The latter left no one with any idea of where to look. One can only hope the Broaches find closure. There are others. Alaskas 586,000 square miles afford countless ways to get lost, whether by fate or design. We never found his firearms, she reminded me on several occasions. But then the not-knowing returns, and it keeps him awake at night. Consider LeMaitre and Griffis the bookends of disappearance in Alaska. They told him to go to the top of the mountain, make the turn and follow them down. When someone goes missing in Alaska, search areas can be as large as entire states in the Lower 48, and considerably more treacherous. Dolly and Heidi contacted Leon shortly after getting the news. They thought he looked fine. More than two years passed before 32-year-old Clifford Greist came home for the last time to be buried. What finally tipped the scales for the investigators seems to have been the skeletons right leg, which showed the markings of an old injury. 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. In August of that year, Jane and Leroy stopped by Richards trailer. Late that night, she stared at the bag, beside her bed, and said, I never thought youd be in my bedroom again. Dolly laughed as she told the story. He spoke slowly, his voice like gravel. Even people who know the terrain and conditions can become disoriented. The bones were close to being ash, Lieutenant Kat Shuey later recalled. They were startled to find the trailer completely cleaned out. For the sake of his family, Rick had tried many times to quit partying, only to be drawn back in. Heidi and Dolly also couldnt accept that he might have gotten lost and succumbed to the elements. Alaska Offers Countless Ways to Vanish - Los Angeles Times The anthropologists found them consistent with the markings on the skeleton. Eric Miller wrestles with opposing theories about his brothers disappearance. Jenna miller missing in alaska - eelks.janusz-andrzejczak.pl She said it would be 10 years before they found Rick. Id walked right past Richard Bennetts trailer when I retraced Ricks last steps, and Richard had probably been home. She called Tom and Heidi and told them to come to the house. 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. Most who disappear in the 49th state are eventually found. . How to reverse Diabetes Belly fat: The removal of Diabetes Crime log: Woman's date overstays welcome, refuses to leave, Crime log: Harassment complaints made by township residents, Explore newly opened 334-acre park in Saginaw with virtual tour, http://www.dps.state.ak.us/ast/cib/Missing.htm. He was home alone that day; his wife, Bette, was sick and being cared for by relatives in Washington State. Its one reason that Eric Miller will always wonder about his brothers fate. His battles with the church arent over, How Palm Springs ran out Black and Latino families to build a fantasy for rich, white people, U.N. envoy says Sudans warring sides agree to negotiate, Yellen says U.S. could hit debt ceiling as soon as June 1, U.S. says 20,000 Russians killed in Ukraine war since December, Speaker Kevin McCarthy addresses Knesset amid fraught U.S.-Israel ties, First Republic: Cheap, interest-only jumbo mortgages to Silicon Valleys elite fueled the banks failure. 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. Wipert's body is still out there somewhere along with that of Griffis. Missing Persons Clearinghouse Manager malia.miller@alaska.gov 907-269-5038 E-mail Missing Persons Clearinghouse The list below is all reported missing persons in the State of Alaska and is updated daily at 6:00 AM. Atop one stack was Colonel Cockrells letter to the Bennetts. The list now contains the names of 89 missing since the 1970s, but it is far from complete. The Troopers announced that they identified the remains of Ronald Oquilluk using DNA from his sister. Heidi worked at a coffee shop; Dolly helped her husband, an electrician, run his business. Why hadnt the police told them about the bones? A retired contractor in his early 70s, Leon is a compact, sturdily built man, naturally reserved but with a lot on his mind. 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. It went on for three days. Troopers search for missing Fairbanks woman. She died last April. Not a shred of clothing. Red means a rough ice road. See Photos. 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. Water conditions are colder here and body gases dont develop at the same speed as in the Lower 48, so bodies tend to sink.. But still.no sign of a bear attack no blood, shredded clothes, shoe(s), race bib. Their only hope of crossing the 300-yard wide river was walking upstream 25 miles to the Donjek Glacier, hoping it was the source of the river, and they could walk across it without crampons or ice axes, which they had left behind,'' Brendan Leonard wrote in an Adventure Journal tribute to Washburn after his death. 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. But experienced ones learn to stay put and equip themselves with survival gear.. Heidi and Rick had two children together, and he had also been raising her eldest, a daughter from a previous relationship, as his own. Less than six years after Griffis went missing, 66-year-old Michael LeMaitre of Anchorage left the coastal community of Seward along with hundred of other runners competing in the annual Mount Marathon race. Id covered many stories of loss, but Dolly and Heidis seemed especially cruel because it had no foreseeable end. His voice as gravelly as ever, he told me he was frustrated. In private, though, she could think of nothing else: Could it be Rick? Alaska State Troopers were notified. When he allows himself to follow this train of thoughtthat maybe Richard is roughing it in the wild, or hiding out in some tiny native village far off the beaten trackhe feels a tinge of comfort. 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. 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. In the middle of telling me about one of their searches for Ricks body, she lost her train of thought and fell silent, then shook her head, as if trying to dispel some unpleasant notion. There are places out there with enough space for a man to remake himself without anyone bothering him. That same morning, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, Lieutenant Kat Shuey read an almost identical letter to a man named Leon Bennett. "People are swept away in the river and their bodies are never found, so it can't be ruled out," said trooper Mike Brandenburger. Les Moonves / Rachel Abrams / 20th Century Fox. The mudflats can be like quicksand; ice and snow can erase a persons last traces. The search was expanded. Bette was still healthy enough to make the 20-minute hike from the highway to a picturesque clearing between two large birch trees. In 2005, Richard was 39 and living alone in a trailer on the outskirts of Sterling, a short walk from the Kenai River and half a mile from the spot where Rick Hillss red Dodge truck had been found the previous year. But that is unlikely given how few people venture into the White River country. it is dedicated to the idea that if everyone is thinking alike, someone is not thinking. I didnt know what to do, Leon Bennett told me, recalling the days and weeks after Lieutenant Shuey showed up at his house. "One man didn't want to be found," Hughes said. The partial jawbone in. She enlisted the help of other volunteers. For Leon, Bette, and Richards two sisters, the ceremony marked the end of a nightmarish year. If he succumbed to hypothermia, of course, that wouldnt help the situation. He was the love of her life and she never moved on!! His body is believed to be entombed in a glacial crevasse in a remote corner of the 49th state that once came close to claiming one of the most storied mountaineers in Alaska history. Human remains found in 1996 in Central, an Interior community of under 100 northeast of Fairbanks, were put into storage. The next day, a small group hiked up a grassy hillside overlooking Lower Summit Lake, one of Richards favorite places to hunt. LeMaitre disappeared into the rain and cold and swirling clouds. My gut tells me that he fell into possibly a concealed crevasse in bushes up there that has yet to be discovered. 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. 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. They told him to make the turn and follow them down. Advocacy groups track missing children's cases, but no one keeps state-by-state statistics of all missing persons. Jane placed a wreath on the freshly turned soil. "He finally agreed to call his mother when I told him, 'Look, if you don't call her, I'll have to file a big report.'". Dolly seemed to rely on Heidi for steadiness, Heidi on Dolly for uplift. Confirmed by DNA. "We were go able to go back to that year and track him,'' Sewell said. A GoFundMe account has been opened for the family of Texan Brad Broach, who has joined the missing in Alaska. Families ask, How come you cant find our son? Ben Sewell of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We're 8 weeks out from OUT OF CHARACTER Day! That would explain why he had been dragging his foot. Top 8 creepiest unexplained disappearances - Sharing Alaska Charlie Chocknok, an elderly Yupik Eskimo last seen walking near the New Stuyahok village airport in July 2000. The goat trail gets to a point where it peters out & starts to get dicey. Some of Alaskas unsolved missing persons cases are detailed on the trooper clearinghouse Web site. And not even a hint has been found to indicate where 31-year-old Thomas Seibold may have gone. Another 145 miles south from there along the Alaska Highway, the only road connecting the 49th state to the rest of the country crosses the White River, so named for the color of the massive load of sediment it moves north from the heart of the Wrangell-St. Elias Park and Preserve past the northern edge of Canada's Kluane National Park and Reserve on the way to the Yukon River. Griffis remaining missing. Miller is among 3,780 people reported missing in Alaska this year and one of the 219 who remain missing, according to the Missing Persons Clearinghouse maintained by Alaska state troopers. The Guard detected no warm bodies on the mountain. There are a number of theories about what causes the disappearances, ranging from local . At that point, one would think hed realize Something is wrong here. and then turn around and head back to the area where he came up. 2023 Anchorage Daily News. She went back to his file. Then hed wandered onto an abandoned airstrip, and there his footprints ended. He knows what big, empty country looks like. 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. Sewell grew up in the territory. The samples could provide a DNA link to the missing. How come you cant find my husband?, Shuey told me. 22,817 1,035. He couldnt just drop everything and go off to the Kenai. Like McCandless, Griffis, too, wrestled with some personal demons. I was working on a story about the phenomenon in Alaska of ordinary people disappearing while doing ordinary things. All of the items were charred to varying degrees, like most everything else in the path of the Funny River Fire, which burned nearly 200,000 acres in the western lowlands of the Kenai Peninsula, a remote corner of this remote part of the world, a place one local described as the middle of the middle of nowhere.. Whats left now is the feeling that well never see him again.. Oquilluk, 38-years-old at the time of his disappearance, went missing from a Butte assisted living facility in 1987. I still couldnt believe he would take his own life. In the center console was $292. His patched together boat was found on a beach at Cape Douglas. They say they are, but Im almost sure theyre not, he said. Under a blazing sun, Leon said a short prayer and bid farewell to his son. Even most of those in the steadily shrinking pool of people who remember Uemura have pretty much given up hope that any sign of him will ever be found. Robert Hunter, the lead investigator on the case, received the anthropologists findings in March 2006 and discussed them with a superior. There werent many people with whom he could share the burden: Jane and Leroy and, it turned out, Dolly, Tom, and Heidi. In mid-May, the Kufels noticed he was burning a lot of stuff in a large metal barrel. How about the guy from Anchorage married man with 2kids I believe? Everyone glanced at it. They never saw anything. Richard wouldnt do that. The date was July 4, 2012. She understands why they ask. "Information is so hard to track, especially for missing adults," said Kym Pasqualini, director of the Phoenix-based center. He did auto-body repair, but so did a lot of other people on the Kenai. Tucked among the documents was the notification letter that the Bennetts had been waiting for in the months after theyd found the skeleton. "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.". They told us there was no one else missing in the area, Leon said. Sewell, when tracked down, confessed he didn't remember a whole lot. He has not been seen since. 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. They lived less than a mile away and hadnt heard from him for a while. We also know, the way this turned out It could have been the other way around.. "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.". Dolly told Leon, Jane, and Leroy that they had chosen a beautiful spot at Lower Summit Lake. They called the medical examiners office several times, asking when the remains could be released. They tried to block those thoughts, but they never went away completely.. There have been random searches for Michael almost ever since by people who come to the mountain with their own guesses as to where he might have gone. The case documents I read show that the State Troopers indeed did not consider that the bones found near Richard Bennetts trailer could have been anyone elses. Richards belongings had been moved into a shed. 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. 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. Eric Miller knows his brother went into the Chugach National Forest and disappeared. His ramblings ended when he journeyed north to test his invention, a wilderness "survival cocoon,'' never to be heard from again. . Sewell is now a mountie in northern Manitoba, but in 2007 he was the official Canadian government presence in Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory, a wide spot along the Alaska Highway just across the U.S. border in Canada, northeast of the Wrangell Mountains. A man planning to kill himself wouldnt have done that. Jenna Yoo Hwa Miller was born September 19, 1984 in Inchon, South Korea where she was given the name Yoo Hwa 'Gentle Bright Shine' before traveling to Alaska . A few hundred more patrol towns and villages, mere flecks in the landscape. Thirty-six-year-old Joseph Balderas from Nome faded away into the hills along the Nome-Council Highway while hiking in July. The boy is grinning from ear to ear. He spent a lot of time in these woods, Dolly said. The State Troopers urge anyone with a missing family member to contact the Missing Persons Clearinghouse at 907-269-5038 or email Malia Miller at malia.miller@alaska.gov. They looked for another month and found nothing. He was lightly dressed and moving slowly, but they judged him to be doing fine. Griffis was an inventor always on the move across the country. You provide yourself food and shelter, or you die. It is home to a footrace the Seward Mount Marathon that rivals the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race as the best known sporting event in the 49th state. A couple horses were missing. 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. But you cant ignore that theres a possibility. The Alaskan bush would suit his sons temperament and skills. Jenna Miller. 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. After the police stopped searching, Dolly and Heidi kept the case alive. A high-school friend of Richards, Harold Hap Pierce, dug a hole and buried the urn. At left is LeMaitre's driver's license photo. From the air, it was easy to see why Alaska attracts certain kinds of peoplenot just loners and misfits but explorers and adventurers as well, anyone drawn to wild, wide-open spaces. And searches that just sort of faded away with searchers unable to find anything. Investigators sent a bone sample along with a swab of Bette Bennetts saliva to a Texas lab for DNA analysis, to confirm that the remains were indeed Richards. Troopers identify remains of missing person after 32 years The clearinghouse is a repository of data submitted by law enforcement agencies throughout the state. No piece of headband. When everyone was settled around the dining-room table, the captain started reading. They werent quite to the point where if you touched them they would disintegrate, but close., The remains were spread across an area about 60 yards in diameter, presumably the work of scavenging animals. See Photos. Lieutenant Kat Shuey says it with the practiced detachment of a 28-year police veteran. The hike of roughly 30 miles he planned from a cabin where he was staying along the upper Ambler River to the village of Kobuk, where he planned to catch an airplane flight back to join his wife in Wisconsin, should not have been a problem. September 19, 1984 - May 17, 2015. She, Heidi, and other family members hiked to the spot above Lower Summit Lake, held hands, and tearfully recited the Lords Prayer before digging the urn out of the ground eight years after the Bennetts had put it in. Two years after he disappeared, hikers stumbled on human remains about 12 miles from Schoch's old campsite. But the lab warned that the test could take up to 18 months, and the Bennetts wanted to bury their son. Millers family members told troopers she has not been in contact with her family since Saturday. Now she was on oxygen and struggling to breathe. Dolly and Tom spend winters in Phoenix, just 200 miles from Lake Havasu City, and the families decided to meet. Winds light and variable.. Showers early, then partly cloudy overnight. Troopers say Chocknok, 84 at the time, had talked about visiting Dillingham 43 air miles to the south, but didn't take a flight. If you wouldve told me suicide, I would have said you were full of crap, Jane said. Disappearance on Mount Marathon On July 4, 2012, runners gathered in Seward, Alaska, for a three-mile trail race up the mountain that looms 3,000 feet over Resurrection Bay. Jim Miller, 39, left his Anchorage home Sept. 22 in the midst of personal problems, including pending heart surgery. First thing I noticed, it had Levis on. He left some of his gear at a lodge near the White River. The late Bradford Washburn -- the famed director of the Museum of Science in Boston who died at the ripe, old age of 96 at his home in Lexington, Mass. All he could do from Arizona was check the news from Alaska every day for updates on the Funny River bones. 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. Hed disappeared on a ski outing in November. or. I swear now and then. I want you to know that we know how youre feeling, Dolly said. Schoch had a history of high blood pressure and diabetes. Not a lot of people could do it. Malia Miller. ", Missing Persons Clearinghouse: http://www.dps.state.ak.us/ast/cib/Missing.htm, Newsletters: Get local news delivered directly to you, Chargers, Chemics will meet on Wednesday at Midland High, A pair of aces: BCW's Kochany, Lacourse have been lights out. It was the Alaska State Troopers that failed, she told me. It was about 8 p.m. local time on July 4 when Seward, Alaska's Fire Department received word that 66-year-old Michael LeMaitre of Anchorage, was missing. Kysar's body was the only one eventually found. The official version of events, according to a still active missing person's bulletin from the Alaska State Troopers is that Griffis went into the wild "to test out a survival 'cocoon' that he had invented. "She didn't even know where the White River was,'' Sewell said. Vast wilderness is what attracted Griffis to Alaska in the same way it did McCandless before him. 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.