Wooded Area in Shelton May Hold Clues to Man's 2004 Disappearance

The family of William “Billy” Smolinski, who went missing in 2004, is reportedly pushing for state police to conduct a more thorough search of a large wooded area off Wigwam Drive in for possible clues in the case, which has .

According to a report in The Register Citizen, a Shelton resident said she may have seen Smolinski’s truck being driven into the woods , making the area a focus in the investigation. State police believe that Smolinski, who was 31 and living in Waterbury at the time of his disappearance, was murdered, but to date there's been no evidence to support that.

State police reportedly searched the wooded area twice using cadaver dogs last year, but came away with nothing, according to the report. They also conducted extensive searches in Seymour and other Connecticut towns.

In the report, Janice Smolinski, Billy’s mother, said although there are "other places of interest... this one is top on the list."

The Smolinski family also privately hired a dog trainer who used a Labrador to conduct four searches of the woods off Wigwam Drive in the spring and fall of 2011, in addition to other wooded areas, according to the report.

This past week, the state medical examiner determined that bones which had been unearthed by volunteer searchers at the Wigwam site in February were animal bones, the report states.

State police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance reportedly told the Register "the Wigwam Drive area was thoroughly searched by our personnel and our canine teams, but it is a very large area too, and anything is possible."

He added, however, that state police will not search the area again unless there is new evidence in the case that prompts them to do so.

Last year the state General Assembly , in response to the Smolinski case. The bill requires police departments to accept all reports filed of all missing persons age 18 and older without delay and to input all collected information into appropriate databases in efforts to locate them.

“This bill, inspired and advocated with Janice Smolinski and her family’s efforts to locate her missing adult son Billy, will be a great help to families across the state who are trying to locate a missing adult in a timely fashion,” State Representative Rosa Rebimbas, R-Naugatuck, said at the time. “With these new changes the police will have a better opportunity to gather the necessary information to locate missing persons quickly and hopefully spare another family the worry and pain caused by such a loss.”