Arthur Brandes, 52, 9/13/1996, Denver

[Starless]

Brandes, Arthur



Date Missing: 09/13/1996

Date of Death:

Jurisdiction: Denver PD

Location:

Local Case Number: MA96-0960

CBI Case Number:

Case Status: Unresolved

Case Type: Missing Person

Detective Name and Phone:

MISSING-PERSONS CASES OFTEN TOUGH TO CRACK WITHOUT A CRIME SCENE, POLICE MUST LOOK TO THE PAST FOR CLUES
Rocky Mountain News (CO) - Tuesday, August 7, 2001
Author: Brian D. Crecente News Staff Writer

An adult vanishes every couple of days in Denver.

Police find most in short order: men and women escaping their unwanted lives, running from the law or creditors. But for the families of those few who truly vanish, hope lies in a handful of detectives who spend their days retracing and rebuilding the lives of those who disappeared.

``It's not against the law for an adult to be missing,'' said Detective Ron Cramer, one of two detectives assigned to the Denver Police Department's missing-persons unit.

The fact that police - and often family - don't take an adult's disappearance seriously for the first few crucial days often makes the case harder to investigate than that of a missing child, police say.

In the case of missing former intern Chandra Levy, her parents didn't notify police until four or five days after she dropped from sight. It took police a few more days to go to her Washington, D.C., apartment.

Denver Lt. Jon Priest says that's not unusual: Often an adult who is missing wants to be.

``Missing cases are so difficult because people can disappear on purpose,'' Priest said, ``and they can stay missing if they really want to.''

That was the case on Aug. 18, 1989, when Denver patrol officer and family man David Hayhurst walked away from an idling patrol car and a double life of debt and mistresses to become Reno auto painter Dave Grove.

Police say Hayhurst tried to fake his death by abandoning his patrol car behind a warehouse near the South Platte River. He then hopped on a motorcycle and drove to Reno.

Once there, he began to build a new life under a new name.

But within a week Hayhurst decided to reappear, walking into a Reno 7-Eleven and claiming he had been abducted by drug dealers and abandoned in the mountains of Nevada. Days later he admitted he made up the story.

Sometimes detectives find the missing among the dead.

On Jan. 10, Abdulaziz Al-Kooheji, son of a Saudi Arabian oil man, walked off a plane at Denver International Airport and disappeared.

Eight days later, a friend of the 20-year-old college student called police to report him missing.

Police worked it as a missing-person case for three weeks before discovering that three of Al-Kooheji's friends picked him up from the airport, drove him to their home, robbed him, strangled him and dumped his body.

No matter the outcome, most missing-person investigations start the same way, said Mark Wilson, agent in charge with the Colorado Bureau of Investigations.

``When you are dealing with a person who is missing, you don't have a crime scene or tangible evidence,'' he said. ``You have to find out what happened through their timeline.''

So investigators begin to sift through the remnants of a person's past, following a life until it leads to the person living it.

In Denver alone, police received 157 reports of missing adults last year.

Denver detectives are still tracing the life of Arthur Brandes , 52.

Brandes had a history of drinking and failing to come home, so his family didn't worry when he disappeared Sept. 13, 1996.

It wasn't until Nov. 19, after a family member spotted Brandes ' truck being driven by another man, that they called police.

Police found Brandes ' truck but never found its owner.

The detectives continue to search.

``The average missing-person case is someone coming in today saying someone's missing and then finding them tomorrow,'' Priest said. ``It's just the nature of the beast.''

LIB5
Memo: Contact Brian D. Crecente at (303) 892-2811 or crecenteb@RockyMountainNe ws.com.
Edition: Final
Section: Local
Page: 4A
Index Terms: MISSING PERSON INVESTIGATION POLICE
Record Number: 0108090185
Copyright (c) 2001 Rocky Mountain News

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Well, certainly doesn't sound like his disappearance was as a result of him drinking and driving that time. Wonder where it all went after this ?