
DATE: Friday, May 16, 1997                  TAG: 9705160687

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  137 lines

"HE JUST VANISHED OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH"

One minute Martin R. Ryan was lying on the couch in his Chesapeake apartment, watching a video. Then he was gone.

``He just vanished off the face of the Earth,'' said his mother, Lu Ross, who lives in Spokane, Wash. ``He just vaporized.''

It's been 16 months since friends and family have heard from the 29-year-old Coast Guard gunner's mate. The Coast Guard is investigating his disappearance as a possible desertion. His mother suspects foul play. His wife, Diana, just thinks he walked out on her and their son David, now 6.

``Some days I think something could have happened to him,'' said Diana Ryan, 28, who still lives in the apartment they shared in Chesapeake. ``Sometimes I think he's in the woods doing the Grizzly Adams thing. Sometimes I think he's with a militia group.''

Martin Ryan was last seen about 11 a.m. on Jan. 24, 1996, when his wife left the house. Soon afterward, his shipmates started leaving telephone messages when Ryan failed to report to the cutter Harriet Lane, which was scheduled to sail two days later.

Diana Ryan called Chesapeake police on Jan. 27 to report her husband missing.

Investigators found his truck parked outside the family's apartment on Stilworken Drive in the Dunedin Apartments. The keys were in the ignition.

On a coffee table was a glass Ryan had been using. His two wallets with driver's license and credit cards were nearby, as if he'd just stepped out for a minute.

``The only strange thing was his closet was disheveled as if someone was looking for something frantically,'' said Joe Fahey, a special agent with the Coast Guard investigative service. A box of compact discs had been tipped over as if something was hidden there, Fahey said.

Ryan's wife could detect only a few things missing: a red Schwinn mountain bike worth about $800, a black duffel bag, a .45-caliber automatic handgun, and a favorite blanket Martin had bought while he was in the Air Force in Germany, Fahey said.

Aboard the Harriet Lane, Ryan's locker contained only dress uniforms - nothing to indicate that he intended to sail for Puerto Rico days later. Otherwise, there was nothing unusual, Fahey said.

Investigators had no obvious reason to suspect foul play. There was no evidence of violence. They were simply investigating a missing person report. But as months passed, Ryan's disappearance took on a more sinister hue.

``Usually people contact someone,'' Fahey said. ``That's what makes this strange.''

In February, a woman called Chesapeake Crime Line and said someone fitting Ryan's description came into the Bonzai Bar & Grill in Norfolk's Ocean View area and told her, ``You'll have to drive, because I only have a bicycle here.'' The woman did not know where he went, Fahey said.

It was a long time before more information surfaced.

Last June, a Suffolk police officer caught a glimpse of a disheveled man carrying a bicycle on his back, but could not stop him before he ran off into the woods near Tidewater Community College's Portsmouth campus.

That mysterious sighting was enough to renew investigators' interest in a campsite near Ryan's apartment that they had looked at the winter before. Neatly stacked firewood was nearby. The encampment is near the college campus, an area where Ryan liked to fish. Nothing came of the search.

``All indications are that if he voluntarily left he had no intentions of coming back, because his military ID was at home,'' Fahey said. ``He was classified as a deserter.''

As a deserter, if Ryan were to be located, he would likely face a dishonorable discharge and possible prison time.

But usually they are located, and quickly. About 95 percent are tracked down within a week, Fahey said.

For months after her husband disappeared, Diana Ryan said she felt as if Coast Guard investigators considered her a suspect.

In March 1996, Ryan's wife took and passed a polygraph administered by Chesapeake police. During the exam, she was questioned about whether she had a role in her husband's disappearance, she said. During an interview, she denied any wrongdoing.

But Coast Guard investigators continue to investigate all possibilities.

``No one has been ruled out as a suspect,'' Fahey said. ``But there isn't anything to point to anyone in particular.''

Diana finds it hard to believe that someone could have forced her husband into anything.

``He was a pretty big guy,'' she said of her 5-foot-11, 180-pound husband. ``If somebody had come in and forced him out, there would have been more damage done. . . . None of it makes much sense.''

Not one to dwell on problems, Diana said she doesn't spend a lot of time missing her husband.

``We hadn't been getting along for about a year,'' she said. ``We were always fighting in front of my son. . . Me and Marty, we used to get along great years ago.''

In fact, shortly before he disappeared, the two had argued over money she had paid a man who was building a shed for them, she said. Her husband apparently didn't think she should have paid any more than the amount he had negotiated with the builder.

``He was yelling about money,'' she said. ``He grabbed my arm and swung me around. I turned around and started swinging. It lasted five seconds, and he walked away.''

Now that her husband has been gone so long, Diana says she isn't sure what to believe.

``I have a hard time thinking he's really dead,'' she said. ``It makes it easier for me to think that he's out there running around in the woods.''

For Ross, Ryan's mother, the days have stretched into an agonizing succession of questions with no answers.

``When his special days come around (his 29th birthday was April 22), I go out and get a card and put them in an envelope,'' she said. ``If he is out there, he'll have them.''

Hardest for her is ``the pain of thinking someone did something to him. . . How scared was he? Did he see it coming? How bad did it hurt?''

Ross does not believe her son simply walked out.

``This young man has never been in any kind of trouble,'' she said. ``I just can't believe he'd walk away from his responsibilities. . . . I have been over this and over it in my mind, and I keep coming up with the same questions.''

When her son disappeared, she and other family members traveled from Washington state to Hampton Roads, where they put up posters with his picture and vital information.

Ross has been to a psychic and an astrologer, and she even took a sample of her son's handwriting to an analyst, desperate for answers.

``I don't think Marty's alive,'' she said. ``I do have a little bit of hope because that's what keeps me going. If he's out there, it can be fixed.''

Fahey also fears that harm has come to the man he has sought for months. ``I think there's a 20 percent chance that he's alive,'' Fahey said. ``That's my opinion.'' MEMO: Anyone with information about Ryan can call the Fifth Coast

Guard District at (757) 398-6231. A reward of up to $3,000 is being

offered. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo by BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot

Diana Ryan thinks her husband just walked out on her and their son

David, who's now 6. Martin Ryan left behind two wallets containing

his military identification.

Color photo

Lu Ross, the mother of Martin Ryan, thinks he ``just vaporized.''

Color photo by Mark Mitchell/The Virginian-Pilot

Martin Ryan KEYWORDS: MISSING PERSON