Post by Joanna on May 25, 2016 12:19:21 GMT -5
Mysterious Letter Claims Knowledge of Son Missing since 1977
The last time Bernard Ross Jr.’s parents saw him was on the morning of Thursday, May 12, 1977, when he left home in anguish. It was suspected the teenager had swiped his aunt’s pickup truck – which was later found empty and intact on a dirt road in Maine, according to news reports from that time. But Ross (above left), 18, was never seen again.
Now, almost 40 years later, his parents have received an anonymous letter claiming some level of knowledge of their son’s disappearance, police told the Portland Press Herald. “It’s very upsetting to us,” Carol Ross, 78, told The Washington Post Monday. “It’s very traumatic, even given the length of time.” She added that it was too painful to speak further about the mystery of her son’s disappearance and that authorities have advised the family not to discuss the letter during the police investigation.
Police reports and missing children’s posters from that time indicate Bernard Ross, known as “Bun” or “Bunny,” disappeared from the home he shared with his parents in Fort Kent, a town in the northern tip of Maine. The teenager was spotted in a wooded area in Ashland, according to The Charley Project. He was wearing a chamois shirt, green vest and corduroy pants – and was taking an anti-psychotic drug at the time, according to the organization.
His parents told the Bangor Daily News the community was “shocked” by the disappearance. “People had a hard time because there were no answers,” Mrs. Ross told the newspaper. “It’s not like there was a death. It was the unknown. ... There was always the hope that he’d walk through the door one day.” Today, Bunny Ross would be 57.
After years of searching, Bernard Sr. and Carol Ross have never learned their son’s fate. “I go from thinking he’s out there somewhere – maybe in a hospital or carrying on a new life,” Carol Ross told the Press Herald years ago. “Other times, I think he must be gone, because he would have called us.” But, she added, perhaps the most heart-wrenching moments were when authorities would call the couple to ask them to identify a body. They were terrified that their son had been found dead – and then upset that his fate was still unknown. “We’ve had several calls,” she recently admitted to the Press Herald. “You’d get your hopes up, but of course it would turn out to be someone else.”
Years ago, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created an age-progression image to show how Bunny Ross might have changed since his disappearance (above right).
Then, earlier this year, Ross’s parents received a letter mentioning a missing person’s story that appeared in the Kennebec Journal that referenced Ross’s case; the letter proposed that the newspaper write another story about him.
Maine State Police Lt. Troy Gardner told the Press Herald he reached out to the media in hopes that more stories might encourage the anonymous author to come forward – although he declined to share detailed information about the letter’s contents with the media. “If there was details in the letter that we felt were important to the investigation, we wouldn’t release them,” he said. “That’s common sense. It protects the integrity of the investigative process.” Yet, he admitted: “I’ve never had anything like this happen in my career. Basically, all we’re doing is extending an olive branch, saying we want to make contact with this person. Of course, there’s no way of knowing whether the letter’s truthful or the information is accurate, but we are asking for whoever wrote the letter to please contact us.”
It might be a hoax, Gardner explained, but police are still investigating. “Obviously, if it is a hoax, that’s a horrible thing to do to somebody who’s been missing their son since 1977,” he told the Daily News. He also said there’s always been hope that Bunny Ross is still alive. “Certainly in their minds – and investigatively – there’s been nothing to suggest he’s not alive,” he told the newspaper. “The other side of that is that he’s been missing since 1977 and that’s a long time to go without contact with family.”
Source: Lindsey Bever, The Washington Post, May 23, 2016.