By LISA LISLE

Ottawa Sun

February 8, 2004

Not having his daughter in his life has simply become a fact for Gene Somerton. The Arnprior man isn't overwhelmed by emotion at the mention of her name and he doesn't manufacture memories of her.

Although he often wonders where Lisa Jean might be, the everyday torture of "the not knowing" has long passed.

The truth is that Lisa Jean has been missing so long -- officially 16 years yesterday -- that Somerton can only say that it's been "quite awhile."

"I sort of think about it more around her birthday," he said matter-of-factly.

Last seen by her roommate on Jan. 27, 1988, Lisa Jean Somerton was reported missing eight days later. Family and friends were initially concerned that her disappearance was somehow linked to her ex-boyfriend's upcoming court case.

The then-21-year-old was scheduled to testify against him at his trial in which he stood accused of assaulting her. Without Somerton's testimony, charges against her ex were withdrawn.

However, the still-wide-open police file indicates that the ex was basically ruled out as a suspect, leaving police with the belief that she might have become depressed about having to testify and left on her own volition.

But as in the other countless cases of missing men and women across North America, police really only have theories and guesses as to what happened to Lisa Jean.

Without a word from his daughter in all those years, Somerton said it's like she "disappeared off the face of the Earth."

"I don't know any more than you do," he said.

What they do know is that she likely didn't suffer at the hands of Robert Pickton -- the man who's accused of being Canada's most prolific serial killer.

Like hundreds of other anxious parents, Lisa Jean's mother and father offered their DNA so police could compare it to the remains found on Pickton's pig farm in British Columbia.

NEED FOR CLOSURE

So far police haven't made a match, which is and isn't a relief to Somerton.

"You sort of like to put it to rest," he said. "Hopefully, you'd like to think the outcome would be good one day."

This -- wanting any kind of conclusion -- is the sad reality for thousands of parents.

But at the Doe Network, an international volunteer organization dedicated to missing persons cases that have gone cold, they work on the assumption that their thousands of missing persons are just that -- missing.

And the idea that someone has simply vanished without a trace is something assistant area director Lusia Maczuzak finds "difficult to accept."

"Someone knows something," she said. "Someone has the answers."

That seems to be true of all but a handful of the almost 7,000 missing persons cases investigated by Ottawa police in the past three years. But the longer a case goes unsolved, the greater the chances are that it will haunt the major crime section for years to come.

"Where do you go, where do you start looking in something like that?" Ottawa police missing persons investigator Sgt. Peter Lineger said, posing another unanswerable question.

Investigators, friends and family might be able to guess what happened to Janette Brunet and Josee Boutin, who both also disappeared from the area 16 years ago. But as memories fade and people relocate, the chances of finding any concrete answers have grown slim.

OPEN FILES

Yet as close to non-existent as that possibility might be, police aren't ready to close their files or move them to the shelves that hold Ottawa's unsolved murders.

And the ever-optimistic Maczuzak believes just one look at the Doe Network's website (doenetwork.org) will help to solve any one of their files.

Anyone with information on any of these files is asked to call Lineger at 236-1222, ext. 3726.