BigBoi
07-15-2005, 01:16 AM
SAINT HELENS, Ore. - The story would read like a good movie script if it wasn't all true: a businessman and father of three heads out for a day of fishing, never to return.
The police cannot find a body or solve the case, and eventually they file a death certificate. His business fails, his wife remarries, the kids grow up, his family moves on.
Then, 12 years later, the missing man turns up alive and well.
But this is no movie, and now a family, police and the people who lost their jobs when Rick McCullah disappeared want some answers.
People in Saint Helens first realized that something was strange when McCullah was named as a surviving relative in his father's obituary.
A former employee of McCullah read the obituary and contacted the St. Helens Chronicle newspaper to let them know they had made a mistake. Rick McCullah was dead. Or at least he was assumed to be dead.
The newspaper then contacted the family to confirm the information, only to be told that Rick McCullah was indeed alive and living in Idaho. The Chronicle then broke the story in a front-page article.
Last year, McCullah contacted his sister. Perhaps suffering from a guilty conscience, he asked her to contact his wife, now remarried, in a bid to catch up with his family. His sister had always kept in touch with his wife. Janet McCullah had changed her name and moved to California with the couple's kids.
Upon hearing the news that Rick was still alive, his now ex-wife contacted the Columbia County Sheriff's Office to inform them of Rick's whereabouts.
But the police told her that while laws may have been broken, the statute of limitations had run out, and there was nothing they could do.
However, questions remain: why did he pull the disappearing act? What has he been doing in the decade since the infamous fishing trip?
Source : http://www.katu.com/stories/78352.html
The police cannot find a body or solve the case, and eventually they file a death certificate. His business fails, his wife remarries, the kids grow up, his family moves on.
Then, 12 years later, the missing man turns up alive and well.
But this is no movie, and now a family, police and the people who lost their jobs when Rick McCullah disappeared want some answers.
People in Saint Helens first realized that something was strange when McCullah was named as a surviving relative in his father's obituary.
A former employee of McCullah read the obituary and contacted the St. Helens Chronicle newspaper to let them know they had made a mistake. Rick McCullah was dead. Or at least he was assumed to be dead.
The newspaper then contacted the family to confirm the information, only to be told that Rick McCullah was indeed alive and living in Idaho. The Chronicle then broke the story in a front-page article.
Last year, McCullah contacted his sister. Perhaps suffering from a guilty conscience, he asked her to contact his wife, now remarried, in a bid to catch up with his family. His sister had always kept in touch with his wife. Janet McCullah had changed her name and moved to California with the couple's kids.
Upon hearing the news that Rick was still alive, his now ex-wife contacted the Columbia County Sheriff's Office to inform them of Rick's whereabouts.
But the police told her that while laws may have been broken, the statute of limitations had run out, and there was nothing they could do.
However, questions remain: why did he pull the disappearing act? What has he been doing in the decade since the infamous fishing trip?
Source : http://www.katu.com/stories/78352.html