25 years later, pain remains
Sara Anne Wood, who would be 37, vanished in the summer of 1993
Twenty-five years ago, Sara Anne Wood vanished while bicycling in Herkimer County. In the years since, police have found her killer but not her remains.
The heartbreaking search for the 12-year-old girl devastated her family and the small-town community where she lived. The fact that convicted serial killer Lewis Lent Jr. won’t say where he buried her body has compounded the pain.
Sara, who would be 37 now, was last seen on Aug. 18, 1993, in Frankfort. She was returning from summer Bible school about a mile from her home in Norwich Corners, a rural community 15 miles south of Utica.
“Everyone held out hope that she was still alive — until Jan. 7, 1994,” said Senior Investigator Reece Treen, who leads the investigation for the State Police.
That day, Lent tried to kidnap another 12-year-old girl in Pittsfield, Mass., but she faked an asthma attack and escaped. He was arrested and, three days later, confessed to abducting and killing Sara Anne Wood.
The handyman from North Adams, Mass., who once lived in Clifton Park, told police he left her body in a shallow grave on a logging road in the Adirondacks.
But despite extensive searches, police have never found her remains.
“You may think you have power over us because you know where Sara’s body is,” the girl’s older brother, Dusty Wood, told Lent during his sentencing in 1997. “We know where Sara’s spirit and soul are; therefore, you don’t have any power over us.’’
Lent, now 68, is serving a life sentence in Massachusetts for strangling 12-year-old Jimmy Bernardo of Pittsfield, Mass., to death in 1990. His body was found near Ithaca.
Lent had already been handed the life sentence when he pleaded guilty to Sara’s killing. And, in 2013, he confessed to killing a third child. Sixteenyear-old James Lusher was never seen again after leaving his Westfield, Mass., home on a bicycle ride in 1992. Lusher’s body has also never been recovered.
State Police investigators now visit Lent three to four times a year at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Mass., in the hopes he’ll disclose something new.
In years past, he’s drawn maps for authorities, leading them to where he said he buried Sara. Police dogs have searched several locations, including Raquette Lake in Hamilton County and Grand Gorge in Delaware County, but nothing was found.
Whether any of her remains are left after 25 years depends largely on the soil and groundwater, Treen said. Wet, acidic soil — like that in the Adirondacks — quickens decomposition. But Treen said he won’t give up.
Sara vanished “very close to where I grew up and a few miles from where I live,” Treen said.
He was a young trooper working out of the Herkimer barracks when Sara was reported missing and was called in to work to join the search that evening.
He recalled thousands of first responders and volunteers swept buildings, woodlands and ponds “around the clock” in those first days.
Sara’s family lives locally but gives infrequent interviews. Over the years, they have lead dozens of bike rides and walks across the region, state and country in Sara’s honor. They also founded the Sara Anne Wood Rescue Center, which was later renamed the Mohawk Valley Branch of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Sara’s mother, Frances Wood, told Lent at his sentencing that her daughter loved dance, poetry and God.
And when her classmates graduated high school in 1999, their celebrations also included poignant remembrances.
“We rarely saw Sara without that beautiful smile on her face,’’ their yearbook dedication read. “This smile is forever engraved in our memories; her twinkling, slightly mischievous blue eyes are forever remembered in our hearts.”