept and Elizabeth apologized. Then she headed home.
It’s been reported that 21 of the 36 runaways depicted in the US versions of the video wound up being found or returning home.
Below you’ll find information on the nine people who appeared in one of those versions.
Wilda Mae Benoit
Status: MISSING
14-year-old Wilda lived with her aunt and uncle in Creole, Louisiana.
She returned from hospital on July 23rd, 1992, after being treated for a shoulder injury.
Wilda spent most of that day in bed, heavily sedated by the pain pills prescribed for her shoulder.
The following morning, Wilda was gone.
Money and jewelry were missing from her bedroom. This led authorities to believe that Wilda had run away.
Her family refused to believe it. They continued their search for Wilda, all to no avail.
Eleven years after she vanished, Wilda’s stepmother posted the following statement online:
If Wilda Mae happens to read this I would like her to know that he has been sober for quite a while now.
There were rumors as to who he was, all of them pointing to Wilda’s uncle.
Those rumors were never confirmed.
No charges were ever brought.
Wilda Mae Benoit is still in the wind.
Christina Ann Wood
Status: MISSING
Christina went missing in Live Oak, Florida on December 2, 1991.
She was 15 years old at the time, with a heart tattoo on her left ankle and a 3-inch scar on her upper leg.
Witnesses claim to have seen Christina in the company of an adult male before she disappeared.
That was 35 years ago.
No other info has surfaced.
Byron Eric Page
Status: MISSING
Byron went missing in Los Angeles on January 29, 1992.
He was last seen waiting for the bus at Overhill and Slauson. Byron was heading to a video and music store 20 miles away in West Hollywood. None of the employees working that day remembered seeing him.
Byron’s parents called the police, but they couldn’t do anything until 24 hours had passed. Unable to wait that long, and unable to sleep, Byron’s parents spent the wee hours of the morning putting up fliers around Los Angeles with their son’s photo.
Byron’s absence made no sense.
His clothes, comic books, and the money he’d saved had all been left behind. Byron loved working as a camp counselor, was proud of making the honor roll, and his PSAT score, which was in the top 6 percent of African-American students, qualified him for a scholarship.
By all accounts, Byron was happy, with a promising life ahead of him.
What happened to that life remains a mystery.
Ginger Sue Hudson
Status: FOUND
Ginger was raised in Denver, Colorado.
She was a shy and quiet kid who liked to keep to herself. Talking to more than one person at a time would cause her loads of anxiety. By the time she turned 16, Ginger had developed a fear of crowds. School and the mall were nightmares for her. She tried to explain it to her mother and brother but neither of them understood. So Ginger ran away in 1992.
She took a Greyhound out to Vegas with a friend of hers. The plan was to stay with Ginger’s sister, to live there until they turned 18, then they’d get married so Ginger’s friend could apply for a green card.
But Ginger’s mother caught wind of the plan and Ginger’s sister called the deal off.
Ginger and her friend split in Vegas. He went his way and Ginger went hers: on a bus back to Denver.
It was on her way home that Ginger met a drifter, a veteran of life on the road. He suggested she get off at the next truck stop and hitch a ride to wherever she wanted. Ginger thought that was a great idea and did exactly that.
A few months later, Ginger met a trucker in California. He was in his thirties and became her boyfriend. The man lived in his truck, which suited Ginger fine. He’d park it at a dispatch center when he wasn’t driving and Ginger would hunker down for hours, leaving it only to go to the nearest restaurant, where she’d freshen up and order food before returning to the cozy confines of the truck.
Ginger’s boyfriend had a daughter who was only a year and half younger than her. It was the daughter who spotted Ginger in the video for Runaway Train. Ginger laughed when she saw it. She was so far off the grid, the chances of her being recognized were slim to none.
Ginger wound up calling her mother after she turned 18.
She didn’t return to Denver, though. She stayed in California and rented an apartment with her trucker boyfriend. They were happy most of the time, but decided to break up in 1999.
Today, Ginger has a daughter of her own.
Antidepressants help her anxiety.
There’s no reason to run anymore.
Michelle Anne Farley
Status: FOUND
Michelle went missing in 1992.
She was found shortly after the video was released.
According to Soul Asylum’s Dan Murphy, the band was co-headlining the MTV Alternative Nation Tour when a young woman approached him and asked, “Why are you fuckers trying to ruin my life?”
Michelle was half-joking. The other half was annoyed.
She’d left an abusive environment at home on her own accord. She didn’t consider herself a runaway, and she didn’t appreciate her life being thrust into the national spotlight.
Because of the video, and because Michelle was still a minor, she was forced to go back home, back into the circumstances she’d deliberately left.
As well-meaning as the video was, it nevertheless had a negative impact on Michelle’s life.
She has stayed out of the public eye ever since.
Christopher Matthew Kerze
Status: MISSING
Christopher stayed home from school on April 20, 1990, claiming to be suffering from a terrible headache.
His father left on a business trip. His mother gave Christopher some aspirin and left to run some errands. When she returned, she found the dog loose and the family van gone.
On the kitchen table was a note:
Mom,
Something important came up + feeling somewhat better.
Back by six. (Unless I get lost.)
Love, Chris
The word lost was underlined twice.
Christopher’s mother believed it’s because her son had a bad sense of direction and was prone to getting lost. But the hours passed and still no Christopher.
His parents received a second note the following day.
In it Christopher admitted that he’d lied about his headache so he could take the van and drive away “to not even I know where”. Christopher added that he intended to take his own life and apologized for any hurt his actions might cause.
The note was postmarked Duluth, Minnesota, two and a half hours from the town of Eagan, where Christopher and his parents lived.
The day after the note arrived, the van Christopher had left in was discovered abandoned on the side of the road in Itasca County, 20 miles north of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Christopher’s grandparents lived in Grand Rapids. They claimed they never saw him.
The keys to the van were left inside. There was also another note from Christopher, explaining who the vehicle belonged to.
A search of the area turned up nothing.
Adding to his parents’ fears was the discovery that Christopher had withdrawn $200 from his account and taken his father’s shotgun.
Soon after Christopher’s disappearance, his parents began receiving anonymous calls at all hours of the day and night. The caller refused to speak and the noise in the background sounded like a party was going on. Six months later, the phone calls stopped.
In 2004, fourteen years after leaving home, the police department in Eagan received a letter postmarked Seattle, Washington. Whoever wrote it claimed that Christopher was a “guardian angel” and would return home when the time was right.
The authorities concluded the letter was a hoax.
They believe that Christopher took his own life and that his body is still out there waiting to be found.
Martha Wes Dunn
Status: MISSING
Martha spent the summer of 1990 visiting relatives in Oklahoma.
Her parents brought her back to Daingerfield, Texas on September 4th in order to get ready for the new school year.
15-year-old Martha didn’t want to be in Texas and spent most of the day fighting with her parents. Later that night, around 10 p.m., Martha spoke on the phone with 17-year-old boyfriend Eric Owens.
The following day, both of them were gone.
Martha’s father claimed that Eric and his daughter were involved with drugs and had run away to indulge their vices. He also said that he received a call on September 30th from a friend in Durant, Oklahoma, who told him he’d seen Martha and Eric. According to the friend, the runaways were “dirty and hungry”, so he helped clean them up and offered them food. When authorities in Durant arrived to investigate, there was no trace of the elusive couple.
There’s another, grislier theory floating around the ‘net.
The nephew of Eric Owens says he has police reports that show Martha’s parents gave a variety of conflicting statements: that Martha and Eric were kidnapped by a cartel, that Martha and Eric were kidnapped by people who worship the devil, that Martha’s mother saw her husband dragging their daughter out of the house.
The rumor around town is that Martha and Eric were killed by Martha’s father, who was then assisted by Martha’s brother, James Kenneth Dunn, who abused a child and is a registered sex offender.
A neighbor who lived across the street from the Dunns says he found “a depressed area behind their trailer that looked like an old grave in a ravine.” He adds that he was “run off from the area by John Dunn [Martha’s father] with a shotgun.”
The neighbor called the police, who said they’d come around the following morning, but “approximately 6AM the next morning 16 trucks dumped tons of dirt into the ravine before the police could get there.”
The Dunns told the police that they were filling in the ravine to make a pond.
The police left and the ravine was filled.
Martha and Eric have never been found.
The case remains open.
Emily Tamara Pois
Status: FOUND
Emily didn’t fit in at school or at home.
Kids teased her for being weird, and while her parents were mild-mannered college professors, who provided Emily with an upper middle-class home, she simply had nothing in common with them.
Emily ran away in 1992 at the age of 13. She hopped on a bus in Boulder, Colorado and rode it to San Francisco.
She fell in with a group of punks and learned how to live on the streets. Emily kept in touch with her parents, letting them know from time to time that she was still alive and well. Her parents were grateful for those calls. They never pressured Emily to come home, fearing such behavior would cause their daughter to cut off contact for good.
Two years later, at the age of 15, Emily headed to Minneapolis.
She stayed with friends at their apartment, and soon became involved in the punk scene there: the same scene which had spawned Soul Asylum a decade earlier.
Emily and her friends were hanging out one day, getting high and watching MTV, when suddenly she saw her face plastered on the screen. She pointed it out to her friends and they began to laugh.
The video made Emily nervous, though.
The cops in San Francisco were far too busy to care about some punk ass kids. But the ones in Minneapolis were known to be more hands on.
Emily kept her head down, dreading the possibility of being recognized from the video and sent back home.
Emily eventually returned to Boulder when she 17.
She got her GED and enrolled at a community college.
Then her father died.
Then her early and haphazard marriage ended in divorce.
Emily turned to drugs and struggled with sobriety for the next ten years. Her mother reported her missing again in 2015. But there was no mystery regarding her whereabouts. Emily was in prison, doing time for misdemeanor theft, motor vehicle theft, possession of a controlled substance, obstructing a peace officer, and resisting arrest.
Today Emily is clean and sober. It’s not easy, but she keeps fighting.
She currently works in a hotel kitchen, and volunteers her spare time helping others in recovery.
Thomas Gibson
Status: MISSING
Two-year-old Thomas Gibson was last seen playing in the front yard of his home in Azalea, Oregon at 11:30 a.m. on March 18, 1991.
His father, Larry Gibson, was Douglas County’s Deputy Sheriff at the time.
He told authorities that he was out jogging around the family property during the time of his son’s disappearance. He also said that he’d brought a handgun in order to shoot at stray cats. Larry claimed he shot at one near where Thomas was playing then continued on with his jog. When he returned less than an hour later, little Thomas was gone.
Neighbors, volunteers, and officers searched the property for signs of the boy.
Investigators noted that Larry was acting suspiciously. Instead of joining the search for his son, Larry took a shower and put on his uniform. He then told people to stop searching because it was snowing out. When his supervisor advised him to stay home and not report for work, Larry ignored him and left in his patrol car. He said he believed his son had been abducted and wanted to check the rest stops nearby.
Detectives confronted Larry seven weeks later.
They told him they believed he had accidentally killed Tommy while shooting at a cat, then drove away with the body of his son in the trunk of his police car while everyone searched for Thomas.
Larry was arrested in 1994 and charged with murder in the second degree.
His daughter Karen testified that Larry was abusive toward her and Thomas, that she witnessed Larry beating Thomas until he fell limp, and that she saw her father place Thomas in a black trash bag, which he then moved to the back of his patrol car.
Also testifying was Larry’s half-sister, Debbie. She said she received a frantic call from Larry, who confessed to killing Thomas and explained he might need her to lend him money so he could post bail.
Larry maintained his innocence throughout.
He was convicted of manslaughter in 1995 and sentenced to 15-18 months in prison.
Larry was released in 1996.
His last-known whereabouts were in Montana, where he worked as an insurance agent and a singing cowboy.
Thomas’s body has never been recovered.
Writing about all 36 American runaways, let alone those in other countries, is beyond the scope of this article.
If you’d like to learn what happened to them, let me know in the comments.
If there’s enough interest, I’ll write a part 2.
The happiness in learning who was found and the utter sadness in learning who wasn’t.
I was 6 or 7 years old when this video was on MTV and it made me cry like a baby. I had to be consoled by my mom 😂