And searches that just sort of faded away with searchers unable to find anything. Of those, three were also involved in the Richard Bennett case. Troopers identify remains of missing person after 32 years, Public testifies on future of transgender student involvement with Alaska sports, Snowmelt seeping into basements, crawlspaces. There are cases like this all over the state. So it wasnt until crew members found a human skull that they stopped to consider that the pieces might go together. The image of two women studying a map, a single light overhead, spoke to me of an inner toughness rising to the occasion. Id never heard of the Funny River, much less the fire that had ravaged the Kenai. The skeleton was found about 300 yards from Richards trailer. The Alaska missing person's bulletin refers questions on Griffis's "Sept. 20, 2006" disappearance to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Beaver Creek. When a woman in Florida finally called mounties wondering if anyone had seen the then 47-year-old man, she had no idea of where to look for Griffis. Ricks tracks in the snowright foot dragging, as if hed injured his legled into the woods. Soldotna, a fishing town of about 4,000 people, sits along the Kenai River in the western lowlands. See Photos. Hikers in Denali National Park and Preserve earlier this year found the remains of 22-year-old Etienne Terrell from Atlanta who disappeared in July 2015. 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. Born in Skagway, on the Alaskan Panhandle, she eventually moved to British Columbia. He liked to get high on cocaine or pills and then go out drinking all night, and he ran with a crowd of men and women who had been in and out of jail. If you wouldve told me suicide, I would have said you were full of crap, Jane said. Dolly and Heidi contacted Leon shortly after getting the news. Richard was most comfortable in the wilderness. View phone numbers, addresses, public records, background check reports and possible arrest records for Jenna Dawn Miller in Anchorage . This past July, I received an e-mail from Leon Bennett. On the table were photographs and police reports, dog-eared and riddled with Postit Notes. A 27-year-old climber from Salt Lake City, he was attempting a solo ascent of 16,237-foot Mount Sanford when he disappeared. Had the men succumbed to that river, they would have joined the likes of Harper, or 28-year-old Peter Kysar, who tried to float out of the area via the White River only to drown, or Griffis, who started a hike up the White only to disappear. When someone goes missing in Alaska, search areas can be as large as entire states in the Lower 48, and considerably more treacherous. Theres Maryellen McMillin, who disappeared from her Fairbanks home with her green Subaru station wagon in November 1998. Wipert appeared to have taken a couple of horses with him when he left. The body found in 2005 and released to the Bennett family in 2006 was not Richard Bennett. After Captain Greenstreet delivered the news, Dolly said, it took another month to find the exact location of the urn. But what if he left it to find a different life? It wasnt Rick, I repeated. McCandless was a confused young man searching for himself. He'd spent years schooling himself in ancient ways of living off the land. You provide yourself food and shelter, or you die. 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 conversation turned to the uncanny similarities between Rick and Richardtwo men close in age, roughly the same height, who disappeared in the same area about 15 months apart. He never showed up there, and there was never much more than a cursory search for him. She was found safe. Heidi was the thoughtful one, more apt to listen and absorb. The rest of Alaska is policed by fewer than 400 troopers. Richard always wore blue sweats., Leon can barely talk about the scene now, but at the time, he kept his emotions in check. The letter, from the University of North Texas, concluded: The individual represented by the unidentified remains F-3677.1 is excluded as a potential maternal relative of Bette P. Bennett. The DNA did not match. Valerie Sifsof , 43, from Anchorage walked away from the Granite Creek Campground along the Seward Higwhay in the summer of 2013 and simply vanished. For Leon, Bette, and Richards two sisters, the ceremony marked the end of a nightmarish year. His 41-year-old daughter, MaryAnne, came north from Utah to search some more. Yet the two women would keep searching for the next 10 years. The three of them went to Richards place and looked around in silence. There were, to borrow one troopers phrase, a great number of equally plausible alternative inferences.. That same morning, in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, Lieutenant Kat Shuey read an almost identical letter to a man named Leon Bennett. 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. View all posts by craigmedred. It was thought he might join the missing forever. Nothing. It brings every thing forward. Whats left now is the feeling that well never see him again.. They told me a body had been found, and that its DNA had been tested. It made him happy to see the kids so tickled, Dolly said. Her husband reported her missing in 1965, and police learned that she hadnt been seen in almost four years. In going through police reports, Dolly and Heidi counted 17 different troopers whod had a hand in their sons case over the years. They told him to make the turn and follow them down. They told him to go to the top of the mountain, make the turn and follow them down. you might recall that while looking for him they did find another body. ", 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. "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.'". On a shelf were the titles to two old pickups, which Richard had signed over to her. I, along with many others, would like to see this mystery solved one day.". But seeing all his things packed up and labeled, the trucks signed over, it looked like he got his affairs in order.. Troopers say Chocknok, 84 at the time, had talked about visiting Dillingham 43 air miles to the south, but he never made it on any flights. Schoch's body did, however, eventually make it home. CORRECTION: This story was corrected on July 21, 2014 to reflect that Great Smoky Mountains National Park reaches into North Carolina, not South Carolina. He disappeared into the northern edge of the Wrangell park. 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. Think of it: 35,000 people, if that, scattered across 10 million acres of rugged terrain. But they traveled in different circles, and no evidence exists to suggest they knew each other. it is dedicated to the idea that if everyone is thinking alike, someone is not thinking. Dolly introduced Heidi as my daughter, and I would come to know the two women as a unit. "Information is so hard to track, especially for missing adults," said Kym Pasqualini, director of the Phoenix-based center. The hook grabs onto whatevers on the bottom.. Red means a rough ice road. She had been missing for 52 years. They didn't worry about him for months. 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. Find your friends on Facebook. All he could do from Arizona was check the news from Alaska every day for updates on the Funny River bones. A retired contractor in his early 70s, Leon is a compact, sturdily built man, naturally reserved but with a lot on his mind. And he led the hunt for Griffis. She is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds. Charlie Chocknok, an elderly Yupik Eskimo last seen walking near the New Stuyahok village airport in July 2000. This puzzled herBennett was still listed as missing in the police database. 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. 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. Jane placed a wreath on the freshly turned soil. I want you to know that we know how youre feeling, Dolly said. See Photos. Park officials later confirmed they were those of the missing man. Searches that found people and saved them. The results came back in two parts. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. He slept in those things.. . 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. They never found any sign of Wipert or the animals. There are lives that are erring and nameless. Eric Miller knows his brother went into the Chugach National Forest and disappeared. -- in 1937 came within spitting distance of joining those who disappeared without a trace in Alaska. They lived less than a mile away and hadnt heard from him for a while. Sign Up. He believes the tired, likely hypothermic grandfather went at least a mile beyond Race Point and then, realizing something was wrong, tried to descend the mountain to the north to find a trail that wasn't there. Of those, 1,027 are still listed as missing. 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. Griffis grew up there, dreaming of the far north. I still couldnt believe he would take his own life. The first concluded that the bones found at the Funny River site were neither Rick Hillss nor Richard Bennetts. Consider that it has been 30 years since Japanese national hero Naomi Uemera went missing after the first successful winter ascent of Mount McKinley. Griffis's disappearance never made the news. I was working on a story about the phenomenon in Alaska of ordinary people disappearing while doing ordinary things. Landslides, avalanches, fissuring glaciers, overflowing rivers, and collapsing riverbanks all make travel unpredictable at best. They took over the search, but did not call in an Alaska Air National Guard Pavehawk helicopter with sophisticated, heat-sensing technology until the next day. Im frustrated that Im not out there looking for him myself., Leon was caring for one of his daughters, who was recovering from a quintuple bypass. And Gerald Deberry, 53, was a Fairbanks man who joined a search for a woman missing in the White Mounains 70 miles north of that community in 2011 only to disappear forever himself. But that is unlikely given how few people venture into the White River country. 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. Thats how people in these parts dispose of garbage, but this seemed far more than the usual amount. Missing in Alaska (TV Series 2015- ) - IMDb No sign of the well-known mountaineers has ever been found. Four months later, in January of 2015, I flew back to the Kenai Peninsula. And I like beer.. He was home alone that day; his wife, Bette, was sick and being cared for by relatives in Washington State. 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. Much of the park -- like much of wild Alaska -- is seldom, if ever, visited. "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.". Water conditions are colder here and body gases dont develop at the same speed as in the Lower 48, so bodies tend to sink.. I hope youre sitting.. in St. Paul, MN. 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. "(And) he never told anyone where he was going.''. After almost four hours, Jane entered a meadow and peered into a small, shaded clearing. Troopers search for missing Fairbanks woman | Local News | newsminer.com In 2004, a man named Rick Hills disappeared on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula. In mid-May, the Kufels noticed he was burning a lot of stuff in a large metal barrel. The weather can sneak right up on you, Mallard said. As I left to catch my flight home, they were bent over a map on the dining-room table at Dollys house, discussing the logistics of dragging the Kenai River. But the lab warned that the test could take up to 18 months, and the Bennetts wanted to bury their son. Somewhere in the northeastern corner of this vast, unoccupied region are believed to be the bones of Richard Lyman Griffis from Spokane, Washington, by way of Oregon, California, New York and Florida. He told people there he was going upriver to McCarthy, an outpost town in the Wrangell-St. Elias Park in Alaska, to test his orange cocoon. 2023 Anchorage Daily News. There was no evidence of criminal activity at the scene of the truck, troopers said. The colors are marked on poles lining trails between villages commonly used by residents who travel around the region. The letter had been hand-delivered by Captain Andy Greenstreet, the commander of the detachment that covers the Kenai. Then they noticed some bones scattered across a wide grassy area. But, she said, sometimes I think they forget how big Alaska is. Between the westernmost tip of the Aleutian Islands and the eastern edge of the Alaska Panhandlea span roughly equal to the distance from California to Floridaa total of 1,332 law-enforcement officers keep the peace. She even consulted psychics. I spent two days with them, going over the investigation, discussing theories, and retracing Ricks last known movements. For this, I am truly sorry. 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. Several large Rubbermaid bins were each labeled with the name of a friend or relative. It never did. As Novakovich crossed the finish line, LeMaitre, a fitness buff and grandfather of two, was still making his way up the mountain. There are others. He preferred to stay outside, on the front steps. The Alaska State Troopers came to the same conclusion. The discovery of his body was pure luck. He spent a lot of time in these woods, Dolly said. Amazingly enough, a few are found eventually. In August of that year, Jane and Leroy stopped by Richards trailer. Others are lost hikers and snowmobilers, commercial fishermen lost at sea and plane crash victims whose remains have not been found. Alaska encompasses 39 mountain ranges, 12,000 rivers, 100,000 . @RedBalloonBooks. 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. He was the love of her life and she never moved on!! Every seasoned Alaskan knows that a large number of ravens and eagles circling in one area means a carcass below, but Frank and Nancy assumed it was a moose or a caribou or some other large animal. Heidi worked at a coffee shop; Dolly helped her husband, an electrician, run his business. Could ancient stories of the Thunderbird be true? One man didnt want to be found, Hughes said. 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. A $300-million (minimum) gondola to Dodger Stadium? Only Dolly was home. She called Tom and Heidi and told them to come to the house. But the condition of the bones made determining the cause of death impossible. He was already out of the Park Service when Griffis went missing and can't remember that search, but the memory is easily lost amid the memories of so many others. MISSING IN ALASKA Clip - Killer Mermaids? (2020) History Channel 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. . Most of them went to the historic Kennecott Mine near the community of McCarthy at the end of a road that snakes into the southern portion of the park. Dolly was the talker, the instigator who moved things along. They found tracks, but no sign of Schoch. A few were marked for Jane, with whom Richard had always been close. Leon Bennett believes his son may have wanted to leave his life. Abbrevation Code for Race: A - Asian B - Black / African American I - American Indian / Alaska Native W - White U or Blank - Unknown 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. He finally agreed to call his mother when I told him, Look, if you dont call her, Ill have to file a big report. . "Finding his body would be a relief at this point," he said. i have a friend from long ago still missing. Missing in Alaska without a trace - Anchorage Daily News He leaned down and gently turned the torso to make sure it was what it looked like, he told me.