Peter Beard’s ‘Missing’ Case Turned Over to Detectives
Following a three-day search for missing photographer Peter Beard, the case is being turned over to detectives, according to a spokesman for the East Hampton Police Department.
The 82-year-old Beard, who suffers from dementia, was reported missing Tuesday late in the afternoon, after leaving his Montauk, N.Y., home. His daughter Zara posted on Instagram Friday that local authorities had exhausted all of their resources following a three-day search.
Acknowledging the pandemic and the need to stay at home for the good of everyone, she encouraged healthy and able-bodied people to join the search for her father in a “socially responsible way.”
Photographer, socialite, conservationist, adventurer and reveler — all of the above apply to Beard. He was just a 20-year-old WASP-y Yale University undergrad when, armed with Isak Dinesen’s “Out of Africa,” he arrived in Nairobi for the first time, bought a fourth-hand Land Rover, set out to track wild game and lived on passion fruit and roasted flanks of freshly slaughtered zebra. That was the first trip of what would be many of his personal expeditions and residencies in Africa that led to numerous books of wildlife photography.
In a 1978 interview with WWD, Beard said, “I would like to say I am