Police Drop Snowdon Investigation : Disappearance: The case of the missing Huntington Beach executive found living in Las Vegas last week is ‘no longer a police matter,’ officer says.

Police said Tuesday they have ended their investigation in the case of a Huntington Beach aerospace executive who was found last week in Las Vegas after mysteriously disappearing for almost four months.

“Basically, it’s no longer a police matter,” said Larry Montgomery, the Irvine Police Department investigator who followed hundreds of leads trying to locate Rowland (Rod) Snowdon, 48.

Snowdon apparently left his wife, two adult sons and job as a business director with Parker-Hannifin Corp. in Irvine of his own will Sept. 1, said Montgomery, based on discussions with Snowdon and his family.

Irvine police began investigating after Snowdon made a cash deposit at a bank near John Wayne Airport and then disappeared.

Snowdon was depressed over “work problems” and decided to leave the area, according to Montgomery. Snowdon did not elaborate, Montgomery said. Robert Rau, Snowdon’s boss and president of Parker-Hannifin, was vacationing and could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

“From what I gathered (the disappearance) was something not planned,” the police investigator said. “It was like, ‘I’ve had enough and I’m leaving,’ ” Montgomery said.

Snowdon was at home Tuesday, said his wife, Cheryl, who said he did not want to be interviewed.

She, along with sons Michael and Rick, had launched a search from Orange County to the Mexican border for Snowdon. Aided by friends, the family members scoured thousands of miles of freeway in Orange County and posted at least 25,000 flyers in English and Spanish bearing Snowdon’s picture.

On the night of Dec. 21, police in Las Vegas making random license plate checks of vehicles in the parking lot of a cheap motel found Snowdon living there, police said.

He maintained a Spartan existence, living on about $10 a day, Montgomery said.

“He was living not like you or I would want to live. . . . He was spending just enough to live there and eat,” Montgomery said.

Snowdon used only cash, including about $800 he got by selling his collection of baseball cards, Montgomery said.

Snowdon left the motel only occasionally and did not plan to return to Orange County, the investigator said.

Investigators now say that a reported sighting in early October of Snowdon’s car in San Bernardino County was erroneous. At the time, police thought the late-night sighting, by a driver outside Victorville, was their first break in the Snowdon case. The driver reported seeing Snowdon’s 1989 Buick Park Avenue being towed by two men and a woman in a pickup truck.

“The sighting that we had, if you believe him, it didn’t appear to be the same car,” Montgomery said.