August M. Thiede, an 84-year-old white man known by the nickname Bill, disappeared from Norfolk, Connecticut, on June 10, 1994. Public case records identify him as 5 feet 8 inches tall and about 150 pounds, with gray or partially gray hair and hazel eyes. He had a distinctive physical feature that could have helped identify him: his right pinky finger was missing. On the morning he was last seen, he was reportedly wearing blue jeans, gray shoes, a brown vinyl jacket, and a black baseball cap bearing the words “Elvis Presley.”
The last known sighting placed Thiede standing in his yard in the 900 block of Litchfield Road in Norfolk at about 8:45 a.m. After that moment, he was never heard from again. The Charley Project classifies his case as endangered missing and notes that he may have suffered from memory loss, a detail that gives the disappearance an especially vulnerable and heartbreaking dimension.
Investigators and loved ones had to consider the possibility that he may have become confused, wandered away, or tried to go somewhere familiar without being able to safely complete the journey.
One reported possibility was that Thiede may have attempted to travel to Maine to visit relatives after he vanished. That theory suggests his disappearance may not have begun with a planned effort to cut off contact, but with an elderly man possibly trying to reach family and becoming lost along the way. An extensive search of the local area was conducted, but no sign of him was found. The available public record does not describe any confirmed sighting after he left the yard, and few details have been released about what searchers found, where else investigators looked, or whether any specific route toward Maine was ever established.
NamUs lists Thiede’s missing-person case as MP3365 and identifies the Connecticut State Police as the investigating agency. The attached case data also identifies the last known location as Norfolk, in Litchfield County, Connecticut, and gives the agency case number as CFS 0300213699. His case remains listed publicly as a missing-person case, with no resolution status of alive or deceased provided in the attached data. In overview, August “Bill” Thiede’s case is the story of an elderly Norfolk man last seen at home on a June morning in 1994, possibly struggling with memory loss, possibly attempting to reach relatives in Maine, and then disappearing despite a local search; decades later, the central facts remain painfully spare, and the case endures as an unresolved disappearance centered on a vulnerable man, a family left without answers, and a community record that still asks what happened after he left his yard.Last Seen: Jun 10, 1994
