| Michael J Sinotte was last seen by family or friends on June 13, 2019.
Michael Sinotte Jr. gets into his car in North Kingstown and drives into the darkness on June 14, 2019. His parents and siblings are still fast asleep in their apartment.
As the clock strikes 2 a.m., a police cruiser lights up Route 138 and approaches Sinotte, who's pulled over on the side of the road.
“Michael said he was pulled over to use his phone and had his phone in his hand, and that was it,” North Kingstown Police Sgt. Gregory Miga said.
The officer left and Sinotte continued driving.
The seemingly random interaction is now a time stamp in a cold case file, a constant reminder that June 14, 2019 is the last time Sinotte was seen.
What happened to Sinotte that night? Did somebody hurt him? Did he hurt himself? Is he dead or alive?
The questions have been haunting his mother Ann Felici every day for the past 4-years.
“Is he out there somewhere alive or is he not alive? I just want to know one way or another to have closure, because I can’t move on unless I know,” she told the NBC 10 I-Team.
“QUIET AND GOOD NATURED”
Felici described Sinotte as a quiet, good natured, young man who kept to himself.
At the time of his disappearance, he was 22-years-old, living at home and figuring out his next steps after getting his associate degree in computers at The Community College of Rhode Island.
“He was living here,” Felici said. “At the time there were four of my kids living here and he would work GrubHub at night.”
Instead of spending his time on social media or at parties, Sinotte found solace in nature.
“He loved to hike,” Felici said. “He just liked nature, he loved to explore different places to hike in the state.”
Sinotte suffered from schizophrenia, a diagnosis he was given in his late teens.
“He couldn’t stand loud noises, so you had to be very quiet,” Felici said. “He would have mood swings.”
Sinotte managed his symptoms with medication, but in the weeks leading up to his disappearance, he suddenly stopped the meds without medical supervision.
“That’s when we saw a difference in his behavior,” Felici said. “About a week before he was doing odd things. He was cleaning out his room, selling things, but at the same time he seemed very content.”
His parents recommended going to his doctor if he wanted to get off his medication, but Sinotte insisted he was doing well.
“He said he didn’t feel like he needed to do that because he felt like he was doing fine," Felici said.
Since Sinotte was an adult, their hands were tied.
VANISHING IN THE NIGHT
About a week later on June 14, 2019, Sinotte's brother woke up in the middle of the night and saw him getting into his car.
Felici found out about it the next morning when she realized her son hadn’t come back.
“I was a little concerned, but again, because he was an adult I said, 'Ok, we will just wait the day and see what happens,'" she recalled.
The behavior was unlike Sinotte, who she describes as very regimented. He usually came home around the same time every night and didn’t leave again.
As far as his family knew, Sinotte had no suicidal thoughts or signs of depression.
But to this day, Felici can’t help but focus on the days leading up to Sinotte’s disappearance when he cleared out his room and computer, wondering if it was a sign he had no plans on returning.
As the hours passed without hearing from Sinotte, the family’s concerns grew stronger.
“When he didn’t come back all day the next morning, we went to the police station and filed a report," Felici said.
At first, police told them Sinotte was an adult and could leave if he wanted to, but his mother knew this was uncharacteristic of her son.
Two days later, Sinotte's 2000 black Honda Civic was found near the Great Swamp Management Area in West Kingstown, locked, with half eaten fast food inside.
The car was locked and turned off, no keys or cell phone nearby.
The discovery immediately sparked a massive manhunt.
SEARCHING FOR MICHAEL
North Kingstown Police Sgt. Gregory Miga has been part of this case since the very beginning.
“I was assigned the case at the end of June, beginning of July," Miga told the NBC 10 I-Team.
He has been involved in numerous searches of the Great Swamp, an area that stretches 3,500 acres.
The initial search began with K9s, followed by an all day multi-agency search the following day.
At one point, a K9 was alerted to an initial scent leading away from Sinotte’s car, but the track quickly dissipated and led nowhere.
“There were many times that canines hit on many different types of odors,” Miga said. “But we were never able to track down any single source that was putting a scent out.”
Weeks later on July 11, a secondary area was also searched.
Search and rescue teams took to the water and the sky using drones, but in every search, crews were battling rough terrain.
“The vast majority of the great swamp is, in fact, the great swamp,” Miga said.
Some areas are completely impassable.
“You can search in areas by kayak to a point where the water is too shallow to go any further and then you get out and you are in thigh, deep muck, and you cannot move 5 feet," Miga said.
He said the foliage is so thick, even drones and helicopters are limited.
“We are just unable to penetrate certain areas of the swamp.”
Police learned Sinotte was involved in Geocaching, a type of global treasure hunt of people looking for caches, or hidden stashes of objects, almost like a hide-and-seek game.
Hiders provide online clues for seekers, who then use GPS devices to find the hidden caches.
Police found and searched all Geocache sites in the Great Swamp on August 16.
“They came up with nothing,” Felici said. “I thought for sure they would find him.”
The only clue that was found was an item belonging to Sinotte that he had purchased at Home Depot shortly before he disappeared.
It was found on a trail, but never led to Sinotte.
GETTING CLOSURE
Police haven't ruled out any possibility as to what happened to Sinotte, including foul play.
“Every piece of information we have says Michael’s last known location was in the swamp,” Miga said. “Our goal from the get-go is to find Michael and bring him home, period.”
But to search the area again, police would need credible evidence or a tip that leads them to a specific part of the Great Swamp.
Other than the search area itself, officers have had little information to base their investigation off.
In missing persons cases, police often rely on phone records, online searches, and other Internet communications, but Sinotte had no social media presence and spoke to few people.
To this day, officers continuously check his credit cards, bank accounts and other memberships, but there hasn’t been any activity since his disappearance.
Sinotte's keys and cell phone have never been found.
Four years later, his family says they still think about Sinotte every single day.
“The years have been filled with hope somehow that we could get closure,” Felici said. “Because you don’t stop thinking about him.”
His family plans to conduct another search before the end of the summer and they’re looking for able-bodied volunteers.
Sinotte is described as a white man, 5-foot-11, with a thin build, brown eyes and sandy hair.
copied from original source | 
American
July 15, 2023
Active
Unknown Missing
Family Member
Male
22
Caucasian/White
Brown
Brown
5'11"
150 lbs.
Last Seen Wearing
Distinct Features
Medical Alert
