Remains Found in Area After LE/SAR Searches

[Hestia's Fire]

I just realized I case I had followed was never added to this list, so I'm adding him now.

Eric Pracht, CO - 2020

Eric walked away from his condo at the base of Green Mountain, barefoot, on July 22, 2016, after an argument. The Green Mountain area was searched extensively by SAR, dog teams, and family/volunteer searchers. After human remains were discovered by a hiker in 2020 and later identified as Eric, his family posted the following on social media: "He was found only 130 yards off Alameda Parkway, just north of the condo. We are still at a loss as to how he could have been missed; the area was searched heavily." In an update on the Vanished podcast, Eric's dad stated that the Lakewood police dog team had cleared Green Mountain after multiple searches, and that he had been with the team himself on one of the searches and "we literally missed him by like 30 feet."

Found Deceased - CO - Eric Pracht, 25, Lakewood, 22 July 2016

Family and friends searching for missing paramedic in Lakewood Family and friends of a paramedic are asking for help to find him after he went missing on Friday night. The family of 25-year-old Eric Pracht says he disappeared for a walk, and even went without his shoes and keys...

www.websleuths.com

 

[Hestia's Fire]

Ashley Turcotte, NH - 2024

Ashley Turcotte was found deceased today near the area where her car was left in early January. Extensive searches were done of the area on foot and with helicopters, drones, SAR, and search dogs.

NH - NH - Ashley Turcotte, 31, last seen at home, her car found at the town hall with her phone & backpack, Barnstead, 4 Jan 2024

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/police-looking-for-nh-woman-missing-since-last-week/3239496/ Police in Barnstead, New Hampshire, are asking for the public's help in locating a local woman who has been missing since last week...

www.websleuths.com

 

[JerseyWasHome2]

I don't see Meghan's case here, so thought I would add her.

Meghan Marohn
Disappeared March 27, 2022, last seen in Stockbridge, MA at The Red Lion Inn; located Sept 2022 just outside of Longcope Park in Lee, MA

Meghan's car was left in a parking area of a rarely used park called Longcope in Lee, MA, in March 2022. Her laptop and cell phone were found in August 2022 (a month before she was found) - laptop discovered by a hiker not far from her car, phone later found by an SAR team 65' from the laptop. Both were located in Longcope Park, not on the west side of Church St where they believed her phone last pinged. The Berkshire Eagle article linked below provides a map of where those items and her body were located, approximately 2000 feet apart. Extensive searches were conducted by LE, official SAR teams skilled with New England terrain, dogs, helicopters, locals, friends and family. Her remains were found accidentally by a civilian in September 2022 just outside of the park area, near a residential street.

Nearly two years later, Meghan Marohn's family is still troubled by her death. How could searchers have missed these key items?

Quote from The Eagle article:

"A GPS screenshot Naple (Meghan's brother) provided shows that the paths teams took on the first two days of the official search came close to the laptop and went right over the cellphone. The multiple searches by family and friends also did not find them, and this troubles him.

“To not see her laptop and phone when there was no vegetation on the ground and no snow on the ground, yet to have it be found six months later in August when everything has already grown up?” Naple said."

Found Deceased - MA - Meghan Marohn, 43, from NY, car found near Longcope Park, Lee, 28 Mar 2022 *Reward*

Public safety officials are activley conducting a search for missing person Meghan Marohn of Delmar NY. Meghan was last believed to be in the Long cope park area on Church St in Lee. Meghan is a 43 year old white female approximately 115 lbs. 5'6" with with auburn hair and green eyes. Anyone...

www.websleuths.com

 

[JerseyWasHome2]

Jolissa Fuentes
August 2022, Selma, CA

While her car crash location was incredibly difficult to find, apparently they had searched that area previously.

Found Deceased - CA - Jolissa Fuentes, 22, Selma, 7 Aug 2022

Police searching for missing woman in Selma Family pleads for help finding missing Selma woman, offers $2,000 reward SELMA, Calif. (FOX26) — A Selma family is searching for a 22-year-old woman who’s been missing for days now. “Find my granddaughter. My son’s daughter," pleaded Earl...

www.websleuths.com

Woman missing for 2 months found dead in car wreckage at bottom of cliff

Search and rescue crews had to rappel 400 feet to get to the wreckage and retrieve the woman's body.

www.kiro7.com

 

[JerseyWasHome2]

Here’s another case whose faulty search efforts I learned of recently were due to confusion over search orders. You all may recall the Chandra Levy / Gary Condit case in DC in 2021:

Chandra Levy
2021

“Although police had previously searched over half the 1,754-acre (710 ha) main section of the park, the wooded slope where Levy's remains were eventually found had not been searched. Police commanders ordered the search perimeters to be within 100 yards (91 m) of each road and trail but due to a miscommunication, the officers only searched within 100 yards of every road.”

Killing of Chandra Levy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[bombardier]

I'm counting the well-known Lucas Tronche case (skeletal remains found on a cliff face) as meeting the criteria here, with a few caveats.

Disappearance of Lucas Tronche - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Disparition de Lucas Tronche: que s’est-il passé sur cette falaise, il y a six ans?

Des ossements, des débris de vêtements et un sac à dos. C’est ce qui a été ret...

www.lavoixdunord.fr

(english translation edited by me)
According to the prosecutor, who spoke onsite this evening, the area had already been " raked" in the past but the rock walls "could only be searched by firefighters via rappelling". The remains and property found Thursday are located less than a kilometer from the home of the teenager's parents. According to Lucas Tronche's parents' lawyer, this area had already been examined by dogs, without results. “It is a cliff approximately 60 meters high, sheer, and it was impossible, without abseiling, to be able to access the places where the remains were found. » This difficulty in accessing the area explains why it was not searched: “It is the stubborn work of the investigating judge which made it possible to fill in this blank spot on the map."

 

[bombardier]

Dennis Day, ex mouseketeer and child-actor, was last seen in 2018 at the age of 76. He lived with his husband, and a handyman roommate. Police did multiple welfare checks at the home, and then eventually fully searched the house, nearby creek and graveyard, and came in with cadaver dogs. Even the attic, crawlspace, and freezer was searched. Day's friend Kirk said that his house smelled awful, like "cat piss and excrement". The house was described as 'ramshackle'. They never found any evidence of a crime. In 2019, a bad smell coming from the property was reported and LE came, but said they did not smell anything. Finally, several days later, another cadaver dog found a decomposed body at the home, hidden under a pile of clothes. It's been alleged in a suite that Phoenix Police visited the home three times between July and August 2018, and stepped on Day's body during the search, which was hidden under a pile of clothes, "causing multiple postmortem skeletal fractures". The handyman roommate was charged with criminally negligent homicide, though his trial is still pending.''

Sounds like there may have been a hoarding situation or similar at play here, making the house difficult to search. Still, it was a single-story, small-ish house, I'm surprised he was missed. It's always possible he was hidden elsewhere and then moved to the clothes pile, I guess.

 

[bombardier]

very recent discovery. Partial remains of toddler Emile Soleil found on Saturday by hikers, close to where he went missing.

Remains of missing 2-year-old Emile Soleil found in French Alps - National | Globalnews.ca

Bones belonging to Émile Soleil were found nearly nine months after he went missing from his grandparent's home in a remote hamlet in the French Alps.

globalnews.ca

The bones were found just one kilometre away from Le Vernet, according to French newspaper La Provence, in an area that had been extensively searched by police. Authorities are unsure of the toddler’s cause of death and forensic investigators will continue to analyze the remains.

 

[SF_Investigates]

Hi, I posted this on another platform regarding Kay-Alana Turner being found yesterday very near to her Last Known Location and how it could relate to the Sebastian Rogers case. A member of this community messaged me and suggested I post it here. I am a missing persons private investigator and also a member of several Search and Rescue teams. Here is the post:

Why are people like Kay-Alana Turner found 400 days later very close to her Point Last Seen, when professional search crews are used? Lets look at it as it could relate to the Sebastian Rogers case.I took a one-square-mile area near Sebastian Rogers' home, which I believe to be highly probable for locating him.

Typically, the search planner at the command post would assign a hasty team to quickly survey a search grid like this. For a trained hasty team, it should take approximately 3.5 hours to clear one square mile, but the probability of detection is only about 30-40%.Assuming days or weeks have passed and the entire search zone has been hasty searched (not just the 1 square mile), search planners might decide that a grid search is necessary. This involves a team of trained searchers walking in lines with predetermined spacing. They do not take the path of least resistance; rather, they tackle challenging terrains, such as going through thorn bushes and thick brush. To grid search the initial one-square-mile section, if we deploy 25 trained searchers spaced 20 feet apart, it will require 11 parallel passes to cover the area. This approach increases the probability of detection to 95%, but instead of taking 3.5 hours, it now requires 37 hours and totals 927 man-hours for just one square mile.

Now, consider the attached map of the search zone. The red box indicates the one square mile, and the yellow arc represents the 75% probability arc, which is based on statistical models from lost person SAR. Imagine the actual time required to grid search the entire area if it took 37 hours for a team of 25 to clear just the one square mile.

This is how people remain undetected. As time passes, the likelihood of finding a person alive decreases, and SAR teams may stand down because SAR is Search and Rescue. Although Search and Rescue and Recovery (SAR/R) teams might continue the search, assembling teams of 25 becomes increasingly difficult, causing search times to skyrocket.

With hasty searches having a maximum 40% probability of detection, 60% of the search zone still needs to be searched. And this assumes you are granted access to all search areas.Finding missing persons even for highly trained SAR teams is not easy and not guaranteed. Yes K9's and technology like thermal drones increase these odds but K9's are not robots. They need down time, they get injured, they have other missions, they are volunteers and can't dedicate weeks at a time.This is the reality of Search and Rescue

 

[Seattle1]

@SF_Investigates - thanks for the update that missing Kay-Alana Turner was found yesterday by TES in an area previously searched. I'm quoting your post to add the required link to the missing person's actual case thread.

Hi, I posted this on another platform regarding Kay-Alana Turner being found yesterday very near to her Last Known Location and how it could relate to the Sebastian Rogers case. A member of this community messaged me and suggested I post it here. I am a missing persons private investigator and also a member of several Search and Rescue teams. Here is the post:

Why are people like Kay-Alana Turner found 400 days later very close to her Point Last Seen, when professional search crews are used? Lets look at it as it could relate to the Sebastian Rogers case.I took a one-square-mile area near Sebastian Rogers' home, which I believe to be highly probable for locating him.

Typically, the search planner at the command post would assign a hasty team to quickly survey a search grid like this. For a trained hasty team, it should take approximately 3.5 hours to clear one square mile, but the probability of detection is only about 30-40%.Assuming days or weeks have passed and the entire search zone has been hasty searched (not just the 1 square mile), search planners might decide that a grid search is necessary. This involves a team of trained searchers walking in lines with predetermined spacing. They do not take the path of least resistance; rather, they tackle challenging terrains, such as going through thorn bushes and thick brush. To grid search the initial one-square-mile section, if we deploy 25 trained searchers spaced 20 feet apart, it will require 11 parallel passes to cover the area. This approach increases the probability of detection to 95%, but instead of taking 3.5 hours, it now requires 37 hours and totals 927 man-hours for just one square mile.

Now, consider the attached map of the search zone. The red box indicates the one square mile, and the yellow arc represents the 75% probability arc, which is based on statistical models from lost person SAR. Imagine the actual time required to grid search the entire area if it took 37 hours for a team of 25 to clear just the one square mile.

This is how people remain undetected. As time passes, the likelihood of finding a person alive decreases, and SAR teams may stand down because SAR is Search and Rescue. Although Search and Rescue and Recovery (SAR/R) teams might continue the search, assembling teams of 25 becomes increasingly difficult, causing search times to skyrocket.

With hasty searches having a maximum 40% probability of detection, 60% of the search zone still needs to be searched. And this assumes you are granted access to all search areas.Finding missing persons even for highly trained SAR teams is not easy and not guaranteed. Yes K9's and technology like thermal drones increase these odds but K9's are not robots. They need down time, they get injured, they have other missions, they are volunteers and can't dedicate weeks at a time.This is the reality of Search and Rescue

TX - TX - Kay-Alana Turner, 27, Tomball, 10 March 2023

Per the article, "her mother, Rosa Calhoun, says Kay-Alana was suffering from PTSD and having a bad reaction to prescription medication." That's severe, any idea why she was not gotten help at that point?

www.websleuths.com

 

[Seattle1]

Family says the body of David Schultz has been found

David Schultz went missing back in November 2023.

www.ktiv.com

4/24/24

David’s body was reportedly found 1.5 miles west of where his truck was located back when he went missing in November 2023. According to Sarah, the body is being sent to Iowa State Medical Examiner for official identification. KTIV has reached out to the Sac County Sheriff’s Office and we are waiting to hear back. [..] Volunteers and law enforcement spent weeks looking for David, with over 100,000 acres being searched.

IA - IA - David Schultz, 53, Wall Lake, 21 November 2023 #3

The Lake View Police Department requests the public’s help locating a missing Sac County man. According to law enforcement, family and friends report last hearing from 53-year-old David Schultz of Wall Lake during the early morning hours of Tuesday, Nov. 21. Schultz, who is a trucker, was en...

www.websleuths.com