It’s a tale more terrifying than anything that Mum-Ra could conjure up. Stephen Perry, writer for both The Thundercats and SilverHawks is missing and presumed dead. Police have not gone so far as to say that they think Perry has been murdered, but the severed arm that was found near his abandoned van does not give many people hope that he’ll be found alive.

The story is being tracked by the Tampa Tribune and the little bit of details that are available are heartbreaking.

Each night Krystal Carroll pulls up a photograph of her former “partner” Stephen J. Perry on her iPhone and shows their 5-year-old son.

“We talk to his picture every night and he kisses it,” Carroll, 26, said, tears streaming down her face as she sat at her mother’s kitchen table.

But Leo Perry can’t kiss Daddy in person anymore.

“He knows that Daddy’s in heaven,” his mother said Wednesday. “He asks me how and what happened, but what do you tell a 5-year-old?”

Stephen was not well and he had actually just had surgery to have seven cancerous tumors removed from his bladder.

The last time that Stephen was seen was May 9th.

It seems like this is the biggest lead that the police are following up on right now:

On May 14, Hillsborough deputies responded to a call of a foul odor coming from a van at the Quality Inn at Bearss Avenue and Interstate 275. The vehicle had been there for a few days before a guest complained about the smell and an employee investigated and was overwhelmed by the smell when opening the van’s door. Deputies found a human body part nearby.

We here can only hope that there is a positive outcome for this seemingly horrible scenario. Stephen Perry brought countless children joy with his work on some of the best cartoons of the 80’s. We wish his family the best.