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Missing Newberg woman had big dreams, hopes
Published: May 16, 2006
By PAUL DAQUILANTE
Of the News-Register
Big Sky Country held big dreams and hopes for Lucille "Louie" Lewis, a 53-year-old Newberg woman wooed over the Internet last fall by a man who lured her to a remote area of Montana to make her home with him.
Earl Dean Stipe, also 53, said he was a retired federal marshal who owned a ranch. But he turned out to be an ex-con with a violent past who was making his home in a trailer in the isolated town of St. Ignatius.
Recently divorced, she took his word for it, brushing off the skepticism of friends, relatives and co-workers from Oregon Mutual Insurance, where she had found rewarding employment for many years.
Did she discover her error too late? That's what members of her family - and even some of his - most fear.
According to his son, long estranged from him, he tried to smother his first wife more than once after she began to have misgivings about him. He thinks that could be the fate Lewis met.
No one in her family has seen her or heard from her in more than six months now, not even the grandchildren she doted on. Police have launched an investigation, but her whereabouts remains a mystery.
Stipe has been considered a person of interest in her disappearance from the outset. After all, she left all of her worldly possessions behind and he began pawning them in short order.
However, they have stopped short of calling him a suspect. The most they have been able to do is put him away for violating his probation on an earlier conviction.
Lewis' sister, Cassie Jones of Hubbard, helped trigger the investigation by filing a missing person's report with the Lake County Sheriff's Office in Polson. When officers went to Stipe's trailer to talk to him about the mysterious disappearance, they found 14 firearms.
That violated terms of his probation on the latest in a series of forgery convictions, earning him two years in the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. He was sent away last month to begin serving his time.
Louie and Ken Lewis had recently ended a 20-year marriage on amicable terms when she encountered Stipe on the internet.
Like everyone else in her Oregon life, her ex-husband harbored deep misgivings. But she felt she had found true love - to the point where she was willing to give up a 25-year underwriting career, leave the home she shared with son Steve Baldoni and his family, including two young grandsons, and set off with Stipe for a new life in the wilds of Montana.
Like Stipe's long-estranged son, Sean, Jones has no doubt at this point about what happened to her sister. Stipe killed her, she figures.
She made a trip to Montana to pick up her sister's belongings, meet the lead Lake County Sheriff's Office detective and visit the area where her sister spent the last few months of her life. While there, she also talked with the younger Stipe, who said he's spent his life living down that of his biological father.
"My sister went there to be with a man she thought she loved," Jones said. "She obviously loved him. She had such big hopes and dreams. When I got there, I looked around, and the area is just beautiful.
"She could have been real happy there," Jones said. "She always liked the country and animals. She was looking for a dream, and she would have had it all there. She had always wanted something like that."
Jones said it was heart-wrenching to walk into the trailer where Lewis had made her home with Stipe and see her possessions. It gave her an eerie feeling.
"Usually, when a woman has lived in a home, you see all the womanly touches," she said. "They had all been wiped away. You could not even tell a woman had ever lived there."
Jones had spoken with Detective Kim Leibenguth by phone, but had not made her acquaintance in person. In Montana, she got to spend most of a day with her.
She said the detective has a tough, no-nonsense way about her. She came away believing her sister's case was in good hands. "She brings a humanness to her job," said. "I value who she is and what she is doing. I believe she is committed to finding out what happened to my sister."
She said the detective told her Stipe's two-year prison sentence would give her additional time to work the case.
Jones said she had hoped to meet with Sean Stipe while in Montana, but had to settle for talking to him on the phone. After collecting her sister's belongings, she said, she felt emotionally drained and just wanted to get home.
But she said Stipe's first wife, Sean's mother, had recently taken the detective on a tour of Stipe's rural haunts. She said that part of the family feels empathy and wants to help.
Jones said she plans to make another trip to Montana. In the meantime, she is keeping in touch with Leibenguth on a weekly basis.
"I keep praying they will find her," she said.
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