THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 5, 1994 TAG: 9410050538
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN E. QUINONES MILLER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
It was three years ago, but she remembers as if it were yesterday. She woke him up that morning just as she usually did before she went off to work.
``Walter, I'm getting ready to leave. I'll see you this evening,'' Ruth Sutton said to her retired husband, Walter.
``OK, I'll see you this evening,'' Walter replied sleepily before rolling over in bed.
That was the last time Sutton saw her husband, who was 71 years old when he disappeared.
Three years ago today she filed a missing person report with the police, but she has yet to hear anything about his condition or whereabouts.
So began the strange case of Walter Sutton. No body has been found, and no amnesia victims have turned up that match his description.
``He went out of this house to go get his breakfast, and he never came back,'' Sutton said Tuesday. ``How can a man just disappear?''
For more than a year, she spent almost all of her time diligently searching for her husband of 12 years.
She went to all his old haunts. She looked in wooded areas and ditches near the University Apartments near the Janaf Shopping Center, where she lives, to see if he had fallen and was unable to get help.
She went to all of the hospitals and nursing homes in the area. Nothing.
In November 1992 she had an operation to replace her right hip. She was no longer able to roam the streets of Norfolk flashing her husband's identification card and asking people, ``Have you seen this man?''
She then relied on friends to help her get around, giving her rides to places like Huntersville, the Downtown Plaza and Diggs Town.
``I've been to places in Norfolk I've never been to in my life, and I was born here,'' said Sutton, 63. ``I never knew it was so big. But nobody says they've seen him. How can a man just disappear?''
In May, Sutton underwent another operation, this one on her back, and now she needs a walker to help her get around. It's painful for her even to get into and out of cars, but she still hasn't given up. She calls the police regularly to see if they've heard anything.
``I don't know where he could be, but I just don't feel like he's dead,'' Sutton said as she sat in her second-floor apartment in the 1100 block of Georgetown Road. ``I keep thinking he's going to show up soon.''
Ruth and Walter Sutton met in 1980 when they were both tenants at an apartment complex on Virginia Beach Boulevard.
``He lived downstairs, and I lived upstairs, and when we'd see each other we'd always speak,'' Sutton said.
They started going out to dinner, Sutton said. Then he started asking her to help him with his laundry and shopping. They fell in love, and in 1982 they married. It was his second marriage and her first.
``We were inseparable,'' said Sutton, her eyes filling with tears. ``We went everywhere together. Walking, shopping, everywhere. When I got off from work he would always be there waiting.''
Walter Sutton, who worked at the Norfolk Naval Air Station for 37 years before his retirement in 1987, was a creature of habit, according to his wife.
He apparently followed his usual routine the morning of Oct. 2, 1991, after she left for work. He slept for a few hours, got up, took a bath, and headed out.
``He always walked up here to the Burger King to get one of those sandwiches they make at breakfast,'' Sutton said. ``Then he'd go over to Military Circle and sit and talk with the other retirees for awhile.
``After awhile he would go get a cup of coffee and go on over to the Farm Fresh on Virginia Beach Boulevard and wait for me to pick him up after I got off of work,'' she said.
Her two co-workers who drove her to and from work each day stopped at the Farm Fresh about 4:30 p.m. that day so she could run in get her husband. But he wasn't there.
She didn't worry at first, she said. There was a time before that he had disappeared for two days, tending to his ailing brother Joseph. The brother, who she said lived in Diggs Town, didn't have a telephone, so she didn't hear from Walter for two days. She figured her husband would turn up soon.
So it was three days before she went to the police.
On Tuesday, she tried to re-create the events the last day she saw him.
Walter had received his retirement check the day before, she said, and planned on cashing it before making his usual rounds.
``When I came back to the apartment I found the money there in the drawer, all but $50,'' Sutton said. ``He must have cashed the check, then left for the Burger King, because the girl there said she had seen him. But his buddies at Military Circle said they didn't. So something must have happened between the time he went to Burger King and the time he got to Military Circle.''
Police say they still have no idea what happened to Walter Sutton.
``It's very unusual for someone to be missing all this time with no clue,'' police department spokesman Larry Hill said. ``At this point we're just as curious as anybody else.''
Hill said Sutton calls him and other officers on a regular basis. She's always pleasant, but always persistent. She wants to find her husband, and so do the police.
The strange case of Walter Sutton is still open.
Ruth Sutton can't go out searching for her husband as she would like to, but she still hasn't given up hope.
``Every time I hear a knock on the door, I think it might be him,'' Sutton said. ``I know one day it will be.''
Anyone with information about Walter Sutton can call the Norfolk Crime Line at 441-5100. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
RICHARD L. DUNSTON/Staff
Walter Sutton, above, disappeared three years ago. His wife Ruth,
right, has been searching for him ever since. She has yet to hear
anything about him or where he might be.
KEYWORDS: MISSING PERSONS by CNB