On the morning of August 18th, 1993, in the small rural town of Saquat, New York, 12-year-old Sarah Anne Wood woke up singing, her older brother Dusty would later remember that sound. His little sister’s voice echoing through their home on Hakadam Road, belting out Dolly Parton’s 9-to-5 with the kind of unfiltered joy that only children possess.
Sarah was the youngest of three, the daughter of Robert Wood, a Presbyterian pastor, and his wife Francis. The family lived in a modest house 300 yd from the Norwich Corner’s Presbyterian Church where Robert led services every Sunday. Sarah was not like other 12-year-olds in many ways. She was deeply religious, almost unnaturally so for a child her age.
She spent her free time at church helping her father prepare for services, attending Bible study classes, singing in the youth choir. Her teachers at Squire Valley Middle School described her as the happiest little girl they’d ever known. One teacher, Nancy Wald, would later tell investigators that Sara had an infectious laugh that could derail an entire classroom.
She would giggle until everyone around her was laughing, too. And Wald would have to turn away, reminding herself that she was supposed to be the adult in the room. But beneath that laughter was a girl who loved simple things. She loved poetry. She loved dancing. She was passionate about cheerleading and had just made the middle school squad.
and she loved riding her bicycle through the quiet streets of Squat, a town so small that everyone knew everyone, where children still played outside until dark without their parents worrying. That morning, Sarah had begged her mother to let her skip school. It was her birthday in 6 months, but she was already thinking ahead, already planning the party she wanted to have.
Francis said no. There was vacation Bible school at the church that afternoon, and Sarah had responsibilities. So Sarah grabbed her bike, still humming that Dolly Parton song, and called out to Dusty as she pedaled away. “See you later,” she said. Those were the last words her brother would ever hear her speak.
Sarah arrived at the church just after noon. The summer heat was oppressive, the kind of thick, humid air that clings to your skin in upstate New York in August. She attended her Bible school classes, participated in crafts, helped organize the younger children. Her father wasn’t there that day. He was home preparing for evening services.
At 2:30 in the afternoon, Sarah gathered her things: a display board she’d made in class, a church song book, and a folder of Bible school literature. She said goodbye to the other children, and their parents climbed onto her pink and white 10-speed mountain bike, and started pedaling home. The route was simple. Less than a mile up Hackadam Road, a steep hill that wound through farmland and scattered houses.
She’d made the trip dozens of times before. It should have taken her 10 minutes. At approximately 2:45, a neighbor saw Sarah riding her bike up that hill, pushing hard against the incline. The neighbor waved. Sarah waved back. She was less than half a mile from home. She never arrived. By 4:00, Francis Wood was beginning to worry. Sarah was never late.
She was the kind of child who asked permission before doing anything, who always checked in, who followed rules with an almost religious devotion. Francis called the church. Sarah had left over an hour ago. She called neighbors along the route. No one had seen her. By 4:30, Dusty and his older sister, Nikki, were searching the streets.
By 5:00, Francis was on the phone with the police. Within an hour, several hundred state troopers and volunteer firefighters descended on the area. They searched fields, woods, drainage ditches. They knocked on doors. They stopped cars. And just before dark, one of the searchers found something that made everyone’s blood run cold. Sarah’s bicycle was leaning against a tree just a few yards off Hackadam Road.
Nearby, hidden in a patch of brush, were her coloring book and crayons, the display board, the song book, everything she’d been carrying, but no Sarah. There were no signs of a struggle, no skid marks from her bike tires, no torn clothing, no blood. It was as if she had simply stopped, laid her bike down, walked into the woods, and vanished.
But the police knew better. The items had been hidden deliberately, and the location, just yards from the road in a spot shielded from view by trees, suggested that someone had pulled her off her bike and into the woods quickly, efficiently, without giving her time to scream. The next morning, the search expanded.
More than a thousand volunteers joined law enforcement. Helicopters circled overhead. Blood hounds were brought in. The story hit local news, then state news, then national news. Sarah’s face appeared on television screens across America. Her parents held press conferences, begging whoever had taken their daughter to bring her home.
Robert Wood stood in front of cameras, his voice breaking, and said what every parent fears most. Someone has taken our daughter. Someone has our little girl. Please, if you’re listening, please bring her back to us. Weeks passed, then months. More than 1500 tips poured into the makeshift command center set up in New Hartford, just miles from Sarah’s home.
Every lead was investigated. Every registered sex offender within 50 mi was questioned. Police knocked on doors throughout the county asking if anyone had seen anything unusual that day. A strange car, an unfamiliar face, anything. The public rallied. A reward fund grew to over $150,000. Actress Winona Ryder, who had connections to the area, held a press conference pleading for Sarah’s safe return.
Missing persons posters appeared in every store window, every post office, every gas station across upstate New York. Sarah’s family printed thousands of flyers themselves. Dusty would later recall, “We went bonkers with Xeroxes.” Like that day, it was pretty obvious she was missing. We quickly moved into trying to find her, but there was nothing.
No witnesses, no evidence, no suspects. The case went cold. Francis and Robert Wood tried to maintain hope. But as summer turned to fall and fall turned to winter, the reality began to sink in. Their daughter was gone, and whoever had taken her had vanished without leaving a trace. The family received support from the community, but they also received something else.
cruel prank calls, fake sightings, people claiming to know where Sarah was, demanding money for information that led nowhere. One teenager even called Robert Wood, pretending to be Sarah, saying she was being held in a hotel. Police traced the call to a residential home. “It was a dare,” the girl said, “A joke.” The Woods stopped answering their phone.
By Christmas of 1993, the active search had essentially ended. Police continued to investigate leads as they came in, but there was nowhere left to look. Sarah had simply disappeared. And then on January 7th, 1994, nearly 5 months after Sarah vanished, something happened that would change everything.
In Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 100 miles east of Soquite, 12-year-old Rebecca Savz was walking to school. It was 7:10 in the morning, bitterly cold, snow covering the ground in thick sheets. She had her headphones in, listening to music as she made her way down West Street toward Notre Dame Middle School. It was one of the busiest intersections in Pittsfield.
Cars passing by, people heading to work. She didn’t notice the man walking beside her until he pulled out a gun. Rebecca would later describe him as scruffy with wireframed glasses and a mustache that looked like it hadn’t been trimmed in weeks. He pressed the gun against her back and told her to do exactly as he said or she would get hurt.
He grabbed her jacket and started steering her toward a black pickup truck parked on the street. But Rebecca Saves had been taught what to do in this exact situation. A police officer had visited her school the year before and taught the students about stranger danger, about abduction prevention. Her mother, Chris Sabberiz, had drilled it into her head over and over.
Kick, scream, bite, spit, do anything to get away. Never let them take you to a second location. So when the man tried to force her toward the truck, Rebecca sat down on the ground and faked an asthma attack. She gasped for air, clutching at her chest, making herself as difficult to move as possible. The man panicked.
He tried to pull her up, but she was dead weight. He grabbed her backpack instead, trying to drag her by the straps. Rebecca slipped out of the backpack and ran. She ran as fast as she could toward a man clearing snow from a sidewalk outside a nearby business and screamed for help. The abductor, realizing he’d been seen, jumped into his truck and sped away.
But someone else had been watching. A witness at the intersection had seen the whole thing unfold. He saw the man grab the girl. He saw her escape and he saw the truck peel away. He memorized three digits from the license plate and immediately called the police. Within hours, police had a description of the vehicle and a partial plate number.
They sent out a bulletin to neighboring departments, asking officers to be on the lookout for a black pickup truck matching the description. That evening, officer Owen Boyington of the Pittsfield Police Department was driving through the nearby town of Lansboro when he spotted a black pickup truck parked in a driveway.
It matched the description perfectly. He pulled over and knocked on the door of the house. The truck belonged to a blind man named Philip Shalies who said he didn’t drive anymore. Instead, his neighbor, a 43-year-old handyman named Lewis Lent, used it regularly. Lent lived just up the road. Boyington asked to speak with him. Lewis Lent was polite, cooperative.
He agreed to come to the station for questioning without hesitation. He seemed calm, almost too calm. At the station, he denied everything. He said he hadn’t used the truck that morning. He said he’d been home getting ready for church. He was a devout Christian, he explained, and would never harm a child. But when Rebecca Severise and the other witnesses were shown a photo lineup, they all identified the same man.
Lewis Steven Lent Jr. Police obtained a search warrant for Lent’s home and vehicles, and what they found inside made their skin crawl. In the truck, officers discovered Rebecca’s backpack exactly where Lent had thrown it after she escaped. They found a loaded revolver. And they found a small bag containing items that would later be referred to as his snatch kit, duct tape, rope, a knife, children’s sunglasses, and candy.
In Lent’s van, they found more rope, more duct tape, and fibers that didn’t match anything in his home. But the most disturbing discovery was in Lent’s house itself. In the basement, partially hidden, police found evidence of construction. Lent had been building something. A large wooden partition, a secret room.
When detectives confronted him about it, Lent admitted what it was for. He was building a bunker, he said. A place to keep victims. He planned to kidnap girls, ages 12 to 17, with long hair just beginning to develop physically. He would bring them to the room, chain them up, abuse them for as long as he wanted. Then he would kill them.
The room wasn’t finished yet, he explained, so any victims he took in the meantime were just temporary. Quickies, he called them. Lewis Lent was arrested and charged with attempted kidnapping, armed robbery, and assault with a deadly weapon. He was held without bail. But as detectives began digging deeper into Lent’s background, they realized they might be dealing with something far worse than a single failed abduction.
Lent had a criminal record. In the late ‘7s, he’d been convicted of robbery and served time. In the 80s, he’d been accused of attacking a woman, binding her with cable ties, and attempting to strangle her. He’d served 8 years of a 20-year sentence before being parrolled. And then there was the case of James Bernardo.
In October of 1990, a 12-year-old boy named James Bernardo disappeared from Pittsfield. He was last seen outside the Pittsfield Plaza Cinema Center where Lewis Lent worked as a janitor. James never came home. His parents called the police that evening. Weeks later, hunters found James’ body in the woods in Newfield, New York, 200 m away. He’d been strangled with a rope.
Duct tape covered his mouth and eyes. The case had gone unsolved for more than three years. But now, with Lent in custody, detectives made a connection. The duct tape found on James Bernardo’s body was an exact match to the duct tape found in Lent’s truck. During his interrogation, Lent was asked about the Bernardo case.
At first, he denied any involvement. But as detectives pressed him, showing him the evidence, showing him the photographs, Lent’s demeanor began to change. And then, quietly, he confessed. He said he’d seen James outside the cinema that evening. He offered the boy $5 to help move chairs inside the theater. James agreed. Once inside, Lent pulled out a knife and bound James’s hands behind his back with duct tape.
He forced the boy into his truck, drove him to his home, and tied him to a bed. The next morning, Lent drove James to the woods in Newfield, blindfolded him, and strangled him to death with a section of rope. The confession was detailed, specific, and it matched the evidence perfectly. But detectives weren’t done. A teletype, a message sent between police departments, had been circulating about Lent’s arrest and his connection to the Bernardo case.
That teletype reached the New York State Police, and one detective reading through the details saw something that made his blood run cold. The victim profile, the circumstances, the use of a vehicle, the age of the victims. It matched Sarah Anne Wood. Detective Frank Lawrence got into his car and drove through a snowstorm to Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
He waited his turn to speak with Lewis Lent. And when he finally sat down across from the man, he asked him point blank, “Do you know anything about Sarah Anne Wood.” Lent stared at him for a long moment and then he nodded. He said he’d been driving through upstate New York that August day looking for someone to take.
“He’d been high on drugs,” he claimed, not thinking clearly. He was cruising through small towns, searching, and then he saw her, a 12-year-old girl with curly brown hair riding a bicycle up a steep hill. She was alone, struggling with the incline, vulnerable. Lent said he pulled his van over, got out, and approached her.
He claimed she had dismounted the bike and was walking it up the hill when he grabbed her. He pulled out a knife, forced her into the van, and bound her hands with cable ties. He hid her bike and belongings in the woods nearby, covering them with brush so they wouldn’t be found right away. Then he drove north into the Aderondac Mountains.
Hours and hours of driving, Sarah bound and terrified in the back of his van. He stopped near Rakette Lake in a remote clearing surrounded by dense forest. He said he could still see his van from where he stopped. And there in that clearing, Lewis Lent sexually assaulted Sarah Anne Wood. When he was finished, he picked up a tree branch and began beating her with it.
Sarah begged him to stop. She begged for her life. Lent didn’t stop until she was unconscious. He wasn’t sure if she was dead or just knocked out. He didn’t check. He just dug a shallow grave with his hands and a stick, rolled her body into it, and covered her with dirt and leaves. He might have buried her alive. Detective Lawrence sat across from Lent listening to this confession and felt a wave of nausea wash over him.
He asked Lent where exactly he had buried Sarah. Lent said he could draw a map. He said he remembered the area well. Within hours, the confession was relayed to the Woods family. Robert and Francis were devastated, but also relieved in a terrible way. After 5 months of not knowing, they finally had an answer. Sarah was dead.
But at least they could bring her home. At least they could bury their daughter. Lewis Lent drew a map. He marked a location near Rocket Lake in the town of Inlet. He described landmarks, a clearing, a view of the lake, a spot where he could see his van. He said the grave was shallow, maybe 2 ft deep. He said if they searched carefully, they would find her.
The search began immediately. Every case on this channel isn’t just a story. It’s weeks of digging through records, verifying facts, and piecing together real lives that were lost. Each episode takes nearly 15 days of research and long nights chasing the truth. We do this because these stories matter, and someone out there still deserves to be remembered.
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In January of 1994, more than 100 state troopers, forest rangers, Air Force personnel, and civilian volunteers descended on the Aderandac Mountains near Rocket Lake. The search area covered miles of frozen wilderness, and the conditions were among the worst imaginable. Temperatures plunged below zero. Snow fell in relentless waves accumulating in drifts that swallowed equipment and made every step a battle.
The terrain was unforgiving. Steep ravines, frozen streams, dense thickets of pine and birch that seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction. Robert Wood, Sarah’s father, was there. Despite the bitter cold, despite the crushing weight of knowing what he was searching for, he showed up every single day. He wore heavy boots and thick gloves and stood shoulderto-shoulder with the state troopers, digging through snow with a shovel.
He transported food and supplies from staging areas to the search sites. He carried equipment through kneedeep drifts, and when exhaustion threatened to overtake him, he kept going. A reporter who witnessed Robert Wood working that first week later described the scene. He was bent over, shoveling frozen earth in sub-zero temperatures, his breath coming out in visible clouds.
He paused for a moment, twisted off a branch that had scraped his head, and said quietly, “Somewhere up here, my daughter is beneath the ground, and I don’t know exactly where. Based on the information we have, our belief is that she is here. We realize that could be false, but she’s my daughter. I’m certainly not going to be sitting at home letting other people do the work.
” The search was methodical and exhaustive. Investigators used Lent’s handdrawn map as a guide, but the Aderondax in winter looked nothing like they did in summer. Landmarks that might have been visible in August were buried under snow. Trees that had been full of leaves were now bare skeletons. The clearing Lent described could have been any one of a hundred clearings scattered throughout the region.
Search and rescue dogs were brought in. They combed through the woods, noses to the ground, searching for any trace of human remains. Heavy machinery was deployed to move snow and dig through frozen soil. Volunteers formed search lines, walking shoulderto-shoulder through the forest, eyes scanning the ground for anything unusual. Days turned into weeks.
The search continued without pause. Meals were prepared by local volunteers and brought to the search sites. Businesses donated food. Churches organized prayer vigils. The entire region seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the moment when Sorrow would finally be found. But that moment never came.
After more than 50 days of searching, after excavating dozens of potential sites, after following every lead and checking every location that matched Lent’s description, the search teams found nothing. No grave, no remains, no trace of Sarah Anne Wood. And then Lewis Lent changed his story. During a follow-up interrogation, Lent told investigators that he’d been mistaken.
Sarah wasn’t buried near Ret Lake after all. He said he’d confuse the location with somewhere else, but when detectives pressed him to provide a new location, he refused. He claimed he had buried Sarah near another victim, someone whose body he didn’t want discovered. He wouldn’t say who, he wouldn’t say where.
He just said that if investigators found Sarah, they would find the other victim, too. and he wasn’t ready for that. The detectives didn’t believe him. They believed he was playing a game, exerting the only control he had left. By withholding the location of Sarah’s body, he maintained power over her family and over the investigation.
It was psychological torture, and Lent seemed to enjoy it. But the investigation into Lewis Lent had uncovered even more horrors. In November of 1992, a 16-year-old boy named James Lusher had disappeared in Westfield, Massachusetts. James was mentally disabled, a gentle kid who loved riding his bike and spending time outdoors.
On November 6th, he told his father he was going to ride his bike to his grandmother’s house just a few miles away. He left that afternoon and never arrived. His bike was found 6 days later in a field off a deadend road, but James was gone. The case had gone cold just like Sarah’s. But now with Lent in custody, investigators began to wonder if he was responsible for that disappearance, too.
For years, they questioned him. And in 2013, nearly 20 years after James Lusher vanished, Lewis Lent finally confessed. He said he had abducted James in Westfield, forced him into his truck, driven him to a remote location, and killed him. Then he dumped the body in Greenwater Pond in Beckett, Massachusetts.
The pond was massive, 88 acres, with depths reaching 58 ft in places. Lent agreed to provide details in exchange for not being prosecuted for the murder. He was already serving life without parole for James Bernardo’s killing, so there was no legal reason to charge him again. The district attorney agreed to the deal, hoping it would finally give the Lucer family some closure. Dive teams were assembled.
State police from Massachusetts and New York worked together, searching the murky waters of Greenwater Pond for weeks. They used sonar equipment. They brought in specialized divers trained in underwater recovery. They dredged sections of the pond bed, sifting through mud and debris. They found nothing.
Just like with Sarah, James Lusher’s body remained hidden. And just like with Sarah, investigators believed Lent was lying about the location. James Lischer’s father spoke to reporters after the search ended. He said, “To this day, when I see a kid, a 16-year-old kid on a bike with black hair, I will instinctively look. My closure is finding my son.
” His sister Jennifer added, “There is no closure unless we have the person. We don’t have anything. We’ve never had anything.” Lent also became a suspect in other unsolved cases. In 1986, a 13-year-old girl named Tammy Anne McCormack disappeared from Saratoga Springs, New York. She was last seen by her older sister, who said Tammy planned to hitchhike to school that morning.
Tammy never arrived. She had told friends she wanted to run away to Florida, but she left all her belongings behind. Investigators believed she had been abducted. Lewis Lent lived in the area at the time. He was questioned, but never charged. To this day, Tammy’s case remains unsolved. Investigators believe there were more victims, many more.
Lent himself hinted at this during interrogations. He told detectives that he had a large hunting area and that he would drive for hours, sometimes across state lines, looking for vulnerable children. If he had money for gas, he said that’s what he would do. He would hunt. But he never provided names. He never gave specifics.
and he never revealed where any of the bodies were buried. In June of 1996, Lewis Lent was brought to trial for the murder of James Bernardo. He was scheduled to face a jury, but on the day the trial was set to begin, he surprised everyone by changing his plea to guilty. The judge immediately sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
9 days later, Lent was transported to Herkimer County, New York to face charges in Sarah Anne Wood’s case. He arrived in a bulletproof vest, surrounded by armed guards, and was escorted into the courthouse through a throng of reporters and cameras. Sarah’s parents, Robert and Francis Wood, were in the courtroom that day.
They sat in the front row holding hands, staring at the man who had murdered their daughter. Lent saw them, and for a moment, something flickered across his face. He turned to his attorney and said he wanted to plead guilty to Sarah’s murder. But then he looked at her parents again and he changed his mind. He pleaded not guilty.
The legal proceedings dragged on for months, but the evidence against Lent was overwhelming. his detailed confession, the DNA evidence, the fibers from his van that matched fibers found at Sarah’s home, the testimony of Rebecca Savz, who had identified him as her attacker, the duct tape, the map, the pattern of behavior that linked him to multiple child abductions and murders.
On October 25th, 1996, Lewis Lent appeared in court again. This time Sarah’s parents were not present. And this time, Lent pleaded guilty to Sarah’s abduction, rape, and murder, but he still refused to say where she was buried. Sarah’s parents asked the court to delay sentencing. They held on to a fragile hope that if they gave Lent more time, if they appealed to whatever humanity might still exist within him, he would finally tell them where their daughter was.
For months, they visited him in prison. They sat across from him in cold, sterile visiting rooms and begged. Francis cried. Robert read passages from the Bible, urging Lent to repent, to do the right thing, to give them peace. Lent said nothing. The prosecutor, Herkimer County District Attorney Michael Daly, made Lent an offer.
If he revealed Sar’s location, he would be allowed to serve his sentence in a state prison instead of a federal facility. a significant difference in living conditions, privileges, and safety. It was a generous deal, one that could make his decades in prison far more bearable. Lent refused. On April 11th, 1990, seven, Lewis Steven Lent Jr.
was brought into the courtroom for sentencing. Judge Patrick Kirk presided. The courtroom was packed with reporters, law enforcement officials, and members of Sarah’s family. Before imposing sentence, Judge Kurt gave Sarah’s family an opportunity to speak. Her brother Dusty stood up. He was 19 years old, still carrying the weight of being the last person to see his sister alive.
He walked to the front of the courtroom, looked directly at Lent, and spoke. “You may think you have power over us because you know where Sarah’s body is,” Dusty said, his voice steady despite the tears in his eyes. But we know where Sarah’s soul is, so you have no power over us.” Lent stared back at him. His expression never changed. He said nothing.
Judge Kirk then addressed Lent directly. He told him that if the death penalty had been a legal option in this case, he would have imposed it without hesitation. He said that Lent’s refusal to reveal Sarah’s location was an act of continued cruelty, a final torment inflicted on a family that had already suffered unimaginable pain.
Then he sentenced Lewis Lent to 25 years to life in prison to run concurrent with his life sentence for James Bernardo’s murder. Lent was led out of the courtroom in shackles. He never looked back at Sarah’s family. He never said a word and Sarah Anne Wood’s body has never been found. Lewis Lent is now 74 years old.
He is incarcerated at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He will never be released. He has spent the last 27 years in prison and he will die there. Investigators have never stopped trying to find Sarah. Even today, members of the New York State Police Major Crimes Unit visit Lent several times a year.
They sit across from him in prison interview rooms and ask the same question they’ve been asking for decades. Where is she? Sometimes Lent hints that he wants to tell them. He says he’s thought about it. He says maybe one day he’ll be ready, but then he changes his mind. He says he’s not ready yet. In 2013, District Attorney Michael Daly gave an interview about the case.
He said, “I believe he has given us all the information we need to find the location. He just hasn’t given us the final piece. He’s challenging us to find it ourselves.” Senior investigator Dennis Dowardy, who has worked on Sarah’s case for years, said, “I do believe he knows.” Yes, he has indicated at various times that he has wanted to tell us, but he’s just not ready.
In June of 2024, more than 30 years after Sarah disappeared, investigators returned to a property in Lansboro, Massachusetts. It was the same house where Lent had been questioned in 1994, the same house where he had spent considerable time in the early ’90s. The property had been searched before, but advances in technology gave investigators new tools.
They brought ground penetrating radar. They scanned the concrete floors in the basement looking for anomalies. They saw something shapes that looked like they could be bones. They drilled holes through the concrete and brought in cadaavver dogs. The dogs alerted to one specific area. Investigators excavated the site, carefully removing layers of concrete and soil.
News crews gathered outside. Sarah’s family waited by their phones. But when the excavation was complete, they discovered it was old piping, not human remains, just pipes. The search continues. It likely always will. But the story of Sarah Anne Wood is not just a story of loss. It is also a story of legacy. In the months following Sarah’s disappearance, her family founded the Sarah Anne Wood Rescue Center.
It started small, just Robert and Francis and a few volunteers printing missing persons posters in their garage, distributing them throughout New York. But it grew. In 1996, the center merged with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and became the Mohawk Valley Office, the only geographically targeted missing child poster distribution center in the United States.
By 2018, the center had distributed more than 10 12 million posters featuring 11,000 missing children. And of those 11,000 children, more than 7,500 had been found and brought home safely. Wendy Fickle, a program director at the center, said in an interview, “The legacy of this one child has assisted in bringing over 7,500 children home.
” On May 25th, 1995, National Missing Children’s Day, Robert Wood and six other men, including Sarah’s brother, Dusty, climbed onto bicycles in Utica, New York. They wore jerseys in Sarah’s favorite colors, teal and pink, and they began riding. They rode for 4 days, covering nearly 400 miles through rain and heat and exhaustion.
They rode through small towns and big cities, stopping at schools along the way to talk to children about safety. They rode past billboards featuring Sarah’s face. And on the fourth day, they arrived in Washington DC at the steps of the US capital. Two years later, the ride became an annual event. Today, it’s called the Ride for Missing Children.
Thousands of people participate every year. They wear jerseys in teal and pink for Sarah, white to represent all missing children, and purple to honor law enforcement. They stop at schools along the route, teaching children how to stay safe, how to recognize danger, how to fight back if someone tries to take them.
They raise money for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And they ride in memory of Sarah and every child who never came home. One of Sarah’s elementary school teachers, Christine Kissile, attended the ride in 2015. She stood on the side of the road as hundreds of cyclists passed by and she thought about the little girl who used to sit in her classroom.
When I was watching the bikers, I thought, “Oh my god, this all started with Sarah.” She said, “I can still see her sitting in my classroom. She was not a morning person and her hair was all in disarray. God, she was so cute. I can see her like it was yesterday.” A tree was planted in Sarah’s honor at Sequoite Valley Middle School.
A ribbon-shaped memorial stands in the courtyard. And in 1990, the year Sarah would have graduated from high school, her classmates placed a plaque in front of the tree. It’s still there today. In the decade following Sarah’s abduction, annual reports of child abduction in New York State dropped by 30%. Experts attribute this decline directly to the awareness campaigns, school programs, and community education efforts inspired by Sarah’s case.
Rebecca Searice, the 12-year-old girl who escaped from Lewis Lent that frozen January morning, rarely speaks publicly, but in 2200, she gave an interview. She said she thinks about Sarah often. She thinks about how easily she could have been in Sarah’s place, and she thinks about the fact that her decision to fight back, to fake that asthma attack, to run, probably saved other children’s lives.
If I had gotten into that truck, Rebecca said, he would have kept going. He would have kept hunting. Herkimer County District Attorney Jeffrey Carpenter said, “I think Becky Saves not only saved herself, she saved countless children because this man was developing his skills. He was getting better at it. She outsmarted him and brought an end to his reign of terror.
Sarah’s family has found a way to live with the not knowing. They don’t have a grave to visit. They don’t have a place to lay flowers on her birthday. But they have something else. They have the thousands of children who came home because of the center Sarah’s disappearance inspired. They have the annual bike ride where her name is spoken aloud by strangers who never met her but ride for her anyway.
They have the memory of a 12-year-old girl who loved Dolly Parton and made her teachers laugh and sang as she pedled her bike on a summer afternoon. Francis Wood once said, “We don’t have Sarah’s body, but we have her legacy.” Dusty Wood, now in his late 40s, still participates in the ride for missing children every year.
He speaks at schools about child safety. He works with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. And when people ask him why he keeps going after all these years, he says the same thing every time. The most important thing for us as a family is to protect kids and make sure that if there’s anything that can be done to protect them from monsters like Lewis Lent, that it be done somewhere in the Aderandac Mountains or in a field in upstate New York or in a place that only one man on Earth knows.
A 12-year-old girl rests in an unmarked grave. She has been there for more than 31 years. She will likely be there forever. Her family believes she is at peace. They believe she is with God. And they believe that one day when their own time comes, they will see her again. Until then, they keep searching, they keep hoping, and they keep writing for Sarah, for all the missing children, and for the day when every child comes home.
