RANDOLPH (AP) – State police say the search for a 55-year-old man whose best friend committed suicide this week has been suspended until spring.

Investigators had been looking for Lawrence “Bicycle Larry” Farrell for more than a month, but the search intensified after Norris Perry took his own life Sunday.

Before his death from an overdose of pills and alcohol, Perry left a phone message with a relative telling her she could find Farrell’s body in a brook behind Perry’s ramshackle trailer home.

Police also received reports from neighbors about a loud argument between Farrell and Perry early last month.

Investigators have labeled the disappearance suspicious and detectives believe Farrell is dead, but police have not characterized the case as a homicide, said Col. Craig Poulin, chief of the state police.

While investigators are still looking into Farrell’s disappearance, state police Sgt. James Urquhart said they won’t return to Perry’s property until the weather improves in late April.

“Norris committed suicide before we were able to get the whole story,” Urquhart said.

Detectives still are looking for Farrell’s bicycle, but are not sure what type he was riding before he vanished.

There were reports that he was last seen on a red Huffy or a gray mountain bike.

Farrell, who often switched bicycles, never picked up his November Social Security check and was reported missing by a social worker.

Even as the official search was suspended, Farrell’s nephew began looking on his own in the area where police still think his body will be found.

“I was just going to go walk the nature trail,” said Scott Ware, 32, of Gardiner. “It goes up to the gully, right down the road where Norris lived.”

Both of Farrell’s parents died this year, Ware said, and the family wants closure.

“We pretty much known that Larry’s dead,” he said. “That’s a given.”

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