MISSING WOMAN FOUND: LONA BROTHERTON SPENDS NIGHT TRAPPED IN HOLE

PATTON, Mo. -- After bloodhounds and a helicopter couldn't find 77-year-old Lona Brotherton during an all-night search, Bollinger County Sheriff Dennis Willis surmised she was either abducted or dead.

"By 5 this morning, I wouldn't have given a nickel for her chances," Willis said Tuesday. "I thought she was a goner."

He was wrong. Brotherton was discovered at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday a quarter-mile from her home as an 80-member search party made what was likely its final walk through 180 acres of rolling hills and fields.

Brotherton said she remembers few details about how she fell into a hole more than 5 feet deep, injured her collarbone and spent a night outdoors. But she is grateful for the neighbors who found her.

The ordeal started when Brotherton left her house on Highway 72 at about 2 p.m. on Monday to go for a walk.

"It was a nice day, and I get lonesome because I live by myself," she said. "I was just out prowling."

She decided to take a path through some of the fields that extend behind her house. About a quarter-mile into her walk, she fell into the mostly dry, deep hole. She said she was aware of the hole, which is sometimes filled with water for cattle to drink, but inadvertently stepped into it.

When neighbors hadn't seen her by 8 p.m. Monday, they contacted the Bollinger County Sheriff's Department.

Willis arrived at Brotherton's residence to find the lights on and her purse inside. The sheriff decided that Brotherton either intended to leave for a short time or she was kidnapped.

After a search of the immediate area produced no clues, Willis contacted the Cape Girardeau Sheriff's Department to bring in bloodhounds and called the Missouri Highway Patrol for a helicopter to perform an aerial search.

Helicopter requests are not unusual, especially when children are missing, said Lt. Tim Hull of the Highway Patrol. The helicopters use heat-seeking sensors to pinpoint missing persons.

But neither the helicopter nor the bloodhounds located Brotherton. The odor of carbon dioxide from searchers' cars and trucks masked any smells which bloodhounds might have sensed, Willis said.

Several cattle, which belong to Brotherton's son, fooled the heat-seeking sensors, the sheriff said.

"It might have picked her up and they thought that it was a cow," Willis said.

Brotherton could hear the trucks and voices of men looking for her as she sat in the hole. She recognized the voice of her son, Keith.

"I called out to him, but he couldn't hear me," she said. "All the other noises just drowned me out."

The searchers stopped at about 5 a.m. and regrouped almost two hours later to perform a grid search of the property. Forty men standing 20 feet apart began walking in a line across Brotherton's property.

The low-tech search discovered Brotherton in 15 minutes, Willis said.

Brotherton was bruised and apparently broke her collarbone, the sheriff said. But her mood was good, and she was alert as she spoke to paramedics.

Temperatures in the mid-60s overnight made a difference in Brotherton's condition, Willis said, since she was only wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt.

"If she had been out there a few days earlier a few days later, she might not have made it," he said.

On Tuesday, Brotherton was just trying to manage eating lunch with her left hand at St. Francis Medical Center. Her right arm was too sore to move, she said.

Brotherton said it is only the third time she has been in a hospital. After surgery today, she plans not to come back.

"I don't think I'm going to take that path again," Brotherton said.