Missing Man: Ronald Johnson - ND - 10/15/2011
Started by
Lori Davis
, Nov 21 2011 06:29 PM
6 replies to this topic
#1
Lori Davis
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Posted 21 November 2011 - 06:29 PM
Ronald Johnson of Riverdale, N.D. has been missing since Oct. 15.
Sister of missing man Ronald Johnson, Carmen Freehauf talks about her brother.mp3
source: Don Haney
11/21/2011
Authorities and family of a Riverdale, N.D. man are mystified about his disappearance. Ronald Johnson has been missing since Oct. 15. Mclean County Sheriff Don Charging says the last contact with Johnson was a cell phone call the same afternoon he disappeared Charging says the ground search has covered six counties.
An aerial search has hit another four counties stretching from Riverdale, in west central North Dakota to the Jamestown-Valley City, N.D. area.
Read more: http://www.rock102on...p?ID=0000005773
If you have any information, you are asked to call the McLean Co. Sheriff's Department at (701)462-8103.
Lori Davis, Project Jason Forum Moderator
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If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.
#2
Lori Davis
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Posted 21 November 2011 - 06:36 PM
Missing Man's Family Not Giving Up
Ronald Johnson, of Riverdale, was last seen on security camera footage leaving a casino in New Town on Oct. 16.
November 21, 2011
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The sister of a 74-year-old North Dakota man missing for more than a month says family members haven't given up hope of finding him.
Ronald Johnson, of Riverdale, was last seen on security camera footage leaving a casino in New Town on Oct. 16.
Johnson's sister Carmen Freehauf says that Johnson is diabetic and may not have had insulin with him. Family members found Johnson's medications, checkbook and a half-packed suitcase at his home.
Read more: http://www.kfgo.com/...p?ID=0000006011
Ronald Johnson, of Riverdale, was last seen on security camera footage leaving a casino in New Town on Oct. 16.
November 21, 2011
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The sister of a 74-year-old North Dakota man missing for more than a month says family members haven't given up hope of finding him.
Ronald Johnson, of Riverdale, was last seen on security camera footage leaving a casino in New Town on Oct. 16.
Johnson's sister Carmen Freehauf says that Johnson is diabetic and may not have had insulin with him. Family members found Johnson's medications, checkbook and a half-packed suitcase at his home.
Read more: http://www.kfgo.com/...p?ID=0000006011
Lori Davis, Project Jason Forum Moderator
www.projectjason.org
Help us for free when you shop online or do a websearch:
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Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html
If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.
#3
Lori Davis
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Posted 27 May 2012 - 12:42 PM
http://bismarcktribu...l#ixzz1w6YWRRzm
Family still has hope public can help with search for missing man
LAUREN DONOVAN | Bismarck Tribune | Posted: Friday, December 9, 2011 12:35 am
RIVERDALE - The unblinking eyes of security cameras at 4 Bears Casino recorded the last known whereabouts of a Riverdale man who left the casino, signaled a right-hand turn in his old, gold Cadillac onto Highway 23 toward New Town and has never been heard from since.
In this void of complete silence, his family tries to fill the empty space with hope. News of any kind would be better than the nothing they've heard for nearly three months.
Ron Johnson, 74, is somewhere. But where?
His daughter, Susan Trautman, also of Riverdale, said not knowing is more difficult in some ways than a death, which would have at least offered the ritual and sad formalities of farewell.
Instead, she waits in limbo.
"I refuse to give up hope that he will walk through that door," she said this week.
She'd hoped that he, or his car, would have been found during hunting seasons in October and November, when thousands of sportsmen and women are out beating the bushes in remote places.
But there were no calls, only more silence.
"It's a nightmare," she said. "I jump when there's a car door slamming in the driveway, running to see if it's the sheriff. I'm getting better at that."
Her home, with accents of rich color, soothing music and the soft sound of falling water on a small rock fountain, is only two blocks from her dad's.
He stopped over frequently when he moved to Riverdale in the late '90s after he retired; less so as he developed his own interests and activities in town. He was good friends with her husband, Kevin Trautman, and they'd settled into a "Dad's around, but he's independent as ever" co-existence.
Johnson loved to play poker, particularly Texas Hold'em, so it was not surprising to learn, days after he officially went missing, that he'd made a late afternoon drive up to 4 Bears.
That knowledge came a week after he disappeared ,when she and her older sister looked at the activity in a local bank account of which she is a co-signer, Susan Trautment said.
Until then, the family knew he had plans to drive to Valley City on Oct. 16 to stay with his sister and then on to Fargo on Oct. 17 for a medical appointment at the Veterans Affairs clinic.
It wasn't until Johnson's sister called to say he hadn't made it to her home that Sunday or to his appointment Monday that the family contacted law enforcement.
By then, there was no answer to his cellphone number and a search of his cellphone records showed his last call pinged off the Riverdale tower in the late afternoon of Oct. 15. He'd called the man who normally rents his house when he leaves to spend winters in Needles, Calif.
An air and ground search focused on the back highways Johnson liked to drive between Riverdale and Valley City. The search was expanded toward New Town after Trautman saw the record of two small ATM withdrawals at the casino, one shortly before midnight Oct. 15, and one just after.
McLean County Sheriff's Deputy Aaron Matties said casino security cameras recorded Johnson in the casino, leaving the building about 12:40 a.m. Oct. 16 and driving out of the parking lot. There was a 45-second delay between him leaving the building when he went off camera, and his car pulling away, not long enough for anything suspicious to have happened in the meantime.
No one knows if he, in fact, made it home to Riverdale and then took off Sunday morning for Valley City as planned.
Matties said Civil Air Patrol planes flew over the highways in Mountrail County and law enforcement drove them, looking for a vehicle or for tracks leaving the road.
Ten days of searching by plane and vehicle yielded nothing.
Matties said he contacted law enforcement in California, where Johnson spends the winter, and nearby casinos. He also contacted a casino in Minnesota and the Spirit Lake Casino in Devils Lake, where Johnson had made reservations for the days following his medical checkup in Fargo.
"He had so many things going on and he was staying in North Dakota this long because of his appointment. He had plans for the whole week," Trautman said.
Publicity yielded a few possible sightings, one in Nevada and two others in Fargo, but none panned out.
"We checked those out and it wasn't him," Matties said.
Matties also has monitored Johnson's bank account in Garrison and other than the regular deposit of his Social Security check and the automatic withdrawals for insurance, there's been no activity.
The fact that Johnson's car has not turned up and that his account isn't being used lead to the theory that he had an accident and if his vehicle isn't off road in a ravine, it's possibly in a deep pothole, or Lake Sakakawea.
"Who knows? We have no idea," Susan Trautman said.
She hopes people will join in looking for her dad out in rural areas or report unusual tracks running off the highway.
Matties said he turned over every stone possible in his investigation, but he plans to turn them over one more time.
"I try to come back to this (case) as much as I can," he said. "When someone's missing, it's personal. I can't imagine what the family is going through."
Susan Trautman said it's possible her dad's medical problems played a part in whatever happened to him.
He's a diabetic who for years managed the disease with diet and oral medication. When she went through his house, she found a letter from his VA doctor advising him it was time to begin insulin injections and she knows he hadn't yet taken that advice. He also had triple bypass heart surgery.
Besides waiting for whatever news of him might come, there are decisions that should be made.
Social Security checks will continue to arrive monthly, but the money would have to be returned were there to be a finding of death dating back to Oct. 15, or to whatever date death might be established. In North Dakota, a person must be missing seven years before death without evidence of a body can be declared.
Susan Trautman said she will need to make some decisions about Social Security, her dad's insurance payments and his property, but this limbo of waiting is not a place that lends itself to decisions.
It's almost Christmas and Ron Johnson went missing two weeks before Halloween.
Susan Trautman said her dad loved Thanksgiving dinner. "He loved turkey dinner and fried chicken," she said.
The Trautmans' home is beautifully decorated for Christmas with just a few poinsettias and garland still to be put up on the staircase to the upstairs bedrooms, soon to be filled with their grown children during the holidays.
It should be a time of happy anticipation. Instead, it's a time of deep stress, grief and painful headaches, she said.
"Our son wants to see the house decorated for Christmas. So we have a tree. I did it for them, but if it were up to me, I wouldn't do anything,"she said.
Anyone who has any information can contact the McLean County Sheriff's Department at 701-462-8103. Johnson's car is 1982 Fleetwood, with license plate HZZ466.
Family still has hope public can help with search for missing man
LAUREN DONOVAN | Bismarck Tribune | Posted: Friday, December 9, 2011 12:35 am
RIVERDALE - The unblinking eyes of security cameras at 4 Bears Casino recorded the last known whereabouts of a Riverdale man who left the casino, signaled a right-hand turn in his old, gold Cadillac onto Highway 23 toward New Town and has never been heard from since.
In this void of complete silence, his family tries to fill the empty space with hope. News of any kind would be better than the nothing they've heard for nearly three months.
Ron Johnson, 74, is somewhere. But where?
His daughter, Susan Trautman, also of Riverdale, said not knowing is more difficult in some ways than a death, which would have at least offered the ritual and sad formalities of farewell.
Instead, she waits in limbo.
"I refuse to give up hope that he will walk through that door," she said this week.
She'd hoped that he, or his car, would have been found during hunting seasons in October and November, when thousands of sportsmen and women are out beating the bushes in remote places.
But there were no calls, only more silence.
"It's a nightmare," she said. "I jump when there's a car door slamming in the driveway, running to see if it's the sheriff. I'm getting better at that."
Her home, with accents of rich color, soothing music and the soft sound of falling water on a small rock fountain, is only two blocks from her dad's.
He stopped over frequently when he moved to Riverdale in the late '90s after he retired; less so as he developed his own interests and activities in town. He was good friends with her husband, Kevin Trautman, and they'd settled into a "Dad's around, but he's independent as ever" co-existence.
Johnson loved to play poker, particularly Texas Hold'em, so it was not surprising to learn, days after he officially went missing, that he'd made a late afternoon drive up to 4 Bears.
That knowledge came a week after he disappeared ,when she and her older sister looked at the activity in a local bank account of which she is a co-signer, Susan Trautment said.
Until then, the family knew he had plans to drive to Valley City on Oct. 16 to stay with his sister and then on to Fargo on Oct. 17 for a medical appointment at the Veterans Affairs clinic.
It wasn't until Johnson's sister called to say he hadn't made it to her home that Sunday or to his appointment Monday that the family contacted law enforcement.
By then, there was no answer to his cellphone number and a search of his cellphone records showed his last call pinged off the Riverdale tower in the late afternoon of Oct. 15. He'd called the man who normally rents his house when he leaves to spend winters in Needles, Calif.
An air and ground search focused on the back highways Johnson liked to drive between Riverdale and Valley City. The search was expanded toward New Town after Trautman saw the record of two small ATM withdrawals at the casino, one shortly before midnight Oct. 15, and one just after.
McLean County Sheriff's Deputy Aaron Matties said casino security cameras recorded Johnson in the casino, leaving the building about 12:40 a.m. Oct. 16 and driving out of the parking lot. There was a 45-second delay between him leaving the building when he went off camera, and his car pulling away, not long enough for anything suspicious to have happened in the meantime.
No one knows if he, in fact, made it home to Riverdale and then took off Sunday morning for Valley City as planned.
Matties said Civil Air Patrol planes flew over the highways in Mountrail County and law enforcement drove them, looking for a vehicle or for tracks leaving the road.
Ten days of searching by plane and vehicle yielded nothing.
Matties said he contacted law enforcement in California, where Johnson spends the winter, and nearby casinos. He also contacted a casino in Minnesota and the Spirit Lake Casino in Devils Lake, where Johnson had made reservations for the days following his medical checkup in Fargo.
"He had so many things going on and he was staying in North Dakota this long because of his appointment. He had plans for the whole week," Trautman said.
Publicity yielded a few possible sightings, one in Nevada and two others in Fargo, but none panned out.
"We checked those out and it wasn't him," Matties said.
Matties also has monitored Johnson's bank account in Garrison and other than the regular deposit of his Social Security check and the automatic withdrawals for insurance, there's been no activity.
The fact that Johnson's car has not turned up and that his account isn't being used lead to the theory that he had an accident and if his vehicle isn't off road in a ravine, it's possibly in a deep pothole, or Lake Sakakawea.
"Who knows? We have no idea," Susan Trautman said.
She hopes people will join in looking for her dad out in rural areas or report unusual tracks running off the highway.
Matties said he turned over every stone possible in his investigation, but he plans to turn them over one more time.
"I try to come back to this (case) as much as I can," he said. "When someone's missing, it's personal. I can't imagine what the family is going through."
Susan Trautman said it's possible her dad's medical problems played a part in whatever happened to him.
He's a diabetic who for years managed the disease with diet and oral medication. When she went through his house, she found a letter from his VA doctor advising him it was time to begin insulin injections and she knows he hadn't yet taken that advice. He also had triple bypass heart surgery.
Besides waiting for whatever news of him might come, there are decisions that should be made.
Social Security checks will continue to arrive monthly, but the money would have to be returned were there to be a finding of death dating back to Oct. 15, or to whatever date death might be established. In North Dakota, a person must be missing seven years before death without evidence of a body can be declared.
Susan Trautman said she will need to make some decisions about Social Security, her dad's insurance payments and his property, but this limbo of waiting is not a place that lends itself to decisions.
It's almost Christmas and Ron Johnson went missing two weeks before Halloween.
Susan Trautman said her dad loved Thanksgiving dinner. "He loved turkey dinner and fried chicken," she said.
The Trautmans' home is beautifully decorated for Christmas with just a few poinsettias and garland still to be put up on the staircase to the upstairs bedrooms, soon to be filled with their grown children during the holidays.
It should be a time of happy anticipation. Instead, it's a time of deep stress, grief and painful headaches, she said.
"Our son wants to see the house decorated for Christmas. So we have a tree. I did it for them, but if it were up to me, I wouldn't do anything,"she said.
Anyone who has any information can contact the McLean County Sheriff's Department at 701-462-8103. Johnson's car is 1982 Fleetwood, with license plate HZZ466.
Lori Davis, Project Jason Forum Moderator
www.projectjason.org
Help us for free when you shop online or do a websearch:
http://www.goodsearc...harityid=857029
Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html
If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.
#4
Lori Davis
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Posted 27 May 2012 - 12:43 PM
https://www.findthem.../cases/13209/0/
NamUs profile for Ronald Johnson - Case 13209
Lori Davis, Project Jason Forum Moderator
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Help us for free when you shop online or do a websearch:
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Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html
If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.
#5
Lori Davis
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Posted 04 November 2012 - 02:44 PM
Ronald has now been missing more than a year. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and loved ones.
Lori Davis, Project Jason Forum Moderator
www.projectjason.org
Help us for free when you shop online or do a websearch:
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Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html
If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.
#6
Lori Davis
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Posted 21 July 2013 - 03:03 PM
http://www.jamestown...icle/id/190037/
New searches for missing N.D. man yield no clues
New searches over the weekend for a missing Riverdale, N.D., man with Jamestown ties yielded no new clues as to his whereabouts.
Published July 03, 2013, 07:05 AM
By: By Chris Olson, The Jamestown Sun, The Jamestown Sun
Riverdale, N.D., man with Jamestown ties yielded no new clues as to his whereabouts.
Law enforcement officers, family and friends of Ronald Lee Johnson — who went missing on Oct. 16, 2011, in the New Town, N.D., area — conducted new searches around the Lake Sakakawea area from New Town to Garrison.
Johnson, who was 74 at the time he disappeared, was last seen on security footage at 4 Bears Casino and Lodge in New Town. He was driving a 1982 gold Cadillac Fleetwood with North Dakota license plate number HZZ466. The vehicle and Johnson have not been seen since.
Johnson was expected to stop and visit relatives in Jamestown and Valley City before a medical appointment at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Fargo at the time he disappeared.
Johnson’s daughter, Sue Trautman, of Riverdale, said in an email that 12 people, including three deputies from the Mountrail County Sheriff’s Department, searched on Saturday and Sunday around Lake Sakakawea. While no new information about Johnson’s disappearance was found, Trautman said she did learn that many of the sloughs along N.D. Highway 23 had not been searched with radar to see if Johnson’s car may be in one of those bodies of water.
McLean County Sheriff’s Deputy Aaron Matties said Tuesday he has been in contact with North Dakota Game and Fish officials about using a portable side-scan sonar device to search the sloughs and other bodies of water along Highway 23. Matties is the lead investigator in the search for Johnson.
Matties said the search over the weekend included planes from the North Dakota Civil Air Patrol.
Matties said the search for Johnson is a priority for him and the McClean County Sheriff’s Department.
“We are coming up on 21 months that Mr. Johnson disappeared,” he said. “It is important for him and his family that we find him.”
Matties and Trautman said they are asking anyone who might be out in the woods between New Town and Garrison, or on the water fishing Lake Sakakawea or any of the sloughs along N.D. Highway 23 to keep an eye out for anything unusual.
“If anyone (out fishing) has a depth finder and you pick up something unusual, check it out or call local law enforcement and have them check it out,” Trautman said.
Matties said they are are also asking people out hunting this fall to check out the ravines and heavy tree areas along Highway 23.
Trautman said the search held over the weekend was organized by Lissa Yellow-Bird Chase, who has also set up a Facebook page, “Bring Ron Johnson Home.” Chase could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Anyone with information about Ronald Johnson’s disappearance is asked to call the McLean County Sheriff’s Department at 701-462-8103.
Lori Davis, Project Jason Forum Moderator
www.projectjason.org
Help us for free when you shop online or do a websearch:
http://www.goodsearc...harityid=857029
Please help us in our mission as a 501 c 3 nonprofit: http://projectjason....y-campaign.html
If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.
#7
Deborah
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Posted 28 June 2016 - 11:01 AM
Deborah Cox, Volunteer
Case Verification
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If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.
Case Verification
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Help us find the missing: Become an AAN Member
http://www.projectja.../awareness.html
If you have seen any of our missing persons, please call the law enforcement agency listed on the post. All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance.
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