Bertis Sutton says his family is doing as well as they can given their matriarch has been missing for a month.
Ruth Carol Sutton of Grand Bay-Westfield, N.B., was last seen on May 25 around 9:10 a.m. on Mallard Drive.
“We’re keeping dad busy,” says Bertis Sutton, one of her four children, in an interview with CTV Atlantic.
“He’s trying to continue on with the things that interest him, but life’s different and we’ve been trying to adapt to that change.
He admits they feel no further ahead in finding his 79-year-old mother than when the investigation started, saying she seemingly disappeared without a trace.
The New Brunswick RCMP has continued to investigate the woman’s disappearance. Police previously said Sutton has a medical condition that may cause her to become disoriented, which her son confirms is early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.
Bertis says his mother was diagnosed several years ago and the disease’s onset has been very gradual, with short-term forgetfulness being the only showing sign.
“No change in personality, no decline in her vocabulary or long-term memory,” says Bertis. “She never experienced disorientation that we were aware of or didn’t know where she was and had never wandered before.
“This seems to have been the first and last.”
In the first days of the investigation, a large ground search consisting of police, professional rescue teams, the town’s fire department and numerous volunteers combed the immediate area, both on land and in the water. The official ground search was suspended a few days later, but volunteers and police continued to look for the Grand-Bay-Westfield woman.
In an update posted to social media Tuesday, the RCMP said last week its underwater recovery team searched a large body of water near where Sutton was last seen. Additional police searches have also been conducted by aerial drones.
“It’s important for the public to know that this is still very much an ongoing investigation,” says Cpl. Jullie Rogers-Marsh of the Grand Bay-Westfield RCMP detachment. “We continue to follow up on any information that we get from the public.”
Both the family and police say they have stayed in constant communication on the file. RCMP says the family did consult with a private cadaver dog, which did some searches in the area to no success.
Cpl. Rogers-Marsh says residents should keep their eyes open for anything when hiking, and out swimming or boating on the Saint John River and nearby bodies of water.
It’s a message echoed by Sutton’s son, especially as the boating season ramps up.
“Our best guess is that she found her way to the water,” says Bertis. “At this stage a month in, the coat she was wearing, the hat we think she had, the short rubber boots she had could have become dislodged by now and then in a location other than where her body is.”
Sutton is described as five-foot-two and 130 pounds. She has blue eyes and white hair. She was last seen wearing a light blue jacket, rubber ankle boots and white socks.
Bertis says the tight-knit Grand Bay-Westfield community has supported the entire family in many ways over the difficult month. He says she was known as someone the community adored.
“She meant everything to us. Family and everyone that you would expect to be out was out, and everyone that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be out was out too,” he says. “Not just people here in the local community, but beyond and people have reached out to us from all over, everywhere and that feels great.”
Anyone with information on Sutton’s whereabouts is asked to contact Grand Bay-Westfield RCMP at 506-757-1020.
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