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Vanished Without a Trace

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(page 6 of 9)

Psychics from throughout New England offered their help. Later, in frustration, Duane Lewis would say, "One says east, one says north, and another tells us west or south. There's only so many points on the compass." The horse hovel was dismantled, as was the ice house next to the camping office. The dump was bulldozed, and workers sifted through clumps of dirt. Teams of volunteers with shovels dug along the tote road. Finally John Shaw and Duane Lewis, haggard from constant twenty-two hour days, announced they were no longer appealing for volunteers. The search would continue, they said, until Wednesday, September 10, thirteen days after Kurt Newton's disappearance. "We've done just about everything we can think of" they said. "Everywhere you go there's marking tape and our footprints."

The day the search was to end, the governor extended it two more days. "It's the perplexity of the situation," he said. "When you've searched that long and hard. there's always the hope that this time we're going to hit it." It ended officially at dusk on Friday, September 12, in the woods by the dump, with twelve wardens, six state troopers, and seventy-five volunteers making a final, mournful shoulder-to-shoulder sweep. At the end, over three thousand searchers had taken part, and absolutely nothing had been found.

Ron and Jill Newton stayed two more weeks before returning to Manchester to put Kimberly, who had stayed with friends, into the first grade. They began weekend journeys to Chain of Ponds, two people in a woods that might as well have stretched forever. Duane Lewis returned as well, a solitary figure on overgrown tote roads that he hoped might still yield the most elusive tracks of his career. Years later he would be unable to spot a sneaker thrown carelessly on a river bank, or a torn shirt discarded on a roadside, without thinking about Kurt Newton. "Every now and then in the history of mankind the incredible happens that we can't make sense of," he would say. "We should have found him - but we didn't."

The Newtons posted "Missing" signs deep into the woods, warning hunters to report any unusual signs. And then the snow came, and Ron had his snowmobile to take him deeper into the backcountry until winter grew raw and even he was forced to say enough. By then they had decided that Kurt was not in the woods, that he never had been, that somehow he'd been taken and probably was still safe. With the tenacity they had shown from the beginning, Ron and Jill determined that if Kurt were to be found, it was up to them.

"From the beginning we never discounted the possibility that Kurt was abducted," said State Police Lieutenant G. Paul Falconer, who headed the initial investigation, adding, "but there are no facts to indicate he's not in the woods." A team of investigators interviewed everyone known to have been at the campground, using polygraphs when in doubt. One camper reported that she had seen a white station wagon roar out of the campground leaving a cloud of dust in its wake shortly after the time Kurt disappeared. But no such car was registered at the campground, and nobody else reported seeing it. Upon further questioning the camper hedged: perhaps she'd been mistaken.

Experienced trackers reported they could find no evidence of recent vehicle traffic on the logging road beyond where Ron Newton had been cutting wood, the only road available for a "back-door" abduction. "With so many children available in the cities, why would a kidnapper come to one of the most remote campgrounds in the state, hoping to find a child riding a tricycle alone down a deserted road?' asked State Police Detective Richard Cook, who assumed charge of the investigation, and who heads it today.

 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.