[T]he former New Jersey mayor who state police have been searching for sent a suicide note to his brother before going missing in Vermont, according to the police chief of his hometown.
Brian Brady, 57, of Ringwood, New Jersey, was last seen around the Champlain Bridge in Addison, according to Vermont State Police. Troopers found an abandoned car there that Brady had rented in his home state, a news release said. He was reported missing Thursday.
But on May 24, he had sent a package to his brother containing his keys, cell phone, legal documents and a suicide note, Ringwood Police Chief Joseph Walker told VTDigger.
Walker said the package had been mailed from Jeffersonville, where Brady owns a condo at Smugglers’ Notch Resort.
Brady, a former mayor of Sparta, New Jersey, and former police captain, had been awaiting re-sentencing on a 2014 conviction for using police databases to run illegal background checks, according to the Rutland Herald and the New Jersey Herald. He had originally been sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation, the Rutland paper reported, but an appeals court judge ruled last August that he had been too leniently sentenced.
Brady was then the third highest–ranking officer of the New Jersey Human Services Police, the New Jersey paper reported.
Ringwood police responded to a call for a welfare check at Brady’s apartment there just before noon on Thursday, Walker said. Officers didn’t find Brady but saw nothing out of the ordinary, the chief said.
Later that day, Brady’s brother called police about the package, which he had received on May 28, Walker said. Its contents indicated that Brady might have been headed toward a wooded area near his apartment, but officers found nothing there, either, Walker said.
Vermont investigators said Brady had rented a car in New Jersey on May 22 before driving north. Family members called police to Brady’s condo for a welfare check Thursday afternoon.
State police scuba divers searched Lake Champlain over the weekend for Brady’s body but called off the search Saturday after turning up nothing.
Troopers described Brady as a white man with brown hair and brown eyes, standing 6-foot-1 and weighing 200 pounds. Anyone with information is asked to call state police at 802-878-7111.
