SKOWHEGAN — Maine State Police investigators returned Tuesday morning to property off Route 150 in Skowhegan, still searching for clues in the case of a Skowhegan woman who disappeared more than a year ago.
The last known sighting of Tina Stadig, 40, was on May 28, 2017, in Skowhegan. She reportedly was seen July 10 at the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter by a case manager at the shelter and might be using the name of her sister, Tammy, or Jen, a fake name, police said in December when the ground search began.
Stadig was reported as a missing person on Tuesday, July 4, 2017, and a Skowhegan police detective took up the case.
Donna Almeida said in a Facebook message to the Morning Sentinel in July that Tina Stadig is her daughter and that she suffers from mental illness.
On Tuesday, investigators from State Police Major Crimes Unit were back at the Route 150 property, this time with an excavator, an evidence response team truck and personnel from the Department of Transportation who are assisting police with ground work at the scene, Detective Sgt. Jason Richards said at the scene.
“We’re back here continuing to clear this property. We’ve been looking for Tina Stadig. She’s been missing since last summer,” Richards said in a roadside interview. “This is the last place we’ve been able to confirm a sighting of her. There have been other sightings, but nothing that has been confirmed. It’s a fairly expansive piece of property.”
Richards said Tuesday morning’s activity was the continuation of the search begun last fall. Investigators searched the property in early December, but suspended their efforts as winter set in.
Richards said the man who lives on the property was a friend of Stadig. He would not name the man.
No one is in custody.
Police concentrated their efforts Tuesday in and around a dilapidated, abandoned house near the roadside at the property, about 3 miles from downtown Skowhegan. The primary residence is at the back of the property and is the home of a man who police say was known to Stadig, and she occasionally stayed there.
Tina’s other sister, Tonia Stadig, said in a message to the Morning Sentinel in December that she knows who lives at the home where police were searching, and she suspects the man who lives there might have had something to do with her sister’s disappearance.
Stadig is 5 feet, 2 inches tall, weighs about 140 pounds and has brown hair and hazel eyes.
Dan Wentworth, of Nobleboro, who is an advocate for another missing woman, Megan Gregory, of Augusta, was at the scene Tuesday, he said, at the request of Tina Stadig’s mother, Donna Almeida, hoping for clues to both investigations.
“Her mother thinks this is where she is,” Wentworth said of Stadig.
He said he is helping a group called Missing in New England in the search for both women.
“Donna asked me to be her eyes. She couldn’t get here, it’s too far away and she asked me if I’d just come and find out what’s going on for her,” Wentworth said at the scene of the investigation in Skowhegan. “They’re digging in the dirt down there where there was fresh dirt. I would guess they’re looking for Tina.”
Wentworth said he has had more to do with Megan Gregory, but is trying to help with both missing person cases because they both disappeared the same week.
“Megan was 27,” he said. “She disappeared a year ago tomorrow. Megan was like my daughter. We were very good friends. I just tried to get some things done for her to make her turn her life around a little.”
Gregory is described as 5 feet, 4 inches tall and about 130 to 140 pounds, according to a notice on the Gardiner Police Department’s Facebook page. She has blond hair and blue eyes. The last time Gregory was seen, in Augusta, she was wearing black yoga pants, a blue sweatshirt and flip flops.
State police remained at the scene in Skowhegan late Tuesday afternoon with no further developments reported in the search for Tina Stadig.
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
Twitter:@Doug_Harlow
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
