Harrison Thorp 12:08 p.m.
Wednesday, May 24, 2017 12:07 pm
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COPYRIGHT2017© WEST LEBANON - Maine State Police say they've reached a dead end in the investigation and search for a West Lebanon man suspected in a violent domestic assault last month.
Dale Godfrey, 52, of 167 Sam Wentworth Road in West Lebanon, was last seen on April 26 around 4 a.m. after police say he allegedly got into a confrontation with his wife and began strangling her.
After the alleged attack, he fled the scene, according to police. His truck was found a couple of miles away about 15-20 yards down a driveway near where a house is being built across the street from Poplar Hill Road where T.M. Wentworth and Champion streets meet in West Lebanon.
State troopers have noted that the interior of Godfrey's truck was covered in a large amount of blood and that Godfrey was known to carry box cutters in the truck. They also found his checkbook in a nearby stream.
A State Police sergeant said last week police would begin ramping up their investigation and search again, but on Tuesday State Police Trooper Kyle Wells, who has handled the case since the beginning, told The Lebanon Voice the investigations is at a "dead end."
Meanwhile, The Lebanon Voice has learned that additional searches were made last week, but the location of those searches is unclear.
Wells has said more than once that the outlook for finding Godfrey alive is grim and that he could have succumbed to his injuries in the woods or waters of either Milton Three Ponds or the downstream Salmon Falls River.
A woman on the Maine State Police Facebook Page who said she was Godfrey mother-in-law said he suffered from mental illness.
Meanwhile, The Lebanon Voice talked to a neighbor who didn't want to be identified who said Godfrey seemed like a normal middle-aged man, who had a wife and two young children.
Godfrey's wife suffered minor injuries and is recovering from the attack iin a safe place with her two children, State Police say.