The family of missing realtor Sid Cranston is asking hunters to look for his corpse or personal belongings this season.
The 40-year-old Arizona man went missing in June while showing a prospective buyer or buyers a listed property, highlighting a little known fact about his profession -- it’s downright dangerous.
Cranston’s loved ones and friends fear he was murdered by the still-unknown client he met on June 16, 2015, since he hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Police are still actively searching for him, but "we have to be realistic," said the missing man’s brother Chris Cranston, who lives in North Carolina. “They're obviously not going to find him alive.”
If his grim hunch is correct, then Sid Cranston is hardly the first real estate agent to suffer foul play while on the job, and not likely to be the last one either.
In 2014, realtor Beverly Carter was assaulted, slain, and buried in a shallow grave when she rendezvoused with a couple to show them a house for sale in Arkansas.
Carter’s case is similar to the so far unsolved homicide of Ashley Okland, who, in a likely armed-robbery attempt, was gunned down while presenting a model townhome four years ago.
Experts say harassment, threats, and actual violence are occupational hazards all realtors everywhere face in the course of showing properties to strangers and trying to make a sale.
Just last week, for instance, a Des Moines Iowa-based realty agency canceled all their scheduled open houses, after one of their female realtors received explicit death threats over the phone from an untraceable number.
“The caller said they intended to bring harm to the agent and that they’d be seeing her later in the day,” the agency’s manager said. “I’ve been an agent for 20 years and this is not even close to the first time where we’ve had something like this happen -- yet this one was very specifically concerning.”
He said, as a result, agents already en route to appointments that day were ordered to return immediately to their offices and police were asked to secure two corporate headquarters in the area.
Sid Cranston’s people are apparently fully aware of how common incidences like that one are for both male and female agents, and the very real risks which are part and parcel to the real estate profession.
That’s why they now firmly believe their missing relative met up with a violent criminal months ago, not a homebuyer, and is lying dead somewhere remote:
“We're asking for hunters to help because they probably know how to tell the difference between animal and human bones … look for shoes, a ball cap, clothing, anything that might lead the police to Sid.”
Anyone with knowledge of Sid Cranston’s disappearance or his current whereabouts is asked to call the Kingman Police Department at (928) 751-1911. Silent Witness is additionally offering a reward in this unsolved missing person case and can be contacted at (928) 753-1234.
