Thirty years after her disappearance, the search for Sara Anne Wood continues

Amy Neff Roth, Utica Observer Dispatch
·2 min read

New information led New York State Police to a field in Vermont earlier this month in their 30-year search for Litchfield resident Sara Anne Wood.

Wood was 12 when she disappeared on Aug. 18, 1993 while riding her bike home from church on Hacadam Road in the town of Litchfield.

More than 80 law enforcement officers took park in a search for the remains of Sara Anne Wood in a state forest in Pownal, Vermont between Nov. 11 and Nov. 16, 2023. Sara Anne, 12, disappeared while riding her bicycle near her home in the Town of Litchfield on Aug. 18, 1993. Lewis Lent Jr. confessed to kidnapping and killing her, but her remains have never been found despite several searches over the years.

New search

The search began Nov. 11 in Green Mountain National Forest after investigators with the New York State Police Major Crimes Unit in Troop D developed new information through follow-up interviews, state police said.

It focused on 29 acres near Dome Hiking Trail at White Oaks Road in Pownal.

For three days, more than 80 officers from the New York State Police, the New York State Forest Rangers and the Vermont State Police joined in the search for Sara Anne’s remains. State police K-9s also helped. The U.S. Forest Service and the Town of Pownal Highway Department also provided assistance.

The search concluded without success on Thursday, Nov. 16.

Remains never found

Lewis Lent Jr. confessed to the abduction and murder of Sara Anne and of Jimmy Bernardo, a 13-year-old from Pittsfield, Massachusetts who disappeared in 1990. He is serving consecutive life sentences for both murders in a Massachusetts prison.

He’s also confessed to, but hasn’t been tried for, the 1992 kidnapping and murder of Jamie Lusher, 16, of Westfield, Massachusetts.

Police have made many searches for Sara Anne, most of them in the Adirondacks, over the years based on information from Lent, but her remains have never been found.

But Sara Anne has left a legacy that is helping other missing children to be found.

The annual Ride for Missing Children, now almost three decades old, was created to raise awareness and money for missing children in Sara Anne’s memory. The ride’s colors, turquoise and pink, are the colors Sara Anne was wearing when she disappeared.

More: Gallery: The History of the Sara Anne Wood Case

The local one-day, 90-mile ride with stops at several schools has spawned sister rides in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and Albany. It has become the biggest fundraiser for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Police search for Sara Anne Wood's remains in Vermont