Missing New York man found dead in creek near home

The search for Lance O. Bogart ended in a creek near his residence, where New York State Police said the 47-year-old Town of Tioga man was found dead on April 30 after a two-day search.

Bogart had been reported missing on April 28, but investigators said his last known sighting came earlier, at about 5:00 p.m. on April 26. He was seen near the wood line behind a residence on Halsey Valley Road in the Town of Tioga, which carries a Barton mailing address. A witness told police Bogart ran northeast into the woods, appeared to be in distress, and may have been under the influence of an unknown substance.

That narrow stretch of terrain quickly turned the case from a missing-person call into a recovery operation. New York State Police said the search included K9 units, unmanned aerial systems, and help from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers. In a rural, wooded part of south-central New York, that mix of resources was the difference between a long hunt and a fast, focused sweep of the area around where Bogart was last seen.

State police have not publicly said Bogart’s death was the result of foul play, an accident, or natural causes. No arrest was announced, and no cause of death has been released. That leaves the case in the hard middle ground true-crime readers know well: a body recovered, a timeline that now matters, and an unanswered question about what happened in those final hours between the wooded area off Halsey Valley Road and the creek near his home.

The geography matters here. Tioga County had an estimated population of 47,453 as of July 1, 2025, and the Town of Tioga was estimated at 4,727 residents in the 2016-2020 American Community Survey. In a place that small, a disappearance can spread fast, but it can also narrow the search fast when the last known movement points to one patch of woods and one creek.

New York State Police, which says it has served the public since 1917, handled the case through Troop C, which covers Tioga County. Under state police guidance, missing-person cases are treated as serious when circumstances suggest a strong possibility of foul play and the person is still missing, which explains why so many resources were deployed before Bogart was found.