VT VT - Audrey Groat, 41, Montpelier, 21 Aug 1993

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Montpelier, Vermont - August 21, 2006

Audrey Groat never had a chance to meet sixteen of her grandchildren. Family members have never been able to grieve Groat's death because they still have no closure. No one has discovered her body.

Angela Rand, Audrey Groat's oldest daughter, says, "We still get up every day and wonder if we're going to get a knock on the door and know what happened."
 
http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/g/groat_audrey.html

http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1241dfvt.html

From:

The newsletter of Washington Electric Cooperative, Inc., East Montpelier, Vermont dated December 2001
Co-op Drains Reservoir
In Police Investigation

Each morning in early November as

Co-op General Manager Avram
Patt drove toward Montpelier from
his home in Worcester, he kept his eye
on the dramatic, and unusual, changes in
the water level taking place in the
Wrightsville Reservoir and the North
Branch of the Winooski River. And he
wondered, “When is someone going to
put two and two together?”
Someone, that is, besides the Co-op
employees who were aware of what was
happening, and the state police, who had
asked the Agency of Natural Resources
to have the reservoir drained for a criminal
investigation.
It was well over a week before Patt got
the inquiring phone call from the local
newspaper that he had been expecting.
“Is it true what we’ve heard…?”
Viewed from Route 12, the impoundment
to the north of the Wrightsville Dam
and the river to the south seemed to be
experiencing two entirely different weather
patterns. The reservoir was drying up,
which people may have assumed was
because of the drought that central
Vermont had been experiencing ever
since the end of last winter’s snowmelt.
The water retreated farther and farther
from the beaches and boat launch.
Meanwhile, it looked like springtime in
the river channel south of the dam where
water poured lustily between the river
banks. It wasn’t quite flood-like; the Dam
Safety Section of the Department of
Environmental Conservation (DEC) saw
to it that the flows were moderated to
protect the dam structure from damage.
Also, the better part of the 210 million
cubic feet of impounded water was being
released into the river; the Agency set
strict standards on the rate of release to
minimize soil erosion and injury to
aquatic habitat.
But when you empty a reservoir into a
riverbed it will have a noticeable effect.
The effect was – drought conditions to
the north and something of a deluge to
the south.
Finally the word got out: The Vermont
Department of Public Safety had asked
the Agency of Natural Resources to draw
down the reservoir so that state police
divers and investigators could look for the
body of Audrey Groat, a 42-year-old
Northfield woman who disappeared in
August 1993. She was last seen in the
vicinity of Shady Rill Road in Middlesex –
just across from the Wrightsville
Reservoir.
The courts have declared that Groat is
dead, the victim, police believe, of a violent
act. But her body has never been
found. Sadly, that is still the case.


 
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pb.../1009&theme

Missing: Mystery surrounds some Vermont disappearances

Published: Sunday, October 30, 2005
By Sam Hemingway
Free Press Staff Writer

Heide Dawn Wilbur's file sits in a box next to the desk of Vermont State Police Detective Cpl. Helaine Gaiotti.

For 14 years, Gaiotti has been trying to locate the blonde-haired teen from Middletown Springs without success. Her inability to find Wilbur, to even know if she's dead or alive, haunts the veteran detective.

"There's never been a really hot lead in the case," Gaiotti said in an interview last week. "Cases like this take away a little piece of me. It's horrible."

Wilbur was 16 and under the custody of the state Social and Rehabilitation Services department. She was living in a Rutland foster home in early 1991 when she got a weekend pass to visit her family in Middletown Springs. On Feb. 11, it's believed she thumbed a ride out of town -- and into oblivion.

"She's 30-something now, if she's still alive," Gaiotti said. "Her father's deceased and her mother's had a stroke. Part of me wonders why she's not come back and said, 'I'm free. You can't touch me now.'"

Investigating the whereabouts of longtime missing persons like Wilbur is one of the most difficult jobs police do, according to Vermont State Police Lt. Tim Oliver. The trail grows cold. Witnesses move on or pass away. More urgent cases demand attention.

"It's up to the investigators to put time into the cases when they can," said Oliver, who oversees a state police Web site that features photographs and details of 11 of Vermont's bigger missing-person cases. "A couple of these will never be solved."

Wilbur's case might be one of them, but Gaiotti refuses to believe it. Gaiotti said she feels she has grown to know Wilbur by studying the young woman's missing-person's folder at her desk over the
years.

"She was the kind of kid who could re-invent herself, you know, tell a story so well you could believe her," Gaiotti said of Wilbur. "Some days, I hope she's out there, doing well. Other days, I think she's got to be gone."

Gaiotti said she recently received a tip that Wilbur was seen at a gathering of people who live a nomadic communal lifestyle. The detective is planning to re-interview relatives and friends; meanwhile, an "age-processed" photo of what Wilbur might now look like has been added to Wilbur's teenage photo collection on www.doenetwork.com, an Internet Web site for missing persons.
Mysteries abound

There were 1,039 reports of missing persons in Vermont in 2004, according to statistics kept by the Vermont Crime Information Center. Nationally, the number of people reported missing annually is more than 800,000.

In most cases, police say missing persons eventually turn up alive and unharmed, many within a day or two of when they are first reported missing. Vermont had 631 missing person reports in the first six months of 2005, but listed only 78 "active cases" last week, according to Max Schlueter, director of the Vermont Crime Information Center.

Missing-person cases have particular significance for the Vermont State Police because of the case of Bennington College student Paula Welden, who disappeared while taking a walk on the Long Trail near Glastenbury Mountain on Dec. 1, 1946.

Vermont had no state police force at the time. The inability of local officials to find Welden forced then-Gov. Ernest Gibson to call in police from New York and Massachusetts to help in the search. It also persuaded local-control-minded legislators to finally support creation of the Vermont State Police. Welden was never found.

"My gut feeling is foul play was involved," Bennington Police Chief Richard Gauthier said last week. "It's consistent with what we know with cases involving a serial killer. Very often, the bodies of the victims in these cases are never recovered."

If Welden is alive, she would be 77 years old, not the smiling, blonde-haired, blue-eyed college sophomore in the photo provided police when she disappeared. "She's kind of the Amelia Earhart of Vermont," Gauthier said.

Over the years, police in Vermont have gone to great lengths in their investigations of missing persons. Police drained the Wrightsville Reservoir in 2001 after receiving a tip that the body of Audrey Groat, a Northfield mother who vanished Aug. 21, 1993, would be found there.

In the search for the remains of Grace Reapp and her daughter Gracie, missing since June 6, 1978, police employed ground penetration radar and conducted three digs between 1996 and 2000 at a Jericho homestead where the Reapp family once lived.

"We've been to that property 14 times," said Detective Sgt. Gerald H. Charboneau of the Vermont State Police. "I'll continue to pursue leads as they come in. This may be a so-called 'cold case' but it's still an open case."

The search for bodies in each case was unsuccessful, but police continue to treat the Groat and Reapp disappearances as possible homicides and Reapp's husband as "a person of interest" in that case. In the Reapp case, family members are so sure Grace and Gracie Reapp were killed that they had Chittenden County Probate Court declare the two dead.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think of her," Grace Reapp's sister, Juliana Woodworth of Franklin, Conn., said of her sibling.

Woodworth praised Charboneau for his efforts in the case, but said police weren't aggressive enough in the first days after Reapp and her daughter were reported missing. "The initial investigation was horrible," she said.

Wilfred "Butch" King III of Essex Junction, missing since Oct. 24, 1980, is also suspected of being the victim of a homicide. His family has had him declared dead, too, and has erected a gravestone in his memory at a Williston cemetery.

King was 37 when he went missing, estranged from his wife and recovering from a bad automobile accident that had forced him to use crutches for two years to get around.

His blood-stained crutches were found by hunters in the woods near Colchester the day he was reported missing. Two weeks later, his truck was found in a sand pit in Williston. Essex police have always treated King's disappearance as a likely homicide, but no arrests have been made.

"If a lead comes in, we work it," said Essex Detective Sgt. Rick Garey. "Unfortunately, after 25 years people's memories fade."

Lillian King, the mother of Wilfred King III, said she's become frustrated with the lack of police progress in solving what she believes is the murder of her son.

"It doesn't seem to me they've done an awful lot," she said. "I'm 80 and my husband is 87. It's torture. You don't know what happened or where he is. You'd like to put it all to rest, but it's impossible."
Confounding cases

The mystery about what happened to some missing persons seems impenetrable, even with the new investigative tools police have at their disposal, including DNA evidence technology and massive national missing-person databases.

Lynne Schulze was a Middlebury College freshman Dec. 10, 1971, headed across campus to take an exam when, friends said, she turned around and went back to retrieve a pencil from her dorm room.

Other than a report that she allegedly was spotted walking along U.S. 7 south of Middlebury later that day, she was never seen again. She left behind all her clothes, her wallet. Police followed many tips over the years without success. Schulze's parents have since died, but not before providing DNA samples to police, along with dental records.

Russ Bovit had recently moved to Vermont from New Jersey and bought the Last Resort Farm in Walden when he went missing the night of May 6, 1986. His empty, light blue 1974 Renault was found a day later, stuck in mud on a dirt road four miles from his home. Bovit left behind a wallet full of money and credit cards.

"We did a massive search," said Detective Leo Bachand of the Vermont State Police, who has continued to chase leads in the case over the last 19 years in conjunction with Bovit's family and private detectives hired to find Bovit or his body.

Bovit's family paid to have a two-man submersible watercraft plumb the depths of Lake Willoughby, searching for a U-Haul trailer purported to contain Bovit's body. No trailer or body was found.

The 2004 disappearances of two Vermont teenage girls are the state's latest high-profile missing-persons cases. March 19, Brianna Maitland vanished after finishing her nighttime dishwashing job at a Montgomery restaurant. On Aug. 27, Dominika Smolinski ran away from her family's Westford home.

Each girl has been featured on national television shows about missing people -- Smolinski's story was profiled on the Oct. 13 broadcast of the CBS drama "Without a Trace."

Smolinki's parents say they received a letter from her last spring, and police have two confirmed sightings of her.

"I think Dominika is out there, I think Dominika is alive," said Detective Sgt. Joe Leahy of the Vermont State Police. "I keep a spiral notebook on her in my bookcase and I pull it out daily. I'm telling you, I'm busting my butt on this case."

There are no new clues about Maitland's whereabouts, but the search for her continues. Saturday, 40 search-and-rescue workers from three states, police from around New England and 17 dogs trained in finding cadavers finished a second consecutive fruitless day of searching sites in Berkshire and Montgomery.

Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com
 
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pb...1/NEWS/60821013

Monday, August 21, 2006

Missing woman remembered by friends, family

Family and friends of a woman who disappeared 13 years ago today converged on the parking lot where she was last seen to remember.

Northfield single mom Audrey Groat, 41, was dropped off at a Montpelier park-and-ride lot 13 years ago and was never seen again. Police believe she was the victim of a homicide, but no body was ever found and no arrests made.

Four of Groat’s six daughters, plus an assortment of grandchildren and friends, gathered at the park-and-ride lot to erect a small white cross commemorating her life. They also issued an appeal to the public to call police with any information which might help answer what happened to their mother.
 
http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=5305280&nav=4QcS

13 Years Later, Still No Sign of Northfield Mother

Middlesex, Vermont - August 21, 2006

Family and friends of a missing Northfield woman will meet with state police detectives Monday, for a short memorial service.

Audrey Groat has been missing since 1993. Police believe she was murdered.

She was last seen alive near the Wrightsville Reservoir in Middlesex. The area has been searched on a number of occasions.

The service will take place Monday afternoon at the Montpelier Park & Ride where Groat's car was found abandoned.
 
http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=5308391&nav=4QcS

Woman's Disappearance Still A Mystery

Montpelier, Vermont - August 21, 2006

Audrey Groat never had a chance to meet sixteen of her grandchildren. Family members have never been able to grieve Groat's death because they still have no closure. No one has discovered her body.

Angela Rand, Audrey Groat's oldest daughter, says, "We still get up every day and wonder if we're going to get a knock on the door and know what happened."

That knock has never come for Groat's six daughters. The single mom's pickup truck was found in a Montpelier Park & Ride August 21st, 1993. But the presumed murder victim has never been found.

Audrey Groat's youngest daughter, Jamesina Cote, says, "It's so easy for other people to forget and move on, but when this has happened to you, you can't move on."

On the thirteenth anniversary of her disappearance, Groat's friends and relatives signed a painted white cross reading, "I looked for you today, just like yesterday, as I will tomorrow."

Vermont State Police have assigned a new detective to the Groat disappearance, hoping to bring fresh perspective to the cold case. In 2001, search teams drained the Wrightsville Reservoir in Middlesex looking for the missing woman's body, but no luck.

Vermont State Police Sgt. John Flannigan says, "We do not have a new search planned at this time, but we do have other information we'll be evaluating."

State Police would not discuss what tips they've received over the months and years, because their investigation is still open. Groat's family has been encouraged by recent developments in other old crimes. Namely an arrest in the 1991 rape and murder of Patty Scoville in Stowe, and an arrest warrant for Michael Reapp, the former Jericho man suspected of killing his wife and daughter in the late 1970s.

Angela Rand says, "It's kind of a double whammy for us, because we're happy for those families that they have their answers. But we say, 'What about us. When is it our turn?'"

Vermont State Police say their turn could come with a tip from the public. They've asked anyone who may have seen Audrey Groat before her disappearance in August of 1993 to contact the Middlesex State Police barracks. And they say no tip is too insignificant.

Jack Thurston - Channel 3 News
 
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar...362/1002/NEWS01

'We deserve an ending'
Audrey Groat's family gathers in remembrance of missing woman

August 22, 2006

By Peter Hirschfeld Times Argus Staff

MONTPELIER – Even at night, when she tries to sleep, Angela Rand's darkness is haunted by the image of the mother who disappeared 13 years ago.

"For me to be able to sleep at night, I need to know what happened," Rand says. "Emotionally, it's a roller coaster no one can understand."

Audrey Groat, 41 years old when she disappeared, almost certainly is dead. Her six daughters took steps long ago to obtain a death certificate and erect a grave marker in Middleton, Conn. But 13 years later, her vanishing still remains a mystery. Until they have a body to grieve over, a murderer to condemn or a miraculous return, the sisters say, they will continue to reside in the empty gulf between grief and catharsis.

"When this happens to you, there's no moving forward… We haven't even gotten to the place where we can go through the grieving process," Rand says. "Emotionally, we're at a stand-still."

"I don't think there's anything worse than this," says Jamesina Cote, who was seven days away from celebrating her 12th birthday when Groat disappeared. "All of us struggle in our own ways."

Four of Groat's six daughters and three of her 17 grandchildren gathered Monday in the park and ride just outside Montpelier to memorialize Groat and reinvigorate the police investigation into her disappearance.

Vermont State Police have long suspected foul play in the Groat case. Lt. Brian Miller said Monday that more than 20 investigators had interviewed several people of interest over the years, but that none of those investigations yielded either an arrest or a recovery. In November 2001, police drained the Wrightsville Reservoir when a credible tip suggested her body had been dumped there. The hunch, like many others before, came up empty.

Groat's daughters say she was a hardworking single mother who scraped together a meager but full life for her kids. After moving her family from South Ryegate to a small Northfield apartment in 1990, Groat asked her daughters if they'd like to build a house on a remote tract on Holstrom Road. They voted in favor of the idea and began work that summer. By late fall, they had moved into the plywood-exterior structure.

"Mom and us girls built it," said Amanda Cote, 28, who now lives in Barre, one of three of the daughters who live in Vermont. "It didn't have running water, and for eight months we didn't have electricity… We had one bedroom and a loft and everything else was wide open. It was pretty cool."

Amanda Cote said the close quarters brought the family together.

A couple years later, they were torn apart. When Groat vanished, four of her daughters were under 18 and living at home. They were dispersed throughout central Vermont, placed in the homes of family friends and in some cases, foster homes.

Some of the girls struggled. Some made out well. Jamesina, 24, works as a counselor at a "healing home" in Worcester for schizophrenic and bipolar patients. She credits her decision to major in psychology at Johnson State College in large part to the emotional train wreck that was her adolescence.

"You think 'she'll come back, she'll come back,'" says Jamesina, a Washington resident. "After a year, you realize she's not coming back.

"She was very dedicated to us kids. She really took care of her kids… The six of us lost our mom, and that's the only thing we had. Even now, we struggle."

Groat's daughters want answers, difficult to stomach as those may be. Jamesina believes an ex-boyfriend her mother confronted the day of her disappearance is responsible. Police interviewed the man, Paul Jarvis, and later charged him with an unrelated crime that resulted in a year-long prison term. However he was never charged in connection with Groat's vanishing.

Whatever happened to Groat, the daughters believe Monday's memorial will help further the search. They handed out posters with pictures to media on hand and issued a plea to community members to come forward with any information they may have withheld. Lt. Miller says there isn't "anything really new" in the case, however he calls Monday's meet-up a "good opportunity to put this case back in the public eye. If anybody does have information," he says, "go ahead and give us a call." Calls, he says, should be directed to Det. Sgt. Russ Robinson at the Middlesex barracks at 229-9191.

For Rand, a case-breaking call could bring the relief she's sought for more than a decade.

"We deserve an ending," she says.

If nothing else, the sisters say, they want their mom to be remembered. With the help of police, the family hammered a small white cross with six stenciled flowers into the ground of the Montpelier parking lot close to I-89. Painted on the marker is Rand's promise:

"I looked for you today, just like yesterday, as I will tomorrow…"
 
Anybody who may have information on Audrey's disappearance should contact the Vermont State Police
Det. Sgt. Michael Henry
Vermont State Police Middlesex
1080 U.S. Route 2
Middlesex, VT 05602
or the Myspace page set up for Audrey at
Audrey's family's Myspace
 
"Not a day goes by that I don't think of her," sighed Lisa England, as she flipped through a scrapbook of newspaper articles covering her friend's disappearance.

England and her husband, Steve, have worried for nearly two decades about Audrey Groat. "We'll never forget," Lisa England said.

Groat, a mother, vanished from the central Vermont community of Northfield in 1993. Vermont State Police believe she was murdered, but her body has never been found; her killer never brought to justice.


- See more at: http://www.metronewsday.com/news/48168-unsolved-crimes-vex-vt-police.html#sthash.4nm9VAlL.dpuf
 
Found an old article from 2009...

http://www.timesargus.com/article/20090429/NEWS01/904290342

Cote, now 27 and a resident of Berlin, was 11 years old when her mom disappeared. She said the experience in the days following the disappearance was "surreal" and hasn't grown easier over time.

"It never fades," she said.

She said many of her loved ones have passed away over the years, but it is more difficult when a person vanishes.

"It's totally different, a death and a person missing," she said. "I'd take a death any day of the week. You know what happened, and with a missing person there's no ending. You're just waiting and waiting to have an answer, and there's no answer."

Cote was joined at the park and ride Tuesday by Lisa England and her daughter Kim England. Lisa England – who was Groat's close friend — is the one who told Cote about Tuesday's search, and is the one who reported Groat missing in 1993, she said. Cote was babysitting Kim England, and Groat never came to pick up her daughter.

"She never came back to get Jamie (Cote), so my husband and I are the ones who called it in," said England

Another 2006 article mentioned 6 daughters and 16 grandchildren, and yet Audrey has no DNA in NamUs, and it says sample not available :( This is her NamUs: https://www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/6966/36/
 
Hello Websleuth Community, My name is Craig McDermott & I am in the process of putting together a multi season podcast about the disappearance of Audrey Groat in the early 90’s from Montpelier, VT.

I am a 5th generation native to central Vermont and have keen momories of this women’s story. I was 11 years old and lived with my single mother. The story hits home and did them because Audrey had six young children and was a single mother at the time she disappeared.

Along with being a podcast producer I am also planing a possible documentary about this case and I joined this forum to find out if there are any theories that folks haven’t already shared or that should be covered in these mediums.????

I will leave my contact info and leave it open to those who would like to contact me about this case


Thanks,

Craig McDermott

(802)-498-5163

Www.facebook.com/DAMPODCAST
 
Hello! I am so happy that Audrey Groats case is on here! Are you still working on this? My friend and I are trying to dig up more information on her case since there is so little out there!

Thanks,
Dawn Duke
 
Police seek new leads in Vermont cold case

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) Today marks 26 years since the mysterious disappearance of Audrey Groat.

The 41-year-old from Northfield shopped with a friend in Burlington that day in 1993. She was last seen when she was dropped off to pick up her car from the park and ride near Exit 8 in Montpelier.

Her car was later found still parked in the lot and her purse was found in the bushes nearby.

Various searches have been done throughout the years in a number of areas near where Groat had been seen, but no new evidence has been discovered.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to call Vermont State Police in Middlesex at 802-229-9191.
 

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