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2007 Wasson, Ada 4-19-07; Lebanon 80 YO
Topic Started: Jun 2 2007, 11:44 PM (221 Views)
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http://www.wcpo.com/news/local/story.aspx?...73-99cd7f6ffe02

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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http://www.lex18.com/Global/story.asp?S=7142132

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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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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http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...140030/-1/CINCI

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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The bodies of two women missing for six months months from Warren County were found after a hunter spotted their car in Henry County, Kentucky.

The hunter spotted the car around 9 a.m. Sunday, and the bodies were then found nearby.

Mary Walters and Ada Wasson were last seen April after they were thought to have gone on a shopping trip in Wasson's car, either to central Ohio, or to Carrollton, KY which is about halfway between Cincinnati and Louisville.

The spot they were found is in a wooded area about 10 miles southwest of Carrollton near Campbellsburg, KY.

Police have not positively identified the bodies, but they have said there is every reason to believe that they are the missing women, and that foul play is not involved.

The women lived at Otterbein, a Methodist retirement community north of Lebanon in Warren County. Police, relatives, fellow Methodists, and even total strangers mounted a large search along I-71 between Columbus, Ohio and Louisville, but they were never found.

With fall the leaves were falling from trees and hunters were entering the woods, and family members ahd hoped that might lead to the missing women being discovered.

Relatives told FOX19 that there was at least a sense of relief that Walters and Wasson had been found. They also said that Warren County Sheriff Tom Arris made a trip to make a family notification in person.




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