Ladyhawker's Ramblings

Thank you, Google, for letting me "borrow" a few maps to create this graphic illustrating where Grandpa's truck was found.

What we know:

--A neighbor visited Grandpa at his home in rural Winfield, KS (top right corner of map) at around noon on Friday, Aug 1, 2008 and dropped off some groceries for him. Nothing appeared unusual about his physical or mental state.

--Grandpa can be seen on footage from a surveillance camera at the Winfield, KS Dillons Grocery Store at 9:20 pm on Friday, Aug 1, 2008. It was dark when he left the store.

--At that time he was wearing a long-sleeved, blue shirt, light blue jeans, red suspenders, a baseball cap and prescription glasses.

--While in the grocery store, he was walking steadily. He purchased a few groceries and used a Dillons discount card for the transaction. The discount card was found in his truck after it was recovered.

--His truck can be seen on the Dillons surveillance footage. It appears that he arrived alone, no one was around the truck while he was in the store, and he appears to have left alone.

--Surveillance footage from Walmart, next door to Dillons, shows Grandpa turning left (south) out of the Dillons parking lot onto US Highway 77 (Winfield's Main Street). This is the direction he should go if he were headed home.

--Nothing was missing from Grandpa's house except his wallet, checkbook, and walking cane.

--Grandpa has two dogs. One was in a kennel outside, the other was in a crate inside. On Sunday afternoon, after we discovered Grandpa was missing, the indoor dog was found without water with him in his crate and the crate had been soiled.

--Aug 1 was a new moon, so the night sky would have been very dark.

--The Cowley County Fair was in Winfield, KS on the night of Aug 1, 2008, so there were more people and more cars in town than usual.

--No unexpected transactions have gone through Grandpa's bank accounts.

--Grandpa's pick-up truck, a dark blue 1999 Ford Ranger was found 1/4 mile south of the Kansas/Oklahoma border on US Highway 81. It had gone off the road, at a perpendicular angle to the highway and stopped on a railroad right-of-way.

--There were no skid marks or acceleration marks noted from the truck.

--The abandoned truck was reported by a passing train on Saturday morning.

--There was no other train traveling on those tracks between 9:20pm Friday night when Grandpa was accounted for, and time the morning train went by and called in the sighting of the truck.

--Oklahoma Highway Patrol responded to the abandoned vehicle call and towed/impounded the truck on Saturday.

--We discovered Grandpa was missing on Sunday. An All Points Bulletin was issued, leading us to discover Grandpa's truck had been impounded in Oklahoma the day before.

--The license tags were on the truck. Other than scratches in the paint from driving through the weeds, the only body damage on the truck was a small dent in a bumper. We do NOT know how long the dent in the bumper had been there, it may have been dented long before Aug 1.

--There was no broken glass or blood in or around the truck.

--There was a working flashlight in the truck.

--The small bag of groceries he had purchased at Dillons were on the seat of the truck.

--The keys were locked in the ignition of the truck.

--There was gas in the truck.

--The truck battery held a charge and was functioning.

--No mechanical problem was found with the truck.

--The pillow he likes to sit on was on was on the seat of the truck.

--After the truck came to rest near the railroad tracks, the 7 foot tall weeds along the highway prevented it from being visible from US Highway 81.

--That stretch of US Highway 81 is fairly heavily trafficked. Day or night, it is unusual for more than a minute to go by without seeing a passing car.

--Lights from the nearby bar would have been easily visible from the point on US Highway 81 where Grandpa's truck went off the road.

--An extensive land search was conducted around the truck. It included an inch by inch search for a 100 yard radius from the truck. A shoulder to shoulder grid search for a one mile radius from the truck, and an air search for a 5 mile radius from the truck. No trace of Grandpa was found.

--Multiple searches with cadaver dogs have yielded several animal carcasses, but no sign of Grandpa.

--He is almost 88 years old.

--He is a World War II Veteran.

What we think. I stress that this is entirely speculative:

--When he left his home on Friday, he only intended to be gone a short time to run some errands.

--He might have become disoriented or lost on his way home.

--After seeing the "Oklahoma" sign, he realized he was very off course to get home and tried to turn around, but something went wrong.

--He may have turned into the driveway of the now defunct drive-in movie theater and turned around. It is possible that as he was about to turn left to head north on US Highway 81, he somehow missed the highway and went straight across instead. Missing the turn could have caused him to go through the weeds and come to a stop on the railroad right-of-way.

--We don't know for sure that he was still behind the wheel of the truck at this point, but evidence seems to indicate that he was still driving and still alone.

--He might have spent the night, or part of the night, in the truck.

--If he was still in the same physical condition we saw on the Dillons surveillance video, he could have walked from the position his truck was found, through the weeds smashed down by his truck, and back to US Highway 81. He also could have walked along the railroad tracks.

--He may have been picked up by a passing motorist. Most traffic through that stretch of highway is local traffic. Interstate motorists usually prefer to travel by way of Interstate-35 located 10-20 miles east of US Highway 81.

--It is very possible that Grandpa Jack Lee Howe is alive and well. We need your help to find him.