COPIAH COUNTY, MS (Mississippi News Now) -
Federal investigators visited the Copiah County Sheriff's Department Wednesday, regarding the investigation into Linda Gale Reed's disappearance.
"I had the FBI, I had Mr. Moore and some of his people, representatives there, everybody getting to know each other, deciding and determining which direction we need to take this investigation," Sheriff Harold Jones told us Wednesday afternoon.
That direction will include a probe into the books at Moore's Fabrications, where Reed has worked as a bookkeeper for 13 years, even spending her work week in a mobile home behind the business. Her permanent residence is in Carrollton.
Shannon Moore, owner of Moore's Fabrications, told The Clarion Ledger that Linda Reed had check writing authority for the company, and there may be some money missing from the business.
"We're gonna enlist some more outside agencies to help us do some forensic examinations, book work, stuff like that," Sheriff Jones says. "I'm telling you we don't have any amount of missing money at this time. That's an avenue we're looking at. I cannot tell you right now Mrs. Reed has taken the money, left the state."
Moore's Fabrications is less than a mile from the Sheriff's Department. When we arrived on Wednesday afternoon, we were told Mr. Moore was speaking to the FBI.
Reed's family spent some time at the Sheriff's Department Wednesday talking to investigators, but they left without commenting for reporters.
Sheriff Jones says he will exhaust all avenues in the search for Reed, who he believes is alive.
"In our investigation, things are not adding up for us the way this has all played out," he says. I can't get into why I think that because that might impede our investigation."
Reed has had only one run-in with the law in the past: an uttering forgery conviction out of Hinds County in 1975.
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