JAMES D. “JAMIE” LUSHER
WESTFIELD – It’s been more than 20 years but James D. “Jamie” Lusher has not been forgotten.
He is doubtless still in the minds of his family and his disappearance still nags city police officers who have continued to work on the case.
This morning, area law enforcement officials will meet with members of the press in Westfield “to announce an update in the investigation into the Nov. 6, 1992 disappearance of 16-year-old Jamie Lusher.”
On that Friday, James D. “Jamie” Lusher pedaled away from his father’s home on the north side of the city after school and headed toward his grandmother’s home in Blandford, planning to attend mountain bike races at the Blandford Ski Area that weekend.
He has been missing ever since.
His parents and police did not initially consider his disappearance to be sinister, as he had a history of spending nights with friends without telling his parents, but the search for him intensified when he was not promptly found.
The last confirmed sighting of the boy was by a high school student who knew the special needs student, who attended the Westfield Alternative School, and served him a meal on Sunday at the Friendly’s Restaurant on Southampton Road, where she worked.
In the following days, police and firefighters searched the roads and trails connecting Westfield with Russell and Blandford and his father, James D. Lusher Sr., searched the undeveloped places where he said his son was wont to go, trekking along the railroad tracks connecting Westfield and Russell on the north side of the river, and searched the riverbanks and adjacent areas.
After the search dragged on for several days, police and the boy’s father said that they were afraid that Jamie, who was developmentally handicapped and, despite his age, looked and acted like a 10 or 12-year-old, might be afraid to go home because of the furor over his disappearance. Despite appeals in the press and to those who he knew, the boy did not surface.
State police aerial assets were utilized in the search and it became focused on the north side of the city in the area of a pond on the Wing farm after a hunter reported seeing the boy’s bicycle near the pond on Nov. 10 and police recovered it the next day.
The pond, which is located within a few miles of the boy’s home with his father but is not on the way to Blandford, was drained but did not reveal any secrets.
The active search for the boy petered out Nov. 18 but new hope for closure was raised after a January, 1994, attack on a 12-year-old girl in Pittsfield led police to a suspect, Lewis Lent, who police were able to place in Westfield about the time of Lusher’s disappearance.
Lent subsequently confessed to murdering two children, a boy who disappeared after leaving a Pittsfield movie theater where Lent worked as a janitor, and a girl from Frankfort, New York, which is near Lent’s home town.
Since then, Lent has been serving a life sentence in a Massachusetts prison for killing the boy and a 17-20 year sentence for his assault on the Pittsfield girl.
He was tried in New York for the murder of the girl there and was sentenced to a 25 year to life term for that crime but is not available to serve it.
Although Lent has long been suspected of involvement in Lusher’s disappearance and in the murder of a 10-year-old Grafton girl who disappeared in Sturbridge, in August, 1992, law officials have been unable to develop sufficient evidence to charge him for those crimes or to induce him to reveal anything he may know about the missing children.
Recently, however, Westfield Police Capt. Michael McCabe has been known to have visited Lent in the Bridgewater prison where he is held.
McCabe’s repeated trips suggest he may have been able to persuade Lent to speak about the case.
Any success McCabe may have had speaking with Lent may be reported later today at the news conference announced late Friday by a State Police spokesperson.
David Procopio, a civilian press officer for the State Police, announced that McCabe will join Hampden County District Attorney Mark Mastroianni, Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless, State Police Col. Timothy Alben and members of Lusher’s family at the news conference planned at the Westfield Middle School South.
