The Watch That Came Back: Missing for Years, Tick Found in Snow

The Watch That Came Back: Missing for Years, Tick Found in Snow

A running silver wristwatch, found face-up and spotless on a concrete pad after eight inches of undisturbed snow - but its owner had reported it missing fourteen months earlier. Why was a watch engraved "For Janet - every Thursday - Love, Paul" left alone at a shuttered Iowa rest area with no footprints around it, and who returned it?

In this episode, we tell the sequence of events that connects a decades-long routine, a disappearing watch, a move across states, and a solitary drop-off in winter - ending with the question of motive and timing that no one has fully explained.

Person: Janet Morris
Person: Paul Morris
Person: Ted Bauer
Person: Person who found item: Eugene Hughes
Date found: February 9, 2011

- The watch was found at 6:40 AM on February 9, 2011 at the Clover Creek rest area in Calhoun County, Iowa.
- The engraving on the case back read "For Janet - every Thursday - Love, Paul," given around 2006.
- Janet Morris was 62 years old, a lifelong Albuquerque resident and a medical transcriptionist of 31 years.
- Ted Bauer moved from Santa Fe to Des Moines in January 2010 and kept the watch on his kitchen counter for 14 months.
- Eugene Hughes had serviced the rest area for 17 years and noted the watch was accurate to within two minutes despite four days of sub-freezing temperatures.

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