How New England volunteers traced final path of Mass. man missing after hospital escape
On a gray morning last December in the woods behind Heywood Hospital, a line of men and women in blaze‑orange vests — some in their 20s, others pushing 70 — moved methodically through the underbrush.
A software engineer walked beside a pediatric trauma doctor as a retiree kept pace with a young EMT. GPS units hummed at their hips and a search dog — an Australian Shepherd named Roo — wove between tree trunks.
They aren't police, or firefighters, or even paid specialists. They are members of Central Mass Search and Rescue — an all‑volunteer team serving New England, whose quiet, painstaking work would narrow the search for a missing Westminster man, Leonard Mercury , to a cold, dark lake a few hundred yards away.
"We don't just dabble in search and rescue. This is what we do," said Amanda Cabral, the group's treasurer.
Members of the Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue Team.(Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue)
"Firefighters ... (and) police have a little bit of training and they don't do (search and rescue) all the time," Cabral said. "These are perishable skills ... that we're using all the time, whether it's personally or at our monthly trainings or out on cold cases and doing other searches."
Michael Foster, the organization's vice president, emphasized the group, which offers its regional services for free, does not "try to be law enforcement," nor "take over a search or second‑guess law enforcement."
The search and rescue group steps in because "police and firefighters have a huge range of responsibilities," he said, and civilians let them focus on the rest of their job.
Missing for months
Foster, Cabral and the group's secretary, Joanne Tobey, were interviewed the day after Mercury, 57, was found dead in Crystal Lake , a body of water located directly behind Heywood Hospital in Gardner.
Before he was found on March 25, Mercury had been missing from Heywood Hospital since Oct. 31, 2025, after he escaped while under a legal psychiatric hold for a diagnosed mental health condition. His wife, Nicole La Guerre, connected with MassLive in multiple interviews this past fall and winter.
Leonard John Mercury.(Courtesy Nicole La Guerre)
Police came to the couple's home at around 3 a.m. on Halloween and told La Guerre her husband broke through a window, got to the hospital roof, then jumped off and ran away, La Guerre said in November. At the time of his disappearance, La Guerre blamed the hospital for her husband's escape.
"The hospital was responsible to keep him safe and protect him. They did not do that," La Guerre said in November.
"Where was the guard?" she asked. "How was he able to break a window and climb up the window ... run across the roof, jump down? Why wasn't he chased on foot?"
A wife's relentless search
La Guerre, who was with Mercury since they were teenagers , also feared her husband's case would simply vanish from public view — and that fear drove her into a relentless, self‑directed search to track him down.
Leonard John Mercury and Nicole La Guerre.(Courtesy Nicole La Guerre)
Between November 2025 and March 2026, La Guerre hired at least two private investigators — Dana Prestone of Rockwell Investigations and Patrick Aubuchon of Aubuchon Investigations .
She mobilized search parties through the fall and winter, combing areas near the hospital and every spot where a tip surfaced. She launched the " FIND Leonard Mercury " Facebook page to blast his image across every social media platform.
She raised funds for the private investigators on GoFundMe and used AI to render images of what he might look like after losing weight, refusing to let him fade from the public's conscience.
These efforts ultimately brought Central Mass Search and Rescue, a Worcester-based nonprofit group that has operated across New England since 1987, into the search. Patrick Aubuchon coordinated the group's deployments and permissions with the Gardner Police Department.
"(Aubuchon) knew this situation and said, 'You know what? I can get Central Mass to come in and assist you with this,'" Foster said. "Rather than the family going out and trying to do searching on their own, we were able to come in and offer our support."
Members of the Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue Team.(Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue)
From December 2025 until February, the group searched well over 100 acres around Heywood Hospital and Crystal Lake. They used trained ground teams, a nationally certified search dog and detailed mapping technology to systematically search the woods.
"We take the point (the missing person was) last seen — in this case, the parking lot — then we draw range rings around that," Foster explained. "All the areas within those rings are broken into individual segments and we develop a priority list of which segments we feel we want to address first."
An example of mapping done by the Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue Team.(Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue)
"With boots on the ground and the canine working in concert, we're documenting every track line on our mapping app, so we know where we've had good coverage and where the likelihood is higher that someone still might be."
All of those efforts resulted in growing confidence that Mercury was not in the woods — pushing the probability toward the water and helping lead Gardner police to fly a drone over Crystal Lake last week.
Leonard John Mercury, 57.(Courtesy of Nicole La Guerre)
Mercury's body was spotted by the drone floating in the water, and he was recovered by a Massachusetts State Police dive team on Wednesday. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will determine the cause and manner of death.
The incident is still under investigation by State Police detectives with the Worcester County District Attorney's Office, State Police Crime Scene Services and the Gardner and Westminster Police Departments.
Inside the volunteer team behind the search
Central Mass Search and Rescue is, at its core, a group of ordinary people who have chosen to spend nights and weekends preparing for someone else's worst day.
With roughly 45 members spread across Massachusetts and into neighboring states, the roster includes people from Boston, the South Shore, Western Massachusetts, New Hampshire and even Connecticut. They include backpackers, bikers, medical professionals, office workers and retirees. They all share a comfort with the outdoors and a willingness to be on call at odd hours.
In a typical year, the search and rescue team fields somewhere between five and 12 cases for deployments throughout New England, Foster said. In 2024, the team responded to 13 searches, and the year before, 17. They also received roughly 25 additional alerts in which they stood ready but never had to put boots on the ground.
Members of the Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue Team.(Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue)
They're usually called in by law enforcement, emergency agencies or private investigators working with families. Every search is run through the local incident commander — typically police — who authorizes where they can operate and ensures the civilian team's work fits within the legal framework of the investigation.
Most members come in with some hiking or outdoors experience, but joining the team is a long haul, Tobey, Cabral and Foster said. It takes about a year of monthly training before a new recruit is allowed to deploy on a real search.
"If a new member attends every month for a year, they'll get certified," Cabral said. "They can't get certified any faster than that. We're very strict on what they're capable of doing before we send them out."
The curriculum follows national search-and-rescue standards, Foster said, and is a blend of classroom and field work. Volunteers learn ground search tactics, the Incident Command System, wilderness first aid, navigation by map, compass and GPS, basic crime-scene awareness and rescue techniques.
A member of the Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue Team.(Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue)
Several members hold advanced medical credentials — wilderness EMT, wilderness first responder or, in one case, a pediatric trauma physician. Everyone is required to complete wilderness first aid at a minimum.
Training happens in "real world" conditions, Foster added, often in state forests and parks, year-round, regardless of snow, rain or heat. Members are also required to build and maintain a 24‑hour pack with enough gear, food and medical supplies to safely operate in the field through a full day and night if necessary.
On top of the human training is the team's canine component. Tobey's personal dog, Australian Shepherd Roo, is trained through the National Police Work Dog Association, and works with him every day, she said.
Roo, the search and rescue dog with the Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue Team.(Central Massachusetts Search and Rescue)
Roo, 8, can follow scent trails many hours old, locate dropped items and search for human remains — all while staying approachable to frightened or vulnerable people, especially children.
In the end, Foster said, the goal is simple but heavy: give families answers.
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