The search today for missing teen Kathlynn Shepard is winding down this afternoon after dozens of officers and a handful of volunteers re-searched key hog confinement facilities, river banks and area parks, a state official said.
An organized search for Shepard, 15, will be suspended Sunday and Monday, said Bill Kietzman, special agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. He said volunteers may continue to comb the area near this north-central Iowa town in Webster County.
http://liarcatchers.com/missing_persons_investigations.html
Police say Michael J. Klunder, 42, took Shepard and another girl, 12-year-old Dezi Hughes, Monday as they walked home from school.
Hughes managed to escape the hog confinement shortly after her abduction. Klunder hanged himself at a rural Dayton property that evening.
Law enforcement officials will regroup early next week to decide the next steps in the investigation. The two days off will be taken because officials have run out of “viable areas to search,” Kietzman said.
“We’ve searched everything numerous times,” Kietzman said. “At some point you have to trust your searchers that you’ve done a good search, and that she’s just not where you’d hope she would be.”
A steady rain and wind hampered the search today, the sixth day since the abduction. An Iowa State Patrol airplane equipped with a heat sensor stayed grounded because of the weather, Kietzman said. The plane will take flight when the weather clears. Rain is forecast for the next two days.
The soggy conditions did not slow the 70 officers and 15 volunteers called to help cover more ground with dogs and all-terrain vehicles, Kietzman said. Iowa Department of Natural Resources officers again searched the Des Moines River.
“We’d love to bring (Shepard) home to her family. Our plan is to bring her home,” Kietzman said. “With every day that passes, unfortunately, the odds are against us.”
