Parents question manner of daughter’s 2002 death

FARMINGDALE – The parents of a woman killed by a shotgun blast still have trouble believing she died at her own hand, more than two years after her death. And it doesn’t help that police have yet to make a final determination.

“After two years you’d think we’d know,” said Christa Lord, the mother of Dianne Sawyer, who died in April 2002.

Christa and Ormond Lord, both in their 70s, said they had trouble merely functioning for more than a year after their daughter’s death. Although time has passed, the tragedy is still fresh for Sawyer’s parents, particularly in the face of the questions that remain.

“To us, it is suspicious,” Christa Lord said. “She didn’t commit suicide. If the police determined this was suicide, they’d have closed the case. And they did not.”

Sawyer was found dead in her bed with a shotgun wound to her head on April 27, 2002, her finger on the trigger of the gun, police investigators said. But police, prosecutors and the state medical examiner still have not classified the “manner” of her death, usually listed as either suicide, homicide, accidental or natural death.

Lingering unsolved deaths are “something of a source of frustration for us,” said William R. Stokes, chief of the attorney general’s criminal division.

Sawyer’s case remains active and is reviewed from time to time, Stokes said.

“We still have questions surrounding the death and, to the extent that we have questions, we continue to investigate,” state police detective Lt. Timothy Doyle said. “The cause of death has been determined. But the manner of death has not been determined. That’s why we have questions.”

Sawyer’s parents say they think police aren’t working to answer those questions, keeping them from reaching closure on their daughter’s death.

“You call them and they don’t return your calls,” Christa Lord said. “Why are they doing this? Don’t they have enough compassion to return our calls? Is that the way it goes in the state of Maine with every crime that goes unsolved? The poor parents are driving themselves crazy.”