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2007 Walters, Mary Ellen 4-19-07; Lebanon 68 YO
Topic Started: Jun 2 2007, 11:38 PM (110 Views)
burnsjl2003
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http://www.star-telegram.com/238/story/93736.html
Few clues found so far in case of missing retired women
By DAN SEWELL
The Associated Press

MARY ELLEN WALTERS LEBANON, Ohio -- Mary Ellen Walters and Ada Wasson set out from their retirement community for a routine day of outlet-store shopping, not telling anyone they planned a long trip or even asking anyone to feed Walters' beloved dog.

There hasn't been a trace of them in more than two weeks.

Authorities, volunteers and relatives have driven up and down roads covering thousands of square miles of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana and have flown over the region. They've looked for credit-card activity, studied store videotapes, checked under bridges and passed out thousands of fliers.

Maj. John Newsom of the Warren County Sheriff's Office said the investigation is one of the broadest ever for the area, which is between Dayton and Cincinnati.

Newsom said there's no indication of foul play.

"They're out there somewhere. It may be the next square mile we search," said Brad Nixon, Walters' son-in-law.

Walter, 68, and Wasson, 80, are believed to have left the closely knit Otterbein Retirement Living Community on April 19, headed to a J.C. Penney outlet store in Columbus or Carrollton, Ky., with Wasson driving her 2000 Chevrolet Impala. They were reported missing three days later, when Walters' daughter came to pick her up for an evening out and found worried neighbors.

"That's all we think about," said Dorothy Pfeiffer, Walters' next-door neighbor.

There's never been a missing-person case at Otterbein.

Walters is a mother of three whose husband was in Florida with his own ailing mother, and Wasson is a widow with no children.

They had set out for Carrollton's outlet mall, some 80 miles southwest, earlier that week but got lost. They had lunch in Kentucky, then returned home laughing about it, said Walters' daughter, Cindy Nixon, and neighbors.

The two women preferred driving scenic highways rather than Interstate 71. That complicates the search.

Authorities know that Wasson filled her car's gas tank the night of April 18, and the women left sometime the next day.

There, the trail goes cold.

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http://www.neighborsearch.info/

NeighborSearch
This website is devoted to searching for Mary Ellen Walters and Ada Wasson, two elderly women who failed to return to their homes at Otterbein Lebanon Retirement Community after a planned shopping trip. We encourage your participation in the search and welcome all prayers for the ladies and their families.



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Friday, May 4th - The Warren County Sheriff’s office met with the Walters’ family and Otterbein Administration today to discuss the next steps in the investigation and the search for Mary Ellen Walters and Ada Wasson.

Members of the Walters family will fly a search over areas of Kentucky this weekend. This is in addition to the completed air search on Monday by the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) in northern Kentucky. CAP will also search Clermont County today, weather permitting. Air searches of Warren County and the I-71 corridor between Columbus and Cincinnati have been completed.

Law enforcement agencies in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana are supportive and have provided assistance in following leads and informing local police in their areas. Warren County detectives reviewed video from locations where they were thought to have been. The family is also reviewing the video. A request for help in locating information was presented to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources statewide and fliers were distributed. All tips and leads have been followed to date with the Columbus Police also following up on dozens of sighting in that area.

While the FBI does not have jurisdiction since no crime has been committed, they are monitoring the situation and have offered some assistance.

The Walters’ family is grateful for the support from all areas of the community and encourages the public to continue to search and be vigilant for the missing women.

Please call the hot-line (513) 696-8582 to volunteer or report a search area completed or respond by email to search@neighborsearch.info. See the website for updates www.neighborsearch.info.

All tips or possible sightings of the vehicle should be reported to the Warren County Sheriff’s Office at (513) 695-1280.


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NeighborSearch will provide updates as they are available on the search for Mary Ellen Walters and Ada Wasson.
The following information is currently available:
Click to go to Areas Reported As Already Searched Page


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Warren County Sheriff's Office
According to the Warren County Sheriff's office, the public's help is needed. If you have any information that may help the women be found, please contact the Sheriff's office at 513 925-1280 during business hours and 513 925-2525 after business hours.


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Search Volunteers Needed
We are attempting to organize a search for Mary Ellen and Ada. If you have expertise in coordinating and implementing a search of this kind we need your help. Please email search@neighborsearch.info or call 513-696-8582.

If you are willing to search an area or have searched a particular area along the I-71 corridor between Cincinnati and Columbus please email or call the locations that have been searched. You may print the poster and place it at the beginning of your search area so that others know the location has been covered.

Search Tips:

Print a poster from the website and take tape or tacks
Call 513 695-1280 if you locate the car
Always use caution – be careful when looking into ravines or ditches
Place a poster at the entrance of a searched area so others do not retrace that area
Always drive/walk to the right when searching an area ending at the starting point.
Watch for tire tracks that lead to thick brush or to a ravine or ditch
Look for brush that appears to be trampled or crushed
Take water, snacks and a first aid kit if possible in your car so that they are available for Ada and Mary Ellen when found. We know that they must be thirsty and hungry by now.
Call the search number or email the locations that have been searched as soon as possible.



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An organized search is being developed through the help of The United Methodist Church, Ohio River Valley District.

Churches and church members who live or work along I-71 to join in searching the roads off I-71. The initial area of concentration is 50 miles east or west of I-71. In particular we are searching for a silver 2000 Chevrolet Impala, Ohio plates DG 30 LC. If you are able to help search, please call 513-696-8582 with the area you have searched so that we can best deploy volunteer resources. Given the length of time that these women have been missing, the sooner we can begin assisting in the search, the better.




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Searches continue for missing women
BY JANICE MORSE | JMORSE@ENQUIRER.COM
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A Butler County woman vanished almost a month ago. So did a pair of elderly Warren County women.

The cases have little in common -- except their families and friends are worried, investigators are frustrated but determined, and the women’s descriptions sit in computer databases waiting for breakthroughs.

“They’ve just fallen off the face of the earth, without a focal point of a crime scene or a criminal incident,” Butler County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Anthony Dwyer said, referring to all three women.


The missing women are listed in the Ohio Law Enforcement Automated Data System computer as well as the National Crime Information Center’s missing-persons database. If anything connected to the women is found, police running computer checks would discover the missing-persons reports, officials said.

Seeking a “tidbit”

Dwyer’s office is investigating the April 14 disappearance of Kiva Gazaway, 38, of Liberty Township, probably a victim of foul play.

Investigators have made “significant progress” in the case, Dwyer said. “We’ve eliminated a lot of situations and a lot of potential locations.”

Authorities found her car in Fairfield and identified her boyfriend, Harvey "Shawn" Johnson, as a "person of interest.” He is being held in Florida on unrelated charges.

But they haven’t said what they think happened to Gazaway.

“We’ve not found her – and if foul play has happened, we’ve not found the body,” Dwyer said.

He thinks some people still have information that might be helpful. Even just a “tidbit” could be enough to unlock the puzzle, Dwyer said.

Longer-term missing-persons cases require interviews and re-interviews. Investigators “spiral out” from what is known and seek more information, then circle back to gather more pieces from earlier sources, Dwyer said.

Even though the case has been well-publicized, Dwyer said some people who knew Gazaway and her boyfriend were totally unaware of the events surrounding both.

Some people “don’t really look at the news,” Dwyer said. Others were out-of-town on vacation or on business when the initial publicity hit.

‘Frustrating’ search

In neighboring Warren County, sheriff’s Maj. John Newsom has tried getting national attention on the case of Mary Ellen Walters, 68, and Ada Wasson, 80.

The women were last seen April 19 as they left Otterbein Retirement Living Community in Turtlecreek Township, where they lived. They had intended to go shopping, but no trace of them has been found.

Newsom persuaded FoxNews.com and America’s Most Wanted to feature the cases on their Internet sites, hoping to generate more information.

“There still are leads that are trickling in... we keep following up,” he said Friday.

Grasping for anything useful, Newsom finds himself scanning the highway as he goes about his personal business, looking for a glimpse of the missing car.

“You don’t realize how many 2000 silver Impalas are out there until you start looking for them. It’s a common, nondescript car,” he said. “It’s both frustrating and disheartening...we’d really like to work this out for the families’ sake.”

This case is unusual because there is “no clear-cut starting point.”

“Who knows if they made it to their first destination and got lost, or never made it there, or went somewhere else?” Newsom said. “If you’ve got suspicious circumstances, you have a starting point. We don’t even have that.”

Anyone with information on the Gazaway case is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 513-352-3040 or the Butler County Sheriff’s Office at 513-785-1000.

Anyone with information in the Otterbein women’s case is asked to call the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, 513-695-1280, or county dispatch at 513-925-2525
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...EWS01/305110051




Local news
Cincinnati.Com » The Enquirer » Local news » Missing women frustrates cops
Last Updated: 5:24 pm | Saturday, May 19, 2007


Missing women frustrates cops
No clues a month after disappearance; family losing optimism
BY MARGARET A. MCGURK | MMCGURK@ENQUIRER.COM
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A month gone by, and still no trace of Ada Wasson or Mary Ellen Walters.

The two retirees - 80 and 68, respectively - left their homes April 19 at Otterbein Retirement Living Community in Turtlecreek Township in Warren County to do some outlet shopping, perhaps in Kentucky, perhaps Columbus.

Walters' daughter Cindy Nixon went to her mother's home April 22, discovered that she was gone and called the police.


The Warren County sheriff notified neighboring police; then the report went into the Ohio Law Enforcement Automated Data System and the National Crime Information Center database.

Friends and family called news outlets, passed out posters and fliers, set up a Web site and recruited volunteers through United Methodist churches, in which Walters served as a minister.

Scores of volunteers fanned out to scour highways and back roads.

Aircraft owners helped expand the search to almost 8,000 square miles in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.

They found nothing. There have been no phone calls, no police reports, no bank or credit-card charges - nothing to hint at the whereabouts of the two women.

The mystery has frustrated investigators and battered their families' hopes.

"We had a hard Mother's Day," Brad Nixon, Walters' son-in-law, said. "We're hoping they are found, and found soon, for the sake of the family. But our optimism has diminished."

Nixon has served as spokesman for the family, which includes Cindy's brother Joe, his wife and children and Walters' husband, who was in Florida caring for his ailing mother April 19.

Wasson's sister, Jean Pierce-Jones of Milford, at first held on to the possibility that her sister, a widow who had no children and loved to travel, had talked Walters into going on some kind of adventure. She doesn't believe that any more.

"I think everyone has done whatever they could, and they can't expect any more," she said. "I understand it's on a national database of some kind.

"If the bodies are found, we'll be called."

She has begun emptying out her sister's Otterbein residence. "There are people on the waiting list wanting to go into the home," she said.

DEAD-END LEADS

Major John Newsom of the Warren County Sheriff's Office said the case is unlike any other he has handled in decades of police work.

"Most of the time, you have a clear-cut starting point," Newsom said. "We don't know if they made it to their original destination. It's speculation at best trying to figure out where they went, or even when they left. Everything is a guess."

Police know that Wasson filled the gas tank on her silver 2000 Impala April 18 and that both women spoke to relatives and neighbors about their shopping plans, although accounts of where they meant to go are contradictory. Neither woman had a cell phone. Walters is diabetic and moves with difficulty because of knee problems. Wasson has shown signs of confusion, including losing her way while driving, since she survived a serious illness in February.

A few leads have come in. All turned out to be vague or simply mistaken.

One discounted report said the two women had been seen recently buying lawn cushions at a yard sale in Indiana. "It doesn't seem plausible they could be out shopping three weeks after they disappeared," Nixon said.

Another suggested the women may have been seen in Corbin, Ky., Nixon said. "That was followed up by police and air searching, but when it was all said and done, there was no firsthand account that they were there."

"We've searched high and low," Nixon said. "We're getting out our maps and marking off every single street and road. We get out and walk where there is a drop-off and you can't see over the side."

Throughout, he said, "There was no sign anywhere, and no firsthand accounts. That says to me something happened relatively quickly (after they left home). A sighting five days later, two weeks later, does not to me ring true, because, where would they be in the meantime?"

Wasson's sister agrees. "I'm very positive ... that they were going for just the one day. Whatever happened to them happened on Friday or Saturday at the latest."

STAYING ON THE CASE

Now, she said: "It's just kind of waiting around. Not knowing is bad. They may never find them. There just is not a trace to even follow. We'd like to know what in the world happened to them, but I'm resigned to the fact that whatever will be will be."

Walters' family plans to keep searching, Nixon said, despite the strain. "Everyone is hanging in. You have that moment when the exterior kind of falls apart, but people are doing as well as they can."

Police also will keep trying to unravel the mystery, Newsom said. "My hope is now with schools being out, people getting more active, hiking and fishing with their families and getting into areas not easily seen by air, that somebody will find them.

"I wish I could say more and do more. We still have a detective assigned, and we will. This case won't close until we have some logical answer."


Help Still Needed for Search:

www.associatedcontant.com

Missing from Ohio; Have You Seen Ada Wasson or Mary Ellen Walters?
By Ever Odessa
Takeaways
Ada Wasson is 80 years old
Mary Ellen Walters is 68 years old
Both missing along with car, Silver 2000 Chevy Impala Ada Wasson and Mary Ellen Walters were last seen April 19, 2007 in Warren County, Ohio where they left their retirement home together to go shopping for the day.
According to the Associated Press, the two may have been planning to shop the outlet malls of Columbus, Ohio or Carrollton, Kentucky; and were driving a silver 2000 Chevrolet Impala with Ohio license plate DG30LC. They have been missing ever since.

If you live in the Kentucky, Indiana, or Ohio area, help is currently needed with the search for Ada Wasson and Mary Ellen Walters. For more information on this case or how you can help, please visit Neighbor Search.

Source: Associated Press, Neighbor Search

More resources
www.neighborsearch.info


www.local12.com

Search For Two Missing Women Goes From Land To Water
Last Update: May 27, 2007 10:02 AM

A water search begins today after a month and a half of searching for two missing women. 68-year-old Mary Ellen Walters and 80-year-old Ada Wasson disappeared April 19 from their Lebanon homes. They haven't been heard from since.

This was the first search of Caeser Creek in Warren County. Using Sonar and powerful magnets, searchers hope to find a sign of the woman's car. That's after weeks of searching by ground and air without any success.

The family got some new information this week. A witness reports seeing the women leave home at 4:15 p.m. the day they left together. That's later than previously thought.

Now the family thinks the women may have stayed in the local area and not gone on an out of town shopping trip. If you have any information that might help investigators find the missing women call the Warren County Sheriff's Office at 695-1280.
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http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...EWS01/309210079

Why did they vanish?

BY LORI KURTZMAN | LKURTZMAN@ENQUIRER.COM

TURTLECREEK TWP. – People don’t just vanish.

Of course not.

There’s an explanation for what happened to Mary Ellen Walters, an answer to the question that’s been haunting her family, a reason she never came home from that shopping trip all those months ago.

Part of it, they know.

The realization sunk in slowly, weeks after she went missing.

Mary Ellen’s husband, Joe Walters, felt it before anyone said it aloud: His wife – the woman he met on a blind date, whom he married in 1960, who would have turned 69 last month – is probably dead.

No one has seen her since April 19. No one has heard from her 80-year-old travel companion, Ada Wasson, either.

No one has used their credit cards or taken money from their bank accounts or tried to sell Ada’s car.

No one’s even seen the car.

So this is the question.

Where are they?

Asking isn’t enough.

After five months, Scott Walters, one of Mary Ellen’s three children, still drives out every Sunday after church and at least one afternoon during the week to look for his mother. Up one road, down another. He parks his green van and hops out to check the ditches that might conceal Ada’s silver 2000 Chevy Impala.

“We still just haven’t found anything at this point,” Scott Walters says.

He’s put more than 7,000 miles on the van. His siblings have ratcheted up their odometers, too.

They’ve driven countless rural roads and trudged through poison ivy and brush and marsh, hoping to discover the silver car in a deep ravine or catch a glimpse of it submerged in a pond.

Theirs is a tedious, blind search, stretching from Columbus to Carrollton, Ky., and into southeastern Indiana.

Dozens of volunteers and law enforcement officials have helped, both on the road and from the sky. With every search comes the same result.

No Ada.

No Mary Ellen.

Scott Walters recounts the past five months from the patio of his parents’ home. He’s a lumbering guy, an engineer, a Forest Park father of two. He holds a map and points out the area he’ll be searching that weekend.

He says he’s tried to find a way to describe what this all feels like, why he keeps looking.

Imagine someone you love dies, he says, and you have that sadness, that heavy grief, that loss. Then, you have a funeral, and while that doesn’t ease the pain, at least it marks something. An ending. Some closure. A chance to move on.

Now, imagine not getting that ending. Imagine the grief just lingers.

Imagine an unthinkable question hangs over your head.

“You’re trapped,” he says.

WHERE’D THEY GO?

Before all of this happened, before the missing persons reports, before their pictures were posted on the window at the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, Mary Ellen was a boisterous 68-year-old, a retired schoolteacher and minister with a husband, three adult children, five grandchildren and a dog named Susie.

Ada was a childless widow who loved to travel and had retired from the accounting department at Columbus’s Riverside Methodist Hospital.

The two women lived in the red-brick homes of Warren County’s Otterbein Retirement Living Community. They sang in the community choir and were part of the same women’s group. Life had worn them down a bit – Mary Ellen had diabetes and two bum knees and Ada suffered an illness that left her increasingly confused – but both remained active, open to adventure, ready for a road trip.

Which is how April 19 came about.

No one’s too sure where the women went. Neither had a cell phone. Ada left behind a list of places she wanted to visit. Joe Walters was out of town. The best guess police and family have is that when Ada and Mary Ellen climbed into the Impala, a handicap tag hanging from its rearview mirror, they were headed to a JCPenney outlet store in either Columbus or Carrollton.

The two cities are more than 160 miles apart. Both are more than an hour’s drive from the retirement community. Either could have posed a problem: Just days earlier, the pair had gotten lost trying to reach the outlet mall in Carrollton.

They ended up stopping for lunch at the Montgomery Inn Boat House, relatives say, laughing about their foiled shopping attempt.

NOTHING COMES CLOSE

Scott Walters tried to think like an engineer. He tried to think like his mother, but that hurt too much. In the end, he and his siblings and his father and all the volunteers have just picked apart the massive search area, one road at a time.

They’ve found plenty of vehicles – one submerged beneath a boat ramp – but nothing even close to the car they’re looking for.

“You can’t fathom it,” Joe Walters says.

In the beginning, this was a rescue operation. Find Ada and Mary Ellen. Get them help, get them home. But weeks passed. Then months. Spring gave way to summer and trees grew green and leafy and thermometers hit the 100-degree mark.

Too much time had passed.

Rescue gave way to recovery.

“It’s hard to say that,” Scott Walters says. “But the reality is kind of where we’re at.”

Across from Scott Walters, Joe Walters sits and fumbles with a pipe. He doesn’t say much.

The son, who admits he’s grown increasing protective of his father, does most of the talking. He says they’re doing “as good as you can expect,” and calls this a “lost summer.” Their expressions are hidden behind sunglasses.

The men chuckle at all the places they’ve been, joke that Mary Ellen is getting a kick out of making them run around, but grow quiet when asked whether they are afraid that one day they might just find that silver Impala.

Scott Walters pauses. He says no. He wants to find that car. He wants to find his mother.

He looks at his dad.

“I think,” he says, “I want to find her for him.”


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http://www.local12.com/news/local/story.as...f6-c2d724448d81

Five Month Mark Since Lebanon Women on Shopping Trip Vanished

Last Update: 9/19 4:04 pm

Five months ago today two women embarked on a shopping trip and vanished...no word from them or sign of the car they drove off in.

68-year old Mary Ellen Walters and 80-year old Ada Wasson left their retirement community in Lebanon on April 19th.

They were headed to an outlet store in either Columbus or Carrollton, Kentucky.

Since their disappearance law enforcements and dozens of volunteers searched nearly 10,000 miles for the missing women...

They looked along the stretch of Interstate 71...rural roads leading down to Kentucky....and also parts of Southern Indiana.

The Warren County Sheriff's office searched waterways by air and friends and family passed out flyers of the women.

They were last seen driving a silver Chevy Impala. It's a 2000 model with four doors, a blue handicap placard on the rear view mirror AND license plate number "DG30LC"

If you have seen the women or their car, call the Warren County Sheriff's office at 695-1280.

Also, there is a website devoted to finding Ada and Mary Ellen.



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http://www.local12.com/news/local/story.as...db-6c5e295f0425

Falling Leaves May Help Find Missing Women

Last Update: 8:04 am

Falling leaves mean new efforts to find two women missing now for months.

Ada Wasson and Mary Ellen Walters left their retirement homes in Warren County's Turtle Creek Township last April. No one has seen or heard from them since.

"Nobody knows," said Lindsay Mescher, Lebanon. "It's like they fell off the face of the earth."

As summer fades to fall, it's clear memories aren't fading about the two women who never came home.

"I was wondering myself," said Mescher.

People who never met Ada Wasson and Mary Ellen Walters know their story and wonder what happened.

"We were talking about them the other day when we saw it in the newspaper," said Walt Bohanan, looks for missing on his motorcycle. "Wondering what was going on. If they'd found them or something."

They haven't been found.

It's been five months, and family, friends, police and church groups have covered thousands of Tri-State miles searching for the two who left their Otterbein Retirement Community on a shopping trip, but vanished without a single trace.

The Warren County sheriff gave an update Thursday night.

"We've had contact with our civil air patrol to go up in the area and when the foliage starts falling off, take another check over the air, see what's going on," said Sheriff Tom Ariss, Warren County. "With that foliage falling off, we're looking at hopefully that car will be found, the ladies will be found, the families will finally have some resolution to their missing mothers."

The two were driving a silver, four-door Chevy Impala with Ohio plate number DG30LC.

"How do you help people come to grips with something that's really unresolved?" asked Bob Benson, Otterbein Retirement Living Community.

Benson runs the Otterbein Community, where the two women lived, where their family and friends are hoping people don't start forgetting these two are out there, somewhere.

"We ask for hunters and people who are going to be out to enjoy the fall color to keep an eye out and maybe we can find their car or something," said Benson.

Family tells us Joe Walters, Mary Ellen's husband, had a birthday Thursday, celebrating it in private with his family but without his wife.
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Clues Sought In Disappearance

Sep 28, 2007 11:03 AM CDT

Searchers hope falling leaves will lead them to two missing Ohio women who haven't been seen since they left for a shopping trip, possibly to Kentucky, in April.

Ada Wasson and Mary Ellen Waters were on their way to either Carrollton, Kentucky or Columbus, Ohio to shop, but neither woman has been seen since.

Now, authorities are hoping that once leaves come off trees, they'll be able to see their car, whereever it may be.

The two left a retirement home back in April on that trip. A physic had led the family to the Ohio River, but nothing turned up.

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Jun 1, 2007 8:21 PM

Search For Missing Warren County Shoppers Continues After 6 Weeks

Posted By: Bill Price

The families of two women missing from a Warren County retirement home say they're not giving up.

The women left home to go shopping six weeks ago, and haven't been heard from since.

For the last few weeks, the families of Ada Wasson and Mary Ellen Walters have used planes, boats and helicopters to search from Carrollton, Kentucky in the south, to Columbus, Ohio in the north.

Their website lists six pages of searched locations.

Now the families are focusing their search efforts closer to the women's homes, rather than farther away.

After searching up and down Interstate 71 through two states for 80-year old Ada Wasson and her friend, 68-year old Mary Ellen Walters, for 6 weeks – Mary Ellen's son-in- law, Brad Nixon – says the families have almost nothing to show for it.

Nixon told 9News, "The police have provided no new leads for this situation. There are no firsthand accounts of them having been anywhere. So we think they may have been close by."

The women's silver 2000 Chevrolet Impala hasn't even been found yet.

Nixon says he has high hopes of finding the car first, and having that lead police and the family to the missing women.

Nixon adds, "We certainly hope they're found with the car, at this point. If they are not found with the car, that could mean something else entirely."

Nixon says the next big step is searching Caesar's Creek Lake in Warren County for that car.

Sometime next week, when the lake is not busy with boaters, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources will bring in site scanning sonar to search the lake.

Nixon is also considering searching in Mansfield, Ohio as well as Richmond, Indiana and Covington, all because of what was recently found.

Nixon told 9News, "We've recently come across a list of places that Mary Ellen and Ada had wanted to go to. We're not sure they were actually using that list before their disappearance, but it's something to follow up on.

After six weeks, Nixon says he and other family members refuse to give up looking for Ada and Mary Ellen.

"We just know we want to bring them home," said Nixon. "We're not going to do memorial services – we're not going to do any kind of memorial service for them now, until we bring them home."

Nixon says his family can still use volunteers to help with individual searches, most likely along I-71 from Mason, north up through Warren County.


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Missing women's car found
Remains await identification
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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CAMPBELLSBURG, Ky. - A car belonging to an Ohio woman missing since April was found Sunday along with skeletal remains in north-central Kentucky, Kentucky State Police said.

Foul play did not appear to be a factor, state police said.

The silver 2000 Chevrolet Impala registered to Ada Wasson was found on the farm, Henry County, about 38 miles northeast of Louisville.


Wasson, 80, and her companion Mary Walters, 68, were reported missing from Warren County in April.

No identification was made, Trooper Chip Perry said.

Warren County Sheriff's deputies were called to the scene, state police said.

"We just have very limited information," Joann Crew, receptionist at the Otterbein Retirement Community in Turtlecreek Township where the women live, said Sunday night. "They (police) believe that it is their car that's been found, and they have contacted the families."

Wasson and Walters were reported missing after they left their retirement home in Ohio on April 19. The pair told friends they were headed for a J.C. Penny outlet store either in Columbus or in Carrollton, Ky., authorities have said.

The disappearance touched off a search of thousands of square miles covering a three-state area by both authorities and volunteers.

Wasson is a widow with no children. Walters is a retired United Methodist minister and a mother of three. Her husband was in Florida with his ailing mother when she disappeared.

Enquirer reporter William A. Weathers contributed
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