“It really shouldn’t be this difficult to find somebody named James Danny Hollingshead.”
I think this virtually every time I renew the search for my late father’s best friend, a man who he had not seen for nearly 50 years when he died in 2019. It’s also a man who he thought enough of that he named my younger brother after him.
Danny was important to my dad, so he’s important to me. He’s also important to his brother, who has been looking for Danny just as long – if not longer – than my father had been. And he’s important to a niece, who I connected with a few years ago.
About 10 years ago, I started watching the ID channel series “Disappeared,” which profiles people who mysteriously went missing. Not surprisingly, most of those folks end up being the victims of awful crimes. But, a few simply wanted to start anew and just vanished.
That seems to be the case for Danny, though I have reason to believe we located him in the late 1990s with the advent of the internet. My father and I placed calls to a house in South Lake Tahoe, but no one answered and we never got a call back. Several letters from my father to the address went unanswered.
My interest in Danny’s story coincided with my old man’s final year in this life. We talked about his friend quite a bit. My father trusted few people on this planet, let alone behind bars, but he trusted Danny.
So, from time to time, I’ll spend several hours digging through Google, old newspaper articles and social media profiles. Years in the newspaper business helped, but not until I started writing the book about Brenda Keller did I really hone my sleuthing skills. That was necessary because, shockingly, there was very little information about the case online (aside from my blog, this is still true).
Nonetheless, despite having decent investigative chops, tracking down information on James Danny Hollingshead has been humbling. There are times I want to devote a full week to doing nothing but research on the man, but I remind myself that my first book still isn’t done. All good things to those who wait.
Despite the frustration, there has been some progress. Through this blog, I’ve connected with a handful of Danny’s relatives. Through our correspondence, I’ve learned that Danny has a granddaughter named Emily Paulson, who I’m attempting to find.
Interestingly, this story has ties to Topeka. After Danny left the Hutchinson Correctional Facility in 1968, he began dating a woman from the capital city named Debora Crump. In 1969, they had a son, Sean W. Hollingshead.
By the next year, Danny and Deb were in the San Diego area, where my father lived. Based on my father’s account, Danny left Deb to fend for herself.
“That’s kind of how Danny was, unfortunately,” Dad said. “He’d be doing really, then start screwing up. He had all the talent in the world.”
Dad helped Deb as much as he could, even helping her take care of Sean. He only heard from Danny one more time, during a brief phone call, in the early 1970s. In a matter of months, my father was in prison for the last time. He never saw Deb, Sean or Danny again.
I’ve searched for all three at various points. I did find Deb, who has moved on to an ordinary and less adventurous life in another state, but she has not returned calls and messages. My assumption is that I’d be asking about a difficult time in her life that she doesn’t want to relive, and that’s understandable.
Today, however, came more progress when I finally discovered why finding Sean has been anything but easy. Through ancestry records, I located a Sean W. Hollingshead … he died two days before his fourth birthday in 1973. His resting place? A Topeka cemetery.
Progress, yes, but also incredibly sad. Just as it would be incredibly sad not to find Danny. Difficult or not, I’ll keep trying.
James Danny is my grandpa what year was the last time he was seen I’ve been looking for him too
My Father was named James Daniel Hollingshead and was deaf. Do you know anything about him?