New Mexico State University police and the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Department’s cold case unit have concluded digging at a site on the NMSU campus where a mother and son were last seen 17 years ago.

By Friday afternoon, investigators found no further evidence and will end the investigation, according NMSU Police Chief Jaime Chavez.

“While there was no new information to cause this review, NMSU remains concerned about all students, faculty and staff and will actively pursue unsolved cases,” Chavez said.

NMSU would not confirm what cold case they are investigating, but the address where investigators were seen digging — 714 Standley Drive — matches the last known address for Edyth Warner, then 35, and her then-11-year-old son, Nicholas Smith, who disappeared Feb. 23, 1991.

The case is the only missing persons investigation at NMSU since the remains of Joanne Dodge, an NMSU student who went missing in 1981, were found in 2005 in her car submerged in Burn Lake.

Warner, an art student, and her son left their home by foot the day they disappeared. Warner left behind her car and 3-year-old son, Andrew. She took almost $1,000 in cash and $10,000 in gold coins, according to statements her husband made to police.

Henry Warner, Edyth Warner’s husband at the time, thought when she disappeared she might have taken her son to visit family in California. The couple was having marital problems. The two were missing for about a week before he reported it.

In 1991, investigators were quoted as saying they didn’t suspect foul play.

Randle Dewees, Edyth’s father, said he had been contacted by NMSU police about reopening the case.

“I’m glad,” Dewees said, said in a phone interview from his California home Friday. “Maybe they’ll stumble onto something.”

Dewees, 84, still alert, has kept meticulous notes on the case, and has been a critic of how police originally handled it in 1991.

“The old hands had no interest in this,” Dewees said. “But this is the second or third time it’s been brought up (to reinvestigate).”

Since 1991, he has visited Las Cruces several times to talk with police. His last visit was in October 2004. He has spent $25,000 to $30,000 on lawyers and private investigators, he said. He hired two psychics in attempt to find his daughter. Strangely, both psychics directed them to search an area in the desert about 12 miles north of Las Cruces.

Dewees said he has never been hopeful the pair would be found.

For years, Dewees said, he maintained a contact list for people who had lived near 714 Standley Drive at the time of his daughter’s disappearance. He said he has since lost track of most of them because they’ve moved several times.

Dewees also kept track of Warner, who officially divorced Edyth Warner, but now has only a vague idea of where he lives. He said he hasn’t seen his other grandson, Andrew, since the disappearance.

He believes Andrew does not know of his maternal grandfather.

Dewees said he talked with two officers on Friday and that they will be visiting him at his California home on Monday.

Renee Ruelas-Venegas can be reached at rruelas@lcsun-news.com