Search in Vermont yields no evidence in Sara Anne Wood homicide case

POWNAL, Vt. – Acting on “new information” in the 30-year-old case of Sara Anne Wood, the 12-year-old girl abducted near her Herkimer County home, State Police said they and other agencies searched 29 acres in Vermont but found no evidence or remains.

Police in a news release late Friday said their Major Crimes Unit in Troop D in the Mohawk Valley began with a cursory search on Nov. 11. Investigators along with a State Police canine unit began looking in the Green Mountain National Forest “after new information was developed through follow-up interviews.” 

The area searched was about 29 acres in the vicinity of the Dome Hiking Trail at White Oaks Road in Pownal, located in the southwest corner of the state.

Over 80 officers from the New York State Police, along with New York state forest rangers and the Vermont State Police assisted in the search, which concluded on Thursday. State Police credited the U.S. Forest Service and the town of Pownal Highway Department for their assistance and support with the search.

Though no evidence or remains were found, police said they will continue to search for Sara’s remains. More than a dozen searches over the years have failed to find her.

A break in the case came Jan. 7, 1994, when a North Adams, Mass. man tried to kidnap another 12-year-old girl in Pittsfield, Mass., but she faked an asthma attack and escaped. Lewis Lent was arrested and, three days later, confessed to abducting and killing Sara, police said. He told police he left her body in a shallow grave on a logging road near Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks. But a search there did not turn up anything.