State Police divers search Saugus River in Lynn for missing woman

LYNN – When Peabody resident Alice Nunes told her daughter over the phone, “I’m about to hit some water” and suddenly went missing Dec. 15, Lynn and Peabody police searched several bodies of water but not the Saugus River.Now, police say they’re looking into whether the 58-year-old stockroom worker drove her car into the river on the Lynn-Saugus line by accident.”I believe that Lynn (police) are working on trying to arrange searching that area,” said Peabody Detective Robert Church, who is lead investigator on the case, on Monday.The Item has since learned a State Police dive team began searching the Saugus River for Nunes on Wednesday morning after receiving a tip from Tim Horgan, owner of the Stoneham Boat Center, which is located along the river next to the Belden Bly Bridge. The Route 107 bridge has been closed to traffic indefinitely while it undergoes repairs, and the first day of the bridge’s closure was the same day Nunes went missing.Horgan says over 100 cars mistakenly drove onto his property that day because construction barrels placed in front of the bridge made it easy for drivers to think his parking lot led to a detour route.”The day they (Mass Highway) shut the bridge down, they put the barrels across the street and they were curved. It looked like they were being guided up our driveway like it was a detour,” Horgan said. “I was going to call the state and say, ‘We need to do something. There’s too many cars coming into the yard.'”Horgan says it would be very easy for someone to drive straight down the boat ramp in the dark and drift downstream. That spot of the river is about 12 feet deep at low tide, he said.”It would be easy to hide a car down there,” Horgan said.Horgan says he called police recently about the possibility that Nunes went into the Saugus River after reading newspaper articles about the case.Authorities believe Nunes made her last-known phone call somewhere in Lynn because the transmission bounced off a Wyoma Square cell phone tower, indicating the call was made within a 15-mile radius.State Police spokesman Sgt. David Mahan confirmed that a dive team searched the river behind Horgan’s business Wednesday and came up with nothing. However, only part of the area was searched and investigators plan to return in the near future with side-scan sonar equipment, he said.”They were talking about using that to search a deeper part of the channel,” Mahan said.A police source says Nunes was last believed to be drinking at a bar in Lynn and appeared upset shortly before she made the phone call to her daughter. Her credit cards have not been used since she went missing, police said.”If she came up the driveway while it was after dark, had a few (drinks), was on a cell phone and thought she was taking a detour,” Horgan said, “the next thing you know she’s in the water.”Local and state police searched several bodies of water, including Lynn Harbor and Flax Pond in Lynn and the Spring and Brown ponds in South Peabody in the days following Nunes’ disappearance.The investigation was initially led by Lynn police because that was the location officers believed she went missing. However, after finding few clues, the case was handed over to Peabody police because that is the city where she resides.Church says there are a few reasons why the Saugus River hadn’t been searched until Wednesday. For one, much of the water has been frozen which creates a safety risk for dive teams, especially when they are not positive that Nunes’ body is located there. Another reason was that the river falls within Lynn’s jurisdiction.