SHERRY ARNOLD - 43 yo/ Accused: Lester Van Waters Jr. and Michael Spell - Billings MT

Authorities resumed their search Tuesday for a missing Montana teacher who left her home for a pre-dawn run and never returned.
The only publicized clue into Sherry Arnold's Saturday disappearance is a single running shoe, found by a ditch along her running route in her hometown of Sidney.

The FBI and local law enforcement are investigating the possibility that Arnold, 43, was
abducted from the town along the North Dakota border, which has been changing rapidly in recent years due to an oil boom.

After three days of searching by hundreds of residents, police, firefighters and others, the plan was to re-canvass areas around town that already had been searched at least once, officials said.

If nothing new in the case emerges, authorities said they would consider scaling back the search.

"At some point we feel like we've exhausted the possibilities in that area where she was last seen and apparently disappeared from," said FBI spokeswoman Deborah Bertrand.

Bertrand added that the search could take a different direction by Wednesday, potentially with searchers going to door-to-door in residential neighborhood

Arnold, a popular math teacher who grew up on a ranch outside Sidney, was married to another school system employee, Gary Arnold. The couple has five children from prior marriages, including two living at home and attending the same school where their mother worked for the past 18 years.

The school district has played an active role in the search by lending buses to transport members of search teams and setting up a fund to defer expenses.

Mayor Bret Smelser said the effort had covered all of Sidney and surrounding areas of Richland County. He said federal agents had met with family members, including Arnold's parents, Ron and Sherry Whited, and pledged to press hard for answers.

"The promise they made Ron and Sherry was that they wouldn't give up until they had found something or found Sherry," Smelser said.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-10/missing-montana-teacher/52483000/1

Search for missing Sidney woman suspended, police chief explains why

Updated: Jan 12, 2012 6:37 AM



SIDNEY- The search for missing Sidney teacher Sherry Arnold has been
suspended, that is for now. Sidney Police Chief Frank DiFonzo tells
Montana's News Station that the search has been put on hold until
authorities receive new information.

Local authorities have been searching by ground and air for any sign
of the missing 43-year-old woman, who disappeared Saturday after
jogging. Although the search is at a standstill, Chief DiFonzo says
there is work being done.

"There have been people interviewed and talked to by investigators,
but at this point I don't know of any particular suspect that's been
named," said Sidney Police Chief Frank DiFonzo.

"The longer you go and the more area you cover, you have to start
looking at the possibility that maybe she was abducted," he added.

Local authorities want the public to know that the investigation is still underway.

"Absolutely, we're not done with this by any stretch of the
imagination and right now we're following leads, getting leads in here
and people have observed things we need to know about and we're
following those things up with actual contact and we do have some state
officials in who are coordinating all the leads we're getting," DiFonzo said.

Sherry's disappearance has left many in the community shocked. "This
is just not something that happens here. We're not used to this kind of a
thing especially with local people who have lived here all their lives," DiFonzo commented.

During this difficult time, DiFonzo says he is thankful for the
overwhelming generosity of the community and hard work of multiple law
enforcement agencies. But DiFonzo says he knows they are all searching for answers.

"I don't believe there's anyone that wants answers more than I do."

Anyone with information about the disappearance is urged to call (406) 433.4027.
http://www.kaj18.com/news/search-for-missing-sidney-woman-suspended-police-chief-explains-why/

It looks like she was found today and they are questioning two people. Supposed to be a press conference at 3pm...

Missing Montana mother and teacher Sherry Arnold has been found dead, according to a post on her school district's website. The FBI announced today that they have one person in custody and another being questioned.

Arnold, 43, disappeared around 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 7 when she went out for an early morning run near her home in Sidney, Mont. A single running shoe was the only trace of Arnold left behind.

"Based on a tip from the public, law enforcement took one adult male into custody, and another adult male is being questioned by police," FBI spokeswoman Debbie Dujanovic Bertram said in a statement. "The investigation to determine what happened to Ms. Arnold continues."

Sidney Public School officials posted a message on the school district's website saying that they were informed of her death this morning, after Arnold's family was informed. Arnold was a married mother of two, and stepmother of three.



The School district will release students from school at 2 p.m. and "additional counselors are on hand this morning in all buildings and parents, if needed, may check their students out from each building."

Arnold was a teacher in Sidney since 1993, teaching at both the middle school and high school, where she was a math teacher at the time of her death.

"Sherry is one of those teachers that every parent wants in front of their child," Sidney School District Superintendent Daniel Farr told ABCNews.com.

"She is caring, first and foremost, one that is there before and after school helping students," Farr said. "She gets to know her students. She becomes a mentor to many a student that goes on to become a math teacher."

Search and rescue teams used canine units, private planes, a helicopter, searchers on ATVs and on horseback. Hundreds of community members turned out to help the Sidney Police Department and the FBI search for Arnold.

Sidney is a small town of roughly 5,000 people that has experienced a sudden influx of out-of-towner oil workers following the Bakken oil boom in North Dakota, according to the Billings Gazette.

Sidney Police Chief Frank DiFonzo told the newspaper that crime rates have gone up since the influx in areas including bar fights, domestic violence and drunk driving.

Welcome kallee89 and thanks for that.

(CBS/AP) HELENA, Mont. - The body of Montana math teacher Sherry Arnold
has been found, and the FBI said Friday it had one man in custody in
connection with her disappearance. Arnold, 43, has been
missing since January 7th, when she left her house for a run. The only
clue to her disappearance that had been publicly released was that one
of her shoes was found along her running route.
Sidney Public
School officials posted a statement online saying they learned of Sherry
Arnold's death Friday morning. No further information was made
available.
CBS affiliate KLXH reports that the FBI released the following statement:
"Based
on a tip from the public, law enforcement took one adult male into
custody, and another adult male is being questioned by police. The
investigation to determine what happened to Ms. Arnold continues."
Authorities
were investigating the possibility Arnold was abducted. Hundreds of
residents, police, firefighters and others searched the town and
surrounding countryside for the popular teacher earlier this week.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57358846-504083/missing-mont-teacher-sherry-arnolds-body-found/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/sherry-arnold-missing_n_1276137.html

http://www.kfbb.com/news/local/Sherry-Arnold-Trial-Judge-Reacts-to-Extradition-139498078.html

APNewsBreak: Kidnap Victim Choked, Buried


An affidavit filed Friday in the kidnapping of a Montana school teacher says she was choked to death and authorities believe she is buried on a North Dakota farmstead.

Lester Waters, 47, and Michael Spell, 22, are scheduled to appear in Montana district court Feb. 28 on charges of aggravated kidnapping. They are being held on $2.5 million bail each.

Few details in the case had been revealed prior to the filing Friday, except that Sherry Arnold was last seen leaving home for a run at about 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 7. She is presumed dead although her body has not been found.

The alleged kidnapping took place just blocks from Arnold's house, at a spot where investigators later recovered one of her running shoes.

The FBI has been heavily involved in the investigation but no federal charges have been filed. For that to happen, authorities would have to prove Spell and Waters crossed state lines during the alleged crime — a difficult task given that Arnold's body has not been found.

Property owners in parts of rural eastern Montana and western North Dakota have been asked to look for disturbed soil or other indications of a makeshift gravesite in agricultural areas.

Williams County, N.D. Sheriff Scott Busching said Friday that multiple leads have come in as a result of that request, but with so far none have panned out.

"We've checked a lot of spots but we haven't found anything yet," Busching said.

Aggravated kidnapping carries a potential death penalty in Montana unless the victim is released unharmed. The minimum sentence is two years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000.

Spell and Waters are being represented by the state Public Defender's Office.

They most recently lived in Parachute, Colo., and it's unclear what brought the pair to Montana. Like the Parachute area, the landscape around Sidney has seen extensive oil and gas drilling in recent years, drawing thousands of workers to eastern Montana and western North Dakota.

Waters has an extensive criminal background in Florida, where he lived before leaving sometime after his most recent release from prison in August, 2010.

Beginning in the late 1980s, he had several stints in jail in Indian River County, Fla., and served three state prison sentences between 2002 and 2010. Charges against him included possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, sale of cocaine, petty theft, burglary, failure to pay child support, contempt of court, resisting an officer and multiple counts of driving with a suspended license.

Spell has prior arrests in Colorado on charges of drug possession, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, sexual contact without consent, careless driving and driving without a license. Charges filed against Spell in a pair of 2007 arrests were later dropped, although it was unclear on what grounds.

The most recent charges came in 2009 after Colorado authorities said Spell asked a middle-school student to text other students and ask them if they wanted to buy marijuana.

He was scheduled to be arraigned in that case in January. But Spell was given permission by a judge to leave Colorado two days before Arnold disappeared, after claiming his brother had been in a car accident in Texas

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/montana-teacher-kidnapping-complaint-filed-15733296#.Tz7w1FGd1Kk

Suspects in murder of Sherry Arnold, Montana teacher, plead not guilty

May 16, 2012 3:25 PM

(CBS/AP) BILLINGS, Mont. - The two suspects in the killing of Montana teacher Sherry Arnold have pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted kidnapping.

Forty-eight-year-old Lester Van Waters Jr. and 23-year-old Michael Spell were arraigned Tuesday on new charges filed since the March discovery of Arnold's body in a shallow grave in North Dakota.

The two Colorado men face the death penalty if convicted on charges of deliberate homicide.

State District Judge Richard Simonton vacated trials for the two men originally set for July. They were not immediately rescheduled.

Arnold disappeared Jan. 7 while on a morning jog in Sidney, Mont., a boom town in the Bakken oil field.

Court documents indicate that Spell has blamed Waters for choking Arnold to death; Waters allegedly said Spell did it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57435548-504083/suspects-in-murder-of-sherry-arnold-montana-teacher-plead-not-guilty/