MISSING
SELINDA "CINDY" JEAN WINEGAR

Reported Missing: 3/21/79
Age (in 2006): 44

Height: 5'4"
Weight: 110-120 pounds

Hair: Brown hair
Eyes: Blue eyes

Race: White
Gender: Female

Burlington High School student
Roman Catholic

Single piercing in each ear
Rings on each finger


This photo was taken prior to 1979.

Selinda was reported missing from her Burlington home at 101 Forest Street on March 21, 1979. She was last seen by family members watching television. Selinda's belongings were left at the residence. She was last seen wearing a green/white striped shirt, blue jeans and low top sneakers.

If you have any information on this person, contact: Det. Ray Nails
Agency: Burlington Police Department
Telephone: 802-658-2700
http://www.dps.state.vt.us/vtsp/missing/winegar_selinda.htm

www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pb...7/NEWS02&theme=

Sunday, May 7, 2006

Woman haunted by search for sister

Published: Sunday, May 7, 2006
By Ed Shamy
Free Press Staff Writer

Pat Duguie says she suspects her baby sister is dead, but let her talk and it's clear she hasn't fully convinced herself.

Twenty-seven years of emotion play across Duguie's face. Anger, fear, grief and tears ultimately yield to wide-eyed hope.

Maybe Cindy Winegar is alive somewhere. And if not, which seems to be the sad truth after so many years, maybe she didn't suffer when she died. For Pat Duguie, for anybody, that's a tragically slender, bleak thread on which to hang hope.

Cindy was by far the youngest of six children -- 13 years younger than her next oldest sister -- raised by John and Mildred Winegar, a working-class couple in a working-class neighborhood of Burlington's New North End.

"She was the change-of-life baby, spoiled rotten. She was like a new toy to us," said Duguie, who lives now just a few blocks from where she grew up. Nearing 61, she's 17 years older than Cindy would have been, or is.

The Winegar household was run on strict rules, Duguie said, but Cindy managed to fall in with a rough crowd.

"Just last year, I found out she hung out with some pretty sleazy people," she said. "She smoked pot."

The Winegars -- and Cindy especially -- had begun to get menacing, anonymous phone calls, and Mildred Winegar had responded by getting a new, unlisted phone number.

Pat Duguie was a young mother, with four children of her own, living in Starksboro on March 22, 1979.

"I remember getting the phone call from my mother," she said. Cindy, then a few weeks shy of her 17th birthday, hadn't come home the night before.

Siblings and parents swapped notes. They fanned out across the neighborhood to search some of Cindy's haunts.

And Mildred Winegar got a final Cindy-related phone call that no mother should ever hear, from a man who did not identify himself.

"If you want your daughter, she's tied up dead at the bottom of the Winooski River," he said, and he hung up.

Pat Duguie can barely speak the words that have repeated themselves so many thousands of times in her mind for the past quarter of a century. On the kitchen table in front of her sits the only photo she still has of Cindy Winegar -- a snapshot of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Cindy at age 14, a slight gap in her front teeth peeking out from behind a thin smile. The photo has turned ocher with the years.

"She looks like dad," Duguie said. "She doesn't have mother's nose."

John and Mildred Winegar have since died, each with the same sad conviction that Duguie still carries, she said. Police didn't take Cindy Winegar's disappearance seriously. Cops filled out the requisite paperwork and seemed to write her off as another runaway.

Duguie remembers to this day the sting of one cop's response to her request that they search the Winooski River for Cindy's body.

"Well, it's a big river. Where do you think we should start?" she said he told her. She understands now, so many years later, his point of view.

Cindy Winegar's disappearance is still an open case for Burlington police.

For Pat Duguie, wondering what became of sister Cindy is a daily task. She has refused to close that chapter by having Cindy Winegar formally declared dead.

How did the anonymous caller know Mildred Winegar's new unlisted phone number? And what would have prompted him to call? Guilt?

And what became of Cindy?

"Does she have kids? Is she alive? Did she suffer, if she's dead?" she asks, tearing up. Cindy would have turned 44 a couple of weeks ago.

Pat Duguie was retelling the story of Cindy's disappearance to a friend just last week, and the friend said that while fishing the Winooski River in 1985, her line had snagged and she'd finally wrenched from the river bottom a swatch of blonde hair.

Duguie phoned the tip to a Burlington detective.

Finding Cindy's body would be a relief. Finding her alive and well would be even better.
Ed Shamy's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 660-1862 or eshamy@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com

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http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=8258650

Burlington, Vermont - May 1, 2008

"And you can see down there where the house burned," says Pat Dughie.

For Dughie-- this is a house full of bad memories.

Her father drowned in the river outside the home 27 years ago.

A couple of years later, her daughter was severely burned when the house went up in flames.

And this is also the home that her 17-year-old sister Selinda vanished from 29-years ago.

"There's always that wonder," she explains. "Is she safe? What is she doing? Does she have any kids? Is she dead? And did she suffer?"

Alan Wineger is Selinda's brother.

"It's very possible that she ran away. I don't know," he says.

Selinda was last seen leaving the home on March 21, 1979 to visit a friend.

"I got the phone call from my mom who was pretty upset; 'You need to come home. I just got a phone call. Cindy's missing. A man told me, you want your daughter, she's tied up at the bottom of the Winooski River.' Needless to say we all dropped what we were doing," recalls Dughie.

Police never could identify the caller.

Friends say Selinda had started using drugs and had gotten mixed up with a rough crowd and like most teenagers, didn't always get along with her parents.

The Winegars say police assumed Selinda was a runaway and simply dropped the case.

"You put all your faith and hope in the law enforcement agencies to help you," says Dughie.

Burlington Police Det. Ray Nails explains, "There is reason to believe she had left on her own, yes."

Nails is the fifth investigator to inherit the case.

While he believes she may have runaway, he says police have never stopped looking for Selinda Winegar.

Police interviewed numerous people. Several say they saw Winegar after she disappeared-- including a relative who thought they saw her standing in the back of the church at her father's funeral.

"It's still active-- a missing person's case," says Nails.

Nails says today it's all but impossible for a person to disappear.

But that wasn't the case in 1979.

"There's more technology. People have things now, cell phones, pagers, the computers, the internet, Facebook, MySpace, stuff like that just wasn't available," he says.

Police now have very few leads to work with, but hope someone will one day come forward with new information.

In the meantime, Pat and Alan are still waiting.

They hope Selinda simply ran away and will one day return.

"I don't know whether I would hug her or, I don't know... not being there for my mother when she passed, I probably would resent that, and then my brother and father passing, I don't know," says Winegar.

Dughie adds, "We'd all be angry, but we'd probably get over it too. I've had people say why don't you have her declared dead? I won't do it. I will not do it."

Selinda Winegar would be 46 today.

Family members say they will continue to try and keep Selinda's case in the public eye. They also plan to meet with a psychic in the next couple of weeks to see if that will stir up any answers.

Keagan Harsha - WCAX News

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http://www.charleyproject.org/images...ar_selinda.jpg
Missing Since: March 21, 1979 from Burlington, Vermont
Classification: Endangered Missing
Date of Birth: April 24, 1962
Age: 16 years old
Height and Weight: 5'4, 110 - 120 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Brown hair, blue eyes. Winegar's ears are pierced. Her nickname is Cindy. She has a cross-shaped scar on her left ankle and a slight gap between her front teeth.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A green and white striped shirt, blue jeans, low-top sneakers and rings on every finger.

Details of Disappearance

Winegar was last seen watching television at her family's home in the 100 block of Forest Street on March 21, 1979. Prior to her disappearance she had fallen in with a bad crowd and smoked marijuana. Her family, and Winegar in particularly, had gotten threatening phone calls until the family got an unlisted telephone number.

Investigators believed Winegar ran away from home, but her family thinks otherwise. After her disappearance, her family got an anonymous tip that Winegar had been murdered and her body was in the Winooski River. Investigators never searched the river and the tip has not been verified. One of her sister's friends says she found a clump of blonde hair while fishing in the river in 1985, however.

Winegar was a student at Burlington High School at the time of her disappearance, and her religion was Roman Catholic. She is the youngest of six children; her next sibling is thirteen years older than she is. Her parents are now deceased, but her siblings continue to search for her. Her case remains unsolved.

Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Burlington Police Department

802-658-2700