DALTON, Ga. — Searchers working near the Conasauga River still have not found Brett Andrew Thomason, last seen Thursday night paddling on the river by himself.

The case has been turned over to the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office by Whitfield County Emergency Services, and Sheriff Scott Chitwood on Monday: “We’ll continue searching until we’ve exhausted all of our resources.”

He said over the weekend that investigators have not ruled out the possibility of a hoax by the Marine Corps enlistee.

Meanwhile, family members on Monday rejected speculation that online MySpace messages from the missing 19-year-old have any bearing on his disappearance.

His sister, Natasha Thomason, 21, confirmed Mr. Thomason has several MySpace accounts. But she said depictions on two of the accounts, which could be construed as relevant to his disappearance on the river, are at least a couple of years old and irrelevant.

One MySpace page, with the username “Im Srry For Everything,” shows an arm extending into the air from beneath a water surface, and the hand making an obscene gesture.

Another page the sister said belongs to Mr. Thomason includes the messages: “Brett...Gone for a while..studying” and “There’s no such thing as goodbye.” It lists the teen’s mood as “crushed.” The listings state the teen has not logged into the first account since March 2006, and he’d not been to the second since early January.

Ms. Thomason said the family doesn’t believe her brother is hiding to avoid Marine boot camp, where he is scheduled to report in April.

“I’m more hopeful every day,” she said. “That may sound strange, but I think we’re going to find him.”

His family began to search about 10 p.m. Thursday when he did not come home from a short trip in an aluminum, flat-bottom boat. Two teen friends — Macie Hinman and Collin Parrish — said they were with him until 8:30 p.m. when he let them out on the bank and said he was continuing downstream, family members said.

Authorities said searchers found the boat pulled onto the river bank about a mile downstream from where his friends said they were put ashore, and about five miles upriver from Tilton Bridge.

Emergency Services Director Jeff Putnam said wet clothes were in a bag near the boat, a wooden oar was in a field nearby and footprints that may have been Mr. Thomason’s were in that same field.

Four days of searching on land and water and by air have found no answer. About a dozen agencies and hundreds of volunteers have searched, using helicopters, boats, dogs, divers, sonar, infrared radar and more.

The Department of Natural Resources will continue ther search on the river that’s 4 to 6 feet deep in the area. Ms. Thomason said they plan to drag the river today.

Sheriff Chitwood’s department took over the ground search from Emergency Services.

He said searchers are concentrating in the area where the boat was found. Tests are inconclusive thus far whether a dark spot found near a barbed-wire fence is blood.

Staff Photo by Kevin Cummings

Whitfield Emergency Services director Jeff Putnam talks to friends and family of missing teen Brett Thomason during search efforts over the weekend. The search will resume Tuesday.