A decade after a Vermont teenager disappeared when Tropical Storm Irene was delaying the state, her mother still hopes someone can answer the question about what happened to her.
Marble Arvidson she was 17 when she left her Brattleboro foster home with a man who appeared to be in her twenties on the afternoon of August 27, 2011, saying she would get home in half an hour. It was hours before the rains began. He has never been seen again.
When Marble was reported missing the next day, regular communications had dropped and people responded to emergencies overwhelmed by the extent of the natural disaster.
At first, everyone offered the possibility that the slender teenager with a volatile temperament and fondness for black clothes might have run away (Marble had a history of being left out overnight), but over the years the his mother, Sigrid Arvidson, has left him with almost that possibility.
“As a mother, I can’t stop looking for her physical body, whether it’s there, or if her body is the skin she lived in,” Arvidson, who now lives in Abiquiu, New Mexico, told The Associated Press. Friday.
He will return to Vermont on Saturday for a public meeting in Brattleboro, near the place where his son was last seen. He will put a marker and make a statement which will be in part a request for more information.
The reward for information about what happened to Marble is now $ 10,000, he said.
Arvidson said there were probably ten chances of what happened to his son, from the relatively benign one like falling and hitting his head before falling down a slope into the water, to murder.
Brattleboro Police Lt. Jeremy Evans said he reopened the investigation into what happened to Marble earlier this year, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of his disappearance.
They are in the process of re-interviewing about 100 possible witnesses and following the advice they received a decade ago and more recently through the department’s tip line.
Evans said they were receiving help from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the New England State Police intelligence network. The case is listed by the Vermont State Police missing persons page.
Evans also doesn’t know what happened to Marble.
“The only thing we can be comfortable with is saying he’s dead,” Evans said.
When Irene roared along the coast in August 2011, she killed at least 46 people in 13 states and a handful of others in the Caribbean. Many in the Northeast breathed a sigh of relief when the New York City area was largely saved. Then the storm settled over Vermont.
Parts of Vermont got 11 inches (28 centimeters) of rain in 24 hours. The storm killed six in the state, washed the houses of their foundations and damaged or destroyed more than 200 bridges and 500 miles (805 kilometers) of highway.
Several events are planned to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Irene’s fury on August 28, 2011, the date of the state’s biggest natural disaster since the 1927 flood.
For much of Vermont, Irene is now history, complete reconstruction. But not for Arvidson or Brattleboro police.
“She’s part of Irene because it made it difficult for all aspects of trying to find him,” Arvidson said.
Arvidson said he believes there are people who know something about what happened to his son. She hopes these people have matured and are ready to do the right thing to help find Marble.
“Maybe they’ve caught on to something and assume someone knows it,” he said. “But now is a good time to get it out of your chest.”