Viking News

John Warren circa 1971

It was a Sunday morning when John E. Warren decided to take a walk on the OCC campus for some exercise. He lived about a mile away in the Squire Village section of Toms River. He cut through the woods separating his home from the college. Estelle, his wife of 47 years, at the time, would later tell an Asbury Park Press reporter, "I said to him why go through the woods? Why don't you take the car? If it gets too hot, you can drive back."

Warren was 69 years old, and his wife never saw him again. He was declared an unsolved mystery of Toms River and has been ever since.

On Aug. 8, 1983, at 8:45 a.m., Warren, a two-month retired OCC associate professor of engineering, a job he had held for 16 years, took his usual four-mile walk. Mrs. Warren would later tell the APP Warren was "very athletic" until he was diagnosed with arthritis two years prior to his disappearance. He was a jogger for more than 20 years but had to limit himself to just walking as his exercise because of his arthritis in his hip, she told the APP.

But Warren never returned from his walk. When Warren did not return home by 11 a.m. for a neighbor's pool party at 10 a.m., Mrs. Warren called the police and reported him missing, according to an Ocean County Observer article.

"He's a very considerate person… He would make it a point to call if he were even going to be a half-hour late," said Mrs. Warren to the APP in 1983.

But before Mrs. Warren called the police, she retraced his steps on the dirt path where her husband would have gone for his walk. She said, at the time, she found two sets of footprints similar to his sneakers. She saw one set that went toward the college and another coming back toward home.

According to APP articles, an OCC security guard saw Warren walking on College Drive at 9:15 a.m. that Sunday, and a jogger stopped to speak with him at 9:50 a.m. on Brokaw Boulevard in Toms River, as well. The unidentified jogger told the police Warren told him "how much he envied the ability to run."

"He just couldn't stand up and lecture for six hours anymore," said Mrs. Warren about her husband. "He certainly wasn't depressed about his retirement because every summer he was on vacation," she told the APP. Police, at the time, did not suspect foul play.

Mrs. Warren did not rule out foul play, saying at the time, "That comes to my mind. But who would want to do something like that?"

By 2:30 p.m., a search party was organized and looked for Warren inside buildings, on streets and in wooded areas around OCC. When he could not be found by the Silverton Volunteer Fire Co., a bloodhound, three army national guard helicopters and one state police helicopter with an infrared heat detector, police and 35 volunteers from fire companies and first aid squads around the area came to assist.

But Warren could not be found, and the search was temporarily halted after a six-hour blanket search. The search continued, and on the fifth day, Lt. Fred Bahr, who was heading the investigation of Warren's disappearance, told the Observer, "The situation hasn't changed one bit...we're still conducting a search, but nothing has really changed. There are no new developments." Bahr also told the Observer the police department conducted foot searches in the woods every day for those five days.

Guy Chamberlain, a member of the sheriff's search and rescue unit, had been called every day for four days to help with the search, but, he said, the bloodhounds were no longer useful in the search for Warren because the propellers from the helicopters spread the scent, confusing the hounds.

"Too much time has elapsed since he's been missing," said Chamberlain, "I'm surprised my dog followed the scent as far as he did on Sunday."

On the eighth day of the search, the investigation was "at a stalemate," said Bahr to the Observer. The case was handed over to Det. Robert Hayes, who was reinvestigating the Warren case by re-interviewing neighbors, friends and relatives. "Once we've exhausted everything, then we can't continue, and when we reach that stage of the game, the lieutenant (Bahr) and I will sit down and decide what we can and can't do," Hayes told the Observer. "There's no indication of what might have happened; it's confusing to piece it together," said Hayes Aug. 17, 1983. "We've found no rhyme or reason to explain it."

According to Lt. Micheal Dorick, supervisor of the Detective Bureau of the Dover Township Police, there were "no leads to follow up on." Dorick decided to re-investigate the case in the summer of 2001, when he became a supervisor. Dorick said he went to re-interview some family members about Warren's case, but "some family members are not cooperating." While Dorick did not say those family members knew more about the missing Warren, he did say "anything's possible in a case like this. You just never know. I just think it's very weird how he went for a walk and disappeared, and no body was found."

The case remains unsolved.

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