Posted on 01/15/2004 1:37:12 PM PST by Theodore R.
Body of Janice Brady found Family grieve after eight months of searching
By Juliette Rule rep9@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
CHEYENNE - Eight months after Janice Brady was reported missing, her car and body have been found in Weld County, Colo., just 12 miles from her front door.
The Cheyenne woman was reported missing May 17 when she didn't return home after visiting her husband, Terrance, in Greeley, Colo. She was being treated for a heart condition, and feeling ill, decided to head home.
It was thought that she took county roads to make her way back, presumably to her house, where she might rest and put away the groceries her daughter found when she went to check on her mother.
On Tuesday a car matching the description of Brady's 1991 Buick Riviera as well as human remains were found, along with other things belonging to Brady.
"I don't know how I feel," Brady's daughter Kim Ponce said Wednesday. "I had the feeling a long time ago, but then a long-distance number would come up on my phone. Stupid. I thought it would be my mom calling me."
The family endured Brady's 64th birthday in August as well as the holidays. And they rang in the new year without her, only to learn at about noon Tuesday that investigators had a clue when they called Ponce to ask about her mother's shoe size.
Ponce asked why they needed to know that after months of learning nothing and after hundreds of miles traveled along the path Brady likely took that day.
About 900 feet from U.S. Highway 85 at the Lazy D Grazing Association, the car was found when a ranch dog named Spanky brought a running shoe home.
Inside the door that popped open on impact, Brady's purse was found, giving her family all the proof they need to finally know what happened.
Investigators will conduct a DNA test to confirm that.
It appears Brady's car was driven through a barbed wire fence on the west side of the road and veered north, perhaps aiming toward ranch manager Chuck Birkemeyer's brick home.
As one stands on the ranch road, three cement pylons left behind by a road crew working on U.S. Highway 85 are visible in the distance. That's where the crash happened, Birkemeyer says as he aims his pickup in that direction.
From the road, the land looks flat. But the pickup truck ride toward the pylons deals out the land's shape sculpted by prairie winds and snow melt.
An 8-foot deep hole conceals what the pylons were attached to, just as a natural-looking ramp ends 10 feet before a cement culvert.
That's where Brady's car went airborne, leaving paint on the rounded side of the culvert.
Investigators say they cannot be sure if Brady died on impact or if her heart condition might have played a role in her death.
Her speed at the time of the crash hasn't been determined, said Weld County Sheriff's Det. Ken Nelson, but he did describe the condition of the car.
"In layman's terms? It looked like it hit a cement wall," he said. "It had front-end impact, the airbag deployed. The damage intruded into the engine, the hood was an upside-down U .
"In my training and experience, with the damage I saw, that's not a survivable scenario."
In May the story of Brady's disappearance was on the Birkemeyer's radar. The rancher read about it then searched the east side of the highway, believing that the landscape easily could hide a crash scene.
"If I would have looked a little closer for tracks, I would have followed them," he said. "I kick myself for that."
It took Birkemeyer 15 minutes to fix the fence Brady appears to have driven through. Drivers hit that fence all the time, he said, even though it follows a straightaway, and he said he didn't think anything of it that day.
"Anywhere else on this wash and we would have seen it," Birkemeyer said.
He has walked the land and late last spring retrieved a calf from that draw. But it's been a while since he moved Lazy D cows to a different pasture.
Ponce said, "There is nothing out there. Nothing. It's a field. There are no trees, the grass isn't tall. There are cactus and cow patties."
She and other family members surveyed the scene Wednesday morning. On the way home, they calculated the mileage at 11.8 miles to their mother's house.
From the end of that natural ramp, the house clearly is visible as are a wind farm's twirling turbines, grazing antelope and soaring birds.
In the early days of the investigation, deputies searched for the car. Family members looked. Pilots and game wardens also were made aware, but it wasn't until investigators were 15 feet from the car that they saw it, said Weld County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Margie Martinez.
Added Ponce, "Standing back a ways, you wouldn't even know there was a hole there."
But she added that she doesn't understand why pilots didn't spot the car in the months she spent smiling through the pain.
Once she even stopped at a small bridge just a quarter-mile north of where her mother's car left the road to peer under it.
"I'm just so mad," she said. "I drove by there a hundred times."
I've driven some back road east of Greeley. That is some really rural country -- about as desolate as any place I've ever been. If the roads to the north are the same, I can easily believe a car could go off the road and not be found for 8 months.
But I'm not real clear from the article just what it was she ran into.
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