Landowners are asked to look for body
Missing teacher might be in ‘shelter belt’
New details about the disappearance and reported death of a small-town Montana math teacher emerged Sunday, as authorities asked property owners in parts of North Dakota and Montana to look for signs of her buried body and released the names of two men being held in the case.
The FBI issued a statement late Sunday saying the body of 43-year-old Sherry Arnold, of Sidney, Mont., might be buried in a “shelter belt,” or a line of trees that protects soil from the wind.
The agency asked that property owners in three North Dakota counties – Williams, McKenzie and Mountrail – and in extreme northeastern Montana check vacant farmsteads for signs of disturbed soil or matted grass. Landowners who discover something unusual should not disturb the area, but call authorities, the FBI said.
“Based on investigative evidence gathered over the last few days, it is believed that Ms. Arnold may be deceased,” FBI spokeswoman Debbie Bertram said in a statement. “Her body has not been recovered.”
Also Sunday, authorities said 47-year-old Lester Vann Waters Jr. and 22-year-old Michael Keith Spell, both of Parachute, Colo., were in the Williams County Correctional Center in Williston, N.D., awaiting extradition to Montana.
Williams County sheriff’s Deputy Jon Garrison said the two men face aggravated kidnapping charges in Montana.
Officials said Waters and Spell were brought to the Williston jail Friday. They declined to say where or how the men were taken into custody.
The jail is about 46 miles from Sidney, where officials say Arnold disappeared while on an early-morning run along a truck route on the edge of the oil boom town of more than 5,500 residents.
Sidney school officials posted a statement online Friday saying they learned of Arnold’s death that day. The statement provided no details.
In the days after Arnold disappeared, hundreds of residents, police, firefighters and others combed the town and surrounding countryside without success.
Arnold and her husband, Gary Arnold, have five children combined from prior marriages.