Montana News

Clerk: Missing North Dakota woman stopped in store, was not alone

Posted: Oct 3, 2012 9:02 AM by Irina Cates - MTN News

Investigators have new clues in the case of Florence Dumontent, a North Dakota woman who disappeared while driving through Montana nearly a year ago.

Dumontet, 82, left her North Dakota home on October 16, 2011, to visit family near Seattle, a trip she'd made several times. She's been missing ever since.

North Dakota investigators say that Josh Johnson, a clerk at Muralt's Travel Plaza in Missoula, told them that he was "100-percent sure" it was Dumontet he tried to help last October when she had problems with her pickup.

Dumontet parked next to a propane tank and it's the last place investigators know of that anyone had contact with her.

Johnson, the Muralt's clerk, said he remembered her asking him to look at her truck.

"I offered to take a look to see what I can see. It was a new truck - all computers, didn't know nothing about it," he said.

Dumontet was directed to Bitterroot Ford, but she never showed up there.

Investigators also learned Dumontet was not traveling alone, and now they're also looking for her passenger, described as a Native American woman, between 40 to 50 years old, thin, with gray-streaked black hair.

Johnson says Dumontet never showed any signs that there was anything wrong, but she didn't seem to be very close to the woman she was with.

"I see ladies come in here, they're just all real buddy-buddy with each other throughout the whole store - they [Dumontet and the woman] were kind of standoff-ish a little bit."

Dumontet is 5', thin, white-haired and wears glasses.

Investigators say she didn't use credit cards and paid for what she needed with cash or cashier checks.

Dumontet is described as 5' tall, having white hair, blue eyes and is about 150 pounds.

She was traveling with her cream-colored poodle "Peaches" who weighs about 20 pounds.

Her black 2008 Lincoln Mark LT crew-cab pickup has a North Dakota license plate with the number HXY-089.