MCSO gets break in Musil-Buehler case

Manatee County Sheriff’s Office investigators returned to the beach July 12-13 and July 15 to search for the remains of missing motel owner Sabine Musil-Buehler, who is presumed dead.

The search — which involved cadaver dogs and MCSO crime-scene technicians and cadets outfitted with shovels, probes and machetes — was prompted by the discovery of items belonging to Musil-Buehler on July 9. The co-owner of Haley’s Motel and Holmes Beach resident was last seen on Nov. 4, 2008, the night of the last presidential election. She had watched the election returns with boyfriend William Cumber in their apartment on Magnolia Avenue in Anna Maria, and left, he said, after an argument over his smoking cigarettes.

Musil-Buehler’s possessions, which the MCSO would not detail, were found by nearby resident and Crosspointe Fellowship pastor Ed Moss in an overgrown, woodsy area just south of the Willow Avenue beach access in Anna Maria.

Moss said he didn’t at first realize a connection to the Musil-Buehler case. He just thought, perhaps, a kid had robbed a woman.

Sheriff Brad Steube called the find “significant.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s the biggest lead we’ve had in this case since she disappeared, because we have been working this for a couple of years, but this is a significant find,” he said.

The find

Early July 13, the MCSO, in a news release, announced that investigators and technicians would search the beach that day, and had searched the day before.

On July 12, cadaver dogs from Sarasota took an interest in two areas by the beach — one patch of palmetto brush, seagrapes and mother-in-law tongue to the north of the Willow Avenue beach access and another spot to the south of the access shaded by Australian pines and crowded by brush.

MCSO Sgt. Pete Rampone, the lead homicide investigator, said an “interest” means the dogs “were all trying to get to the same area,” and that they did not “alert” on an area, which would have been a stronger indication of human remains in the vicinity.

On July 13, as crime-scene technicians dug into the hard soil on the edge landward of the beach, law enforcement officers discussed the ongoing investigation.

The public affairs announcement brought a crowd of reporters and photographers, whose breaking news reports drew several of Musil-Buehler’s friends and a small, rotating group of onlookers to the scene.

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