Search Is On in Hamlin County to Solve 65 Year-Old Mystery




Hamlin County investigators hope they're on the verge of solving a 65 year-old mystery tonight. The break, a flood of memories that came back only after a witness to the crime scene returned to the site this summer.
George Everson says he wanted to find out what happened. "This is the old homestead." He has no memory of his mom, Mary. He last saw her 65 years ago. No one knew where she went, or what happened to her. Over the years George hired private investigators, even a psychic to try to help solve the mystery. No luck, until this past August.
"I believe it's here, we just haven't found it." That's when Hamlin County Sheriff Dan Mack received a call from George he won't forget. "He said it's just like something flipped a switch. All of a sudden all these memories came back."
George grew up on this farm with his brother and sister. He lives in Arizona now and hadn't been back in 40 years, until last August. He wanted to show his wife where he had grown up. When he saw this field, it brought back memories. Memories he never knew existed. "I don't remember her. But I remember helping my father cover the well."
George told Sheriff Mack details of what he believes is the cover-up of his mother's murder. The killer....George' s father. Mack says, "it's something that he would have had to have been there to see."
George says he wasn't there when his mother was killed, but he thinks his father threw his mom's body down a well and dumped rocks on top. George says his dad, Harry, smashed up the top of the well and covered it with dirt.
That's why the search is on in this field outside the town of Bryant to find the body George and Sheriff Mack believe is still buried here. "I think we'll find it eventually," says Sheriff Mack
Finding the body is now a top priority for the county and investigators from the South Dakota Cold Case Unit. Mack tells KSFY, "if it was my mother or any body's mother. It's immaterial who it is. They didn't deserve to end up where they're at."
High tech equipment may soon help the search effort. According to the sheriff, "we're going to try to get a ground penetrating radar in here to try to locate the rock and the well and the wood and so forth."
An effort that won't stop until George can give his mother a proper burial, even if it is 65 years later.
George says he's heading back to Arizona on Friday. And if he doesn't find his mom's body by then, he'll be back here next spring to continue the search.
By Robert Wilson
KSFY News Sioux Falls, SD

Hamlin County is about 90 miles north of Sioux Falls

NEWS
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Story last updated at 11:33 PM on Nov. 15, 2006
Search On For Long-Missing Person


BRYANT (AP) -- A farm field northeast of Bryant is being searched for an abandoned well that may contain the remains of a woman who disappeared decades ago.
Mary Everson's family last saw her about 65 years ago.

George Everson, of Yuma, Ariz., believes his father killed his mother and put her body in the well on the family farm after an argument in the early 1940s.



Hamlin County Sheriff Dan Mack and others are involved in the search because of a recent phone call from Everson.

Mack said he checked on the validity of Everson's claim and found that Harry and Mary Everson had three children and lived on a farm northeast of Bryant. The couple divorced when George Everson was quite young. Mary Everson left and perhaps moved to Missouri where she grew up.

Everson told Mack that his mother returned one day by train and came out to the farm. That night an older brother told him their parents were fighting in the garage.

Everson, who was age 4 or 5 at the time, never saw his mother again. His father collapsed the well, threw a load of rocks down it and told the kids to never go near it.

It wasn't until a recent trip back to Bryant, when Everson took his wife to see the site of the old farmyard, that he started to remember details.

His son is paying the costs of the search and has hired a private company to bring in equipment and machinery to search the field.

Mack acknowledges there's no proof that a body is buried anywhere in that field, but he feels confident that Everson's memories are true and the request merits attention.


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