Newtown police said this week that the presence of electronic and conventional billboards in the Bridgeport area, which seek information on the whereabouts of missing Newtown man Robert Hoagland, have prompted one tip from the public.

But an investigation into that lead proved fruitless because a person who was thought to be the missing Mr Hoagland was ruled out, based on surveillance video evidence, according to police Detective Lieutenant Richard Robinson.

Mr Hoagland has been missing for more than a year.

At the request of the Hoagland family to more broadly publicize Mr Hoagland’s July 2013 disappearance from his Sandy Hook home, police recently agreed to advertise his “missing person” status on three billboards in the Bridgeport area in the heavily traveled Interstate-95 corridor.

Lt Robinson said this week, “As of this point, we have only received one tip from the billboards. That tip was a dead end.”

“We have received numerous tips without the billboards, and although there is no way to predict when or if we will get more [tips], once the billboards come down, we will actively investigate the case until there are no more avenues of investigation available,” Lt Robinson said in a statement.

Since August 25, the three billboards have been posted in the Bridgeport area seeking leads on the whereabouts of Mr Hoagland. The Hoagland billboards are scheduled to be displayed until September 21.

The billboards list Mr Hoagland as a missing person, display photos of him, and provide the Newtown Police Department telephone number 203-426-5841 as a contact point for any information on his whereabouts.

“Lamar Advertising has been very generous and is working with us to keep the costs down to a minimum. We only have to cover the costs of the physical vinyl and installation for the two standard billboards [$420], and they are donating the space,” Lt Robinson said.

“This [Newtown] area has been saturated with news media [coverage] and attention, and the Bridgeport area was one of the places [Mr Hoagland] was known to have been and worked. That area has received less media saturation,” the lieutenant noted.

“As with any case, once the leads have been followed with no positive results, you look for more. It is a known avenue of lead generation [billboards], especially for people missing for some time,” Lt Robinson said.

Lt Robinson said that the Hoagland family had been in touch with the Smolinski family and then requested that billboards be used by police as a way to generate tips on the whereabouts of Mr Hoagland.

In 2004, the then 31-year-old Billy Smolinski went missing from Waterbury and has yet to be found. His family has sought to widely publicize Mr Smolinski’s disappearance.

Looking For Leads

In late July at Fairfield Hills, the family and friends of Mr Hoagland formally marked the first anniversary of his mysterious disappearance from town.

Police have continued to pursue leads on his possible whereabouts in a case that has puzzled both police and the people who knew the Sandy Hook man.

Mr Hoagland, a real estate appraiser, was 50 years old when he disappeared.

In July, police investigated a possible sighting of Mr Hoagland as a visitor at the Putnam County Correctional Facility in Carmel, N.Y., but video evidence proved inconclusive.

Also, last winter a report of a sighting of Mr Hoagland at a Savers store in Brookfield, which was recorded on video surveillance equipment, proved inconclusive.

After more than a year of extensive investigation, police have no clear evidence of any crime having been committed in connection with Mr Hoagland’s disappearance, and also have no clear evidence of his whereabouts.

On July 29, 2013, Mr Hoagland was reported missing by his wife Lori when he failed to show up at Kennedy Airport in New York City to pick her up following her trip overseas.

Mr Hoagland had last been seen at his Glen Road home at about noon on July 28, 2013.

He was reported as a missing person to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System database on August 7, 2013. His listing can be found at www.findthemissing.org/en/cases/21356/7.

Police have said that media reports of Mr Hoagland’s disappearance resulted in tips that produced several investigatory leads in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

People with any information on the whereabouts of Mr Hoagland are asked to call the Newtown police at 203-426-5841.