BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A police artist's sketch of Walter Dunson. He's 99, 5-foot-8 and 150 pounds.
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Gary Adams is not surprised people are wondering whether his father has been dead for years.
Walter Dunson would have turned 99 last week, and neighbors have told police they haven't seen him in decades.
A month after Mr. Adams reported him missing, suspicion has turned to Mr. Adams himself. He filed the missing report June 5 -- four days after the Social Security Administration sent a letter requesting to see Mr. Dunson in person so he could continue receiving his monthly checks, which his son has been co-signing and depositing.
In his first and only interview with the media, Mr. Adams said Friday that he believes his father is still alive and that his family's private lifestyle is simply misunderstood.
"Basically, we are reclusive-type people," he said. "In 18 years, not one neighbor has been in here for so much as a cup of coffee. If anything, we're guilty of being anti-social."
In a tour of the Adams' Kennedy Heights home -- painted pink and white inside and out -- Mr. Adams showed his father's upstairs bedroom.
The white plastic cup on the bedstand is where Mr. Dunson kept his dentures at night, his son said, adding that the non-prescription spectacles are his father's reading glasses.
The only personal item in the room -- a picture of a woman -- is an aunt named Claire whose last name Mr. Adams said he doesn't remember.
The basketball shoes with no laces at the foot of the bed are what Mr. Dunson uses instead of slippers, his son said. In the closet, next to about a dozen hangers, two pairs of dress shoes and socks and folded robes, Mr. Dunson kept a bottle of asprin and some medication for back pain, his son said.
But he said his father never believed in banks or doctors, which explains why his paper trail ends about the same time his driver's license expired in the 1970s.
Mr. Dunson, a retired iron worker, toiled the night shift for so many years that he kept that schedule -- sleeping and watching television most of the day and "sneaking out for walks and things" at night, his son said.
"We live like mountain people, I'm telling you," Mr. Adams said. "We live like hermits. We just don't socialize."
Mr. Adams knows little about his father's history -- only that he grew up near Marietta, Ga., and came to Cincinnati, where he retired in 1970 after about 40 years at the foundry.
He never formally married. Mr. Adams isn't sure how many children he had -- probably eight or nine. The family never kept in touch. Mr. Adams isn't even sure whether his mother is alive. He said he also doesn't know why other family members have told police they haven't seen Mr. Dunson. One of Mr. Adams' sons has told detectives he never met the man.
The family also never believed in taking pictures, Mr. Adams said, which accounts for why the only thing police have to go on is a description and sketch of a 5-foot-8, 150-pound black man with gray hair and brown eyes.
Mr. Adams said his father wandered away from him when they were shopping June 5 at Findlay Market in Over-the-Rhine.
The two people he says can back up his story were at the market that day -- M. Reevesand Sharma Robinson.
Mr. Reeves, a clerk at Cee Kay Beauty Supply at Findlay Market, says he thinks he sold Mr. Dunson a lottery ticket about 2 p.m. that day.
Mr. Reeves said an old man wearing a blue windbreaker walked up to his booth at the back of the store, picked his numbers, took his change and left.
The other woman at the market who told police she thought she saw Mr. Dunson has since changed her mind.
Ms. Robinson, administrative assistant at the community agency IMPACT Over-the-Rhine, saw an old man by a vegetable stand. He was dressed in brown, matching the description. But one thing seems odd to her now.
"He was walking too good," she said. "He wasn't no 99. If anything, he was in his 60s or 70s."
Gary Tedesco, owner of Tedesco Produce, was at the booth that day near the spot where Mr. Dunson was said to have disappeared. He never saw him. And he hasn't heard of anyone else who did.
"He was supposed to have been sitting right on the steps over there," he said. "Nobody remembers seeing him. It just doesn't add up."
Cincinnati police have said the same thing. The division has missing person detectives, fraud investigators and homicide detectives all scouring leads -- and coming up with dead ends.
Officer Denise Neu said police are pleading for anyone to come forward with information by calling Crime Stoppers at 352-3040.
Mr. Adams says he knows he's under scrutiny, likening himself to the family of Mary Love before police found the 6-year-old dead last week and charged a neighbor with aggravated murder.
"It's something that you have to live with," he said.
"It was really hard a couple weeks ago. It's gotten to the point now where there's so many stories going around, I had to get myself together. You can't lock yourself in a room somewhere. Actually, we've done a lot of crying and stuff. I've broke down a few times. I've had to gather myself together because I have to work and move on."
