In Memphis, Hunt for Wiley Continues

The investigation into the disappearance of Harvard biophysics Professor Don C. Wiley continued to baffle investigators yesterday, as authorities as well as Wiley’s colleagues failed to provide any concrete leads.

One colleague who saw Wiley right before his disappearance said he was acting “absolutely normal.”

Stephen Sallan, chief of staff at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center, said he talked to Wiley at 11:30 p.m. on Nov. 15., following the annual meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

Sallan said that he and Wiley discussed personal matters, and that Wiley did not share his plans for the rest of the night.

Investigators believe Wiley disappeared sometime between midnight—when he left the meeting’s banquet—and 4 a.m., when they discovered his abandoned rental car on a bridge over the Mississippi River.

Craig Thompson, professor of hematology and oncology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School, spent Nov. 15 with Wiley and said he was “as bewildered as everyone” about the disappearance.

“[Wiley] was a very active member of the board meeting that day,” he said.

“He seemed his normal self,” said Thompson, who is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board along with Wiley and Sallan.

Lieutenant Walter Norris, a supervisor in the Memphis Police Homicide Department, said that yesterday brought no new developments in the case, and that police have not ruled out either suicide or homicide as explanations for Wiley’s disappearance.

“Our main concern is trying to fill in the blanks between when he left [and when the car was found],” Norris said.

Although Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Andrea Shen said that Harvard is “in daily contact with law enforcement officials in Tennessee,” Norris said that the investigation primarily involves Memphis sources.

Norris said the department was viewing convenience store surveillance tapes to track Wiley’s movements after he left the banquet.

George Bold, spokesperson for the FBI’s Memphis office, said that the FBI is informally monitoring the case and will only open its own investigation if evidence indicates a kidnapping or a link to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Because of Wiley’s research on infectious diseases, Bold said that a connection between his disappearance and fears of bioterrorism is “conceivable but not supported by objective evidence. There is not a factual basis to make [the connection] anything more than speculation.”