Yankee Mystery Files →

Vanished Without a Trace

COMMENT

SINGLE PAGE

EMAIL

PRINT

SHARE:

(page 5 of 9)

The C-130H gunship flew a three-hour mission Tuesday morning, failing to detect a trace of Kurt. The plane was hampered by low-hanging clouds and heavy rains that grew so bad searchers could not see their way in the woods and had to be pulled out. Hovering over the search area in the helicopter, Jill would call, "This is Momma. I want you to go to where you can see the sky. Come and wave to Momma." As the rain and fog continued into the fourth day, hopes dimmed that Kurt could be found alive, and the strain on Jill was growing unbearable.

"If someone had asked me beforehand how I would have acted," she would say later, "I would have said I'd go to pieces. But something happens to keep you going. You find reserves you didn't know you had. I kept telling myself it wasn't going to do Kurt any good if I wasn't able to function. It seemed that every time I turned around the wardens were pulling Ron out of the woods because I was upset. Finally I said, 'Look, I'll tell you if I need him. But I'm going to cry. There's no way I'm not.' "

She preferred to search on her own with a few friends, "going on gut instincts. I kept thinking I'd find him whimpering behind the next tree." One day she found some holes by the horse hovel that bothered her, one in particular large enough for a child to have crawled through and way down under. Lacking a flashlight, she began clawing at the ground, desperately trying to see in. Looking up, she saw a group of National Guardsmen recently activated to search. " 'I've got to have help,' I said, and three or four of them started digging. I was panicky by then, saying, 'Oh, please, God, he's got to be in there.' And I looked down and this guy crawls out from the hole and he says, 'There's nothing there,' and I said, 'He's got to be,' and he said no and tears rolled down his face."

As days passed and absolutely no trace of Kurt was found, a sense of unreality flooded Jill. "It seemed it was someone else's child, not mine. Not our Kurt," she said. At night, "the worst time," she'd rest fitfully, listening to strangers bellowing her son's name into the dark, and the thoughts crowded in. "If he panicked, if he heard a noise, if anything the noise would have kept him out of the woods, ... even if he ran into the woods why haven't we found tracks ... he'd surely have taken off his jacket that first day when it warmed up ..." and, as always, the questions kept turning because there were no answers. At night she faced terrible thoughts -- "How does a four year old face starvation?" but in the morning searchers were buoyed by her dauntless optimism.

"You walk beside people you've never seen before, and they're poking and searching, hunting, and calling his name," she said. "With all this drive and all these volunteers, we're going to find him. And even though he's four, he's very sure-footed. I know he's scared, but I'm still optimistic we'll find him safe." Ron quietly vowed, "I won't give up until they find him."

On the fifth day of the search, the governor of Maine, James Longley, flew to the scene. He promised the Newtons, "Anything in my power I'll do." He called the search, which had moved into the extraordinary stage of a shoulder-to-shoulder combing of more than two thousand acres, "the most impressive experience I've ever had."

The C- 130H aircraft returned and flew another mission, again failing to detect a trace of the lost child. The bloodhounds tried vainly to pick up scent pools, places where Kurt might have lingered, and which under some conditions may last for ten days. The woods search grew so intensive that although Ron Newton twice lost his pen in terrain called by Warden Supervisor John Shaw "the roughest I've searched in nineteen years," it was twice returned.

 I became interested in this case, last year, after reading, "The Day Kurt Newton Disappeared" in an old 1979 Yankee Magazine and did an internet search to see if this case had been solved.  
 I had hoped that Kurt had been found safe and returned to his family. 
 Having come across the old magazine again while cleaning, I once again did another search to see if anything new had come to light concerning this child's case.
 I wonder if anyone might have done a computer aging on Kurt, updating his appearance to what would be his current adult age and distributing it or perhaps publishing it in the newspaper where he grew up.  I suppose I like to believe in miracles, even at this late date.  Perhaps he would see the picture, read the story, and be reunited with his family.  Such stories have happened before.
Kurt's story still haunts my heart when I read it and see his photo.  I hope that he is alive, mentally and emotionally well and that God guides him back to where he belongs.