MISSING BARTENDER MAY BE IN CANAL: Sarah Majoras a victim of mistaken identity?

UPDATE 3/12/13: Majoras drowning "accidental" due to "very
high blood/alcohol levels at her time of death - case closed"
(This discussion is ongoing and has been bumped up for ease of posting)
UPDATED 2/17/13 - POLL QUESTION: Was Sarah Murdered?
*Scroll side panel to vote, and comment section for all updates:
BREAKING NEWS posted 2/1/13: Body ID'd as Sarah Majoras

 

With her customary cap, camouflage coat, leather boots, unisex eyewear and blue jeans, this short-haired bartender might've easily passed for a drunken youth, if you glimpsed her trudging home, hunched in the gripping cold of late January, at around three in the morning. She's been missing ever since then. 

 

Divers resumed searching the canal near the Delaware River community of Lambertville, New Jersey today. Evidently convinced this is where they'll find the body of Sarah Majoras, 39, who disappeared shortly after leaving John & Peter's Bar where she'd bartended for 15 years.

 

Majoras was off duty for the evening; drinking with her friends and enjoying live music, which the pub is locally famous for.

Afterward, at around two o'clock in the morning, she walked home and is said to have been just a few blocks shy of her residence when, in a 'Smiley Face Killer' scenario usually reserved only for intoxicated young males, she vanished without a trace.

 

If authorities are correct in their suspicions and Majoras did end up in the canal, then she would be the second hospitality industry worker from this particular region to mysteriously drown in cold waters in as many weeks.

 

On January 7th the corpse of Manuel Antonio Guevara, 26, was fished out of neighboring Watchung Lake. Tactical divers found him beneath a layer of ice near the lake-bottom. His shoes and wallet were recovered just a short walking distance from the lakeside restaurant where he was employed as a waiter.

 

Guevara's family had reported him missing the last week in December. So far there's been no ruling on the cause and manner of the young man's death, as police are still investigating.

 

More coincidences

 

If she drowned in the frigid morning hours without any witnesses, Sarah Majoras would also be the second resident of the virtually crime-free community of Lambertville to meet such an icy and bizarre fate.

 

In 2000, David Anderson, 31 years of age, was also walking alone in the wee small hours of the morning when he vanished and was later found dead in one of the nearby spillways.

 

Anderson's death was ruled an accident, but his friends, of which he had many, never believed it. They insisted his body could neither have entered nor drifted to the place it was found floating in.

 

They also said that the victim was super-cautious around the canal and river, whether sober or drinking, because he was deathly afraid of water and didn't know how to swim.

 

David Anderson was a very popular musician in this New Jersey/Pennsylvania border town, and he and his band played most of the local venues there because they cranked out great tunes and could really pack a place with customers.

 

One of his most frequent gigs was at...yep, you guessed it, John & Peter's.

 

That's were Anderson departed from--at three in the morning--when he was last seen alive.

 

Even more coincidences

 

Interestingly enough, both of John & Peter's pub-favorites, Sarah Majoras and David Anderson, took the same path on their journey homeward. And they also had the same destination in mind when each of them mysteriously disappeared: They were going to the house they shared with a guy named Adam Baker.

 

Baker was buddies with Anderson and reportedly the two roomed together, and he is also Majoras' live-in boyfriend of several years.

 

That ought to send up red flags for the authorities and strongly suggest to them that both victims did in fact make it back home and thereafter went missing. But police claim these two cases "aren't related" and that Baker, who is currently not thought to be a suspect, is fully cooperating with investigators.

 

Sarah Majoras is described as five-foot-four and 140 pounds, with blue eyes, blonde hair, and a fair complexion. She disappeared in the early hours of January 26th, 2013 and was last sighted by surveillance cameras on foot at the intersection of Bridge Street and Lambert Lane in Lambertville. 

 

Anyone with any information as to what happened to her after that, and/or her current whereabouts, is urged to call the Lambertville police at 609-397-3132, or the Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s Office at 908-788-1129, and ask for Detective Lacey.  

 

(Any breaking news/updates in all 3 of the above cases will be posted below.)

 

UPDATE 1/30/13, morning: Parents of missing/drowned Lambertville resident, David Anderson, 31, who in 2000 went to the same person's home as Sarah Majoras was heading when he also disappeared, have spoken up about her case.

 

"It’s unbelievable. It’s really eerie what’s happening. It does seem strange she [too] crossed the bridge and no one knows what happened,” said Elizabeth Anderson. "This is the same pattern," her husband Carl Anderson added.

 

The 'Find Sarah" Facebook-group administrators are, however, aggressively discouraging any active theorizing on that page. They are trying to keep everyone's attention and dialog focused on "finding Sarah alive" they repeatedly state, despite that officials from the local DA's office as well as police divers being active on the scene shows that this is by now considered a "recovery operation" with indications of foul play. (DA's don't usually get involved on the ground without suspecting abduction or murder.)

 

It's not unusual for a citizen's group to micro-manage a missing person's case on the mistaken belief that simply "talking positive" will bring about positive results. Unfortunately that rarely occurs, and cutting off public debate about a case can often result in thwarting the public's interest in it as well. Something which can make the crime trail grow cold in a hurry.

 

Discussion concerning foul play here is warranted since there is obviously a number of glaring similarities and connections in Anderson's and Majora's disappearances that are impossible to ignore and which will justifiably cause speculation in all quarters, including on the part of police.

 

On that note, people familiar with the Lambertville terrain are expressing themselves elsewhere on the web. The following individual observations are of interest to those actively sleuthing this case. Both comments concern the appearance of a parked vehicle at the intersection where Sarah Majoras was last seen which appears to suddenly turn its parking beams on, as if engaging its engine:

 

“When I saw the still and that SUV sitting there immediately I thought of course thats a cop car! Thats where they always sat during my college days! It really does look like a cop car. Its black in front and has the white towards the back and there appears to be something on top of the vehicle.”

“When these bars let out at 2am, there is always a heavy police presence on the New Hope side as petty arguements break out among the 20 somethings however Ive never seen any real violence or fights, just drunken arguements. There is also a heavy police presence on the Lambertville side as the police often sit directly over that bridge and try to catch drunks coming over from New Hope. Its quite common to see people pulled over in this short area between the bridge and rt. 179 at this time of night.”

BREAKING NEWS - January 30th 2013, afternoon: Investigators reported that Sarah Majoras' leather boot has been recovered today from the ice on the Delaware River canal, near where she was last sighted on camera, and sources say a body has also just been retrieved matching Majora's description. No official confirmation as yet, but the vicitim is believed to be the missing bartender. The FBI is now fully involved in the Lambertville investigation.

NOTE: at this time I am flagging the Find Sarah facebook site on new evidence: Visitors to that page should be aware that one or more of its administrators has a vested interest in the outcome of this missing persons inquest, bringing doubt on the integrity and impartiality of their entire online "search" effort there. One or more Find Sarah admins also appear to be not only deleting "speculative" comments from the facebook page in question, but also "dropping in" on similar online discussions actively taking place elsewhere. This attempt to thwart critical dialog and info-sharing is strange in a missing-person's case and, IMHO, the individual or individuals engaging in it are not acting in good faith. Please keep in mind that boyfriends and husbands are always the prime suspects in missing women scenarios, since, statistically speaking, abductions and/or murders are rarely ever perpetrated by strangers. This would now be especially true for Majoras' boyfriend, Adam Baker, who has had at least one other "dear friend" go missing and then die in the same manner. (That deceased friend and Majoras are also said to have been friends, by the way. Yet another evidentiary fact that has caused the Federal Bureau of Investigations to "speculate" apparently.)

UPDATE JANUARY 31st 2013: The body retrieved yesterday from the canal in Lambertville has been formally identified as missing bartender Sarah Majoras. Her family was notified and autopsy and toxicology reports are still pending. Majoras was found in the same area of the canal as her friend David Anderson was 13 years ago. Both were coming from the same bar and going to see the same person when they disappeared and drowned. The FBI is still investigating  Majoras' case, but local law enforcement agencies are already announcing her death a "tragic accident" even though full test results have yet to come in. Anderson's drowning in 2000 was ruled "inconclusive" in part because he had facial lacerations and other perimortem injuries not typical for water fatalities, yet for some unknown reason the authorities did not pursue an explanation as to his manner of death. The Bureau is currently reviewing that identical drowning now as well.

UPDATE February 1st 2012: In a "tragic" rush to judgment, local law enforcement agencies are trying to push through a ruling of accidental drowning in order to swiftly close the Majoras death inquiry. Namely because they say they didn't note any significant injuries to the body. David Anderson's identical death 13 years prior is "not related" they still insist, and Adam Baker, a troubling link in both drownings, "has been ruled out as a suspect." However, the  same bar, the same hour, the same trek, the same canal area, the same destination, the same friend, the same kind of accident...the statistical improbability of all this presents the strongest hint of foul play. So detectives probing this matter are reminded that in all theorizing, "everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler." (Albert Einstein) Operating on a theory of Majoras' disappearance and drowning being merely an *accidental* coincidence with Anderson's in 2000 is obviously too simplistic.

UPDATE February 5th 2013: Formal rulings on cause and manner of death as well as toxicology reports are still pending, but the police investigation into Sarah Majoras' disappearance and drowning is said to be ongoing. The Lambertville canal with suspected pathway Majoras took is shown in the image below. (Note that locals are emphasizing that there was significantly less snow and ice covering the water on the night that she vanished, and the canal area she's alleged to have "fallen" in is only about three feet deep.)

 

3/12/13: The drowning death of Sarah Majoras has now been

ruled an "accident" due to high concentrations of alcohol in her

blood at the time of death. Case is considered "closed" by LE.