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07-21-2026, 06:29 PM
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 ★ ★ GENERAL ★ ★ Poster Rank:41 male Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 35,992
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The Disappearance of Adam Emery
Jason Bass was 20 years old and had done nothing wrong. On the evening of August 31, 1990, Adam Emery was at dinner with his wife Elena and another couple at a restaurant near the old Rocky Point amusement park in Warwick, Rhode Island. When they came out, Emery's 1985 Ford Thunderbird had been sideswiped in the parking lot. Convinced he knew which car had done it, Emery and Elena climbed into the Thunderbird and chased another vehicle for roughly 1.7 miles into a Warwick neighborhood. The driver of that car was Jason Bass, with his cousin Joshua Post, also 20, in the passenger seat. When the confrontation came and Bass threw the car into reverse, Emery stabbed him in the heart with a knife. Bass died. He was a stranger who happened to be in the wrong car. Three years later a jury convicted Emery of second-degree murder. On the day the verdict came in, he walked out of the courthouse still free, and by that night he was gone. More than three decades later, the FBI still talks about Adam Emery in the present tense. Who they were Adam Charles Emery was a white man born on November 10, 1962. NamUs describes him as about 6 feet 1 inch and 175 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. Elena Emery was his wife, and she was with him through everything that followed, from the parking lot to the bridge. Jason Bass was 20 and lived in Warwick, where he worked as a cook. He had left high school at 16. His family remembers a young man who liked to cook, collected football cards, and was devoted to his young relatives. His cousin Joshua Post, also 20, was in the car the night Bass was killed and later testified at Emery's trial. Jason's sister, Diana Bass, spent much of the rest of her life pressing for justice, keeping scrapbooks of newspaper clippings about the case. She has since died. Her daughter found the book of clippings she had kept. The paint chips The detail that turns this from a road-rage killing into something colder is the forensic work on the two cars. Emery believed Bass had sideswiped his Thunderbird. He was wrong. Police compared paint chips from both vehicles and determined that Bass's car was not the car that had struck Emery's. Bass had not hit anyone. He was an innocent stranger in the wrong car, chased down and killed for something he never did. That finding is the spine of the criminal case, and it is why the word that follows Jason Bass through the coverage is not the loser of a fight but simply innocent. The verdict and the vanishing On November 10, 1993, his 31st birthday, a Kent County Superior Court jury convicted Adam Emery of second-degree murder. His claim of self-defense was rejected, and he faced 20 years to life. He was not taken into custody. Superior Court Justice Linda Savage, who has since retired, allowed Emery to remain free on bail pending his sentencing rather than jailing him immediately, a decision the Bass family has said robbed them of justice. He was never sentenced, and there was never an appeal. In the courtroom that day, a lip reader hired by the Rhode Island State Police watched Elena lean toward her newly convicted husband and interpreted what she said to him. Within hours, the couple was seen at Kelly's Sporting Goods in Cranston, where they bought wearable exercise weights. Then they drove toward the water. The bridge That evening the Emerys' Toyota Camry was found abandoned at the top of the Claiborne Pell Bridge, the long span that carries traffic across Narragansett Bay to Newport. The engine was still running. Inside were cut-up credit cards, folded clothing, cash, and Emery's driver's license. The bridge deck sits roughly 200 feet above the water. According to one account, both Emerys mailed suicide notes around the time they vanished, though that detail rests on a single source and is not corroborated by the other reporting. No one saw anyone jump. Elena In 1994, fishermen working Narragansett Bay below the bridge recovered human remains, including leg bones and, on August 30, 1994, a skull. DNA testing identified the remains as Elena Emery. That is a finding. What is not a finding is how she died. The cause and manner of Elena's death were never established. She was never charged with any crime. A single account has claimed that Elena handed Adam the knife used to kill Bass, but no source establishes it, and it has never been more than a disputed claim; she was never accused in any court. Adam Emery's remains have never been found. Legally dead and wanted at the same time Here is where the case splits in two and never comes back together. In 2004 a court declared Adam Emery legally dead. That declaration was statutory, a legal step taken after years without contact, not a finding that anyone died and not backed by any body. Six years later, in 2010, the FBI added Emery to its wanted list in connection with the second-degree murder of Jason Bass. Officials said they were not convinced he was dead, and his arrest warrant remained active. One government record treats him as deceased. Another treats him as a fugitive who could turn up tomorrow. Both are official. Both are current. The contradiction has kept the case in front of the public. Emery's likeness was included on a 2018 Rhode Island fugitive and cold-case playing-card deck circulated through a Pawtucket police program. In 2019 the FBI said there was a significant chance of locating Emery within five years and considered him most likely to be in Italy, where he has family. Kristen Setera, an FBI Boston spokeswoman, has said the bureau keeps getting tips and chases down every one. Theories No one has ever proven what happened to Adam Emery after he left that courthouse, so everything in this section is a theory. There are two, and they cannot both be true. The first is that Adam and Elena died together, a double suicide off the Pell Bridge. A lead Rhode Island State Police investigator has said his honest opinion is that Emery is deceased, because searchers looked everywhere and never found him. A U.S. Coast Guard petty officer, April Shaw, has said surviving a jump from that bridge is very improbable, describing a body hitting the water near terminal velocity as hitting concrete. The idling car, the cut-up cards, the reported notes, and Elena's recovered remains all point this way. The second is that Adam killed Elena and staged the bridge scene to get away. Joshua Post, Bass's cousin and the eyewitness who testified at trial, believes the killing of Bass was premeditated and that Emery is still alive. Post has said it is easier for one person to hide than for two. The exercise weights, bought within hours of a murder conviction, sit uneasily in both stories. The FBI's own working position lands closer to the second. Reflected in the 2010 wanted listing and its later statements, the bureau has treated Emery as a fugitive who may be alive rather than as a confirmed decedent, and has said it will keep following every lead until it can locate him or his remains. Where it stands As of 2025 the case remains open with the Rhode Island State Police and the FBI's Boston Division. NamUs lists Detective Sergeant Robert Hopkins as the case contact, under case number 17RIX1-33-OF. Around the 35th anniversary of Jason Bass's murder, NBC 10 WJAR released a digital documentary about the case called "Mystery Under the Bridge." Diana Bass did not live to see it. Adam Emery, if he is alive, would be in his early 60s. Anyone with information about Adam Emery is asked to contact the Rhode Island State Police or the FBI's Boston Division.  ·  ·  ·  ·  ·
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