The only suspect in the 2011 disappearance of an elderly woman from her North Whidbey home has died, leaving investigators with no leads in the case.

Betty Tews was 81 and medically fragile when she went missing sometime prior to June 21 of that year. She is presumed to be dead, but her body was never found.

Detectives with the Island County Sheriff’s Office long suspected that her son, Raymond Willey, was involved in her disappearance.

Willey was living with his mother on and off after her husband died. Tews had sought a protection order against him, claiming he pointed a gun at her head on one occasion. He was evasive when a deputy asked about his mother’s whereabouts and then suddenly moved to California.

Earlier this year, Detective Laura Price was notified by authorities in West Sacramento that Willey had died. A friend found him dead in his apartment on Jan. 6; he passed away from natural causes.

Even if Willey hadn’t died, detectives would have a difficult time ever charging him with anything related to his mother’s disappearance, Chief Criminal Deputy Rick Felici said. There’s no physical evidence and no body.

“I don’t have a clue where she is,” he said.

Tews’ relatives on the mainland reported her missing in June 2011 after they hadn’t heard from her in a couple of weeks. Tews had medical problems and needed daily medication.

Felici suspected foul play after he contacted Willey at the home. The man was evasive about his mother’s whereabouts and then refused to talk before suddenly moving to California.

Investigators searched Tews’ wooded property and the property of her neighbors, but found nothing. A dog team was brought in. Detectives obtained a warrant to search the house, her vehicles and analyzed her computer for clues; again, they didn’t find anything. They’ve monitored her bank account, but there was no activity.

Laura Trippi, Tews’ ex-daughter in law, tried to monitor the case from her home in South Carolina. She was married to Tews’ other son and they used to live with his mother, but Trippi left because of Betty Tews’ drinking.

“The whole family was pretty good at drinking,” she said. “It was a pretty dysfunctional family as far as I can remember.”

Tews was also very smart and successful. Trippi said she was in the Navy and then “wrote computer programs” in the civil service, which is where she met her third husband, Glenn Tews.

In 2008, the couple built a house next to Trippi’s home to be close to grandchildren. They planned to move there from Whidbey, but then Glenn was diagnosed with cancer and passed away. Raymond Willey moved out to Whidbey to live with his mother and help her out, but things didn’t go so well.

Trippi said she repeatedly tried to convince Tews to move to South Carolina, but the elderly woman just wouldn’t. Trippi said she felt that some people on Whidbey who knew Glenn and Betty had taken advantage of Betty financially after he died.

Court documents show that Tews filed two petitions for “vulnerable adult orders for protection” against Willey in the year before she disappeared.

In the first one, she wrote that she wanted Willey out of the house.

“I feel the respondent will act out in revenge and may harm me,” she wrote. “He will not leave my home when asked. He shows signs of paranoia — mixed with alcohol use and loaded weapons. I am fearful with him in my house.”

A judge granted a temporary order, but Tews later filed a motion for it to be terminated.

Tews filed another petition several months later. She wrote that Willey spent a day drinking, pointed a rifle at her head and told her to say goodbye. She claimed she tried to knock the gun out of his hands and bruised her arm.

Willey was also charged with assault for allegedly stabbing a man in the head.

According to the police report, Willey attacked the man in his car Feb. 18, 2011, in Oak Harbor, apparently because he was upset with Tews after getting off the phone with her.