BREMERTON – Former child actor Joe Pichler, who appeared in two of the “Beethoven” comedies, has been missing for a week, and relatives and authorities disagree on whether writings he left in his car included a suicide note.
Relatives and others joined police, emergency workers and tracking dogs in unsuccessful efforts to find Pichler, now 18, since his empty car was found Jan. 9 at an intersection above the Port Madison Narrows.
In the car was a note in which he wrote about wishing to be a “stronger brother” and asking that his belongings go to a younger brother, his family said.
“There’s a good indication that it might have been a suicide, but we don’t know that,” detective Robbie Davis, the lead investigator, said Monday. There is no reason to suspect foul play, he added.
But relatives don’t believe the two pages of writings, which also included poetry, amounted to a suicide note, they said.
In a phone interview Monday, Pichler’s mother criticized investigators. She said police have given her the impression her son is dead when he “could be in someone’s basement. He could be wandering the streets hurt.”
Kathy Pichler said police released the car to the family without fully processing it for evidence: “They haven’t fingerprinted his car. They sifted through it. They were in his apartment for about three minutes. They’ve done nothing.”
Davis said he believed the car had been dusted for fingerprints.
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