(Photo submitted)
MARY ROSE WALLEN
The badly decomposed remains of a woman later identified as Mary Rose Wallen was found by a construction worker on the banks of the Ohio River near Kenova on June 3,. 2005, six months after her disappearance from an area beneath the Second Avenue bridge in Williamson.
Wallen’s death was never fully explained to family members, two of whom have hired a special investigator to reopen the case.
“The family needs to have closure in her death, to know if she was a victim of foul play or if it was an accident,” said a cousin, Opal Crabtree, who grew up with Wallen, identified as a resident of 516 Goodman Ave., at the time of her disappearance. They were reared by an aunt, Betty Parsley of Goodman Avenue.
#Parsley and her niece, Crabtree, have hired Don Stevens, a private investigator of Williamson, to pursue the matter of Wallen’s death so the family, including Wallen’s two children, can have closure.
Wallen reportedly was last seen near the local bridge on Dec. 6, 2004, in the company of four or five male persons. A witness who said he was with her on that date told local police officers that he had turned his head away from where she had pulled down her pants to relieve herself and heard a splash..The other men who had been there earlier, around 3 p.m., had left.
The man told police he saw something floating down the river and knew that Wallen had disappeared, perhaps fallen into Tug River. He later left the scene and did not tell anyone about the incident until 10 days later, according to police.
Recounting the things reported during the early investigation, Crabtree told the Williamson Daily News that when “Rose” had failed to return home for several days, Parsley called Opal, crying and telling her “something bad is wrong, so come up here.”
“My aunt told me Rose hadn’t been home for three days,” Crabtree said. “She said someone had called her on the telephone that day, telling her that if she wanted to find Rose, ‘Watch the river.’”
Parsley called relatives and friends. Crabtree recalled, saying, “We couldn’t get help to search for Rose and the county could do nothing. The Daily News ran a missing persons report, along with Rose’s photo, on the front page of the June 5, 2005 issue.
Divers and specially-trained dogs searched the Tug River but found no trace of the missing woman. At that time, Williamson Fire Chief Jerry Mounts told the Daily News weather conditions could keep the body from being found for months, and this proved to be the case.
Meanwhile, Williamson Police Chief Roby Pope said, “As far as we know, there were no witnesses to
how Wallen entered the water, or if she had been sitting on a post close to the river and fell off. The river was up at the time.
“The man that was with her said that she was sitting on a round post,” said Pope.
“The man stated he had kind of walked away and heard a splash. Looking around, he said the woman was nowhere to be seen. He also said he thought he saw her head bobbing in the water, but he didn’t report any of this to police that day.”
Pope said the man told his landlord 10 days later about the incident.
Lt. Wally Looney and Sgt. Bert Gibson, city police at the time, investigated the case, said Pope.
The woman’s body had been sent to the state medical examiner’s office in Charleston for an autopsy, but identification was difficult because only the lower torso was preserved by a heavy garment she had been wearing and the upper part of her body was only skeletal remains.
#Pope said the only dental work Rose Wallen had undergone was done by Dr. Robert Staker, a dentist who had left Williamson and retired some time earlier. Eventually — a year later, according to Crabtree — the corpse was identified as that of Wallen after family DNA proved her identity.
“As to the cause of death,” the police chief said, “I don’t think any ruling was ever made. So far as we knew, the cause of death was ‘unknown.’”
The body was sent to a Marshall University forensic pathologist, Pope said, but nothing productive came of it. Because of the condition of the remains, Pope said, there was no way to determine her level of intoxication at the time of her death.
Pope said the companion with Wallen at the time of her disappearance, identified as Danny Maynard, had come forward during police investigation and gave an eyewitness account regarding the time she “fell” into the river. He said there was nothing he could do about the situation so he picked up his “six-pack” and went to his apartment on Dickinson Street where he then resided.
#Crabtree’s husband, Johnny, who accompanied her to the Daily News to report the hiring of a private investigator a week ago, claimed a “bloody spot” had been found under the bridge where Wallen disappeared but offered no further comment.
“We know there were four or five men and her sister with Rose under the bridge the afternoon she disappeared,” said Crabtree. “There are so many unanswered questions and conflicting stories about her death that we, members of her family, want to know what did happen.”
“Without fail, Rose was always home to see her children off to school and there for their return,” said Crabtree. She said her cousin’s lifestyle may not have been proper, “but she was a human being, an unmarried mother of two and we think her death deserves an investigation.”
She alleges the city put the case folder in a drawer and did not do enough to solve the mystery of Wallen’s death. No one was ever charged in connection with the death.
“The state medical examiner’s office kept the body for a year and the family had to call U.S. Sen. (Robert C.) Byrd’s office in Washington, D.C.,. for help in getting her body released,” Crabtree said.
Wallen was given a proper burial in Fairview Cemetery in West Williamson.
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