"One man didn't want to be found," Hughes said. An experienced wilderness traveler, the 31-year-old man left a cabin on the Ambler River in Northwest Alaska in November 2012 to hike 30 miles across the Brooks Range Mountains to meet a plane in the tiny village of Kobuk for a flight home to his young wife in Wisconsin. Alaskas 586,000 square miles afford countless ways to get lost, whether by fate or design. You dont want to dwell on it. Dolly was the talker, the instigator who moved things along. I still couldnt believe he would take his own life. "Richard disconnected from us after his struggle with cancer,'' she said. We're 8 weeks out from OUT OF CHARACTER Day! I, along with many others, would like to see this mystery solved one day.". It was a lucky discovery that brought closure for the family. Among a hodgepodge of field reports, lab results, correspondence, handwritten notes, and transcribed witness accounts dating back to 2004 was a two-page letter from the director of the Alaska State Troopers, Colonel James Cockrell, dated August 28, 2014. He was lightly dressed and moving slowly, but they judged him to be doing fine. Others, like Griffis, just vanished. Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com. Griffis remaining missing. They never found any sign of Wipert or the animals. Bush pilot Harley McMahan dropped Harper off near 7,000 feet on the. Bette had been so distraught when the skeleton was discovered in 2005, and so relievedmore than anyone else in the familywhen theyd laid the remains to rest on the mountainside. The two women plastered the communities along the Sterling Highway with missing-person posters. Shes the one who uncovered them, and felt honor-bound to deliver the news face-to-face. Hes probably gone. Good Samaritan Gerald DeBerry disappeared in the foothills of the White Mountains while helping for a search for a missing woman in the fall of 2011. On June 23, 2006, the family held a memorial in Anchorage. The latter left no one with any idea of where to look. In July of 2009, the search was called off. She even consulted psychics. All he could do from Arizona was check the news from Alaska every day for updates on the Funny River bones. thanks, Michele. But he would never not come home, Heidi said. He has not been seen since. We cant wait that long.. They knew Rick was likely dead, but without his body, they couldnt rule out the possibility that he was somehow still alive, perhaps injured or in pain, or even held against his will. Find your friends on Facebook. Les Moonves / Rachel Abrams / 20th Century Fox. Hed fished and hunted since he was a child. Nothing was certain, however. Glenn Youngkin rules out presidential campaign while in California, 7 bodies found during search for missing Oklahoma teens, US to lift most federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates next week, Multiple fatalities on Illinois highway during a blinding windstorm. "There are eight people missing'' in the Seward area since 1993, she added, and trooper files hold an unknown number of cases of people who disappeared before that date. Tucked among the documents was the notification letter that the Bennetts had been waiting for in the months after theyd found the skeleton. More than 53,000 people have been reported missing in the state since the clearinghouse was established in 1988. He lives today on the edge of the park in eastern Alaska. Troopers guessed that the bones were those of an adult male, based on the size and style of the boot and the fact that in these circumstances, the deceased is usually a man. Kysar's body was the only one eventually found. The image of two women studying a map, a single light overhead, spoke to me of an inner toughness rising to the occasion. Heidi and Rick had two children together, and he had also been raising her eldest, a daughter from a previous relationship, as his own. When someone goes missing in Alaska, search areas can be as large as entire states in the Lower 48, and considerably more treacherous. It appeared, they said, that he sat down on a rock, possibly to rest, and died from a heart attack or some other natural cause. But when he gets to Race Point rock in thick clouds and no one is there, and he sees a defined trail going UP and continuing west, he says to himself: 'I'm not at the top yet, I've got to keep going up.'". Heidi was the thoughtful one, more apt to listen and absorb. My gut tells me that he fell into possibly a concealed crevasse in bushes up there that has yet to be discovered. He faded into the Brooks Range of northern Alaska just about the time DeBerry's four-wheeler was discovered along the White Mountains in the Interior. Richard Bennetts family described him as a boy of few words who grew into a man of even fewer words. They never saw anything. He never showed up there, and there was never much more than a cursory search for him. Dolly and Heidi ruled out suicide: Rick had never shown any inclination, and they didnt believe he would abandon the children, who were 5, 9, and 13 at the time. She enlisted the help of other volunteers. She isnt the one who made the errors. Or call home, at least, Dolly added. A few blackened molars clung to the upper jaw. The samples could provide a DNA link to the missing. The Earth opened up and swallowed him? you might recall that while looking for him they did find another body. If theres anything we can do, or if you just want to talk, call us, Dolly said. Chance of rain 40%. He was just the messenger. A search was soon underway. Some of Alaska's unsolved missing persons cases are detailed on the trooper clearinghouse Web site, including that of Charlie Chocknok, an elderly Yupik Eskimo last seen walking near the New Stuyahok village airport in July 2000. He was frustrated that his grief felt so raw, as if Richard had disappeared just yesterday. In early 2015, I traveled to Lake Havasu City to meet the other family that had gotten a knock on its door the previous August. The next day, a small group hiked up a grassy hillside overlooking Lower Summit Lake, one of Richards favorite places to hunt. "The cocoon was (invented) in Boca, but the hope for large-scale manufacturing and marketing directed him to the Northwest. And searches that just sort of faded away with searchers unable to find anything. (2020) History Channel Although it's not as famous as the Bermuda Triangle, the Alaska Triangle has more unsolved m. His car was found about three weeks later in the parking lot of Resurrection Pass Trail, a popular hiking route in the national forest south of Anchorage. The Alaska State Troopers announced that they were able to positively identify a body that had been classified as missing for 32 years with the use of DNA evidence. Theyve either chosen to start anew in one of Alaskas remote villages or theyve neglected to contact relatives living outside. She even got a helicopter to fly over the area that could locate a person by their thermal body heat. After almost four hours, Jane entered a meadow and peered into a small, shaded clearing. A man planning to kill himself wouldnt have done that. He adored them; he had nicknames for each of them and took them fishing every chance he got. Dolly was 53, petite and gregarious, with short black hair, glasses, and an angular face. He had let Bette continue thinking that Richard had been laid to rest. Advocacy groups track missing children's cases, but no one keeps state-by-state statistics of all missing persons. At left is LeMaitre's driver's license photo. Curious to know what Macdonald meant by typical, I flew south to the Kenai, a peninsula shaped like the craggy profile of a T. rexs head, extending 150 miles southwest into the Gulf of Alaska. Alaska brims with stories of people who vanish and are given up for dead. "(And) he never told anyone where he was going.''. Searches in this area are always difficult because of the huge glaciers, the jagged mountains, the sheer remoteness, and the limited search-and- rescue assets. Rick may have re-injured his leg when his Dodge plowed into the snowbank. Eric Miller knows his brother went into the Chugach National Forest and disappeared. I want you to know he was well taken care of, Jane said. Mount Marathon towers over the community of Seward at the head of Resurrection Bay about 125 miles south of Anchorage. She became confused easily. Both knew they were about to deliver upheaval to an unsuspecting family. Seventy-one-year-old Jerry Warner from Missouri was missing for more than a year before his body was found along Willow Creek just upstream from the busy George Parks Highway. There were, to borrow one troopers phrase, a great number of equally plausible alternative inferences.. The pilot returned to find Schoch's camp, his medicine and other gear, but no sign of the retired Greyhound bus driver. As Novakovich crossed the finish line, LeMaitre, a fitness buff and grandfather of two, was still making his way up the mountain. He would never be seen again. Dolly introduced Heidi as my daughter, and I would come to know the two women as a unit. . If you wouldve told me suicide, I would have said you were full of crap, Jane said. There are cases like this all over the state. The clearinghouse is a repository of data submitted by law enforcement agencies throughout the state. Finding his body would be a relief at this point, he said. Firefighters battling a huge blaze on Alaskas Kenai Peninsula first spotted a boot in the dirt. Griffis grew up there, dreaming of the far north. Except for a few unconfirmed sightings, searchers had no leads. Any number of climbers are missing from the missing list, though they have never officially been declared dead. Like McCandless, Griffis, too, wrestled with some personal demons. Kluane/Wrangell-St. Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek World Heritage Site, Matt Novakovich won the 3.5-mile race in less than 45 minutes, Russell Glacier, a favorite spot for amateur photographers like Schoch, Wrangell-St. Elias accessible enough to attract people, still there are those who go lost never to be found, pioneer the popular West Buttress route to the summit of Mount McKinley, "Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival. Sprawling east from Alaska's Richardson Highway across big river valleys, brushy hillsides and the desolate Nutzotin Mountains all the way to the U.S. border with Canada, the district covers 5 million acres, an area almost twice the size of Yellowstone National Park. Wipert's body is still out there somewhere along with that of Griffis. Noting that Race Point, commonly called the "top" of Mount Marathon, is 2 miles east and 1,800 feet lower than the actual summit, Alaska adventurer Tim Kelley has theorized that misinformation might have contributed to Michael's death. dont know how i missed that. He was 42 when he disappeared. Alaska encompasses 39 mountain ranges, 12,000 rivers, 100,000 glaciers, and 3 million lakes. On February 24, 2004, he had been home from an oil-rig job for just a few days when he left Soldotna in his red Dodge truck to pick up a paycheck in Anchorage, about 150 miles away. They found what was left of him in the spring of 2014. But probably the best known missing person case in wild Alaska involves 66-year-old Michael LeMaitre of Anchorage who went up Mount Marathon on July 4, 2012 and never came down. In going through police reports, Dolly and Heidi counted 17 different troopers whod had a hand in their sons case over the years. But we may never get to know what happened to him.. By the end of my visit, I came to believe that whatever had happened to Rick couldnt have involved more prolonged suffering than what Dolly and Heidi were going through. The e-mail appeared in my inbox in September 2014. The national average is one out of 343 people, according to the FBI. Places where people fish and hunt to eat. Of those, three were also involved in the Richard Bennett case. The colors are marked on poles lining trails between villages commonly used by residents who travel around the region. FAIRBANKS Alaska State Troopers are trying to find the location of a Fairbanks woman whose pickup truck was found abandoned along the Parks Highway near Healy on Sunday. Low around 30F. He was clean-shaven with light-brown hair and glasses. The letter was dated November 5, 2007, some 16 months after the Bennett family had buried the remains of a man theyd believed was their son. He disappeared into the northern edge of the Wrangell park. In 2004, a man named Rick Hills disappeared on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. Then in June, the Kufels noticed what they described as a tremendous amount of bird activity in the woods across the street from Richards trailer. Some on the list are thought to be victims of foul play. They didn't worry about him for months. Jenna Miller. A few hundred more patrol towns and villages, mere flecks in the landscape. Of those, 1,027 are still listed as missing. Whats left now is the feeling that well never see him again.. Winds light and variable. SO bizarre. Leon isnt the only one whos had that idea. It found no sign of him and was eventually called off. Volunteers were flown in to comb the area on foot. But still.no sign of a bear attack no blood, shredded clothes, shoe(s), race bib. He never made it. Amazingly enough, a few are found eventually. Under a blazing sun, Leon said a short prayer and bid farewell to his son. Richards closest neighbors, Frank and Nancy Kufel, retirees who lived down the road, appeared to be the last people whod had contact with him. Thats how people in these parts dispose of garbage, but this seemed far more than the usual amount. Race officials saw him an estimated 200 feet below Race Point. Lieutenant Kat Shuey says it with the practiced detachment of a 28-year police veteran. Last year the Justice Department awarded a two-year, $1.75 million grant to the Nation's Missing Children Organization and Center for Missing Adults, a clearinghouse that works with authorities. Dollys husband, Tom, helped but mostly kept busy with work. Blue signifies thin ice or open water, and green a nearby shelter. No sign of the well-known mountaineers has ever been found. People are swept away in the river and their bodies are never found, so it cant be ruled out, Trooper Mike Brandenburger said. Soon after, he was cleared as a suspect. Out there, it can go from clear one hour to zero visibility the next, said Peter Atchak, Search and Rescue leader. The results came back in two parts. In private, though, she could think of nothing else: Could it be Rick? They learned that no one had seen Richard in several months and that just before Memorial Day weekend, hed withdrawn his last $10 from an ATM in Soldotna. Get the day's top news with our Today's Headlines newsletter, sent every weekday morning. FAIRBANKS Alaska State Troopers are trying to find the location of a Fairbanks woman whose pickup truck was found abandoned along the Parks Highway near Healy on Sunday. In Anchorage, the statewide coordinator of search-and-rescue at the time, Lieutenant Craig Macdonald, had told me about some recent cases, including that of Rick Hills. She listened and mostly kept silent. . The headline read, Troopers Identify Human Remains Found During Last Years Funny River Wildfire. The bones belonged to a Soldotna resident, James Allen Beaver, whod been missing since 2011. @RedBalloonBooks. Not much has changed there since 1907 when Robert Service, the bard of the north, wrote these words in a poem titled "The Spell of the Yukon": There's a land where the mountains are nameless. Now shes the deputy commander of the Alaska Bureau of Investigation, a special unit within the Alaska State Troopers that handles, among other things, missing persons. They felt bound to him by circumstance, and by their shared experience of a grief few others could understand. For the sake of his family, Rick had tried many times to quit partying, only to be drawn back in. Could ancient stories of the Thunderbird be true? "Left behind were his tent, sleeping bag, cook stove, food -- and medicine he had been taking daily for diabetes, high blood pressure and a thyroid conditionHis wife, Carol, said she doesn't expect to see her husband of 44 years again.". The list now contains the names of 89 missing since the 1970s, but it is far from complete. Jane felt her heart pound. He looked at the skeleton and thought it seemed about the right size. A hasty search found nothing. He let Heidis question hang in the air. September 19, 1984 - May 17, 2015. They found nothing. Everyone I met there seemed to know of people still missing or unfound. Dolly Hills herself lost a 13-year-old brother, William, in 1962. See Photos. The Race Point timers, whod been high on the mountain in inclement weather for more than three hours, were headed down to warm up when they passed LeMaitre. "Information is so hard to track, especially for missing adults," said Kym Pasqualini, director of the Phoenix-based center. They covered all the likely exits he should/could/would have taken within hours of his disappearance. Clearly something catastrophic happened to him. Searches that ended with bodies found. The truck was registered to Luann Miller, 51, of Fairbanks. He would still be laboring toward the top almost three hours after the race began. They tracked him to where he'd been dropped off by the bus along the Alaska Highway. This past July, I received an e-mail from Leon Bennett. Included are black flags, which mark locations where unidentified human remains have been found. She was at home when I visited, only partially lucid, so I spent two days with Leon at the house of his sister, Jane Potter, who lives down the street. At the top of the list were Rick Hills and Richard Bennett, whose last known locations were close together and only about three miles from the Funny River site. "He left bacon in the sink thawing out," Striker Overly, a hunting guide from Tok, told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. High 51F. His car was found about three weeks later in the parking lot of Resurrection Pass Trail, a popular hiking route in the Chugach National Forest south of Anchorage. They even wore the same kind of clothes, and both had old fractures in their right legRichard from his motorcycle accident, and Rick from playing hockey. Wrangell-St. Elias and Kluane meet at the U.S.-Canada border, then link with Glacier Bay National Park farther south and a Yukon Territory park to the east to form the largest wilderness preserve in North America. And not even a hint has been found to indicate where 31-year-old Thomas Seibold may have gone. More than 3,000 people had been reported missing the previous year in Alaska, a state with a population smaller than San Franciscos. But it didn't. "It's very difficult to identify who in our population goes missing because they choose to be, because of diminished mental capacity or foul play.". Sixty-year-old John Wipert was the caretaker for the Ptarmigan Lake Lodge on the northern edge of the park when he disappeared in June of 2009. If youre not prepared for the weather or the harshness of the environment, a twisted ankle can put you into an emergency situation.. View phone numbers, addresses, public records, background check reports and possible arrest records for Jenna Dawn Miller in Anchorage . The June before Griffis faded away into the wilderness, Sue Nott, 36, and Karen McNeill, 37, went missing on 17,400-foot Mount Foraker in the Alaska Range. They drop a long pole with a big hook in the water, and the boat goes back and forth. He remains missing. In the two weeks immediately after his disappearance, a small army of people scoured the rain-forest-covered mountainsides around the resort of community of Girdwood, but they found nothing. Wipert appeared to have taken a couple of horses with him when he left. But then the not-knowing returns, and it keeps him awake at night. July 9, 2021 Searchers released these photos of Michael LeMaitre after he went missing in the 2012 Mount Marathon Race. Leon sat with his elbows propped on a small table, his hands clasped as if in prayer. There are lives that are erring and nameless. She went back to his file. Investigators had traced the Samsung phone to Beaver, but theyd decided to wait this time for DNA confirmation before releasing the bones to his family. If he succumbed to hypothermia, of course, that wouldnt help the situation. Even then, it was not known who they belonged to since they didnt match anyone in the Troopers database. Dolly seemed to rely on Heidi for steadiness, Heidi on Dolly for uplift. But you cant ignore that theres a possibility. The Alaskan bush would suit his sons temperament and skills. Two years after 68-year-old Paul Schoch from Brule, Wisconsin disappeared in 4,500-foot Skolai Pass in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, hikers discovered his remains about 12 miles from where park rangers had earlier found his campsite. These things sometimes take time in the wilderness of the north. Searchers scoured the known routes for horses for 35 miles west to the deserted mining camp of Chisana and 35 miles east to the tiny community of Beaver Creek in Yukon. I Google his name once or twice a year with the hopes that somebody has finally found him. No scrap of clothing. Seventy-one-year-old Jerry Warner from Missouri, told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner at the time, https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/human-remains-found-remote-island-sept-belong-missing-french-adventurer-francois/2014/11/06/. crevasses at Russell Glacier, a favorite spot for amateur photographers like Schoch,'' Beth Bragg wrote in the Daily News when the search ended. But they traveled in different circles, and no evidence exists to suggest they knew each other. The second concluded that the original DNA sample taken from the remains released to the Bennett family in 2006 was in fact that of Rick Hills. Captain Greenstreet paused without looking up from the letter. There was something about them that stayed with me, growing more vivid as the years passed and I suffered losses of my own. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. See Photos. Much of the park -- like much of wild Alaska -- is seldom, if ever, visited. Their stories are represented by color-coded flags dotted across an Alaska map in Hughes' office. Race officials told her to be patient, but to notify them if Michael hadn't shown by 8 p.m. By 9 p.m. the first of several searches were being organized. One, a British woman who lived in Anchorage, told Dolly that two men had been nearby as Rick was dying, that they had rifled through his coat for drugs and then left, and that Rick had frozen to death. Glacier-topped mountains spread across the eastern and southern parts of the peninsula; marshy lowlands cover much of the rest. Over the years, the poisons that might have killed him have changed, but the myth of the search for the meaning of life in the wilds of Alaska has endured, though life in the wilderness comes with some simple precepts. "Nothing panned out," Eric Miller said. For Leon, Bette, and Richards two sisters, the ceremony marked the end of a nightmarish year. The first year was particularly hard on Dolly; she essentially stopped eating, and by the time I met her shed dwindled to about 100 pounds. McCandless was a confused young man searching for himself. Id be pissed, he said, but I wouldnt be surprised.. More than 53,000 people have been reported missing in the state since the clearinghouse was established in 1988. There was no evidence of criminal activity at the scene of the truck, troopers said. When he returned, Erin Marie Gilbert had vanished. Jim Miller vanished as trees lost their leaves, creating ground cover thick enough to hide valuable clues from even the keenest eyes. We also know, the way this turned out It could have been the other way around.. Alaska authorities are also sending saliva samples from relatives of three missing fishermen involved in a boating accident in the area a few years ago. Missing in Alaska: With Ken Gerhard, Jax Menez Atwell, Tommy Joseph, Matthew Evan Paine. Some 80 percent of the Yukon's meager population of 33,900 huddles in Whitehorse, another 285 miles down the highway. But the lab warned that the test could take up to 18 months, and the Bennetts wanted to bury their son. There is speculation now that he went past Race Point, climbing toward the true summit of Mount Marathon far back in the Kenai Mountains and fell off a cliff somewhere. Then there are the people who are not really lost. "He contacted my sister regarding his expedition fall '06 It is surmised his cancer, which had been in remission, had returned and this walk in the woods and down river was to defy the odds. Dolly and Heidi contacted Leon shortly after getting the news. He couldnt just drop everything and go off to the Kenai. That same morning, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, Lieutenant Kat Shuey read an almost identical letter to a man named Leon Bennett. With the bones now identified, a new thought has taken root in the back of Leons mind: What if Richard is alive? One such recent find _ a human foot inside a shoe discovered in northwestern Alaska _ is being sent to the FBI's new National Missing Person DNA Database at the agency's Quantico, Va., academy. At the time, Luciana was the highest unclimbed summit in North America. His remains were found in September 2014. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/human-remains-found-remote-island-sept-belong-missing-french-adventurer-francois/2014/11/06/. After descending that mountain, the duo was forced to make a 140-mile hike to Burwash Landing, an outpost community on Kluane Lake in Canada, to survive. A jogger vanishes from the top of Mt. Schoch had a history of high blood pressure and diabetes. He felt the urge to touch it. A resilience equal to the worst thing that can happen. I hope youre sitting.. Also found at the site were three hunting knives, two quarters, two metal buttons, a zipper, and part of a Samsung mobile phone. See Photos. Jim Miller, the Anchorage outdoorsman, vanished as trees lost their leaves, creating a ground cover thick enough to hide valuable clues from even the keenest eyes, said Trooper Sgt. Sewell, when tracked down, confessed he didn't remember a whole lot. Some remote communities rely on trail markers to guide snowmobilers and other travelers during winter, when whiteout conditions can erase familiar landmarks. One man didnt want to be found, Hughes said. He had quietly hoped the man would turn out to be his son, even though troopers had ruled out that possibility the previous summer. Then, in 2013, the couples only daughter, Linda Evans, went searching for answers and, to her shock and amazement, found her mother living with a different family in the Yukon Territory. They turned out to be those of Guenot. On a shelf were the titles to two old pickups, which Richard had signed over to her. So yes, it was in the back of my mind that it could be Richard.. Not a bone. In the book "Into the Wild," author Jon Krakauer speculated the 24-year-old wanderer had fallen victim to mysterious wilderness poisons. Its easy to fall prey to the states unforgiving terrain and severe weather, according to those in the business of searching. The goat trail gets to a point where it peters out & starts to get dicey. "She didn't even know where the White River was,'' Sewell said. The body of Nephi Soper, who went missing in the Chugach Mountains above Anchorage in February, was found on an iceberg in Taniana Lake in June. i have a friend from long ago still missing. "We were go able to go back to that year and track him,'' Sewell said. Their stories are represented by color-coded flags dotted across an Alaska map in Hughes office. Two years after he disappeared, hikers stumbled on human remains about 12 miles from Schoch's old campsite. Vast wilderness is what attracted Griffis to Alaska in the same way it did McCandless before him. Author Dave Roberts would later write one of the north's greatest mountaineering tales with the 2007 publication of the book "Escape from Lucania: An Epic Story of Survival.''. The rest of Alaska is policed by fewer than 400 troopers. Both the medical examiner and the State Troopers were reluctant to declare the remains Richard Bennetts without DNA confirmation. People on foot scoured all likely routes down the east side of Mount Marathon. What finally tipped the scales for the investigators seems to have been the skeletons right leg, which showed the markings of an old injury. you can contact the editor directly at craigmedred@gmail.com.