UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, April 28, 1993
7
Into thin air...
Mystery surrounds the disappearance of Alexis Dillard nearly five months after he was reported missing. Reports of when Dillard was last seen vary between 11:30 p.m. Dec. 10 and 12:40 a.m. Dec. 11.
Chronology of events
Dec. 10, 1992
■ about 5:30 p.m. — Dillard and several friends arrived at BurlWinkle's Bar, 14th and Tennessee streets.
about 8:30 p.m. — Dillard went back to the stadium and got his car. He and his friends drove to the San Bernard Eighth and New Hampshire streets.
■ about 9:15 p.m. — Dillard and his friends left the Sandbar and went to Johnny's Tavern, 401 N. Second Street. Dillard left his car at the Sandbar.
9:30 p.m. to about 11:30 p.m. — Dillard and friends were at Johnny's Tavern. After this time, reports vary as to when and by whom Dillard was last seen.
Source: Reporting II class of Carole Rich, associate professor of journalism
The search
Bowtown Dam lies beneath the Kansas River Bridge. Some believe that Dillard may have tried to swim across the Kansas River, a feat he claimed to have accomplished.
The Douglas County Sheriff's Office found footprints matching Dillard's size 10 Rockport shoes near the river, but there was no proof that the person entered the water.
The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks searched the river for three hours Dec. 12 and searched the river by boat Feb. 6. The Kansas Army National Guard made nine helicopter flights along the river during this period but found no trace of Dillard.
The disappearance of Alexis Dillard
James Wilcox / Special to the KANSAN
About 9:15 p.m., Dillard and friends went to Johnny's Tavern, 401 N. Second St., to continue celebrating the end of the fall semester. Dillard was later seen outside the bar by Scott Weitzman, Northbrook, Ill., senior. This was the last confirmed sighting of Dillard
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may have been the last person to see Dillard before he disguised
Weitzman, Northbrook, ill., senior, had been waiting with some friends to get inside Johnny's since about 11:15 p.m. in the beer garden at the back of the bar. After a half hour, he got impatient. He decided to go around to the front of the building to see if one of his friends was working at the door and might let him inside.
As he was walking along the side of Johnny's, someone called out. "Hey you! Hey you!"
The stranger, who was coming from the direction of the woods that leads to the river behind Johnny's, caught up with Weitzman and tapped him on the shoulder.
"You got a minute?" the stranger asked.
They began talking.
Weitzman stopped and the two introduced themselves. The stranger was Alexis Dillard.
They began taking
"Then Alex started freaking out." Weitzman said.
"Then Alexia started freaking out "Welzman San" Dallard kept repeating. "Life sucks. Nothing's worth in
metal prescription glasses;
"Here on hold to these," Dillard said.
At one point Dillard handed Weitzman a pair of brown metal prescription glasses.
handing them back to Dilmar.
"I don't think so." Dillard said.
"I think you'll need them more than me," Weitzman said, handing them back to Dillard.
Wetzman said their conversation lasted about five minutes, and he believed he had calmed Dillard down. He recalled Dillard saying, "Thanks a lot. I appreciate you taking time to talk to me."
long time to talk to him.
Then he watched as Dillard walked toward the Kansas River Bridge. Weitzman could no longer see him, but he heard Dillard scream "F—this!"
"I was hoping he was drunk." Weitzman said. "That would explain why he was acting that way."
would explain why he was acting as the attorney. Weitzman returned to the beer garden and finally got into Johnny's. He didn't think about the conversation anymore. Two days later, Weitzman was going into Watson Library to study for his finals. He saw the poster of Dillard on the door and had a weird feeling. He said he always remembered a face and wouldn't forget a name like Alexis. Weitzman called the police and filled out a report.
"I couldn't get it out of my mind." Weitzman said. "Sometimes I couldn't sleep. Everywhere I went I saw a picture of him. That was really hard."
re is suit troubled by the conversation he had with Dillard that night. "I think it would have been easier if I hadn't seen him."
Weitzman, a psychology major, didn't do well on his finals. He said a lot of his teachers understood.
The investigation
"The biggest problem is that we don't know where to look."
Sue Morrell was taking the SUA staff out to lunch at Molly McGees on Dec. 11. Dillard had been looking forward to it. But when he didn't show up at the SUA office before the luncheon, Morrell didn't worry.
Loren Anderson Douglas County Sheriff
"I figured he was still sleeping and just couldn't get up," said Murrell, program manager for the Kansas Union. "I
But after lunch when she returned to the office, someone said, "Sue. nobody knows where he is."
She sprang into action. She and the staff began calling everyone to find out if Dillard had crashed somewhere. They had no luck.
They had no back. Murrell was distraught. In the years that Dillard worked at SUA—first as a travel coordinator in 1990-91, then as vice president for administrative affairs in 1992 and this school year her accountant—she had become very close to him. He even babysat for her two children.
"I try not to have favorites in the SUA office, but when you spend that much time with a student you develop a special relationship," Morrell said. "He was like a little brother to me. We could talk about anything."
ty late afternoon, Dillard's roommates had filed a missing person's report with the Lawrence police.
ing person's report with the LAwrie. The next morning was cold and misty when fraternity brothers and friends organized a search for Dillard. His car was still at the Sandbar, where he had left it before going to Johnny's. Acting on stories that Dillard had told his friends about how he previously had swum the river, friends and police combed the river banks behind Johnny's and the Bowersock Dam.
shoes Diana had been wearing. Douglas County Sheriff Loren Anderson, whose agency is in charge of river searches, said the footprints weren't that revealing because the person who made them could have stepped on rocks and would not have left footprints leading away from the area.
The searchers found footprints that led to the river but not away from it. The footprints, 200 yards upstream from the Bowersock Dam on the north bank of the river, were made by size 15 Rockport shoes, the same size and type of shoes Dillard had been wearing.
That afternoon the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks searched the river by boat above and below the Bowersock Dam for three hours. No trace of Dillard.
The river rose the next day, making a search dangerous. Later in December, officials searched again with a blood-hound and a drag bar, a metal bar with three-pronged hooks on its end that is used to retrieve items from a river. Still no trace of Dillard.
Then the weather turned cold and wet, hampering more searches. On the good days between Dec. 17 and Jan. 5, the Kansas Army National Guard conducted nine helicopter searches over the area.
On Feb. 6, parks and sherrif's officials again searched the river by boat. A solitary figure watched them from the river bank. No one talked to her. When the search ended, she left. It was Feicie Dillard. Still no trace of her son.
"The biggest problem is we don't know where to look." Anderson said.
He said several other factors complicated the search; the time Dillard actually left the bar is unclear — police reported he was last seen between 12:15 and 12:45 a.m.; no witnesses saw Dillard enter the river; he was not reported missing until 5:30 p.m.; and he had been drinking before he disappeared.
Alcohol causes major changes in the body chemistry, said Nathan Feldt, chemical dependence counselor for the DCCCA Center, a regional facility for alcohol prevention and treatment.
"Your inhibitions and common sense are the first to go when you drink," he said. "If he had done it before (swum the river), there is a very good chance he could have thought it possible to do again."
Feldt also said some people get alcohol flush, a condition that causes them to get very hot and sweaty.
Police had other clues, as well. A woman reported seeing someone resembling Dillard walking south on Vermont Street near Sixth Street at 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 11. She claimed he was being followed by a white Ford Escort or Mercury Lynx. But the leads were weak.
"There are more rumors connected with this case than any case I've seen in 20 years," Hall said. "It's the worst I've ever seen. With rumors, you have to sort through all this stuff to get down to one tiny little fact. It can be very distracting.
The police file on Dillard is about an inch and a half thick, but there are no new leads. It's a frustrating case for Detective Commander Lt. Mike Hall of the Lawrence Police Department, the primary agency in charge of the investigation.
"If she was very hot, the coldness of the water might have seemed even less threatening," he said.
we begin an investigation at the point of the event," he said. "We start with where we was seen last, in this case at Johnny's. Our scope is very narrow. If we fan out too far, you squander your resources."
Hait said the most difficult part of the case was balancing the missing person's right to privacy with the investigation because the person might have left voluntarily.
you squander your resources.
Hall doesn't like to speculate about theories. But the kid-napping theory that some have proposed is weak, he says.
"It wouldn't make sense that he was kidnapped like young boys who have been taken," he said. "He was an adult."
"It's a very delicate situation because there's no indication of any criminality here," he said.
ion of any criminality here," he said. "The drawing theory remains the strongest
"Where else could he be?" Hall said. "We don't have anything else to do £0.00."
But one of Dillard's pledge brothers, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was skeptical that Dillard would have jumped into the river on that 39-degree December night. He said Dillard had told him about his previous swim across the river.
"He isn't rich. He took care of what he had," the source said. "The first time he swam the river he took all of his clothes off... and swam it in his boxers. The night he disappeared he on nice slacks, a nice shirt and sweater and a nice jacket. He wouldn't have gone in the river like that. If he is in the river, it wasn't his choice."
No additional river searches are planned. But the investigation continues. ...
"As far as I'm concerned, 'Hall said, 'this case will never be closed until we know what the answers are.'"
The unanswered questions trouble the Rev. Vince Krishe, who conducted a candlelight vigil at the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center a week after Dillard disappeared.
By then hope was beginning to dissipate.
"Itried to be hopeful, yet realistic, to console the mother and family without losing faith," he said. "We don't know whether he was depressed or whether there was foul play or what. It's so hard to know how to grieve when something like this happens."
Sue Murrell, who had organized the candlelight vigil, is also tormented by those questions. She said Dillard didn't seem depressed. She doesn't believe he left of his own free will.
"Like to think about him at least every day," Morrell said. "Not knowing is worse than death."
Alexis Dillard: The person
"He had a lot of charisma. It was difficult not to like him."
Armen Kurdian
Wichita senior and childhood friend of Dillard
in his daily planner, Alexis Dillard carried a Thomas Jefferson quote he had clipped from a magazine: "I believe that every human mind feels pleasure doing good to another."
"That kind of is Alexis," his mother said. In the next breath, she speaks of her son in the past tense.
he was just a person that was full of life," she said. "He had a lot of confidence in life, in other people. He had a wonderful spirit."
The youngest of three children, Dillard grew up in a single-parent home for most of his life. His parents were divorced in 1977. His father, Hardy Dillard Sr., a regional manager for Pan Am Airlines, died when Dillard was a sophomore in high school.
At Wichita East High School, Dillard had already embarked on a path of leadership and service reflecting the Jefferson quote he admired so much. He was class president during his junior and senior years.
"That was such a big achievement," said Armen Kurdian, a Wichita senior who has known Dillard since kindergarten. "He had a lot of charisma. It was difficult not to like him."
Dillard entered the University of Kansas with a four-year scholarship from the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps. In his first two years of college, Dillard earned four awards in NROTC, including the Distinguished Achievement Star and the Outstanding Student Award.
"He was in the top three of the class," said Rob Shassberger, a former NROTC classmate who graduated in December. "I thought he was going to go places."
But after two years in NROTC, Dillard decided to drop out of the program.
He gathered everyone together during P.T. (physical training) just to let us all know what he was doing," said Lee Saugstad, Weston, Mo., senior, who was with Dillard in NROTC. "Basically all he told everyone was that he needed to put his time and effort into other things. We all understood, and we appreciated that he told everyone."
understood; author
Those other things included Dillard's involvement with SH and some of the 27 activities listed on his resume – ranging from Student Senate committees to KU Soccer Club.
He always had a positive attitude, and he would do anything to help the team, said Brian Robey, Gladstone, Mo., junior, who is coach and manager of the student-run soccer club.
"If we could have had 11 of him on the team, we probably would have won all our games," Robey said.
As Dillard headed toward the last semester of his senior year, his future looked promising. With a double major in business administration and economics, Dillard had a cumulative 3.2 grade point average and several honors, including Mortar Board Senior Honor Society
Photo and Graphic by Sean M. Tevis / KANSAN
He was considering joining the university program that recruits college graduates without education degrees for two-year teaching jobs in poor communities. But he also was weighing a job offer from the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City, Mo., where he had worked as an analyst intern last summer.
"He had a consistently positive attitude and a great working relationship with his co-workers and with me," said Ann Hoelking, his supervisor at the Federal Reserve Bank, where he did budgeting and analytical projects in the computer systems department.
ation. And all his friends and co-workers echoed these sentiments. But one professor painted a different picture
puter systems department. She said his work during his internship was so professional that he was offered a full-time position upon graduation.
Carol Matthews, graduate teaching assistant in Western Civilization, noticed a change in him. She had taught DWI
Education:
Alexis F. Dillard Resume
Experience:
Education Working toward bachelor's degrees in business administration and economics Cumulative GPA: 3.2
Analyst intern, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Mo. Vice president for administrative affairs, Student Union Activities Board of Directors, University of Kansas Memorial Corporation Travel coordinator, Student Union Activities
Activities:
Honors and awards
KU Student Lecture Series Board
Student Senate Finance Committee
Leukemia Society volunteer
Naval ROTC, squad leader
Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity member
Scholarship Committee chairperson
Honors and awards:
Dean's肩丸 Roll (Fall 1989)
Katherine Scholarship
June Ritchie Scholarship
Lee J. Phillips Endowment Scholarship
lard in two of her classes, one last spring and another last fall,
and he was a B+ to A-student, she said.
ing.
On Dec. 9 Dillard came to Matthews to discuss his final project. He was going to create a dramatized dialogue between economists and politicians of different historical periods. She said it sounded very interesting and expected him to do well. But he seemed depressed, she said. She thought it could have been caused by any number of things that affect students, such as illness or relationships, and she dismissed any concern.
fall, and he was BACK in the middle or front of the class because he was so active in class discussions, she said. Late in the fall semester he began sitting in the back of the class. He appeared disheveled and unkempt, which was unusual for him. He began turning in assignments late or not at all, also out of character. And he stopped participating in class discussions.
After Dillard's disappearance, other students told her they also had noticed a change in Dillard during the fall semester. She said his disappearance put a cloud over finals.
"I gave him an incomplete in the course in the hope that he would eventually turn in his final," she said.
Living without answers
"No matter the outcome, it has changed my life forever."
Follicle Dillard Alexis Dillard's mother
Weathered posters seeking information about Dillard still cling to campus doors, tumpell toot booths and buildings from Lawrence to Wichita. One set shows a smiling Dillard from a high school picture. Another set made up later by fraternity brothers shows a more serious 22-year-old described as 5-feet, 11-inch tall, weighing 160 pounds. The posters cite the reward Felicite Dillard is offering for any clues that will lead to finding Dillard alive.
Last month someone stole the large free-standing poster that had been outside the SUA box office since the disappearance.
"Something like that just upsets us all," said Donelle Meyer, the SUA staff member who drove with Dillard to Kansas City the day before he disappeared.
Dillard's brother, Hardy, 25, and his sister, Eugenie, 27, also find it hard to cope. "They're very angry and sad," his mother said. "They feel deprived of his part of their futures."
Felicie Dillard also struggles to understand how her son with such a promising future could disappear without a trace.
"He would always call," he said. "He basically knew that we would worry about him. He was at a point in his life where he made all of the decisions in his life. He may or may not ask my opinion, but he would absolutely understand what can
Knowing how many people care helps, but nothing can make the pain go away, she said. "No matter the outcome, it has changed my life forever."
Editor's note: This story was written and reported for the Kansas by the Reporting II class of Carole Rich, associate professor of journalism. Members of that class are: Surendar Balkirashan, Damian Carlson, Christina Corder, Christoph Führmans, John Gambie, Matt Gouen, Cecile Julian, Noelle Kastens, Liz Klinger, April Looms, Janice McCall, James Wilcox and Jennie Zeiner.