Officials: Man likely missing by own choice

CHARLOTTESVILLE — An Albemarle County man has been missing for seven days, and the Nelson County sheriff is questioning whether Michael Comer wants to be found.

“What we have is a missing person,” Sheriff David Brooks said Tuesday, “a 45-year-old male, who for some reason or another, in my opinion, [chose] to be missing.”

On July 1, Comer missed a morning meeting. Family members worried when they weren’t able to get in touch with Comer. A family friend checked Comer’s Wintergreen vacation home, according to brother-in-law Jeff Gaffney, who said Comer’s car was found there unlocked, with his keys and cell phone inside.

Investigators searched for Comer through thousands of wooded acres and trails in Wintergreen, with a suspicion that the outdoorsman had gone hiking, but the search was halted the next day.

“I don’t believe that he’s on Wintergreen [grounds],” Brooks said Tuesday, adding that the possibility of foul play has been eliminated and there’s no evidence that would suggest Comer is dead.

Now, much of the investigation consists of following leads that authorities hope will ultimately lead them to Comer, Brooks said.

“There’s not a lot you can do, especially when you don’t have a criminal act,” Brooks said. “I can’t go into your background — if there’s not a criminal act — and get the paperwork signed off, just to see where you’re at, if you’re an adult.”

“I mean, a person of age has a right to be missing,” Brooks said. “There’s not a crime against it.”

The president of the Glenmore Community Association, Trevor Joscelyne, said Monday that the 10:30 a.m. meeting Comer missed the day of his disappearance had been scheduled because an auditor raised questions about some of the association’s financial transactions.

Comer was the association’s treasurer, though he was removed from office following his disappearance.

Joscelyne said Tuesday that he and another member of the association’s board had hoped to get answers from Comer at the meeting. Instead, the two men waited for a couple of hours but Comer never showed, Joscelyne said.

“The auditors were requesting information that Mike [Comer] had failed to deliver,” Joscelyne said Monday, shortly after sending out a statement announcing Comer had been replaced as treasurer. “That data did not materialize, because Mike didn’t materialize for that meeting, so that gave us some cause for concern.”

Comer was replaced out of an “abundance of caution,” Joscelyne has said, adding that the association had long planned to fill the role of treasurer with a different board member. It also made sense to replace Comer this past week because someone needed to fill the role, Joscelyne said.

Joscelyne has said that the association has “no concrete proof” that Comer’s disappearance is related to the association’s finances.

Both Brooks and Wintergreen Police Sgt. Steve Southworth have declined to say whether the investigation is probing whether Comer could have left the area because of financial issues.

“We’re looking into all possibilities,” Brooks said. “I don’t want to give anybody any false hope. We’re just looking into various leads.”

Brooks said that the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office is leading the investigation, with help from the Wintergreen Police Department and the Albemarle County Police Department. He said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is not involved.

Gaffney, Comer’s brother-in-law, said that he doesn’t know of anyone who has heard from Comer since his disappearance, and the family is concerned about “his safety and well-being and would like to know where he is.”

“I would tell him that there’s a lot of people [who have] prayed for him and his return,” Gaffney said, “and that the whole Glenmore community has kind of rallied around this and is hoping for the best for him, hoping that he’ll come home.”

“And here’s the important part,” Gaffney said, “if he could see the look in the eyes of his children and his wife, he’d want to get back home.”

At the time of his disappearance, Comer was the president of Glenmore Country Club, a privately owned club east of Shadwell, and was the project manager for Glenmore Associates, the developer of the Glenmore community and other commercial projects.