Where is Sara Anne Wood? Location of N.Y. girl's body a mystery decades after murder
Investigators say they will never give up looking for the body of Sara Anne Wood. The 12-year-old was abducted in 1993 in central New York. Even though her killer, Lewis Lent, is behind bars, authorities say he refuses to give her family the peace of knowing where Sara is. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty has been on the case from the beginning and reports on the unending search for Sara.
Dusty Wood: My sister's life ended. … And I couldn't stop that. … Someone hurt her and took her life. … I know at the time I felt like could have done something but I couldn't.
It's been a little over three decades since his 12-year-old little sister disappeared, but for Dusty Wood, memories of Sara have not faded with time.
Dusty Wood: She was an exuberant person. She was excited to be alive. Every picture you see of her, it's like a big beaming smile, those bright blue eyes.
Dusty says the two of them had a lot in common.
Dusty Wood: I'm an extrovert. She's pretty extroverted. … She's not a person in the background. She stuck out.
Dusty Wood: … she was funny … I imagine she would be funny now.
On August 18, 1993, Dusty, then just 16 years old, was enjoying a lazy summer day with his family in Sauquoit, a small town in central New York.
Dusty Wood: That day we had gone shopping, uh, we had come home. We just hung around the house. … We lived in the country, so there … wasn't a lot of stuff to do.
Sara had made plans to ride her bike to Vacation Bible School at the church where her father was a pastor. It was just about a mile down the road.
Dusty Wood: The last time I saw her she was singing Dolly Parton.
Erin Moriarty: Do you remember what song she was singing?
Dusty Wood: "Working 9 to 5." Yeah.
Dusty Wood: She and I were at the front door and … so I was listening to her as she's "Working 9 to 5" (singing) … and then, uh, she got on her bike and was like, "see you later."
THE SEARCH FOR SARA ANNE WOOD
When Sara didn't return home later that afternoon, Dusty and Sara's parents began to worry.
Dusty Wood: So, I remember … getting a phone call from my parents at my friend's house. "Hey, did you see Sara?" And me being like, "no." And so at that point we rode our bikes … and came home and didn't see her.
Soon after, that's when a neighbor came across Sara's bike hidden in the bushes on the side of the road – less than a half mile from the family's home. Police were called. Around 6 p.m., New York State Police Trooper Timothy Blaise, who is now retired, arrived at the scene.
Erin Moriarty: So, Tim, where was her bicycle found?
Timothy Blaise (pointing towards woods): It was off the grassy area; it was in where the shrubs are. And there was also some school paperwork that was around some papers were blowing around.
Erin Moriarty: And at the time, did anyone remember seeing a truck or a child being grabbed or anything?
Timothy Blaise: No. No.
Erin Moriarty: I mean she just vanished.
Timothy Blaise: Yeah, well, as you can see, I mean there's nobody here really to see anything you know.
By early evening, the massive search for Sara began.
Dusty Wood: We'd be out in the woods searching for her at midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning hoping that we find her in maybe a hole or she fell down in something.
"48 Hours" was invited by Sara and Dusty's parents, Bob and Frances Wood, to witness those early days of the investigation in hopes that the media attention would help find Sara. It would become one of the largest searches for a missing child during that time.
Pastor Bob Wood (1993): The first day was the worst — the first night.
Pastor Bob Wood (1993): The first night, of course, you know, I was up on the road all night — out in the woods all night. The second day I was on the road all night, watching.
Bob Wood's tiny church was turned into a state police command post.
Major Pylman (1993): The more people we can reach early on, while the thing is still fresh in their minds, the better chance we stand of maybe turning something up that — that'll help us.
Major Pylman (1993): The big thing, as far as the uniformed troopers are concerned, is the door-to-door.
Major Pylman (1993): The thing that keeps everybody going is the uncertainty, not knowing whether she's dead, whether she's alive, whether she's a mile away or whether she's 120 miles away.
Pastor Bob Wood (1993): All I'm doing is praying and encouraging people because they are doing all the work.
Searcher (1993): When you're dealing with a child, if — it hits you personally. It hits me personally. You tend to devote 110 percent. … I hope we find this girl.
Major Pylman (1993): What we need is a break — a good solid lead that we can take and finish this case up with.
And Bob Wood believed police were going to get that break if enough people could see his daughter's face.
Pastor Bob Wood (1993): Somebody stops in one of these stores and gases up, 10 minutes later you'll see my daughter, they could make the phone call we need to get.
Frances Wood (1993): You see this little person here? This is my baby. … Whatever I have to do, I'm going to do to find this little girl, here.
Sara's mother, Frances, made a public plea.
Frances Wood (crying): And whoever is behind this, I don't hate you. I don't hate you. I just want my daughter back. That's all. I just want her here, right here with us.
Investigators were determined to find out what happened to Sara, and they did not shy away from looking anywhere or at anyone.
Dusty Wood: Our entire family was focused on getting Sara back. … So if you want to investigate me … I'm OK with that. … Sara has got to come home. We'll do whatever it takes, period.
THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY
Det. Reece Treen: When this happened, people realized this could happen to anybody. It could be their children.
Retired New York State Police detectives Reece Treen and John Fallon were state troopers when Sara Wood disappeared in 1993.
Det. John Fallon: My daughter was only five miles from there when this happened at her grandparents' house at 3 years old. It's home.
Treen and Fallon were part of the army of investigators from around the assigned to search for Sara.
Det. Frank Lawrence: We had no vehicle. She didn't just go into thin air.
They would join Frank Lawrence, one of the lead detectives.
Det. Frank Lawrence: Something or someone had to have taken her.
Yet, despite the weeks of media attention that Sara's case received, Lawrence says law enforcement still had very little to go on.
Det. Frank Lawrence: Somebody took her we didn't know. So, when you don't know, you have to eliminate everything, every possibility and you start local.
And that included questioning the people closest to Sara — her brother and her parents.
Erin Moriarty: You had to look at the Woods.
Frank Lawrence: The Woods were looked at.
Erin Moriarty: I mean wasn't that tough though?
Det. Frank Lawrence: They have to. It's very — it's always difficult to do that, you know, especially in this case cause they're such good parents.
Det. Frank Lawrence: Bob Wood was there every day. Every day. I had a hard time going every day. (emotional)
Once the Woods were eliminated, Lawrence says they turned their attention to investigating known and suspected sex offenders.
Det. Frank Lawrence: Each and every one of them had to be spoken with and eliminated. … And we did. We did.
And they still had nothing despite the long hours and heavy manpower until a bitterly cold day in January 1994 – five months after Sara disappeared. Officer Timothy Blaise was working in the command center when a message came in via teletype – a device that police departments used at the time to share information.
Officer Timothy Blaise: One came over about an attempted abduction in Massachusetts that I handed off to Frank.
Another 12-year-old girl named Becky Savarese was almost abducted as she walked to school in Pittsfield, Massachusetts — 100 miles away.
Becky didn't respond to "48 Hours"' most recent request for an interview, but back in 1994, she did speak with "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty and told her her remarkable story.
It was 7:10 a.m. on Jan. 7 at one of the busiest intersections in town.
Becky Savarese (1994): I was coming up here.
Becky Savarese (1994): I was listening to my music, he, he was on the side of me. He's…
Erin Moriarty (1994): Like, where I am … ?
Becky Savarese (1994): Yeah. He was saying stuff before I didn't know what he was saying so I took my earphones out to um hear what he was saying and then he said, "Do you see the gun I have"? And I was like "Yes, I see the gun you have." He's like "Just do everything I say, everything will be perfectly OK." I was like, "Alright."
Erin Moriarty (1994): He had it up against you?
Becky Savarese (1994): He, he he had it an inch away from me.
Erin Moriarty (1994): Were you scared?
Becky Savarese (1994): No.
Erin Moriarty (1994): You weren't scared?
Becky Savarese (1994): I wasn't scared. (laughs nervously)
Becky Savarese (1994): We turned down here to where his truck was parked.
Erin Moriarty (1994): Now he wants you to go in the truck that's over there..
Becky Savarese (1994): Right, right.
Erin Moriarty (1994): But you are not intending to go into that truck.
Becky Savarese (1994): No. If I got away, I didn't care if he shot me, I, I just knew I was not going to get into that truck.
Erin Moriarty (1994): Why, why did you know that, was that something someone told you or…?
Becky Savarese (1994): I, I just felt it inside me and I knew I was not going to get into that truck.
That's when Becky came up with an idea that possibly saved her life. She faked an asthma attack.
Becky Savarese (1994): I started to fake that I was like losing breath. When I was trying to take my backpack off uh, he tried to grab it from me and he got my backpack instead and I just ran.
Becky ran into a man clearing snow off a sidewalk who called the police. At about the same time, a witness called in with three digits from the truck's license plate. Investigators began searching for the vehicle.
Det. Frank Lawrence: I remember it well because it was a blizzard. It was not nice out there. It was bad.
Despite the snowstorm, a Pittsfield officer spotted a truck with those three digits in its license plate sitting in a driveway in a residential area. The officer quickly called for backup.
Det. Reece Treen: And they … knocked on the door and said, "Yeah, who was driving this truck earlier?"
The homeowner told the officers a friend named Lewis Lent had borrowed the truck and he just happened to be sitting in the kitchen. When police entered the house to question Lent, he denied knowing about Becky, but willingly agreed to come down to the police station.
Erin Moriarty: Had Lewis Lent, that name, Lewis Lent, ever come up before?
Det. Reece Treen: No, not in our investigation.
Erin Moriarty: Had he ever been connected to a disappearance of a child?
Det. Reece Treen: No.
Erin Moriarty: But he did have a criminal history?
Det. Reece Treen: Yeah, some minor things like bad checks and forged checks, things like that. But nothing that approaches this.
And when investigators searched Lent's vehicle, they knew they had the right man.
Det. Reece Treen: They found, Rebecca's backpack. They found a gun. They found … duct tape and a clothesline rope. … basically his, his kidnapping abduction kit.
Although the attempted abduction was 100 miles away in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, everyone wondered if Lent could have also taken Sara.
Det. Frank Lawrence: I got a call from the lieutenant … He says well go home and pack a bag and you're going to Pittsfield.
QUESTIONING LEWIS LENT
Almost 12 hours after the attempted abduction of 12-year-old Becky Savarese, New York State Police Detective Frank Lawrence struggled through a snowstorm and finally arrived at Pittsfield, Massachusetts — eager to speak to Lewis Lent. But he would have to wait his turn.
Det. Frank Lawrence: There's similarities, but it's a Pittsfield case, OK. … They would talk to him then … we'd get him in between.
Erin Moriarty: And he was willing to talk to you?
Det. Frank Lawrence: Yeah. He talked to us.
And during their conversations, Lawrence says he and two other New York investigators made sure Lewis Lent understood why they were there.
Det. Frank Lawrence: I actually showed him this poster. And I said to him, "Lew, this is who I'm here to talk to you about." (points to a photo of the poster shown above) So he knew that eventually we're gonna be talking about this, OK?
Erin Moriarty: How did he react? Did he –
Det. Frank Lawrence: He, he was, he was — he was flat.
Erin Moriarty: Flat?
Det. Frank Lawrence: Yeah. He was flat to the whole thing.
Erin Moriarty: Did that make you think he had no idea who she was?
Det. Frank Lawrence: I didn't really care. … I was gonna find out. That's what we were there for.
But getting Lewis Lent to admit anything was not going to be easy. Although Becky Savarese and a witness picked him out of a lineup, it took Lent until the next morning to admit he had tried to take her.
Lewis Lent was arrested and charged with kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon. But New York investigators were not done with Lent. They started to ask him questions about other missing kids.
Det. Frank Lawrence: We talked to him. We spent a lot of time with him.
And that's when Lawrence says he and New York investigators came up with a strategy.
Det. Frank Lawrence: We … found out that he was religious.
So, he says, they brought a Bible into the interview room.
Det. Frank Lawrence: That Bible sat on the table in front of him … Any time he would wander, OK, we would use the Bible and we'd go "Lew you gotta tell the truth. And it comes from the heart and you gotta tell us the truth." … We would go back to the Bible.
And Lawrence says the strategy appeared be working because as the hours went by, Lent started to reveal things about himself and some very disturbing plans for the future that involved kidnapping young victims.
Det. Frank Lawrence: He told us about his "master plan." … Once he found the acceptable vulnerable individuals, he was gonna bring 'em back to his house and put 'em in, — I describe it as a coffin, but keep them alive. So he could use them and have them whenever he wanted them.
Investigators would later find the beginning of his horrifying construction project when they searched Lent's bedroom and found a wooden partition wall. And things only got worse.
Det. Frank Lawrence: He wanted to talk about Jimmy Bernardo.
Jimmy Bernardo was a 12-year-old boy who had gone missing three years earlier in Pittsfield. A month later, hunters would find his body. The case had stumped local investigators for years, but now Lent was about to tell everyone what had happened to Jimmy.
Det. Reece Treen: He was riding his bike through a strip mall in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Lewis Lent was a janitor at the cinema center there in Pittsfield.
When Jimmy stopped in front of the cinema to wait for a friend, that's when Lent said he offered him money to help him clean the movie theatre. Jimmy agreed.
Det. Reece Treen: And then once Lent got him inside, he overpowered him and kidnapped him.
Lent told investigators he drove Jimmy 200 miles to a rural and isolated area near his hometown of Reynoldsville, New York. Then he said he strangled Jimmy to death and left him there.
Det. Reece Treen: He had details that only the killer and the police knew.
As horrific as that revelation was, investigators kept pressing him about Sara Wood.
Det. Frank Lawrence: The more we talked about Sara, we're probing, he's responding.
And then five months after she went missing, Lewis Lent finally confessed. Lent admitted that he had kidnapped, raped and then murdered Sara Anne Wood.
Det. Frank Lawrence: She was vulnerable. He was hunting and he found a victim.
And just like Jimmy Bernardo, Lawrence says Lent's account matched details only known to investigators. Lent knew specifics about what Sara had been wearing and details about her bike that had not been made public.
Det. Frank Lawrence: He knew that the chain on the bike was broken. … And he also said that the bike was a little bit big for her. I didn't know that. I found out later that it was …
Then Lawrence says Lent drew them a map showing where he said he buried Sara's body.
Det. Frank Lawrence: This is just a copy, obviously. (referencing the map shown above).
Erin Moriarty: Right. But this is actually what Lewis Lent did.
Det. Frank Lawrence: Drew. He drew that. … I handed him a piece of paper and this is what he drew.
Erin Moriarty: And where did he say he put her?
Det. Frank Lawrence: Off Route 28, up by Blue Mountain Lake.
Blue Mountain Lake is located in a remote, woody area near Raquette Lake in New York's Adirondack Mountains. Within hours, police from all over New York state were dispatched and searched the area. Bob Wood was there, along with Dusty, who was a senior in high school.
Dusty Wood: It was very cold. It was ridiculous. And it was tons of snow. … I remember a lot of help. A lot of people. (emotional)
Erin Moriarty: Was this a time when you thought you might be able to bring Sara home?
Dusty Wood: Yeah.
For over 50 days they searched for Sara in the Adirondacks.
Timothy Blaise: It was 30 below zero. We could only stay outside for 20 minutes at a time.
Timothy Blaise: We were in waist high snow. We had shovels, we're digging, we're looking for any evidence at all having anything to do with Sara. … You know we were hoping somebody would come up with something, that had something to do with her. That just didn't happen.
As investigators continued to look for Sara's body, Lent would face murder charges in both Massachusetts and New York.
Dusty Wood: It was a rare occasion where everyone was laser focused on one event which was find Sara … bring him to justice.
THE TWO SIDES OF LEWIS LENT
Before Lewis Lent could be tried for Sara Wood's murder in New York, he first had to face charges in Massachusetts.
In 1995, Lent went on trial and was ultimately convicted for Becky Savarese's attempted kidnapping and was sentenced to 17 to 20 years. Almost a year-and-a-half later, after taking a plea, he was given a life sentence for murdering Jimmy Bernardo.
And then on June 6, 1996, Lent arrived at Herkimer, New York, to a media frenzy.
DA Jeffrey Carpenter: The District Attorney wanted justice for Sara Anne Wood and her family.
Jeffrey Carpenter is Herkimer County's District Attorney. He wasn't in office when Sara Wood was murdered, but he has studied Lewis Lent's case files. He says the DA's office thought Lent was going to plead guilty to killing Sara. But without warning, Lent changed his mind.
DA Jeffrey Carpenter: It's my understanding that when he entered the courtroom, and he saw certain members of the public, especially I think her family, he decided on that day he did not want to enter a plea.
Days later, Lent would change his mind again, and finally entered a guilty plea.
Erin Moriarty: What do you remember of him sitting there?
Dusty Wood: I couldn't believe … how small a man. You know, I couldn't believe it. Not imposing.
Almost four years after Sara Wood was abducted and murdered, Lewis Lent was sentenced to 25 years-to-life. He was sent back to Massachusetts to serve the rest of his life in prison.
Dusty Wood: He will never cause harm to anyone else.
But it was not over for the Wood family and New York State police investigators. They still needed to find Sara.
Det. Reece Treen: He changes his story so often. It's hard to — hard to tell what's the truth and what's fiction.
In fact, Treen says Lent's original story that he buried her in the Raquette Lake area turned out to be a lie.
Det. Reece Treen: He cashed a check on August 18th … in Pittsfield at 6:18 p.m. So he did not physically have time to abduct Sara at around 2:30 p.m. and then drive to the Adirondacks, dig a grave, bury her, and then drive back to Pittsfield … to cash a check.
So, investigators continued to visit Lent in prison, hoping, that over time, he would reveal where he buried Sara … and perhaps even disclose the murders of other victims.
Det. Reece Treen: I do believe that there's other ones that — that he is responsible for, other murders of children.
Detectives Fallon and Treen say they visited Lent in prison about 20 times.
Erin Moriarty: Isn't it difficult at times though … for the two of you not to just jump across the table and grab him?
Det. John Fallon: No. … One of the things you have to do is you have to leave hate outside of the room when you go in.
They didn't push him, but during their conversations, Lent revealed that he often suffered from blackouts and claimed he had an evil alter ego that he called "Steven."
Det. Reece Treen: He has this dichotomy — this is the word he used. … He has a really good side that studies the Bible and actually was a traveling minister … but then he has this evil side. And he has these uh, uncontrollable compulsions. This is the way he put it, to do terrible things, that he could not stop.
Somehow Lent managed to hide that "evil" side from nearly everyone he knew. Back in 1994, "48 Hours" correspondent Richard Schlesinger interviewed some of Lent's friends.
To Phil Shallies, who is legally blind, Lent was a good Samaritan.
Phil Shallies (1994): He just came over and said, "Well, I'd be glad to give you a hand. I hear you're doing work on your foundation." He said, "I'd be glad to help you out." We built a border all the way around. We put in probably hundreds of hours working together in that cellar. It was definitely hard work.
Richard Schlesinger (1994): He — and he did that all out of the goodness of his heart?
Phil Shallies (1994): Yes, he did.
To Frank Colet, the dean of students at a Bible school that Lent attended, he was a gentleman.
Frank Colet (1994): He was intelligent, he was unassuming, he was quiet. One thing about Lewie that everyone remembered was he always had his hand out to — to shake your hand to — when you were meeting him. And if you didn't watch out, he'd give you a big bear hug.
Richard Baumann (1994): He had a lot of children with him, young kids. The kids would play video games and then they would come in and go to the movies and he would bring them home.
To Richard Baumann, who employed him, Lent seemed like a mentor to children, who called Lent "the Big Brother."
Baumann owned the movie theater where Lent worked as a janitor for six years, and he thought he knew Lent very well.
Richard Baumann (1994): I — I hired him. I worked side by side with him. (breaks down and cries)
Richard Schlesinger (1994): What's — what's — tell me what's going on?
Richard Baumann (1994): I just feel as though I may have missed something that he might have said or done that would have keyed me.
Richard Schlesinger (1994): That would have let you know?
Richard Baumann (1994): Just — just give me a clue that there was something wrong with this guy.
Julia Cowley: People have trouble understanding that you can have this very religious, God-fearing, nice polite man in contrast that to his other side where he is … hunting and preying on and killing children. … those can exist in one person.
Julia Cowley is a retired FBI agent and profiler who worked on cases like the Golden State Killer. She now hosts a true-crime podcast called "Consult: Real FBI Profilers."
Cowley has never met Lewis Lent, but at "48 Hours"' request, she reviewed his background and studied his confessions. She says that what appeared to be Lent's desire to help people could actually have served a selfish purpose.
Julia Cowley: By helping all these people, this is a way to maybe hide who he really is, to gain people's trust. When you do that, you can manipulate them. You can control them. … It's strategically motivated as opposed to being motivated by true emotion.
Just like other serial killers she has studied, Cowley says Lent is completely self-centered.
Julia Cowley: His needs come before anyone else's obviously. He had no regard for his victims, he has no regard for victims' families.
Something Reece Treen says he has seen firsthand.
Det. Reece Treen: He knows what emotions are that other people have … but he doesn't feel them himself. … One of the things that he said in the past that is that the murders … ruined his life. … He's remorseful that he got caught, that it ruined his life, but he doesn't think in terms of it ruined anybody else's life. He just doesn't think that way.
Erin Moriarty: Lewis Lent so quickly admits to kidnapping and killing … Sara Wood. Why not tell it all? Why not give all the details?
Julia Cowley: It's just a secret he wants to hold onto. It's his. It's the only thing he has that's his own that he can control. … And … a bit of sadism. Knowing that family members want answers … continuing to hurt them is something I think that he feeds off of… It's — it's — there's some enjoyment in there. … most killers don't tell us everything. … They rarely give the full story.
Instead, Lent reveals what he wants when he wants, on his own timetable. In 2013, he revealed something new.
DA Jeffrey Carpenter: I've described it … as speaking directly to the devil. He really is the devil.
FAMILY HONORS SARA ANNE WOOD
As Detectives Fallon and Treen continued to question Lewis Lent about Sara Wood and other possible victims, in 2013 he made yet another confession.
Det. John Fallon: He ended up admitting to uh, killing Jamie Lusher.
Nine months before Sara was abducted, Jamie Lusher, a 16-year-old teen with disabilities, disappeared in Westfield, Massachusetts — just 40 miles from the Pittsfield area,
Det. Reece Treen: Again he was riding his bike um, through a parking lot of a Friendly's restaurant.
His bicycle was later found in a wooded area close by. Lent told investigators that after he kidnapped and murdered Jamie, he discarded the teenager's remains in Greenwater Pond in Becket, Massachusetts.
Det. John Fallon: We had divers go actually with the Massachusetts State Police divers. … and they all dove the pond. … and, uh, nothing was found.
As he has done many times before, Lent would later recant his confession. Authorities decided not to charge Lent with Jamie's murder — hoping that one day he will lead them to his body.
Det. John Fallon: At this point, we are not interested in further prosecution. … He's not going anywhere.
At a press conference shortly after the confession, Jamie's sister talked about the grief she endured since her brother went missing.
JENNIFER NOWAK (Jamie's sister to reporters | emotional): Anybody that knows me knows that I talk about this, I think about this every day.
It's this searing heartache, in part, that keeps authorities motivated to find the missing. So, soon after Lent confessed to killing Jamie, District Attorney Jeffrey Carpenter got permission to take Lent — who was serving his life sentence in Massachusetts — out of prison and back to New York. This time they drove him around hoping he would reveal anything that would help them find Sara.
DA Jeffrey Carpenter: So really what did we have to lose? … We had to do it. … We drove to the Massachusetts border. We drove to the Vermont border. He took us to where she was abducted. He took us to where he claimed he murdered her.
But after three long days and over 600 miles of driving, Carpenter says, New York authorities ended the operation.
DA Jeffrey Carpenter: The consensus was, he absolutely knew where she was. He just was not gonna tell us.
Before Carpenter sent Lent back to Massachusetts, he recorded this conversation with him:
DA JEFFREY CARPENTER: You know, we spent some time here the last couple of days. I hope you feel like you were treated with respect.
LEWIS LENT: Oh, all the way.
DA JEFFREY CARPENTER: Yeah. Treated well?
LEWIS LENT: Yes.
DA JEFFREY CARPENTER: Well that was our end of the bargain right?
LEWIS LENT: Yes.
DA JEFFREY CARPENTER: Right?
LEWIS LENT: Yep.
DA JEFFREY CARPENTER: What was your end of the bargain?
LEWIS LENT: Do the very best I can to find Sara.
DA JEFFREY CARPENTER: Yeah.
LEWIS LENT: Yeah.
DA JEFFREY CARPENTER: Is that what we've done?
LEWIS LENT: That's what we've done. … I would say that, uh, that I tried. I was absolutely sure that I knew the route but when it came down to it, I could only get partial of what I, where I actually, where I actually went.
Erin Moriarty: What was going through your head when you were talking to him?
DA Jeffrey Carpenter: Anger. … He does not forget details. He recalls details. He recalls many things until he wants to pretend he doesn't remember.
A decade after that fruitless search, in November 2023, investigators were back out looking again — this time at the Green Mountain National Forest in Vermont after Treen identified an area with landmarks that Lent had talked about during their many conversations.
Det. Reece Treen: Just too many things matched up. … A lot — a lot, a lot of boxes were checked.
What's more, search and rescue dogs taken to the area had alerted to a possible body there.
Det. Reece Treen: So we were hopeful, optimistic, that we would find something there. … And we never, never found anything.
But authorities kept looking. Earlier this year, detectives went back to the cellar that Lent worked in with Phil Shallies to see if they missed something in 1994. The search turned up no new evidence.
Erin Moriarty: Do you feel in a way that you might be running out of time? Lewis Lent is in his 70s.
Det. John Fallon: It's a concern. But that's one of many things we can't control.
Regardless of the challenges, authorities say they will never stop looking for Sara Wood and Jamie Lusher.
Dusty Wood says he chooses not to think about Lewis Lent.
Dusty Wood: Every day I'm less angry because I devote my energy to positive things.
Every year, Dusty and some family members participate in the Ride for Missing Children, a 78-mile bike ride that was created in Sara's honor by Bob Wood.
The riders wore turquoise and pink – the colors that Sara wore when she was abducted. Riders stop at schools along the way to talk about abduction prevention.
Dusty Wood: The most important thing for us as a family is to protect kids … and make sure that if there's anything that can be done to protect them from monsters like Lewis Lent, that it be done.
Riders pay silent tribute to those children whose families hold out hope that they will be found alive, and to children who went missing and are never coming home … like Sara Anne Wood.
Dusty Wood says he and his family are grateful to their community who have supported them since the beginning.
Dusty Wood: There'll be never a way to repay the kindness, of strangers that opened up the possibility of giving the best chance to my sister.
He's not sure if they will ever find his sister's body, but he is at peace.
Dusty Wood: I'm waiting for the day I see Sara in heaven. And I know that day is coming. And that makes me feel good
If you have information about where Sara Wood or Jamie Lusher are, please contact New York State Police Troop D Headquarters at 315-366-6000.
To learn how to educate children about abduction prevention, please visit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website.
"48 HOURS" POST MORTEM
In the season two premiere episode of Post Mortem, "48 Hours" correspondent Anne-Marie Green takes listeners behind the scenes of the disappearance of 12-year-old Sara Anne Wood. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty and producer Chris Ritzen talk about the impact this case continues to have on Sara's family. Lewis Lent, a serial killer, was convicted for her murder, but investigators are still searching for Sara's body 30 years later.
REMEMBERING PHIL JONES
In memory of longtime CBS News correspondent Phil Jones. Jones, also a "48 Hours" correspondent, reported on Sara Wood's case in 1993.
Produced by Chris Young Ritzen. Michael McHugh is the producer-editor. Ken Blum is an editor. Marc Goldbaum is the development producer. Michael Loftus is the associate producer. Lourdes Aguiar is the senior producer. Nancy Kramer is the executive story editor. Judy Tygard is the executive producer.
