Found Deceased CA - Philip Kreycik, 37, Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park, 10 Jul 2021 #2

[katydid23]

Exciting tech and possibilities. Looks promising. But it detected LIVING people.

Seems like a low-tech cadaver dog would have had more success if allowed to roam and wear something to carry a signal to a SAR team upon detection. Having to search with a human handler would not be as efficient for covering a large wilderness area.

Just my 2 cents.

But most handlers are uncomfortable releasing their dogs to roam in a large, remote terrain like that. There are snakes and coyote packs and bobcats---and it is hot and there are other dangers. They prefer to keep a closer eye on them. MOO JMO

 

[Beekarina]

I too did not like the assumptions made on this thread and generalizations, such as looks or re. so-called 'flowery' speech indicating this or that; or unwarranted accusations against a pal.

Just to be 100% clear: I never thought the lengthy speech implicated the insider. I only noted it seemed unusual to me, and in any missing case, I look for things that seem unusual. I personally thought, and hoped, PK was voluntarily missing. So I thought perhaps they were discussing more than was shared.

I almost exclusively post on long cold cases where we all speculate with little chance of ever being read by a friend or relative, or if so, the missing disappeared so many years in the past pretty much every angle would be up for speculation. One person was recently found alive after almost 50 years, and the family had searched not knowing the entire time, so my mind tends to go there because of that case. PK reminded be of friends who went to MIT and were involved in the Outing Club, so I was drawn to this case. I should have used more discretion, and clarity when throwing ideas out there.

 

[runspired]

Just to be 100% clear: I never thought the lengthy speech implicated the insider. I only noted it seemed unusual to me, and in any missing case, I look for things that seem unusual. I personally thought, and hoped, PK was voluntarily missing. So I thought perhaps they were discussing more than was shared.

I almost exclusively post on long cold cases where we all speculate with little chance of ever being read by a friend or relative, or if so, the missing disappeared so many years in the past pretty much every angle would be up for speculation. One person was recently found alive after almost 50 years, and the family had searched not knowing the entire time, so my mind tends to go there because of that case. PK reminded be of friends who went to MIT and were involved in the Outing Club, so I was drawn to this case. I should have used more discretion, and clarity when throwing ideas out there.

I was more sad for those folks than personally offended. I fully grok how many not-great men there are out there. But to seriously know so few that someone being emotionally aware of a friend / willing to go back and forth to ensure we could hit his schedule / wanting to talk about life became a flag for lover? I hope everyone who jumped to that assumption comes to know more men that give them faith in humanity.

I appreciate you all following along in the search, and for giving me a bit of a stress relief outlet. A decent part of me just needed someone not directly invested in the search to chat to.

RE PK reminding you of friends who went to MIT, I similarly went to a school with a reputation for nerdiness and quirkiness, I'm sure much of the "flowery" is those characteristics carrying through life. Our shared academic and athletic interests were an integral part of our relationship.

 

[GuyfromCanada]

Based on preliminary autopsy findings, Kreycik’s death wasn’t the result of foul play or animal attack, according to sheriff’s Sgt. Ray Kelly.

Philip Kreycik autopsy shows no sign of foul play | KRON4

 

[NSamuelle]

I was more sad for those folks than personally offended. I fully grok how many not-great men there are out there. But to seriously know so few that someone being emotionally aware of a friend / willing to go back and forth to ensure we could hit his schedule / wanting to talk about life became a flag for lover? I hope everyone who jumped to that assumption comes to know more men that give them faith in humanity.

I appreciate you all following along in the search, and for giving me a bit of a stress relief outlet. A decent part of me just needed someone not directly invested in the search to chat to.

RE PK reminding you of friends who went to MIT, I similarly went to a school with a reputation for neediness and quirkiness, I'm sure much of the "flowery" is those characteristics carrying through life. Our shared academic and athletic interests were an integral part of our relationship.

Thank you for sticking it out and putting up with the occasional troll; everyone appreciates your insights!

 

[ElizabethAnne]

I put the two maps (where body was found plus police map) together, but the police map doesn’t even indicate the location of the body so you have to make a visual guess based on other landmarks like the shopping center and Moller Ranch staging area that looks like a guitar head. It doesn’t look like the area was heavily covered except by the tip of the light blue loop. My best guess is that the body was slightly above the light blue loop. Use the line underneath the shopping center in both maps as a horizontal reference. It looks like the body was almost exactly due west of that line.

For other landmarks, on both maps, there’s a feature that looks like a toolbox above Diablo Canyon Road.

The SF Chronicle republished their map and looks to me moved the dot a little further south just a tiny bit. They changed the name of the nearest road also from Diablo Canyon Road to Dublin Canyon Road. Here is the link I have of it -- https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7-7Jw_VcAA5rvL?format=jpg&name=900x900 Matthias Gafni from the SF Chronicle is the one who put the revised map out in a series of twitter posts.

To me, on the SF Chron revised map it looks like the location is about due west from the end of Blessing Dr. [Side note: The City of Pleasanton used to call the end of Blessing Dr. by Morgan Dr. but changed the name in the 1990s. It looks like the City of Pleasanton never told the East Bay Regional Park District about the name change because Morgan Dr. still appears as the name of the street in the EBRPD Fire and Public Safety map that shows all of the park's Emergency Vehicle and Maintenance Access points].

Also if you look on the Alameda County parcel viewer here Geocortex Viewer for HTML5 and search on 11025 Dublin Canyon Road, you can see two parcels divided by a red line. Plug the address into where it says Situs Address and search. You do not need to know the APN.

The termination of the North Ridge Trail ends near the top of the lower parcel (the rectangular parcel in the red box) and that is where the Sky7 helicopter showed the emergency vehicles parked. There is a label called Access Trail Tr on the map in the parcel viewer. It shows where two trails seemingly overlap, but it is one arcing up to the northern direction, and one continuing in the east direction that are at two slightly different levels. This corresponds to the picture CT runspired posted on his instagram and he linked on an earlier posting to Websleuths. He said the single track was about 10 ft away from where he took the photo. I am guessing this might be what law enforcement referred to in the press conference as possibly the 'game trail.'

The Alameda County parcel viewer seems to more or less show an accurate depiction of the trails for this parcel. It also matches the Fire and Public Safety map that you have to zoom in to see details here https://www.ebparks.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=29796

On the other hand, the map that the city of Pleasanton has on its website of this parcel is completely wrong as it shows lines for trails the EBRPD has not even built yet. I'm referring to the section F on the Moller Ranch Trail connection to Pleasanton Ridge that the city of Pleasanton has in its Trails Master Plan that it published on April 16, 2019. On this map, it has on the Legend of the map that solid lines mean existing trails. The lines for trails in the northern section of Pleasanton Ridge are depicted as solid lines on the City of Pleasanton map even though EBRPD has not even built these trails yet.

The map with all of the incorrect trails in the northern part of Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park in on page A-11 and is called the Pleasanton Trails Master Plan from the City of Pleasanton and the upper right corner says April 16, 2019. It is two pages and the section is called: F. THE PRESERVE AND MOLLER RANCH TRAIL CONNECTIONS TO PLEASANTON RIDGE and includes a map. It is on the City of Pleasanton website and I repeat, does not accurately portray the trails in Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park. Please do not rely on this map particularly if you plan to hike Pleasanton Ridge. It is so shockingly wrong, I have no idea how this ever made its way on the City of Pleasanton web page.

It seems to me that it is irresponsible and reckless for a public agency like a municipality to post a map purported to be of EBRPD Pleasanton Ridge trails where they have not had either had: 1) EBRPD review the map of trails for their property that the City of Pleasanton created to make sure it is accurate or 2) City of Pleasanton staff actually walk the trails themselves to make sure they in fact exist.

This City of Pleasanton map is so wrong about the northern grid of Pleasanton Ridge Regional Park that anyone relying on it as fact would get hopelessly lost including me. If Philip saw this City of Pleasanton produced map and used it as a reference, because it is so inaccurate, in my opinion there is no way he or anyone else for that matter could have figured out a way out of there.

 

[runspired]

Runspired, has there been any comment by K9 SAR handlers about whether a cadaver-trained dog would have typically been able to find Philip once he was deceased? My assumption was that they would be able to alert to and find a deceased victim if present. It is pretty disappointing that they could not. Sure, the wind could have blown a certain direction, but I guess I would have assumed that they would have taken dogs all around in different areas of the park, and eventually they would have caught the scent and be able to track it.

I wouldn’t call myself an expert or even more than marginally well educated on the subject; however, in the research we did and discussions we had with SAR dog experts it was pretty clear that it’s a lot tougher than it seems. A few of the things we heard from folks that do HRD searches regularly:

- dogs have to be retrained often, and that training may only last a few days, and is very difficult to do right
- dogs often have a very small window during the day in which they’ll stay focused on the task
- the wind and temp locations need to be just right
- most dogs with various SAR specialities don’t have HRD capabilities, those with HRD training may not be trained in the right specialization
- scent changes with time so the training may not match the stage of decomposition
- when best to deploy them is an unknown since day/time of death (or if dead) is unknown
- even with a large number of perfectly trained dogs and multiple passes on multiple days to get high coverage of the area based on wind/temp there’s a good chance the scent doesn’t carry far enough or that the body was in terrain the scent didn’t escape or the body was just out of range that it gets missed.

Some of the HRD assignments on 7/31 were within the theoretical range of detection, though on the far side not the near side of that range, and had favorable winds from what I can tell in the data: obviously was still missed.

All this combines to HRD searches being a tool but rarely a silver bullet. Similar to how many folks are convinced thermal should have found him. Great when the conditions are right, great if you look in the right spot with the right conditions, tons of reasons why someone might be missed.

 

[terracotta1982]

…not when the ambient temperature is the same (or warmer!) than body temperature. Note that the study you cited was conducted in the fall.

The day was hot when Phil went missing. At 11am, it would have been low 90s. By noon it was 97, and people on this board have mentioned it was possibly even hotter than that on the ridge. That night, and the days after, it was cool.
So the ambient temperature was much cooler after ~9pm the day Phil went missing. Therefore, the thermal imaging camera's should have picked up Phil IF USED WITH www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyKVQYG-j7U

Now, as to why this technology isn't currently being utilized is unknown. Its source code is listed freely on the web, so its available.

The graph below shows the time as "Start" when Phil went missing, around 11-12pm. Please also notice the windspeeds, very high that day.

 

[Beekarina]

I was more sad for those folks than personally offended. I fully grok how many not-great men there are out there. But to seriously know so few that someone being emotionally aware of a friend / willing to go back and forth to ensure we could hit his schedule / wanting to talk about life became a flag for lover? I hope everyone who jumped to that assumption comes to know more men that give them faith in humanity.

I appreciate you all following along in the search, and for giving me a bit of a stress relief outlet. A decent part of me just needed someone not directly invested in the search to chat to.

RE PK reminding you of friends who went to MIT, I similarly went to a school with a reputation for nerdiness and quirkiness, I'm sure much of the "flowery" is those characteristics carrying through life. Our shared academic and athletic interests were an integral part of our relationship.

I'm not sure? Nothing read as romantic or "flowery", so that leap didn't make any sense to me. I read something in your AMA about a private conversation*, or keeping a conversation private, so I thought the texts were lengthy because you were also discussing a personal problem/life stressor/pressure which may have contributed to his disappearance. In hindsight, I feel ridiculous for drawing that conclusion, and being so persistent in advancing a theory. (* I now understand you were only trying to keep certain routes you discussed private.)

I'm so sorry it ended this way Chris. I hope you will stay and lend your intellect and experience to other cases.

 

[ElizabethAnne]

I wouldn’t call myself an expert or even more than marginally well educated on the subject; however, in the research we did and discussions we had with SAR dog experts it was pretty clear that it’s a lot tougher than it seems. A few of the things we heard from folks that do HRD searches regularly:

- dogs have to be retrained often, and that training may only last a few days, and is very difficult to do right
- dogs often have a very small window during the day in which they’ll stay focused on the task
- the wind and temp locations need to be just right
- most dogs with various SAR specialities don’t have HRD capabilities, those with HRD training may not be trained in the right specialization
- scent changes with time so the training may not match the stage of decomposition
- when best to deploy them is an unknown since day/time of death (or if dead) is unknown
- even with a large number of perfectly trained dogs and multiple passes on multiple days to get high coverage of the area based on wind/temp there’s a good chance the scent doesn’t carry far enough or that the body was in terrain the scent didn’t escape or the body was just out of range that it gets missed.

Some of the HRD assignments on 7/31 were within the theoretical range of detection, though on the far side not the near side of that range, and had favorable winds from what I can tell in the data: obviously was still missed.

All this combines to HRD searches being a tool but rarely a silver bullet. Similar to how many folks are convinced thermal should have found him. Great when the conditions are right, great if you look in the right spot with the right conditions, tons of reasons why someone might be missed.

Chris, did you see those small red flags that Sgt Kelly referred to along the game trail that Philip followed? He said he thought those were the type of flags that contractors sometimes use that they stick in the ground and that they were on part of that path of that game trail Initial autopsy indicates no foul play in death of Philip Kreycik – East Bay Times

The quote was in case you run into the paywall ... "He said small red flags similar to those used by contractors were found stuck in the ground along a portion of the game trail, but he was not sure why they were there."

He didn't say if they were at the beginning or midway through and how many there were, or whether they were scattered around at random places. Did you and the searchers see them around the Pleasanton Ridge park from time to time or were they just in this location? I'm not sure, but maybe they could have been there to perhaps mark off the Valle Vista or some other trail they haven't built yet that are shown on this concept map in the north section (just a guess) https://www.ebparks.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=26896

Do you have any idea why the red flags around there might have been there? Sgt. Kelly according to the article said he did not know.

 

[PickledGinger]

I'd be more interested in seeing the heart rate chart than the supposed duration of the run.

 

[Curious_in_NC]

There was no GPS, so no defined trail. Just the time.

You're right. I think you could also call the 6 miles and 4:31 info a "subtractive" analysis. I would certainly respect the rights of LE and Philip's family to keep other more specific information like GPS and HR private if they choose to do so.

 

[terracotta1982]

Why would he run without GPS? Don't all trail runners want to log their path, especially on a new trail?

 

[Tower]

Why would he run without GPS? Don't all trail runners want to log their path, especially on a new trail?

I think this has been verified by CT, but my watch is very similar to Philip’s. When paired with my desktop/laptop, I can upload my track or route which my watch has stored during my run via GPS. It does not allow my whereabouts to be tracked if I were missing (does not send out any type of ping or tracking signal).

 

[terracotta1982]

I think this has been verified by CT, but my watch is very similar to Philip’s. When paired with my desktop/laptop, I can upload my track or route which my watch has stored during my run via GPS. It does not allow my whereabouts to be tracked if I were missing (does not send out any type of ping or tracking signal).

Thank you. My understanding was his watch has no GPS and/or wasn't enabled. So even after pairing, there is no trail. Is my understanding correct? If it is, then my question earlier is why go with no GPS to log your new run.

 

[Tower]

Thank you. My understanding was his watch has no GPS and/or wasn't enabled. So even after pairing, there is no trail. Is my understanding correct? If it is, then my question earlier is why go with no GPS to log your new run.

There was a news article upthread that said the watch had “no GPS,” but I believe it was confirmed by CT it does use GPS to track his route as he is running. I think the news article meant to clarify he could not be found using the watch (as we could using a cell phone, for example), but the article confused the issue. I believe LE is now able to see his route, although it appears they have not released that info. Jmo

 

[ElizabethAnne]

I added up the approximate distances that Philip may have run that day based on the shortened loop via Mariposa. I tried to use Google maps to do this. It may be a coincidence, but when I did this I ended up with about 6 miles. I am not sure what this means, but here are the segments I used, and hope I did not make any mistakes when trying to put these routes on Google maps, which is not exactly easy:

.2 miles from Moller Ranch staging area via Moller Ranch Drive to beginning of trail at top of the street

.3 miles (a little more than that) from beginning of trail at top of street to end of Moller Property via the Moller Ranch trail [Note this was a saga because Google maps defaults the route up Tehan Canyon Rd, but I could not get an exact route so I did the best I could]

1.5 miles (approximate) from portion of Lying Stump Shortcut Trail to entrance of Pleasanton Ridge park boundary

2.9 miles for loop on the Pleasanton Ridge assuming North Ridge Tr, Cowing Tr, Sinbad Creek Tr, Mariposa Tr, back to North Ridge Tr (note this is shortened loop corresponding to the Aug 2019 Strava run route but in the counterclockwise direction)

.6 miles from North Ridge Tr heading north to gate at the South boundary of Poole property (landbank EBRPD) where Google maps stops calculating distances. Here is the aerial view of the gate I am talking about Google Maps

about .5 miles from that Gate to around where Philip's body was found near the end of the North Ridge Tr end point in the middle of the Poole property (landbank EBRPD)---this is a guess because Google does not measure any distances north of that gate at all.

 

[Deleted member 222031]

Looking for a summary to today's date:

1)Have any conclusions been reached based on known data?

2) What knowable data are we still waiting on?

3)What unknown or unavailable data would he helpful if obtainable?

TIA

 

[Cuoco7]

It seems there are so many posts where everyone is trying to figure out Watch Data and Animal Data etc. I wonder if anyone has taken into consideration how absolutely so much of society is distraught and mentally affected by what has happened this past year? Does anyone realize how simple the thought that people just don't want to deal? More common than not. Call any doctor, they will tell you. I look at most hiking, camping, running, just out for a walk cases, in this manner as of late. IMOO.

 

[runspired]

Hi folks.

I have seen and analyzed the GPS data. We may make it public, in fact I believe it eventually becomes an official part of the public record so it may not even be our choice, though it is something we intend to eventually share.

There are a number of reasons to hold off still for the family to finish their grieving and finish putting together the full picture of what occurred, but sans track I’ll still say a few things.

the watch data does not have temperature or HR data. It has cadence and GPX track only, both of which tell a pretty compelling but unfortunately incomplete story.

the worst thing I can tell you is that it ends before the end.

the most expected things I can tell you are that it (1) clarified his route to the top was roughly what we assumed (and not what was drawn), (2) that his speed to the top was exactly what we presumed and he cooked himself in the process (~18min) (he owns a lot of crowns that will be hard to take on Strava were we to take that public) (3) that the footprints on Mariposa were his though his route to there was different than expected though in line with one of our theorized re-routes for the amount of time he’d estimated he’d be out there, and (4) that the first hint of trouble was only 25min in, the first compromised decision 31min in, the first highly irrational decision was roughly 38min in, and he was incapacitated by 48min.

Heat strikes quickly.