By Derek Spellman

dspellman@joplinglobe.com

STELLA, Mo. — Colleen Spears still keeps a vigil for her daughter from the top of the slope that leads to their Stella home.

As the search for her missing daughter reached its fifth day, Spears again spent part of Wednesday sitting in the front yard of their home and hugging a large, stuffed teddy bear to her chest.

“Right now, I am pretending this bear is a baby,” she said. “A mom cannot be upset holding a baby. I just wish it was my baby I was holding.”

Spears said she has not abandoned hope that her daughter, Rowan Ford, 9, will be found unharmed. The girl has been missing since late Friday or early Saturday.

But she acknowledged that it is getting harder to preserve that faith.

“It is getting to be real,” she said. “It is getting to be a roller coaster.”

More than 50 FBI personnel, largely agents, helped local authorities Wednesday continue the search for Rowan and the investigation into her disappearance. They combed fields and wooded areas, including the woods around Spears’ home at 777 Grove St., but still had found no sign of her.

“I wish this was a time I could tell you we found Rowan,” Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland told reporters at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

He later said, “All I can tell you is that every day she is missing, it is a negative.”

Copeland said authorities have not yet identified a suspect in the case, but they have not ruled anyone out as a suspect either. He said authorities still believe foul play is involved.

He said authorities are looking for a pink bedsheet that Rowan’s mother reported missing from the girl’s bedroom.

Asked how long authorities intended to continue the search, Copeland said no deadline has been established.

“I am sure at some point we are going to have to discuss that,” he said.

Jeff Lanza, a special agent and FBI spokesman, said about 40 of the approximately 50 FBI personnel on hand are agents. The bureau, he said, is assisting the Sheriff’s Department with searching for Rowan, processing physical evidence and interviewing people.

He said federal authorities were processing evidence gathered from “indoor locations,” although he declined to be specific.

Copeland said about 75 people, including students from Missouri Southern State University’s police academy in Joplin, helped search Wednesday in outdoor locations in Stella and Newton County.

Spears saw Rowan just before she left home at 8:30 p.m. Friday to go to work at the Wal-Mart store in Jane. David Spears, Rowan’s stepfather, and two of his male friends were with the girl at the home until they decided to go out together about 10:45 p.m. The stepfather told investigators that he looked in on the girl in her bedroom before leaving, and she was asleep.

David Spears did not return to the house until about midnight, when one of his friends dropped him off, the sheriff said. Copeland said Spears told investigators that he did not check on Rowan again before going to bed, although he later acknowledged to investigators that he left the home a second time.

Copeland said Spears made a phone call to his mother sometime after 1 a.m. Saturday and asked to use her vehicle. She took it to him about 1:30 a.m. and stayed at his house while he left in the vehicle for about 5 1/2 hours, the sheriff said. The stepgrandmother told investigators that she never checked on Rowan while she was there watching television.

Copeland said Wednesday that David Spears still has not given an account of what he did during those 5 1/2 hours.

“We would very much like to know where that time was spent,” he said.

David Spears told the Globe in an interview Monday that he made a mistake in leaving Rowan alone at the house and in initially misleading police.

He said he is innocent of any wrongdoing, and that he has since told the authorities everything he knows.





Hunting season



Despite the onset of deer-hunting season, Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland said authorities will continue to search outdoors for Rowan Ford this weekend if there are leads. He advised against residents conducting their own searches of the woods because of the potential for accidents but said he is asking that hunters be watchful for anything that might help authorities find the girl.