JUSTICE FOR MEGAN MAXWELL: Quarry search for Maxwell turns up nothing new

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Quarry search for Maxwell turns up nothing new

(c)2009 NPT PHOTOS BY DAVID POPIEL
District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn observes the search for Megan Maxwell in an old rock quarry Tuesday afternoon. Members of the Cocke County Rescue Squad, Cocke County Sheriff's Office and Newport Police Department continue to search for Maxwell, who has been missing more than a month. Inset is a photo crews searching near the banks of the quarry.

06/04/2009

Author: Nelson Morais
Source: The Newport Plain Talk

NEWPORT-Two divers with the Newport/Cocke County Rescue Squad on Tuesday came up empty when they searched the murky waters in the old county rock quarry for the body of Megan Maxwell. It took them two hours to complete their search in waters closest to the edge of cliffs that surround most of the quarry. They did not find her. "It yielded nothing," said Police Chief Maurice Shults of the search.

Maxwell, 19, disappeared early Sunday morning on April 26 east of Newport. Her Mitsubishi Eclipse vehicle was found burned. On a cliff overseeing the operation, Chief Shults said he and members of the Rescue Squad searched the area two weeks ago, but without divers at that time. Jimmy Dunn, district attorney general, who was also at the quarry, said, "We're doing what we do every day of the week-search" for Maxwell's whereabouts. The two divers with the Cocke County Sheriff's Department were Sgt. Armando Fontes and Danny Ray Reece, a school resource officer. Dunn said of the quarry, "In the 1970s, it wasn't uncommon to find bodies here."

In another development, the Brushy Mountain Bear Club announced it will sponsor a search for Maxwell on Saturday, June 6. Members of the club and any other volunteers from the community are welcome to participate in the search. Searchers will meet at the Jones Nature Center across from Del Rio Elementary School at 8 a.m. Organizers said they need hikers, as well as drivers in vehicles, to help with Saturday's search. Volunteer searchers are encouraged to wear orange shirts and bring hand-held radios or CB radios, if they have them. Organizers will provide water to the searchers.

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MEGAN MAXWELL CASE TIMELINE:

April 26th, 2009 - Sometime After 12:00 a.m. – Maxwell receives a call to go check on her father because he has been “in a situation.”

- 4:00 a.m. – Police reportedly respond to Maxwell’s father’s home on Mineral Street in Newport. Family members say Megan, her father and Jeffrey Lee Stock, 41 were there. Stock was allegedly drunk and belligerent, but not arrest was made.

- 4:27 a.m. – Megan calls her best friend to tell her she is finishing a cigarette and driving back to her grandmother’s home in Newport.

- Between 4:30 a.m. and 6:15 a.m. – Witnesses see Stock driving Maxwell’s 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse. One told investigators that stock stopped to ask for a lighter, and kept “fiddling around” with something in the trunk.

- 6:15 a.m. – An off-duty Newport Police Officer spots Megan’s car on fire along East Highway 25/70 near the French Broad River. Evidence found in the car leads investigators to believe she may have ended up in the river.

April 27th, 2009 - Authorities begin searching up and down the French Broad River for Megan’s body. The search goes on for weeks.

April 30th, 2009 - Governor Phil Bredesen authorizes a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person responsible for the disappearance or death of Megan Maxwell.

May 9th, 2009 - Jeffrey Lee Stock is taken into custody for violating the newly enacted “Adam Walsh Act.” He was indicted by a federal grand jury for being a convicted sex offender who traveled to the state of Indiana without registering. Stock was added to the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry after being convicted of sexual battery in 1997.

June 2nd, 2009 - The Cocke County Sheriff’s Office confirms Jeffrey Lee Stock is considered a person of interest in the Maxwell disappearance. Police say evidence put Stock at Megan’s father’s home the night she disappeared and Mr. Maxwell had Stock’s car towed from his home sometime after Megan’s car had been discovered burning.

- Lisa Maxwell, Megan’s mother tells Volunteer TV News that her daughter knew Stock as an acquaintance of her father and that, “She didn't like him and I know that she had run him off from up there before."

June 6th, 2009 - Megan Maxwell's story is featured on America's Most Wanted.

September, 21st, 2009 - Jeffrey Lee Stock enters a guilty plea in federal court to violating the Adam Wash Act. He still refuses to cooperate with the investigation into Maxwell’s death.

March 11th, 2010 - Stock is sentenced to six years in a federal prison for violating the Adam Walsh Act. He is transported to Arizona to serve his term at the United States Penitentiary-Tucson. He'll remain there until 2014 and spend the rest of his life on federal supervised release.

November 4th, 2010 - A man walking his dog along Ponderosa Road near Parrottsville spots what appears to be a human skull and some bones. Cocke County deputies, Newport Police and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation close access to the scene and begin searching the wooded area for more remains. They reportedly discover clothing on the scene as well. - The remains are taken to the University of Tennessee Regional Forensic Center in Knoxville.

November 5th, 2010 - Cocke County Sheriff Armondo Fontes calls a news conference to announce confirmation that the remains are those of Megan Maxwell.