Emergency vehicles parked at East of Eden Flower Farm, near where police recovered a body from Merrymeeting Bay Friday morning. (Darcie Moore / The Times Record)
Police recovered a body from Merrymeeting Bay Friday morning. (Darcie Moore / The Times Record)
BOWDOINHAM — Bath police confirmed Friday morning that the body of David Dieterich, a Wisconsin man who fell into the Kennebec River in Bath last month, has been recovered.
His family said Friday would have been Dieterich’s 36th birthday, and expressed relief that he’s been found.
“We think this was sort of his last gift to us, this being his birthday,” said Kim Krotts, one of his three sisters, shortly after police notified her they’d found Dieterich’s body.
Firefighters and EMS personnel from Bowdoinham and Topsham carry equipment to the shore to recover a body found along the shore of Merrymeeting Bay Friday morning. (Darcie Moore / The Times Record)
An owner of East of Eden Flower Farm on Brown’s Point Road in Bowdoinham was trying to get her dog to return to her along the shore around 8 a.m. Friday morning when she discovered the body near shore, according to Sgt. Greg Siegel of the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Department.
Members of Bowdoinham Fire Department and Topsham Fire and Rescue recovered the body, and police confirmed it was Dietrich’s by checking the identification in his pocket.
The State Police major crimes unit was notified. The body was taken to the state medical examiner’s office for an autopsy to confirm the cause of death, which is standard for an unattended death, Siegel said. Police believe Dietrich drowned after slipping off a dock in the Kennebec River.
“We still don’t suspect any foul play so once that is confirmed, the case will be closed,” he said. “We’re happy the family will have some closure.”
The medical examiner’s office said Friday that the cause of death is pending further study.
Dieterich, 35, of Caledonia, Wisconsin, was with two coworkers around 10 p.m. April 18 when he stepped onto an unstable dock near the Kennebec Tavern and fell into the river. He’d recently arrived in Bath as an employee of the Milwaukee-based Marshall Erecting, a subcontractor for Bath Iron Works. He was staying at the Hampton Inn while on a temporary assignment that was expected to last approximately six weeks.
Merrymeeting Bay is about 6 miles upriver from Downtown Bath, where Dieterich fell into the Kennebec River. Searchers hadn’t been able to find his body in the weeks since, despite using boats, planes, a drone, divers and side-scanning sonar, a device dragged across the surface of the water as it sends sound waves through the water to find objects.
“It’s a tidal river with big tides at times, and it’s quite a current,” Field said.
Merrymeeting Bay is at the confluence of six rivers: the Androscoggin, Kennebec, Eastern, Abagadasset, Cathance and Muddy rivers.
“The natural rate of flow during tide cycles is increased exponentially right now with the amount of spring runoff, and so sometimes the surface water and the water underneath are going in different directions,” said Sgt. Robert Beal of the Marine Patrol last month. “It’s an incredibly dynamic environment.”
Julia Baecher, who owns the End of Eden Flower Farm with her husband David Baecher, said they had been harvesting tulips before she found the body. They picked some flowers to send home with Dieterich.
“It has to be incredibly hard to wonder where your loved one is for a whole month,” she said. “It was pretty tough to find him but we are happy that he was found. We can’t do much but we can certainly send him home with flowers.”
Krotts said the family wants Baecher to know how grateful they are for her, “and (how) incredibly kind we felt it was that she left flowers with him. It really touched our hearts.”
Krotts said it has been difficult to mourn her brother without his body. The family had hired an attorney to start the process of having Dieterich declared dead. It’s a detailed and overwhelming process to deal with the business side of death without a death certificate, she said.
Meanwhile, the family held a celebration for life for Dieterich at a historic brewery in Milwaukee. The event drew more than 130 people.
“People said wonderful things about David — how detailed he was, what a great worker he was (and) fellow employee, always worried about safety,” Krotts said. While a private person, “Gosh, he had such close friends that loved him.”
Krotts said her mother, Inga, is very grateful her son is coming home. The family hasn’t decided yet if they will hold a funeral but want to do something more ceremonial when he arrives back in Wisconsin.
“We have to deal with our everyday lives but it’s always there,” she said. “It’s never far from our hearts and our minds what happened and there are moments it just comes crashing down on us.”
She didn’t realize just what a heaviness lay on her heart until getting news Friday morning her brother had been found.
“We continue to be heartbroken and crushed but we’re incredibly relieved he was found,” Krotts said. “And we do feel in some way that whatever higher power there is, helped guide him to where he was. Especially on his birthday.”
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