Published: November 08, 2007 11:54 pm            

Sheriff continues searching for Logan

Even though his mother Katherine Rutan-Pollard has been convicted for his murder, the investigation into Logan Tucker’s death is not complete.

“There is no closure on the Logan Tucker case just because Rutan was convicted and sent to jail,” Woodward County Sheriff Les Morton said.

As far as Morton is concerned the investigation “will go on until the day he is found.”

“The fact is that Logan is still out there,” he said.

Morton and his men continue to follow up on any leads or tips they receive as to the young boy’s possible whereabouts. Logan Tucker was six years old when he disappeared in June of 2002.

Morton said he recently searched the Cedardale area both by plane and car.

He decided to search the area when “we found a map in her (Rutan-Pollard’s) cell that had the Cedardale area circled.”

While not sure why the area was circled or even if it was Rutan-Pollard who circled it, Morton said the map was still a lead he thought his office should follow up on.

So far his searches have not yielded anything promising. The sheriff said he has been looking for places that resemble descriptions originally given by Tucker’s younger brother Justin Dagett during pre-trial investigations.

But Morton said he plans on combing the area further, perhaps extending the search area to see if he can find anything of note.

The map is just one of hundreds of leads that the Woodward County Sheriff’s Office has received over the years, Morton said.

“Checked out all of them, as far as I know,” he said. “Every tip that comes to us, we try to look at.”

Morton said his office has even considered information provided by psychics.

In fact, Morton visited with a group of psychics within the past couple of months to see if they had any possible insight as to where the boy’s body might be.

He said he also discussed with them whether other recent leads have been in the right direction.



Morton understands that some people don’t believe in psychics and might not agree with using them in an investigation. But he said he knows there have been other cases where information provided by psychics have helped investigators locate people.

“I don’t discard it, because there has been some good come out of it,” he said.

“My only reason and hope for talking to these kind of people,” Morton said, “is if that is what it takes to find Logan, then so be it.”

Morton said finding Tucker is not just important to him, it is important to the whole community.

“I think everyone in the community would like to find him and give Logan a proper place to rest,” he said.

Until Tucker is at peace, Morton said the sheriff’s office will continue to accept any tips that the public might have about the boy’s possible whereabouts.

“If it’s something we haven’t heard or seen before then we definitely will check it out,” he said.

Morton said he wished he could investigate every abandoned farmhouse or overgrown field where Rutan-Pollard could have disposed of the boy’s body, but there are just too many.

“There are a million of those places out there,” he said. “That’s why it’s so hard to do.”

However, he said he will continue to look for Tucker as long as he can.

Morton said he will do “whatever I can do . . . to help find him.”

On Aug. 31 a Woods County jury found Rutan-Pollard guilty of murdering Tucker in 2003 and on Oct. 9 she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. She was recently transferred from the Woodward County Jail to the Lexington Correctional Center where she is awaiting another transfer to a higher security facility.

        

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