New Clues In Search For Matt Maupin

Via WCPO:

There is new information on the search for missing Union Township soldier Matt Maupin.

Members of an Army unit searching for the missing Tri-state soldier found new clues this past weekend.

And those new clues could hold the answers into what happened to Matt Maupin, who has been missing since April 9, 2004 when his fuel truck convoy was ambushed west of Baghdad.

A week later, Arab television network Al-Jazeera released a videotape showing Maupin sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.

The Army lists him as "missing-captured."

Thirty-two members of the Army's 10th Mountain Division spent seven hours Saturday scouring over terrain in the Abu Ghraib region west of Baghdad, looking for signs of the missing Tri-state soldier.


A tip had suggested that Maupin's body might be there, so they parceled the tract into sections and moved systematically through them.

It was the third day of searching the area.

"He needs to go home to his family," First Sgt. Joseph Sanford told an Iraq-based reporter for The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. "And there needs to be closure for his family. Those are the two things we're trying to bring: closure to his family, and a way to send this young man home."

The New York-based unit dug 45 holes and bagged and tagged 10-items that could hold the answers to Maupin's fate, including a scrap of military clothing.

Each will be shipped to a lab for analysis...