Body of Missing Madix Rep is Found

Lon Dowdle, the Madix Store Fixtures sales representative who was reported missing a week ago while on a business trip to the Cincinnati area, was found dead yesterday. Covington, Ky., police announced that the body of the 26-year-old Alabama businessman was found face down on the bank of the Ohio River, about a half-mile from the Holiday Inn where he had been staying.

Dowdle was the son of Madix vp Walter Dowdle, who was part of the search party that discovered the body. He was based in the company's Goodwater, Ala., facility.

The body was covered with heavy mud, but there didn't appear to be any visible signs of trauma or signs of foul play in the area where it was found, according to an initial police report. “We are treating this as a crime scene, even though there are no signs that a crime has been committed at this time,” the local police spokesman said. Police would not specify whether Dowdle's wallet or the silver Rolex watch he was wearing when he disappeared were among the personal effects police found.

Dowdle disappeared mysteriously early Thursday morning, April 4, 2002. He and a friend had gotten out of a cab in front of a restaurant at about 2:30 a.m., and Dowdle walked to the side of the restaurant as his friend lingered to pay the cab driver. When the other man, a childhood friend recently relocated to the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky area, turned around, Dowdle had vanished without a trace.

After nearly a week of fruitlessly searching for the missing man or traces of his disappearance, police say they were led to the spot along the riverbank by a woman describing herself as a psychic, who had called the hotline set up to collect leads.

The 42-year-old woman said she had been getting images of Dowdle's body face-down amid trees, near water. “I smelled water, but didn't see it,” she said. (The area where the body was found was heavily wooded, and Dowdle's body was face down.) The woman, who lived nearby, said those images became stronger when she drove past the area where the body was eventually recovered. “Every time I drove through that area, I got a biting feeling,” she told police, “and it just gnawed at me.”

Dowdle, married but without children, was to turn 27 on Sunday. He had had a sales appointment at Kroger's Cincinnati headquarters the day after his disappearance.