People disappear east of
Snowflake
http://www.wmicentral.com/news/snowflake_taylor/people-disappear-east-of-snowflake/article_39d66e52-1099-52b8-965b-2dbbf6662c43.html
SNOWFLAKE - As the investigation
continues into the disappearance of June Goodman,
another Snowflake woman still wonders what
happened to her son who disappeared more than two
years ago under startlingly similar circumstances.
Reed Wasson, aged 51 at the time, was reported
missing by his wife in December 2000. He hadn't
taken his vehicle or any personal effects. In
fact, his wallet, $1,000 in cash, credit cards and
his keys had all been left behind. His dalmatian
dog was also found in the house, his mother Ruthe
Wasson said.
In a similar fashion, Goodman, 66, a rural postal
delivery person, left everything behind, including
her vehicles and dogs, when she disappeared March
29. Wasson's home was within sight of Goodman's.
"Wasson's wife found footprints going toward the
canyon but there was no way of knowing when they
were made," said Sgt. Larry Fellows of the
Snowflake/Taylor Police Department. "We called in
the sheriff's department search and rescue team
and searched the area but there was no sign of a
body.
"At the time, the conjecture was that he committed
suicide but for us, we have to look at every
possibility. Public theories are just that -
theories.
"The Wasson case has never been closed and won't
be until we find out what happened."
A talented potter, Wasson was 6-foot 3-inches tall
and weighed about 350 pounds, his mother said,
adding it would have been hard for him to walk
very far. With his long brown hair worn in a
ponytail and a gray-and-red full beard and
mustache, his distinctive features would have been
easy to remember but no one has reported seeing
him or picking him up on any of the major highways
out of Snowflake, Ruthe said.
"We need to get the word out that we have never
stopped looking for him," Ruthe said. "He would
never have walked away from his son. His son is 16
now and his sister is a Freshman at ASU."
As for the theory he committed suicide because his
marriage was breaking up, Ruthe discounts that,
saying, "Reed is a wonderful, talented, gentle man
who made beautiful pottery. He couldn't even kill a
tomato worm. He believed in the Indian culture in
which every living thing has a place. He just
couldn't go that route."
Two days before he disappeared, she said, he had a
good visit with his brother and didn't seem any
different. He had also had dinner with his next door
neighbors the night before his disappearance and
they, too, reported he seemed the same as usual as
did his son, Ruthe said.
The home from which Wasson disappeared is in the
same area as Goodman's home. Fellows said he stood
on Goodman's front porch and could see the front of
the Wasson house.
Despite the similarities in the two incidents,
Fellows said there is no evidence the two cases are
related. Ruthe thinks differently.
"I think Reed's disappearance is tied with June
Goodman," she said. "When you realize how exactly
alike they are - the same time of day, the same
circumstances - it has to be.
"We're going to find my son. It's important for my
grandchildren to know what happened to their father.
I think when they find June, they are going to find
Reed, too."
A fund has been established through the
Snowflake/Taylor Chamber of Commerce to accept
donations for anyone wishing to contribute to the
effort to put together a reward and to pay for the
expenses of putting up posters to publicize Wasson's
disappearance. Those wishing to make a donation can
drop it by the chamber office in the Freeman Home in
Snowflake, call the chamber at 536-4331 or send a
check or money order designated to the Reed Wasson
Fund to the chamber office at 110 N. Main St.,
Snowflake, AZ, 85937.
If no information is received at the end of 18
months, any funds in the account will go to
establish a fine arts scholarship in Wasson's name,
his mother said. Anyone with information on Wasson's
whereabouts can contact the Wassons at
findreedwasson@aol.com or the Snowflake/Taylor
Police Department at 928-536 7500.
END OF ARTICLE
JEFF WRITES:
He was (is?)
a first-class person. Kind to all,
crafty, artistic, knowledgeable in
native Am lore and customs. I remember
smacking him from behind with a
well-placed hurled snowball in the
winter. To make the moment more
memorable he fell first on both knees
(the snow was knee-deep) then face
forward into the snow, gone from sight.
I laughed like hell!
HERE'S
THE ARTICLE ON THE MISSING WOMAN
Disappearance in Snowflake baffling
by Mark Shaffer on May 06, 2003, under City/State
The Arizona Republic
SNOWFLAKE – Just about everyone in these parts
assumes that June Goodman must have seen a vehicle
winding its way down a quarter-mile gravel road to
her ranch-style home on that cold, clear late
March evening.
After all, investigators said, she’d been sitting
in the recliner in her living room, watching TV,
with a good view of the road outside her picture
window. She had even flipped on the outdoor lights
and half-opened the sliding-glass door,
authorities said, and is believed to have gone
outside.
Then, the 66-year-old widow, mail carrier, doting
grandmother of 18 and great-grandmother of 7, and
cousin to powerful GOP politicians such as state
House Speaker Jake Flake and U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake,
disappeared without a trace.
Law officers and family believe she was abducted.
But they don’t know why.
The case has baffled Snowflake police, Navajo
County sheriff’s investigators and the FBI since
Goodman failed to show up for work at the town
post office the morning of March 29. More than 300
interviews have been conducted, and a $100,000
reward has been offered by family and police
agencies for her safe return.
In Goodman’s house everything was where it should
be. Her billfold and valuables hadn’t been
touched. Even all her shoes were accounted for.
Her work van was parked in its usual spot, and a
daughter had borrowed her other vehicle earlier.
Investigators fanned out for miles in all
directions, but they couldn’t find a footprint or
even a sock print of the woman.
Goodman’s health was excellent, family members
said, so good, in fact, that she only bothered
with medical checkups once every two years. She
rode her exercise bike religiously every day and
easily handled the rigors of her six-day-a-week
mail carrier job.
For Navajo County sheriff’s Commander Larry
Dunagan, it’s the most frustrating case in his 34
years of law enforcement.
There was no theft, no scuffle, no evidence.
And, Snowflake isn’t exactly the kind of place
where violent crime is an everyday occurrence. The
town is so strait-laced that the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints built a temple here
two years ago.
“When Mrs. Goodman walked out that back door, it
was like she disappeared into thin air,” Dunagan
said.
But there is one man who investigators have more
than a little interest in talking to.
Patrick Michael Conn, 44, had
lived on Goodman’s rural mail delivery route east of
Snowflake. Conn, like many others along the route,
had been upset that the U.S. Postal Service had
refused to deliver mail to people unless they used
designated addresses for their homes for
correspondence.
Conn had a confrontation with Goodman one day last
year while she was delivering on her route, which
she noted in a report to her supervisor.
Conn then went to the Snowflake post office and
threatened Goodman’s life in a discussion with her
co-workers, said Pat Fawcett, Goodman’s sister, who
said Goodman was “deathly afraid” of the man.
Shortly after that incident, Snowflake had its first
homicide in recent times, and Conn was named by
Snowflake police as the prime suspect. The body of a
Snowflake man, identified as Douglas Sewell, was
found slumped in his vehicle along the side of state
Highway 77 in the undeveloped, northern part of
town. He had been shot 13 times, Dunagan said.
Local law officers thought they had their man when
they were notified late last year by police in
Española, N.M., that Conn had been arrested and
detained for shoplifting. But while officers in
Navajo County thought Conn was in custody and began
extradition proceedings, it turned out that the last
name of the man jailed in New Mexico was spelled
differently, Dunagan said.
Conn’s whereabouts are unknown, and police are
focusing their search for him in Hocking County,
Ohio, were he was born and raised before moving to
Arizona.
Meanwhile, Fawcett said police also are interested
in interviewing a local handyman, who is in custody
on unrelated drug charges, who Goodman had called to
repair her TV about a month before she disappeared.
“June and I were talking one day on the telephone
about how he had brought the TV back and it still
wasn’t fixed and how she was wondering if someone in
our family could work on it,” Fawcett said. “She
said that she felt very uncomfortable around that
guy.”
Dunagan said investigators began with 40 possible
suspects in Goodman’s disappearance and that the
list has been whittled to “five or six.”
Goodman’s family has erected a billboard on one of
the main roads into town seeking information as to
her whereabouts. Family members also have put up a
Web site (www.junegoodman.com THIS SITE IS DEFUNCT.)
about the case.
Fawcett said her sister had been eagerly
anticipating retirement from the Postal Service in
July, after 20 years of work. She said that had been
one of the main subjects of discussion when Goodman
came to her house for dinner on the evening of March
28 and spent two hours.
Goodman stopped at a Snowflake supermarket, where
she bought four candy bars at 8:25 p.m. Then she
apparently went home and turned on the TV.
It was still on the next morning when Fawcett
arrived after getting no answer when she tried to
call Goodman at 7 a.m. and learning that she hadn’t
shown up for work shortly after 8 a.m.
“We’ve been brainstorming hundreds of scenarios,”
Dunagan said. “When you don’t have a single piece of
evidence or a good suspect, that’s about all you can
do.”
UPDATE:
Patrick Michael Conn was convicted about 15
years later of the murder of Sewell"
HOLBROOK - After accepting a plea
agreement between Patrick Michael
Conn and the Navajo County
Attorney's Office, Judge Dale
Nielson sentenced Conn to 18 years
in the Department of Corrections
for the death of Donald Eugene
Sewell, 46, of Snowflake, on Feb.
11, 2002.
Under the plea agreement, Conn
was re-sentenced to two years for
a failure-to-appear charge to
which he pled guilty on Sept. 23,
2003. Although he has been at the
DOC since pleading guilty on a
failure-to-appear charge in 2003,
he gets no credit for time served.
The two sentences will be served
consecutively which means Conn was
sentenced to a total of 20 years.
The state agreed to dismiss any
remaining counts on the
indictment. The state also agreed
that the sentence and other
penalties imposed for an earlier
case in which he was found guilty
of child molestation would be
dropped.
The sentencing stated the victim
in that earlier case was not
opposed to the appeal. The earlier
case was dismissed with prejudice
meaning charges can't be refiled.
That case had been under appeal
with Conn claiming ineffective
counsel. He was found guilty in
that case while he had fled after
being released on his own
recognizance while awaiting trial.
In his plea agreement hearing,
Conn admitted to shooting Sewell
next to state Route 77 on the
north side of Snowflake, at the
top of the hill. He stated he had
shot Sewell multiple times with a
handgun.
The acceptance of the plea
agreement was deferred until the
issues involving the earlier case
could be resolved.
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