The wife of missing doctor Jeffrey Whiteside, who disappeared after the vacationing couple quarreled three weeks ago in Ephraim Wisconsin, won’t allow police to search their family home.
The 63-year-old physician was last seen alive on June 29th at the village of Ephraim’s Yacht Harbor Marina, following a disagreement with his spouse which was reportedly bad enough that she went back home to Grand Chute without him.
Dr. Whiteside was supposed to be on a brief hiatus in Door County from his medical duties at the Fox Valley Pulmonary Medicine clinic 100 miles away, but hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Air, water and land searches were conducted from the moment Kathi Whiteside reported her husband gone several days later, but the Whitesides’ Ephraim residence itself … apparently overlooked.
Today, perhaps recognizing their oversight and suspecting foul play at last, investigators sought to perform a “consent search” of those premises, but were greeted instead by Mrs. Whiteside’s lawyer who abruptly turned them away.
That seems like surprisingly uncooperative behavior for a woman eager to find her long-lost mate, but, absent any proof of a crime, say police, it won’t necessarily make her a person-of-interest.
With no evidence of wrongdoing they also can’t obtain a search warrant either, they claim, even if the doctor’s unplanned and unexplained absence is, at this point, highly suspicious.
"That's not him to just disappear like that," one of his patients has stated for the record. "It's not his nature to walk away from his responsibility. I mean, his patients are his life."
Dr. Ray George, who’s worked with Whiteside for years, agrees with that assessment: “As each day goes by, we become more and more concerned that a good outcome is becoming less likely."
Anyone with information on what may have happened to Dr. Jeffrey Whiteside or his current whereabouts is urged to contact the Door County Sheriff's Department at (920) 746-2416 immediately.
