unsolved national park disappearances

41 year-old Paul Fugate was a law enforcement Park Ranger at the chiricahua national monument a unit of the National Park Service located in the mountains of southern Arizona On January 13th 1980 he was the only permanent staff member working at the Visitor Center sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. that day he told his lone co-worker a seasonal employee that he was going out to patrol some of the nature trails he instructed the co-worker to begin closing down the Center for the day without him if he was not back before 4:30 according to the co-worker Paul left the Visitor Center without his radio heading towards the trails that led to fairway ranch a large area of land recently acquired by the Park Service he never returned to the visitor center the following morning the park superintendent called Paul's wife Dottie to tell her that he was missing search teams canine units helicopters and small planes searched the area for Paul extensively with no success federal state and local agencies were involved in the investigation but none of them found any sign of Paul the Park Service offered a $5,000 reward for information about Paul's disappearance and Paul's family promised to match that amount within a few years this amount grew to $20,000 the initial assumption made by the Park Service was that Paul met with foul play Paul's wife Dottie continues to hold this belief Dottie believes that her husband happened upon some sort of drug deal out in the wilderness and was abducted in a panic when the dealers saw the badge on his uniform the Park Service paid Paul's wife a portion of his salary as survivors benefits when he first went missing however the director of the Park Service's Western Region Howard Chapman reviewed the case in 1981 and alleged that Paul had not gone missing but had rather abandoned his post he was therefore formally fired as a park ranger and Donnie was ordered to pay back the almost $7,000 in payments she had received plus 11 percent interest she was told she could not appeal this decision because such an appeal had to occur within 20 days of an please termination and Paul's termination had been applied retroactively Li to the date he disappeared more than a year prior it took daddy five years of fighting before the National Park Service re-examine the case and had Paul listed as deceased rather than as a deserter in 1986 dottie received all of the financial benefits she was entitled to Paul's case was classified as a probable homicide by the Cochise County Sheriff in 1988 On June 19th 2018 the National Park Service tripled the amount of the reward in Paul's case bringing it up to $60,000 they announced that they had new information in the case that inspired this renewed appeal to the public they did not reveal what this new information was the increased reward has so far not brought forth any answers in Paul's disappearance thalma pauline milton was known to her friends as polly the 58 year old lived in an Airstream trailer with her husband Bob they lived in Jacksonville Florida but spent several months out of the year in Western North Carolina where they shared a large rented campsite with friends just outside of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Peggy and Bob had only been married for six years but Peggy herself had been coming to the area for over 20 years on September 25th 1981 Peggy and two of her friends from the campsite Trula and read set out for a walk which was fairly routine for the three friends they left at approximately 3:00 p.m. walking along the Deep Creek Trail which took them into the national park a quarter mile into the park they went right at a fork in the trail that took them past a campground and picnic area the group walked a mile past the campground before turning around pausing so that Polly could smoke a cigarette on the walk back Polly suddenly began walking much more quickly and soon got ahead of her two friends she disappeared out of red and truelist view over a small hill and they did not see her again even after reaching the top of the hill themselves assuming that Polly had just kept up her quick pace they went to Polly and Bob's trailer when they got back to the campsite at 4:30 however Bob told them that Polly had not come back and that he had not seen her since she had left with them an hour and a half earlier Bob began calling around to friends while Trula and red retraced their steps on the trail and searched the campground they did not find any sight of Polly at six o'clock Polly was reported missing to the Park Rangers the park rangers were able to assemble a search team of 25 people to look for Polly that evening the trail was later closed so that 150 people and a team of search dogs could search for her that search went on for a week but was unsuccessful Polly was very familiar with the trail she had been on when she disappeared and it was a fairly easy hike so it was hard to imagine that she had gotten lost or off trail some she was also reportedly terrified of snakes so her friends did not believe that she would have willingly gone off trail she was not in good health but was just under six feet tall so her friends believe that there would have been signs of a struggle on the trail had she been abducted the most popular theory about Pauly's disappearance is that she voluntarily walked away from her life and had made arrangements for someone to pick her up along the trail which is why she had to walk ahead of her friends the campground had been very busy the day she went missing with 50 cars in its parking lot so a vehicle would not have been suspicious in the area Polly had lost her driver's license due to medical issues and as such did not carry a key to the station wagon she and Bob owned which did not go missing with her anyway if she left the area in a vehicle another unknown person was involved Pauly's pastor provided some insight into who that other person could be according to the pastor Paulie had made statements to him that he believed indicated that she was having an extramarital affair although she never said so outright he also revealed that Polly had a history of mental health issues which were largely situational and seemingly under control by 1981 however in addition to her own health issues Paulie was also dealing with the medical conditions of her husband bob was 20 years older than Paulie and in declining health the stress of caring for him could have been a motive for Paulie to become involved with someone else and choose to run away with them during her time in North Carolina Paulie volunteered at the Presbyterian nutrition center where she served meals to the elderly the day before she went missing Paulie had not signed up at the end of her shift to volunteer the following day despite the fact that she normally worked every weekday furthermore according to the center supervisor Paulie had asked to use the phone several times that day in the four years she had been volunteering there she had never previously used the centre's phone police could not trace who Paulie called but they did know that the calls Paulie made had to be local as no long distance charges were made to that phone line it is possible that Polly made these calls to arrange being picked up the following day inside the park the idea that Polly ran away to start a new life with someone else is undermined by the fact that she left with nothing more than her cigarettes if she really wanted a fresh start however she may not have wanted to take possessions from her previous life no matter how practical it would have been to take them the one potential exception to this rationalization however would be the prescription medicines she was taking for high blood pressure and nausea which were left behind Polly's husband Bob was so upset by his wife's disappearance that he had to be admitted to the hospital the night she went missing in 1982 Bob with the help of his sons from a previous marriage sold the Airstream trailer he had shared with Polly and went to live in a nursing home Polly Milton has never been found Joseph wood jr. was an accomplished 34 year old journalist from a close-knit family in the Bronx he graduated from Yale with honors in 1990 and had received a grant that allowed him to travel to Ghana to write his first book back in New York he began working as a writer and editor at the Village Voice in 1996 he left the Village Voice to take a job at the new press by 1999 he had also begun work on a new book about the African American family on July 7th of that year Joe traveled to Seattle for unity 99 a conference for minority journalists at the first unity conference at Atlanta in 1994 Joe had met so many Sengupta a reporter for the New York Times the two had become romantically involved and had lived together for several years but had broken up at the beginning of 1999 they saw each other briefly at the opening ceremonies for the 1999 conference that night Joe had dinner with friends and mentioned to one of them that he was planning to visit Mount Rainier National Park the following afternoon to do some bird-watching after attending a press breakfast with presidential hopeful Bill Bradley Joe had loved the outdoors since he was young progressing through Boy Scouts until he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout so these plans were very much in line with his interests Joe is not at any of the conference events from July 9th onward something has many friends took note of but were not initially concerned by when Joe failed to return to New York on July 11th however so many Sengupta began making inquiries into where he was having no luck getting a hold of Joe or finding any information about where he might be she formally reported him missing and hired a private investigator the private investigator learned of Joe's plans to visit Mount Rainier from the friend he had talked to a dinner the night of the 7th authorities located Joe's rented Mercury Marquis and the Longmire parking lot inside of Mount Rainier National Park a receipt inside of the car revealed that he had entered the park at 12:29 on July 8th a search for Joe began but there was a massive area for the search team to cover the biggest break in the case came on the morning of July 15th when a man named Bruce Kalman's contacted authorities Bruce had seen an article about Jo's disappearance in the newspaper and came forward with the last known sighting of Jo Bruce had been hiking on the Rambert Ridge Trail on the afternoon of July 8th there he ran into Joe who was on his way up while he himself was on his way down at the time they were at an altitude of roughly 4800 feet the two men chatted about the birds they had seen for a few minutes and Joe asked Bruce about how much farther he could expect to go up the trail bruce advised him that he could only go on for another five or ten minutes before encountering a snow bridge that did not look sound Bruce then continued back down the trail and Joe continued up after assuring Bruce that he would be turning around soon while Bruce's statement was the high point of the investigation because it helped narrow down the search area the search teams quickly ran into even more problems snow and ice were a major issue in the search for Joe well he had gone on his hike on a warm July day Mount Rainier had experienced unusually heavy amounts of snow over the winter Joe had been hiking unpacks down snow at the altitude he was last seen at and much of it had melted over the several sunny days following his disappearance leaving no tracks for searchers to follow the warm weather ended on July 16th when heavy rains brought in cooler temperatures with the search now being much more dangerous in these conditions many of the members of the search team were not able to continue on for the day on July 18th the National Park Service announced that they were scaling back the search for Joe Park Rangers explained to Joe's family that they believed that he had suffered some sort of accident when Bruce Kalman's saw him he was wearing a light shirt and did not seem to have any provisions or equipment with him beyond his binoculars and bird-watching book even if he had remained alive but in Mobile somewhere on the mountain he would have almost certainly fallen victim to hypothermia when the rains and cold temperatures rolled in in the absence of Joe's remains to prove this theory Joe's parents have not ruled out the possibility of foul play in his disappearance Park Rangers dismissed this possibility arguing that if Joe had been in a struggle with someone on the mountain it would have resulted in scent trails that the dogs used in the search would have picked up Joe's literary agent raised money amongst Joe's friends to hire a former NYPD detective to work on the case after the search was scaled back despite these efforts no sign of Joe has ever been found

Channel: heavy casefiles.

Views: 112,974

Rating: 4.8646255 out of 5

Keywords: strange disappearance, strange disapperances, missing people cases, missing people national parks, missing persons, missing person cases, national parks, unsolved disappearances national parks, missing 411, people who vanished in national parks, joe wood missing, unsolved mystery, unsolved, unsolved mysteries, smoky mountains national park, mt rainier national park, chiricahua, missing park rangers, national park service, national park disappearance, unsolved disappearances

Id: FNfArzmt-54

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2019