Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 15, 1991 TAG: 9103150296
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN and VICTORIA RATCLIFF STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Milton Wright, who was 46 in 1976, was reported missing by neighbors who had not seen him for several days, Roanoke police said Thursday.
Wright lived in the 4200 block of Joplin Road Southwest in the Southern Hills community, close to the woods where a man found the bones while running his hunting dogs Wednesday, authorities said.
Wright had a history of mental problems and drinking problems and apparently was not working when the missing person report was filed, police said.
He had lived alone for two or three years in a rundown house. His billfold and other personal belongings were found on the porch of the house the day he was reported missing.
Wright originally was from Bayboro, N.C., and does not have relatives in the area, authorities said.
Roanoke County Police Chief John Cease said the bones, which were found near the Hunting Hills Country Club golf course, could be associated with a skull found in the same area by dogs 13 years ago. "We are operating on the theory that these skeletal remains may belong to that skull," he said.
Cease said police evidence technicians found a complete lower jawbone and two teeth lying next to each other Wednesday. They also found a moccasin and the tattered remnants of a black-and-white checkered shirt within 50 to 60 yards of where the bones were discovered in the Pinkard Court community Wednesday morning.
Witnesses told police that Wright was last seen walking over the hill where the bones were found. One witness told police that Wright usually wore moccasins.
The bones and teeth have been sent to the medical examiner's office in Roanoke. Police are still trying to find dental records on Wright.
Bertha Midgette, Wright's former wife, who still lives in Bayboro, about 115 miles southeast of Raleigh, N.C., said she does not remember that he ever went to the dentist. She said she last heard from him after he wrote her several letters from Roanoke wanting to come home.
Although police said Wright disappeared in 1976, Midgette recalled that the letters were written in early 1978. She could not confirm the date because the letters had been destroyed in a house fire.
"I told him we just couldn't make it and there was no use of him coming back," Midgette said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Midgette said she divorced Wright because he would become mean when he was drunk and he sometimes beat her.
Leland Brinson, the former sheriff of Pamlico County, N.C., said he arrested Wright several times on charges stemming from domestic disputes. Midgette said a judge in Pamlico County finally ordered Wright to leave the county because he was so abusive to her. He moved to nearby Craven County, N.C., before moving to Roanoke.
"When he was sober, you couldn't find a better person," she said. "When he started drinking, he was something else. He started accusing me of things and getting mean and crazy. He never did a whole lot of talking unless he was drunk."
by CNB