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Here's more on the missing retired govt intel worker/authorities think he's dead due to foul play.

Metro/State OTHER HEADLINES
December 05, 2005

Feuding in missing man’s case

By PAM ZUBECK THE GAZETTE

Squabbles are heating up between the father of a New York native who vanished from his rural Fremont County home last year and the man’s wife, who has control of his assets.

The focus is on how to handle his $520,000 estate and if his disappearance warrants a forensic search of the 35-acre home site east of Cañon City, the last place he was seen.

Meanwhile, Fremont County authorities are handling the case as a missing person, although private investigators say they think he’s dead due to foul play.

Eugene Fish, 53, a retired government intelligence officer, left home on June 21, 2004, said his wife, Lynn. She called his father, Bill Fish, in Fultonville, N.Y., a week later saying he had left her.

Since June 21, 2004, Gene Fish hasn’t tapped his $4,621-a-month pension, his savings accounts and credit cards. Nor has he used his passport.

Bill Fish and Gene Fish’s friends call his disappearance out of character for an only child who kept in touch weekly with his ailing parents and contacted friends regularly.

Lynn Fish has given inconsistent versions of his disappearance to friends, family and authorities and is fighting to keep control of his estate.

Fremont County District Judge David Thorson put her in charge in July over Bill Fish’s objections and later waived a bond requirement when two firms refused to bond her, citing “the situation,” according to court papers.

On Oct. 17, she filed a financial plan and sought permission to sell a $17,200 tractor Bill Fish gave his son, and two parcels of land in New York, valued at $58,000.

She wants to use the money to pay off a $5,495 credit-card debt and $1,818 in attorney fees and to pay some of the home’s $210,000 mortgage. She also wants to continue using his pension money for her support. Lynn Fish is unemployed.

Bill Fish objects, arguing in court documents that her property inventory lacks detail and appraisals and that a conservatorship’s chief purpose is to protect the estate, “not to provide Lynn with a means for avoiding work.”

He argues Lynn Fish valued the Fremont County property at $420,000 in October 2003 but now says it’s worth $335,000. That depreciating tract, not the farmland that generates income, should be sold, Bill Fish says.

He also wants Lynn Fish to use estate money to look for his son.

“Looking for Eugene Fish has no benefit to the estate,” Lynn Fish said in her response.

She notes the farmland made no income for at least a year and is difficult to manage long distance.

Gene Fish’s cousin, Frank Hernigle of Fultonville, N.Y., said in an interview he oversaw the farmland for 20 years on Gene’s behalf and offered to continue, but Lynn Fish told him she didn’t want him to.

She accuses Bill Fish of harassing her with legal maneuvers costly for the estate. Also, she, as Gene Fish’s spouse, is entitled to support; her husband didn’t require her to work, she argues.

In October, Bill Fish asked Thorson to allow a forensic search of the Fremont property to hunt for clues. Thorson denied the request but said if a law enforcement agency sub- mitted an affidavit with probable cause “or even reasonable suspicion,” he “might look favorably” on issuing a warrant.

Bill Fish’s private investigators, with a combined 70 years of law enforcement experience, drafted a nine-page affidavit and recently gave it to Sheriff Jim Beicker.

Beicker said Thursday that he doesn’t know when, or if, he’ll seek a search warrant. He said evidence gained from a search could be suppressed if the warrant was found to be issued without probable cause.

“If there’s a criminal case here, I can’t jeopardize it,” he said. “If leads or evidence lead us to probable cause and we consider it a criminal matter, we could end up back at that property.”

For now, Beicker considers it a missing-person case.

“I feel like I have to play by the rules and look at every aspect of the case,” Beicker said, including checking Fish’s DNA against bodies that turn up elsewhere.

“I do not know Mr. Fish’s fate,” he said. “I don’t know if he’s alive or whether he’s dead and buried. I can’t say with certainty where he is. But it’s common sense he isn’t well.”

Describing the investigation as a “slow methodical march,” Beicker said he and District Attorney Molly Chilson feel no sense of urgency. Bill Fish, who has cancer, wants to know what happened to his son before he dies.

http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1312626&secid=1