No Remains Found In Bethesda Cold Case, Cops Ask Hikers For Help

BETHESDA, MD — Two years after the suspect in Alison Thresher's death killed himself in his prison cell, Montgomery County Police are asking hikers for help finding her remains. Thresher, 45, disappeared from Bethesda in May 2000; investigators believe she was killed by a former teacher convicted of sexually abusing her daughter.

Last week, detectives from the Montgomery County Police Department said they have received credible information about where Thresher may have been buried and asked anyone with information about the case to contact police.

Montgomery County Police held a press conference April 13, 2018, to name Fernando Asturizaga, a former Maryland teacher, as a person of interest in the Thresher's death. That night, officials at Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland said Asturizaga hanged himself. His death was ruled a suicide.

Since Asturizaga’s death, detectives have continued to investigate this case and have received credible information that Asturizaga murdered Thresher and buried her remains somewhere in the area of the United States Department of Agriculture – Beltsville Agricultural Research Center located on Baltimore Avenue in Beltsville, a police news release said Thursday.

Detectives have searched more than 300 acres in that area, but have not located any human remains. Because the area is frequented by hikers, investigators ask anyone who may have been in the vicinity, and who may have found or seen anything unusual linked to the case, to call 240-773-5070.

Asturizaga was serving an over 100-year sentence for the sexual abuse of Thresher's daughter, whom he babysit and taught Spanish to at the Friends Community School in College Park. She was 12 at the time her mother disappeared in May 2000.

In February 2001 police said Thresher's case was being investigated as a homicide. Her employer, the Washington Post, had notified her family that Thresher had not been to work for two days. Thresher left behind her then 12-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son.

Police named Asturizaga a person of interest based on the 2018 forensic analysis of evidence that was gathered in Thresher's apartment.

Detectives believe Thresher "had suspicions that her daughter was being victimized by Asturizaga and had notified the school, her ex-husband James Thresher, and Asturizaga of her concerns," police said.

"Soon after (Thresher) made her suspicions known, she disappeared," her daughter said at a 2018 press conference. "A few months later, when I expressed frustration at his lack of empathy towards my grief over the loss of my mother, FA said to me: 'I thought things would be easier for us now that she's gone.' At the time I didn't think anything of it. After nine or ten years of reflection I started to question if his words meant something more."

Detectives believe Thresher may have been murdered inside her apartment. They think her body was moved to an unknown location, as it has not been located. Detectives also think Thresher's car was moved from her apartment complex and abandoned by the suspect(s) on Broad Street in the Brookmont neighborhood, about a mile from her residence.