Mother looks for answers

MILAN, Ohio (AP) — Investigations into the disappearance of a man who hasn’t been seen since 2003 have left his mother with more questions than answers.

Rosalie Gottwald hasn’t seen her son since shortly after she and her husband, George, kicked him out of their house. They took him in after he was divorced, but she said they told him to leave when they found he was dealing drugs.

Since then, Gottwald has been frustrated that little has been found out and wonders if her son, Michael A. Sheppard Jr., is still alive or if his body just might be buried nearby.

She last saw him in April 2003.

“After Michael disappeared, we didn’t really know what was going on until the death threats started,” she said.

The calls came from two brothers in Las Vegas, which is where Sheppard used to live, Gottwald said. The callers said he had stolen thousands of dollars from a drug dealer. The Gottwalds alerted police, then filed a missing-person report.

“We need to know what happened to him,” Gottwald said.

She began over the last few months writing down everything she could recall related to her son’s disappearance — names, dates, conversations with investigators.

Gottwald wants to make sure the case doesn’t remain stalled.

All three police officials who have looked into the disappearance have left the Perkins Township Police Department. And the information they gathered is in the department’s archives but no one has found it yet, said Lt. Robb Parthemore said.

Former police chief Tim McClung told the Sandusky Register that the case was handed over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. BCI did not respond to a request for information on the status of the case.

Gottwald said police investigators never talked to the men who made the death threats or people her son lived with in the Sandusky area just before disappearing.

One of her son’s associates told a family friend that Sheppard was buried on the property of his roommates, Gottwald said, adding that a second person said the same thing.