Chris Egert
KIRO 7 Eyewitness News
Posted: 9:37 am PST November 24, 2009
Updated: 10:38 am PST November 24, 2009
SEATTLE -- A Bellingham man is a person of interest in the disappearance of his ex-wife, who vanished in Florida in 1994, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reported.
Over the weekend, detectives in Orlando searched for the woman, Melisa Sloan, who was 23 years old when she disappeared.
Sloan's mother, Merle Brady, said she has lived with great pain ever since.
"(It was) like the earth had just, just opened up and swallowed her," Brady said. "It is just hard to live this life and not know where she is."
Sloan was last seen in surveillance images, withdrawing $20 from an ATM in Florida.
Police questioned her husband at the time. He currently lives with a new wife and children in Bellingham.
"His statement at the time was, 'She left me for another man, about a week ago,'" said Andre Boren, an Orlando police detective.
Orlando police said there's no evidence of that and that two weeks after the woman disappeared, her husband divorced her. Sloan disappeared at the same time she was scheduled to testify against him in a domestic battery case.
Orlando Police confirmed to KIRO 7 on Monday that the missing woman's former husband, who graduated from Western Washington University in 2008, has yet to cooperate with them.
Police identify him as a person if interest. KIRO 7 is not revealing his identity because he's not a suspect.
Detectives from Orlando traveled to Bellingham in the past year to question him. They said he avoided contact with them, saying he couldn't afford a lawyer, and that "You know what has to happen for me to get a court-appointed attorney."
By phone, detectives in Orlando told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News anchor Chris Egert that the weekend search turned up no new clues.
An e-mail to the man was not returned on Monday.
There is a $10,000 reward in the case.
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