Woman with Alzheimer’s missing Search fails to locate Bradley resident, 67; effort to resume today

BRADLEY – Searchers scaled back their efforts to locate a 67-year-old Bradley woman with Alzheimer’s disease late Wednesday night, but were expected to resume this morning with a larger contingent.

Search dogs, trained to detect the presence of minute flecks of human skin or other minutiae left behind, were used in an extensive search that began earlier Wednesday after Annie Dunton was reported missing from her Route 178 home. At least one family member intended to continue searching the area by himself on an ATV during the overnight.

Dunton left her home at about 7:20 a.m. dressed fairly warmly, but only carrying food stamps in her pockets, family members said. She was last seen for sure about two hours later about two miles away in the woods, sitting on a cedar stump.

Family members began searching the area, on foot and using ATVs, visiting neighbors and checking local stores. The search has since expanded to include postings in Brewer stores and notification to area police and even UPS drivers.

Since her disappearance, several people reported seeing a woman matching her description – including one wearing a pink jacket like Dunton was – on Route 9 as well as at a supermarket in the neighboring city of Brewer. The reports offered some room for optimism but little certainty to the family, many of whom remained clustered together at the search headquarters at the Northeast Forest Experiment Station, waiting for news.

“We’re trying to find out where in the world she is,” said Sgt. Doug Tibbetts of the Maine Warden Service.

But even with a plane searching overhead and a score of people and search dogs on the ground, that has proven no easy task. A powerful thunderstorm that passed through the area earlier and continued precipitation limited how long the search plane was available.

On the ground, it likely helped disperse any scents Dunton would have left behind, said Julie Jones, of the Maine Search and Rescue Dogs organization, who brought dogs and handlers from as far away as Stonington, Belgrade and Harmony to assist in the search.

And although the search effort was concentrated in woods and swampy area in the area around her home, authorities aren’t even sure she was in the woods.

One of her sons, Darrell Smith, thought she might have made it at least to Brewer. He said he reviewed videotapes from Paradis Foodliner at the North Brewer Shopping Center and saw what appeared to be his mother leaving the supermarket. The description employees gave also matched his mother, Smith said. The woman bought $10 worth of cigarettes and groceries that she left behind in the cart in the parking lot.

While Dunton left with only food stamps in her pocket, family members suspect she may have had access to a bank account and was lucid enough to withdraw the money. Sometimes Dunton’s memory and thinking have been shrouded with the Alzheimer’s, which in the last 18 months seems to have worsened, a family member said.

Dunton’s niece Bonnie Wilson said her daughter was driving on North Main Street and saw a woman walking in the heavy rain between noon and 12:30 p.m., only later to learn that Dunton was missing and wearing similar clothing to the pedestrian she had seen.

Smith, Dunton’s son, said the supermarket videotape of what may be his mother was taken at 12:37 p.m.

But wardens were taking no chances and planned to redouble the search this morning.