University Daily Kansan / Thursday, April 30, 1987
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Search for missing local man fails
By PAUL BELDEN
Staff writer
After a bloodhound in a boat snellled something yesterday in the Kansas River, the Lawrence fire department dragged the river but did not find Elmer Wolford, the Lawrence man who disappeared on April 17.
"We'll do a patrol down to Eudora tomorrow," said Rich Barr, a Lawrence Fire Department captain.
He said firefighters dragged an area near the north bank of the river just below the Bowersock Dam and several other areas farther downstream but did not find anything.
The water level, almost 5 feet above normal, hampered the search, he said.
Wolford has been missing since he and a Topeka man went over the dam in a small boat. The Topeka man palled himself out of the river at the Eighth Street boat dock.
Yesterday, a bloodhound named
Markie picked up a scent in the river north of the retaining wall on the dam's north side. After the search turned up nothing, Markie still indicated by her actions that something was down there.
Len Rimbey, a corrections officer from Lansing and the dog's owner, said he believed his dog.
"She found three drowned people just last summer," he said. "One in Perry, one in Pomona and one in this river, only down by Bonner Springs."
Rimbey said a body under water was just like a can of oil with holes in it.
Oil leaking out of the can will create a slick on the water's surface, as do body fluids that are released as the body decomposes. Those fluids collect on the surface, where trained dogs can smell them, Rimbrey said.
But the water below the dam is so turbulent, making it difficult for Markie to pinpoint where the smell is
Cunningham, Randy Manis, of Lecompton and a friend of Wolfford's, drove the boat that held Rimbey and Markie.
coming from. he said.
"We know he's dead," Manis said.
"We just want to find his body.
"We grew up with him. He was just a little younger than us, but we grew up with him."
Manis said that he thought Wolford still was not far from the dam and that he would search again today.
He said iron bars stuck out from the concrete on the downstream side of the dam. The bars were turned down and could have caught Wolford's body.
"From here to Topeka, I know this river pretty good." Manis said. "I've hit holes 150 feet deep out there just below the dam."
At one time while Manis, Rimby and Markie were on the river, the small fishing boat drifted dangerously close to where the water rolled and boiled just below the dam.
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