BOSCAWEN, N.H. — A Newport grandfather and his adult grandson who have been missing since they set off for a motorcycle ride on Monday are believed to have been killed in a crash involving a deer, according to police.
Police responding on Thursday afternoon to evidence of a crash site in woods off Route 4 in Boscawen, near the town line with Salisbury, N.H., found what are believed to be the bodies of Jerry Proper, 69, and his grandson, 22-year-old Cody Pillsbury, according to Newport Police Chief Brent Wilmot.
Video footage from surveillance cameras and cellphone data helped pinpoint the search for the two men, who were found about 35 miles from Newport.
Family members had been notified, though formal identification was still pending from the New Hampshire Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, police said.
“My precious son, I cannot comprehend that I will never see your sweet face again. Never take a walk with you, trips with you, hear you say ‘I love you, Mom,’ ” Laura Glynn, who is Pillsbury’s mother and Proper’s daughter, wrote in a Facebook post Friday. “I would give up anything to have you back. Rest in peace, my precious son.”
In a news release from Newport police on Friday morning, officials said an initial investigation shows Proper and Pillsbury were traveling on Proper’s motorcycle southbound on Route 4 in Boscawen “when they struck a deer in the roadway.
“Their motorcycle left the roadway and came to final rest in a dense swamp,” the release said. “However, a final determination as to the cause of the collision is pending a full joint investigation by the Boscawen Police Department and New Hampshire State Police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Unit.”
The two men were reported missing after they left Proper’s Newport home on the Honda GL18R1 Trike motorcycle around 2 p.m. Monday. After cellphone data indicated that Pillsbury’s phone connected to a cell tower near Danbury and Andover, friends and relatives spent much of Thursday searching the Route 4 corridor.
Police saw them riding by on video footage collected on several surveillance cameras from gas stations and other stores along Route 4, and were also able to narrow their search to the area near the crash site late Thursday after they received “sophisticated cellular tower data analysis” from the Civil Air Patrol’s National Cell Phone Forensics Team, the release said.
According to Wilmot, a police officer who was trained in recognizing crash sites noticed a small amount of debris by the side of the road Thursday afternoon, leading officers to investigate farther into the woods.
There, they found the two men along with the motorcycle “very deep into the woods,” according to Wilmot.
“Someone could drive by (the crash site) and never notice,” Wilmot said in an interview, adding that there were no downed trees or skid marks visible at the site.
New Hampshire Fish and Game and the New Hampshire State Police had also assisted in the search, and Newport police and state police used a helicopter on Wednesday to search for the men.
For members of the Newport community and people who knew the two men, the news was devastating.
“I used to see (Proper) driving around town with a smile on his face,” family friend Cindal Menard said Friday, remembering him as a “happy and friendly” man who loved riding and spending time with his family.
Family friend Kristy Kibbey, who had helped lead the search, also remembered the pair fondly, saying in a message Friday that “They were loved by all who knew them.”
Messages to several family members were not returned Friday. Some spoke about the men on Thursday hours before the crash site was found.
“Cody is amazing. He’s a hard worker, very intelligent, very sweet, friends with everybody,” his older sister Mandy Pillsbury said in an interview early Thursday afternoon. “I just know that when I have a bad day — and my mom — he helps us feel so much better.”
She spoke similarly about her grandfather in the interview, calling him the “family’s rock.”
“We just worship the ground he walks on,” Mandy Pillsbury said.
Glynn, who spent all day Thursday driving around the Danbury, area, looking for her father and son, said in an interview early Thursday afternoon that the two men have been going on bike rides together ever since Cody was 3 years old. Proper switched to the trike bike in February due to leg pain, she said.
Glynn added that the two were diligent, hard workers who always let people know their plans, which was why the family first became concerned about their whereabouts.
Pillsbury worked at LaValley Building Supply in Newport and was taking classes at Southern New Hampshire University, and Proper worked at Micro Precision, Inc., which has a location in Newport.
“I cannot say enough how grateful I am for all the help we got over the last three days,” Wilmot said Friday, noting that multiple agencies and the local community all got involved in the search for the missing men.
Kibbey was similarly heartened by the community effort, saying, “That’s what we do in Newport. When one of us needs help, we rally.”
Anna Merriman can be reached at amerriman@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.