POLICE: Body of Missing North Sea Man Is Found

After a nearly weeklong search, the Southampton Town Police Department said on Tuesday, January 30, that the body of James Thomas Lee was found around noon behind a private residence in North Sea, just a few doors down from the cottage he lived in, and where he was last seen on January 23.

Police received a report of a body located in a brushy area located between a garage and a fence nearby Lee’s cottage and determined it was Lee.

No criminality is suspected in his death, and Southampton Town Police Chief James Kiernan said it appeared that Lee had succumbed to the winter cold.

Lee, who was 82, went missing from his North Sea Road home last Tuesday, prompting a search for his whereabouts. Involved in the search were two police dogs, drones, helicopters and nearly 75 volunteers from the Southampton Fire Department, Kiernan said.

Lee, who had Alzheimer’s disease, according to police, had left his cottage but didn’t close the front door and left the oven on, prompting a call from very concerned family members, and a missing persons alert from Town Police.

It was not surprising to Kiernan that Lee wasn’t located by searchers, owing to the brushy area in which his body was discovered.

“There was just so much brush there,” Kiernan said. “It’s completely understandable why a helicopter or drone [did not locate him].”

“He was really exposed to the elements,” Kiernan said, given the state of Lee’s body when he was finally located.

In a statement, Town Police said the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office had responded to the scene and would conduct an investigation into his death, and an autopsy.

Along with local resources, the search for Lee also drew in the New York State Police, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department, the Quogue Village Police Department and the Southampton Village Ambulance corps.

Lee will be missed, said family members. He was remembered as a proud member of the Shinnecock Nation who regularly attended powwows. Richard Hite recalled that “as a kid we remember him at the powwows — he always had the bow and arrow and trinkets that he would give us at powwow time. He was really just a good man. If you knew him well, he’d give you the shirt off his back.”

Lee also ran Lee’s Cleaning Service, recalled cousin Denise Smith-Meacham, and later in life had a house painting business.

“He spoke Native wherever he went,” Smith-Meacham said. “He was proud of who he was.”