Griffis was a big man at 6-foot, 220-pounds. There are cases like this all over the state. 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. 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. 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. Even people who know the terrain and conditions can become disoriented. Ben Sewell of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Spread across almost 38,000 square miles of mountaintops, glacier ice, forests and slopes thick with brush, the Kluane/Wrangell-St. Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek World Heritage Site is larger than the state of Maine and far wilder. "As I searched the gullies on the north side of this ridge,'' Kelley wrote, "I hoped that my logic would lead me to solve the LeMaitre disappearance mystery. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), View craigmedred.newss profile on Facebook, the 46-year-married father of three walked away. Rick Hillss skull hasnt been found. There are a number of theories about what causes the disappearances, ranging from local . Before taking off, he told friends in the southern U.S. that he "might winter over'' in Alaska, Sewell said. Oquilluk, 38-years-old at the time of his disappearance, went missing from a Butte assisted living facility in 1987. Clearly something catastrophic happened to him. Red means a rough ice road. 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.''. Keith Mallard, who has participated in scores of searches. No one has ever been able to figure out what happened to him. The bones were close to being ash, Lieutenant Kat Shuey later recalled. All he could do from Arizona was check the news from Alaska every day for updates on the Funny River bones. The officer there now knew nothing of the case. July 9, 2021 Searchers released these photos of Michael LeMaitre after he went missing in the 2012 Mount Marathon Race. The lower jaw was missing. 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. no one at this point expects to find Broach alive. Winds light and variable. Girdwood is a densely forested area. It was like he was planning on coming back.. Until 1 a.m., the date claimed that he searched for her. There was something about them that stayed with me, growing more vivid as the years passed and I suffered losses of my own. But the troopers didnt make the connection. There werent many people with whom he could share the burden: Jane and Leroy and, it turned out, Dolly, Tom, and Heidi. Dolly and Tom spend winters in Phoenix, just 200 miles from Lake Havasu City, and the families decided to meet. After her father's death, she received $800,000 as an inheritance Zoe Kravitz Alyssa Miller (2013-2014) - Gyllenhaal dated American model, Alyssa Miller from . Its just a couple guys in a boat, I heard Dolly say. Itd be hard living. Please use the button below to manage your account. 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. 2023 Anchorage Daily News. See Photos. Devoted as he was to his kids, he had a wild streak. We cant wait that long.. A GoFundMe account has been opened for the family of Texan Brad Broach, who has joined the missing in 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. Then they noticed some bones scattered across a wide grassy area. "Mr. Griffis was added to the Missing Person's Clearinghouse in 2009,'' Beth Ipsen, a spokeswoman for Alaska State Troopers said earlier this month. After Captain Greenstreet delivered the news, Dolly said, it took another month to find the exact location of the urn. Richard always wore Levis. I'm so excited for it to exist in the world and can't wait to celebrate. 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. In September 2007, Paul Schoch, a 68 year-old adventurer from Brule, Wisconsin, was dropped off by airplane at 4,500-foot Skolai Pass in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park for a few days in the wilderness. It was raining and chilly that day, but thousands of spectators gathered anyway on the streets of the waterfront city about 125 miles south of Anchorage at the end of a heavily traveled highway. Mount Marathon towers over the community of Seward at the head of Resurrection Bay about 125 miles south of Anchorage. He knew them.. 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. The two women feared that Rick might have been a victim of foul play. 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. Thirty-six-year-old Joseph Balderas from Nome faded away into the hills along the Nome-Council Highway while hiking in July. 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. "Nothing new has ever surfaced,'' said Sewell, who still wonders if some part of the orange survival cocoon might pop up somewhere, some day -- even though he knows the odds are against that. "We were go able to go back to that year and track him,'' Sewell said. LeMaitre disappeared into the rain and cold and swirling clouds. 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. What finally tipped the scales for the investigators seems to have been the skeletons right leg, which showed the markings of an old injury. Firefighters battling a huge blaze on Alaskas Kenai Peninsula first spotted a boot in the dirt. Malia Miller. (if stored in your account) No. Finding his body would be a relief at this point, he said. Leon isnt the only one whos had that idea. Alaska authorities also are sending saliva samples from relatives of three missing fishermen involved in a boating accident a few years ago. The missing woman was found. The two women came to believe she was closer to the truth about what had happened to Rick than anyone else, certainly closer than the Alaska State Troopers. "Richard disconnected from us after his struggle with cancer,'' she said. But then the not-knowing returns, and it keeps him awake at night. Of those, 1,027 are still listed as missing. 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/. 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. Train that derailed in East Palestine carried Dow product, EthylHexyl Mid-Michigan police officer accused of defrauding Meijer of $10K, Thousands gather for 37th Freeland Walleye Festival despite rain, clouds, Creative 360 moving to former Chapel Lane Presbyterian building. She became confused easily. We never found his firearms, she reminded me on several occasions. Miller is a white woman with brown hair and brown eyes. The missing woman was found. Les Moonves / Rachel Abrams / 20th Century Fox. 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. There are lives that are erring and nameless. 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. Everyone settled around the dining-room table at Janes house, with Dolly and Tom at one end, and Leon, Jane, and Leroy at the other. If theres anything we can do, or if you just want to talk, call us, Dolly said. When I first met Dolly, in January of 2005, her son Richard Thomas Hills had been missing for almost a year. It never did. White and orange indicate a good trail. My heart goes out to all the families that have felt this hurt of losing someone this way! Some of Alaskas unsolved missing persons cases are detailed on the trooper clearinghouse Web site. The results came back in two parts. I guess if he did it, he did it. They were things he knew we could use, Jane told me. The goat trail gets to a point where it peters out & starts to get dicey. 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. Investigators finally tracked him to a lodge along the White River in the Yukon Territory, Canada, where hed left some gear and told the proprietor he planned to travel upriver through the Wrangells to the Alaska community of McCarthy on the south side of the park. 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. The date was July 4, 2012. He never showed up there, and there was never much more than a cursory search for him. 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. More than 3,000 people had been reported missing the previous year in Alaska, a state with a population smaller than San Franciscos. 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. Lucy Ann Johnson was 77 when her daughter found her. The anthropologists found them consistent with the markings on the skeleton. A 27-year-old climber from Salt Lake City, he was attempting a solo ascent of 16,237-foot Mount Sanford when he disappeared. We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. 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. I, along with many others, would like to see this mystery solved one day.". Eric Miller wrestles with opposing theories about his brothers disappearance. "They arrived at the Donjek River to find it uncrossable, a raging torrent rushing with glacial meltwater from upstream. The letter had been hand-delivered by Captain Andy Greenstreet, the commander of the detachment that covers the Kenai. ", 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. His 41-year-old daughter, MaryAnne, came north from Utah to search some more. Missing in Alaska: With Ken Gerhard, Jax Menez Atwell, Tommy Joseph, Matthew Evan Paine. The next day, a small group hiked up a grassy hillside overlooking Lower Summit Lake, one of Richards favorite places to hunt. Are you fucking kidding me?, Heidi said. Find your friends on Facebook. When someone goes missing in Alaska, search areas can be as large as entire states in the Lower 48, and considerably more treacherous. 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. A ground team put on the mountain to try and track Harper also came up empty. "Water conditions are colder here and body gases don't develop at the same speed as in the Lower 48, so bodies tend to sink.". 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. "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.". 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. 548 had been out overnight in cold, rainy weather. "One man didn't want to be found," Hughes said. i have a friend from long ago still missing. Last year, 2,295 people were reported missing in the state. Was it possible that the remains released to the Bennetts and now buried near Lower Summit Lake were those of Rick Hills, and the scattered bones found in the Funny River fire, Richard Bennetts? When someone goes missing in Alaska, search areas can be as large as entire states in the Lower 48, and considerably more treacherous. They built a makeshift 75-foot "rope" out of pack cord knotted together and fought the current, half-slipping, half-swimming, falling into the icy waters past their heads.". 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. The boots are too big; the tops reach all the way to his crotch. The skeleton was found about 300 yards from Richards trailer. 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. MISSING IN ALASKA Clip - Killer Mermaids? "Park officials believe Schoch left his campsite for a day hike, possibly to take pictures of . The Alaska State Troopers came to the same conclusion. 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. See Photos. See Photos. Hes probably gone. You dont want to dwell on it. More than two years passed before 32-year-old Clifford Greist came home for the last time to be buried. 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. 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. Jeffrey Goldberg interviews Obama, a preview of the new. Sewell grew up in the territory. He and Rick Hills must have crossed paths many timesat the Safeway and the hardware store, at gas stations and stoplightsgiven that they lived only a few miles apart along the same highway. A few people continue to search, but no one at this point expects to find Broach alive. How could this happen?. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. 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. The truck was registered to Luann Miller, 51, of Fairbanks. People on foot scoured all likely routes down the east side of Mount Marathon. They told us there was no one else missing in the area, Leon said. They never found any sign of Wipert or the animals. Hed knocked on the front door of the Hillses tidy rambler on a Thursday, around 10:30 in the morning. 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. He slept in those things.. His voice as gravelly as ever, he told me he was frustrated. A woman named Lucy Ann Johnson made headlines a few years ago. Sun and clouds mixed. 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. Kysar's body was the only one eventually found. 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. Jane called Leon, who was living in Bremerton, Washington; he flew to the Kenai the next day. There are others. The men rushed over, and the three stood in silence. Jane felt relief too, but something nagged at her. Troopers say Chocknok, 84 at the time, had talked about visiting Dillingham 43 air miles to the south, but didn't take a flight. See Photos. 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 . Jane and her husband, Leroy, are snowbirds, Alaskan residents who winter in the Southwest. Ricks tracks in the snowright foot dragging, as if hed injured his legled into the woods. Troopers noticed a blue. The Bennetts only son went missing from his home on the Kenai Peninsula in 2005. Not a shoe. His patched together boat was found on a beach at Cape Douglas. In June 2014, soon after the discovery of the Funny River bones, Shuey asked for a list of people in the area whod gone missing in recent years. See Photos . Two families, two bodies, and a wilderness of secrets. Jenna Miller. The elements can change with amazing speed, particularly in colder seasons. That may never happen. He ended up dead in an old school bus along an abandoned and overgrown road just north of Denali National Park and Preserve. She listened and mostly kept silent. Jim Miller, 39, left his Anchorage home Sept. 22 in the midst of personal problems, including pending heart surgery. And I like beer.. Like her, Sewell would like to know what really happened to Griffis. I was met there by Dolly Hills and Heidi Metteer, Ricks longtime partner. In the center console was $292. He would never be seen again. As Novakovich crossed the finish line, LeMaitre, a fitness buff and grandfather of two, was still making his way up the mountain. in St. Paul, MN. His name was Richard too. Sewell, when tracked down, confessed he didn't remember a whole lot. Griffis's disappearance never made the news. Human remains found in 1996 in Central, an Interior community of under 100 northeast of Fairbanks, were put into storage. Fewer than 70,000 people traveled to Wrangell-St. Elias in 2013. Included are black flags, which mark locations where unidentified human remains were found.