7th Annual Ride for Audrey overcomes rain
Family and friends hope missing Audrey Herron will be found
The Daily Mail
Aug. 30, 2009

EARLTON — Roughly 300 family and friends of Audrey May Herron marked the 7th anniversary of her disappearance Saturday with music, food and a ride through Greene County.

Herron’s brother Ray Turk Jr. said the annual “Riding 4 Audrey” benefit keeps Herron’s name in the public.

“Hopefully, somebody with information will come out and say something,” Herron’s father, Ray Turk Sr., said.

Before the ride, talk turned to Jaycee Dugard, who was reunited with her family in California earlier this week after being missing for 18 years. Dugard was kidnapped in 1991 at the age of 11. Police there are questioning suspects in that case.

Friends Marie Fahey Parker and Maria Ferencz, who runs the “Riding 4 Audrey” Web site, said Dugard’s story proves that missing persons can be found years later, and somewhat close to home.

“Maybe [Herron] is right here also and we are just not seeing it,” Ferencz said.

Rains throughout the morning caused only 17 people to ride, although, Parker pointed out, that rain has fallen on every Aug. 29 since 2002.

The ride began and ended at Brennan’s School House Inn, on Rte. 81., to be followed by a poker run and a pig roast. Half of the proceeds went to the $25,000 reward/trust fund for Herron’s three children and the other half to the Center for Hope of Ballston Spa.

Herron’s daughter, Sonsia Rae Court, was 10 in 2002. Herron’s children Katie and Quinn were 4 and 2.

In the last seven years, the event has drawn families of other missing persons, including Suzanne Lyall, who disappeared in 1998 from the area around the University of Albany, where she was a student, and Patricia Viola, a school librarian who disappeared from her home in Bogota, N.J., in 2001.

Parker has continued to organize the ride for seven years because of a promise she made to Herron’s parents never to stop looking for her friend.

“[Herron] is still missing. Her kids are still growing up without a mother,” she said. “Somebody out there knows something.”

Herron disappeared on Aug. 29, 2002 after leaving work at the Greene County Long Term Health Center in Jefferson Heights. She was last seen in the Town of Catskill at 11 p.m. driving a 1994 black Jeep Cherokee, New York registration X233UV.

The Jeep has never been found.

Catskill Chief of Police David Darling, who led the investigation until he left State Police Bureau of Investigation in 2006, said his team interviewed friends, family and co-workers as well as individuals and followed several leads including possible sightings of Herron’s Jeep.

“For eight weeks we worked non-stop, every day,” he said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was brought in, Darling said, but their efforts yielded no answers.

Herron’s photograph and information were featured in a deck of playing cards depicting missing persons created last year. The cards were distributed in area prisons.

State Police Investigator William Fitzmaurice, who took the case over from Darling, said no new leads have come to his attention recently.

Police encourage anyone with information to call them at the Catskill State Police Barracks, 518-622-8600. All calls will remain confidential.