Search brings folks together
By Andrew Barksdale
Staff writer
BARBECUE TOWNSHIP — They are relatives, friends and co-workers. Some are friends of friends; others are strangers who learned about the Jan. 2 abduction and disappearance of Julie Michelle Bullard and just wanted to volunteer.
For five weekends, people have been searching for Bullard, who is 23 and goes by her middle name.
They hope they will find more clues. They pray they will find her alive.
“I fear the worst, and I’m hoping for the best,” said Bullard’s father, Julian.
On Saturday, in southern Harnett County, more than 60 people trekked along country roads around Buffalo Lake. They navigated steep embankments and peered into culverts in a cold drizzle. Some rode on horseback and others drove muddy all-terrain vehicles.
Bullard was watching a movie with her boyfriend, his roommate and a family friend at her boyfriend’s home in Broadway, southeast of Sanford, when an armed, masked man walked in. The robber bound the other three people with tape and put them in separate rooms. When the others broke free, Bullard was missing.
A few weeks later, her purse was found on a roadside in southeastern Cumberland County. Her parents have appeared on CNN and Fox News to talk about their kidnapped daughter, and a relative has posted a $10,000 reward.
Searchers found nothing Saturday. Here are some of the people looking:
Brady Olive grew up with Julian Bullard in western Harnett. They used to ride dirt bikes and hunt in the woods they are now searching. Olive has a 21-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son.
“I look at it as if it were my daughter,” he said.
Olive has a smooth, youthful face and green eyes. He is 42 and does interior trim work on houses. He has searched the last three Saturdays.
On this Saturday, he wore navy blue overalls and a knitted orange hat. He stepped over an occasional beer can or fast-food wrapper along the side of a two-lane road off N.C. 87.
He spotted a path covered in red pine needles. “Better check this out,” he said, disappearing into the woods.
In five minutes, he was back alongside the road. Another dead end.
Bullard’s mother, Karen Riojas, said she keeps busy making soups and desserts to feed the crews of people searching. She finds comfort in her faith and believes God will reveal what happened to her daughter and where she can be found.
“He has told me not to worry about it,” she said.
She was stirring a pot of chicken and rice soup in the kitchen of the Buffalo Lake Clubhouse, where maps plastered the walls and food covered tables and a countertop.
Linda Rose knows what Bullard’s family is going through firsthand. In 1999, her brother, John Butler, disappeared from his home in Hoke County. He had several illnesses and was 52 at the time.
Rose, who was a background investigator at the time, searched for her brother before and after work, during her lunch break and on weekends. Her hopes were dashed each time someone mistakenly reported they had seen John Butler.
“I thought I would have a nervous breakdown,” Rose said.
A hunter found Butler’s skeletal remains 16 months later in the woods, almost a mile from his home.
A medical examiner could not determine the cause of death.
Rose and her sister, Saundra Ashley, registered searchers Saturday at the Buffalo Lake Clubhouse. The two women also bought $350 worth of food for those who are looking.
Rose’s Butler’s advice to the Bullards? “You have to have a trust in God,” she said.
Al Mignacci rode inside the warm cab of a pickup, sheltered from the rain. He was scouting new areas to search and jotting directions on a piece of paper.
“It’s a wide-open country,” he said.
Mignacci, who is 69, has three daughters, who range in age from 38 to 42. A retired IBM employee, he has been driving down almost every day for a month from Raleigh looking for Bullard.
“I know how I would feel if my children were missing,” he said. “I’d like to give the family some closure. Plus, when you see searchers, it shows the family that people care, and it gives them hope.”
Mignacci said he had hoped to bring some divers and canoeists, but Saturday’s weather dampened those efforts. He will try that idea again next weekend, he said.
Sonya Cissell took Saturday off work at Fairview Dairy Bar, a Sanford restaurant where she and Michelle Bullard wait on tables.
They had worked together for about a year. She described Bullard as a spunky, smiling person with a “squeaky little voice.”
“She is just so sweet,” she said.
Customers at the restaurant often ask Cissell about Bullard. They tell her they are praying for Bullard and her family.
Cissell, who has four children, has to work a double shift today, when another organized, day-long search resumes. So she will search another time, clinging to the hope that Bullard will be found.
Staff writer Andrew Barksdale can be reached at
barksdalea@fayettevillenc.com or 486-3565.
http://www.fayettevillenc.com/article?id=226350