Search Dogs on the Case at the Point

    The East Hampton Town Police Department’s search for George Richardson of Dix Hills, who disappeared in the early morning hours of Aug. 28 from Hartman’s Briney Breezes Motel on Old Montauk Highway in Montauk, intensified this week. Police brought out teams of Suffolk County police dogs to comb the rocks and coves of Montauk Point and circulated updated missing-person fliers with new photos around the hamlet.

    “The family came out with four boogie boards,” Detective Sgt. Robert Gurney said Tuesday as he supervised the manhunt around the Lighthouse. “They took an inventory of all their possessions” that they had returned with from their three-day stay in Montauk.

    According to the detective, there were only four items that the family noticed were missing: Mr. Richardson’s reading glasses, which he used as bifocals, frequently wearing them while walking, the orange cap with a Montauk logo shown in many of the missing posters, a pair of dark-colored, thick-strapped sandals, and a red boogie board with stars on it. Police stressed that the board shown in the images circulated is not the actual board, but is very similar in appearance.

    Mr. Richardson, 51, who was scheduled to check out later that morning and return home with his three sons and his wife, Mary, was last seen by his family at about 1 a.m. He is believed to have gone for a walk before the family awoke.

    The surf was rough that day, and police will not rule out the idea that Mr. Richardson may have been washed out to sea.

    The dogs, sometimes called biosensor dogs, are trained to find the living and the dead. On Tuesday, they were used going from Turtle Cove at Montauk Point, working methodically west, sniffing out every nook and cranny along the rocky coast.

    One of the dogs deployed was Chase, a 4-year-old German shepherd who recently found a missing man, Dr. Jerome Nadler, 76, in Caleb Smith State Park Preserve in Smithtown after the doctor was lost in the woods for four days. The dog found him alive but badly dehydrated.

    Police have not given up hope that Mr. Richardson is still alive, and they continue to canvass Montauk, searching for anybody who might have seen him the day he went missing.

    The family, which has declined to speak to the press, has been active in the search, Detective Gurney said. Many details of the disappearance have been kept from the public.

    “We are reluctant to go with all the specific information because it really doesn’t help,” the detective said, stressing that police were mindful of the family’s anguish. While he would not disclose whether Mr. Richardson took his wallet when he left Room 25 at the motel in the dark that morning, the wallet was not listed by the family as missing, and was most likely left behind.