Search intensifies for woman seen with `Cowboy'

KELSO, Wash. (AP) - Searchers have begun combing an area north of Castle Rock where a man found a credit card belonging to a woman last seen with "Cowboy" Michael Braae.

Braae, held on $3.5 million bail in Vale, is under investigation in the death or disappearance of several women in the Pacific Northwest.

Susan Ault of Rosburg, Wash., was last seen arguing with Braae on the night of June 25. He was driving her pickup truck July 20, the day he was stopped and arrested after jumping into the Snake River on the Idaho-Oregon border.

Search personnel used a helicopter and two dogs trained to find bodies Monday in a mile-long area between the Toutle River bridges on Interstate 5 and Toutle Park, hoping to find evidence of what happened to Ault, Cowlitz County sheriff's Deputy Dave Bodine said.

Braae, nicknamed "Cowboy" for his habit of wearing Western hats and boots to bars, is being investigated in the deaths, rapes or disappearances of seven women in Washington and Oregon.

Authorities say that besides Ault, Braae was the last person known to have seen three women:

· Lori Jones, 44, of Lacey, Wash., whose body was found under the bed in her apartment July 8.

· Velina Larson, 37, a homeless woman who disappeared from the Portland suburb of Gladstone, in September 1997.

· Deb VanLuven, 45, of Lacey, Wash., who disappeared in March 1997. She had been a regular at the Olympia bar where Jones was last seen with Braae. For a while, VanLuven and Braae shared a Lacey hotel room, where neighbors reported frequent screaming.