Author Archives: Ryan Auclair

Lidar is a type of ground scan using pulsed lasers to measure the ground. In Oregon, you can find the Oregon Lidar Consortium on the Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) webpage. It is an open source lidar imagery database for the state. Lidar works similar to radar (radio waves in the air) or sonar (sound waves in water) in that laser light is emitted, bounces off the ground or objects on the ground and is returned to a sensor. The resulting sensor data is then rendered into an image.

I am analyzing the imagery as a supplement to my analysis of topographic maps, aerial photographic surveys and my own on-the-ground developed knowledge of this stretch of Soda Fork Rd. The lidar imagery is providing a more finely grained view of the topology of the hill side, and this informs my search plan for this year. The topographic maps would indicate that this area has a very moderate elevation change from the road to the stream, but the lidar confirms my own observations about the actual steepness of this hillside.

The lidar imagery also shows benches and funnels in the terrain that the topographic map does not. I’ve outlined those benches in red, and you can see the funnels leading from and to them in the darker greyscale of the imagery. In fact, the most visible funnel is the one below the turquoise shaded area that was searched on 25 May and 15 June. There might also be a way to skirt the south edge of the funnel to get to the narrow benches at the bottom.

The lidar, in concert with the 1982 BLM aerial photo-survey, also confirms something that has limited or frustrated prior searches by LCSO. The original reports of regarding the location where Karen and Rodney’s clothing and belongings were found are very general. We have a map sheet name, Upper Soda, the BLM section number 19 and a general and vague description of 1/4 mile down a rugged hillside from a logging landing, in an area of second growth timber and thick vegetation. Without a GPS grid to really nail down each location, finding a center point to work from is impossible. This is why I have resorted to a “brute force” hands and knees grid search. Using the shape of the terrain to inform how debris and hopefully remains have moved with water flow should help narrow down probable locations to search.

Topographic maps of the area can also confuse the search effort. In addition to the current FS 2041 road, annotated on the maps is a second road labeled Soda Fork Road, running parallel to and west of the 2041 road. Based on a map recon alone, one might think that “Soda Fork Road” was abandoned once the 2041 road was cut, thereby altering where to look along the road for a landing.

However the lidar imagery confirms the 1982 aerial photo-survey in this regard. The road network hasn’t;t changed over time. The current 2041 Road is the same as the “Soda Fork Road” listed in the original reports, and the road sign at the junction of US20 and FS 2041 still bears the name “Soda Fork Rd”. The lidar shows no abandoned road running parallel to the current one and this is true from the US20 junction to the log yard. You can see another, long abandoned landing along a spur road that splits from the 2041 Rd at the landing I am working out. That landing is next on my list to explore in case that is the one referenced in the original reports.

I had my first obligation free Saturday since Memorial Day Weekend, and I headed out to the Lee Site Saturday morning. I cleared a bench just slightly to the east and below the area where the volunteers had searched on 25 May 2024.

I started at the cliff out, where the hill side dropped abruptly down to the creek. The search box was bounded on the north and south by slight ridges in the topology of ground, which helped funnel debris and provided a workable search area for the day.

Nothing to report in this area. It was free of trash, animal remains, really anything. Just a clean forest floor underneath the leaf litter.

I did explore the hillside beyond the 25 May and 27 April searches, as evidenced by the red track. A LiDAR scan of the hillside revealed some more benches that way, and I wanted to give it a preliminary look.

We marked the 47th Anniversary of Rodney and Karen’s disappearance with a volunteer search day at Soda Fork Road. Despite the bad weather, we had an amazing group of volunteers show up early in the morning, on a holiday weekend. We met at a nearby campground and convoyed to the Lee Site. Joining us was Deni Grove and her daughters, relatives of Rodney Grissom. Deni was there to provide support in the form of hot coffee, food and a pop-up canopy for shelter from the rain.

Once there, I provided a case overview, why we were searching in this location, a “how to search” demo and a safety brief. When that concluded, we walked down the hill to the two areas I identified on previous searches as good locations for the volunteers to work.

The first area was a 50’ x 100’ bench on the hillside. It was relatively level and free of debris, which should make for easy searching by the volunteers. I then took two of the group with me to help take apart a large pile of logs and other debris adjacent to the location of the bottle I found on the last search.

Both groups of volunteers were incredible. Brie and Dayne helped me make quick work of taking that pile of debris apart, while Kristina, Jody and Teresa grid searched the bench with an amazing amount of thoroughness. They located two skull fragments, which were forensically photographed and the photos sent off to the State Forensic Anthropologist’s “Bone Phone” for a rule in / rule out judgement on origin. Dr Vance asked that we package up the bones and deliver them to the State ME’s office when it opened, which we promptly did.

Dr. Vance let me know, and I relayed that to the rest of the volunteers that the fragments were of animal origin. While disappointing, the fact that the team found one fragment that was 2cm x 2cm and another that was 5cm x 2cm speaks to their attention to detail and thoroughness in their search.

I want to give a sincere thanks to Dayne, Brie, Jody, Teresa, Kristina, Deni, Kady and Nicole. Thank you so much for showing up, the absolutely amazing effort and commitment to helping out. It is very much appreciated. I want to thank Deni, Kady and Nicole for allowing me the honor of taking them to the location where Rodney’s clothing was found.

Karen Jean Lee was last heard from 47 years ago today, at 3:18pm Pacific. She made a call from a pay phone in Lebanon, Oregon and vanished. Traveling with her was Rodney Grissom, who has also never been seen again. May they come home soon.

In the official documentation on NAMUS, LCSO, etc, Rodney Grissom is listed as missing since May 24, 1977, and was last seen in Albany Oregon. You’ll find this same information in the earlier entries in my website, as it is the “official record”. However, I have found through additional research in contemporaneous newspapers that this information is incorrect, not out of intentional error or negligence, but due to the passage of time between his actual disappearance date and point last seen.

Rodney Grissom was officially reported missing in 2012, not in 1977. His family in Hillsborough may have reported him missing to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, but through error or the lack of a priority that a teen runaway would have been given in 1977, it was not officially recorded. When Lt. Mike Harmon began a new investigation in 2012, he contacted Rodney’s family, determined that he was still missing and LCSO filed the official missing persons report then.

This post-fact reporting introduced both the 24 May date and the Albany point last seen into the record. Albany Oregon is the Linn County seat, the headquarters of LCSO and would probably be the default for LCSO making a report. The official report does state that LCSO filed the report as a courtesy to Washington County, which indicates that the actual point last seen would have been there.

The 24 May date could have been a typographical error, or an error in memory on the part of Rodney’s family when talking with the investigator. It’s hard to determine which, but it is a good faith error.

All the contemporary accounts (1977-1982) list Rodney as traveling with Karen on the day she disappeared, 26 May 1977. Her last phone call indicates that they were traveling together as well. I apologize for my own earlier propagation of the incorrect 24 May 1977 and Albany information. I hope that this entry helps clear up that error.

The search at the Lee Site yesterday was a continuation of the prior 27 April Search. I started by overlapping the ground search with the 27 April area, since there is a decent amount of deadfall in the area. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t leave a seam between the two search boxes and inadvertently miss something.

I’m still working the plan I developed after finding the 1982 aerial survey, which is to work the edge of the felled area. Once I have that line on the hillside searched, I’ll get ropes to descend the hill and work between that line and the creek. The task for today was to clear a large pile of deadfall, branches, and debris that had built up in that search box. The weather was excellent-90, sunny and dry.

I was clearing debris from around the base of a standing cedar, visible in the center of the first photo above, when I discovered an unusual item.

Underneath the leaf litter, I found an old fortified wine bottle. I found it odd at the time, and throughout the day and into the night, it gnawed at me. I’m familiar with the “it’s Miller Time” beverages of the PNW working man. Beer cans don’t even rate a mention when found, but this is unusual. Fortified wine would be an out of the ordinary choice for a logger at the end of the day, let alone an entire bottle. It’s too far from the road to have been thrown from a passing truck and land in this spot, let alone land intact. There are enough debris traps between the road and its location to have prevented it from rolling downhill. Usually, you find these around campsites, but this isn’t a place you’d camp in or “hang out” at. Around the landing, sure, this wouldn’t be out of place. Here it is. Whoever drank this, sat here for a while, and left it behind when done.

John Arthur Ackroyd is known to have revisited his body dumps. We know that in February 1979 he revisited where he left Kaye Turner. We also have statements from Rachanda Pickle’s cousin, Jennifer Persinger, that she believes he revisited Rachanda’s remains while she was catching a ride with him along US20. Ackroyd is also a known drinker, according to neighbors. It is also not unusual for serial killers to revisit their body dumps. Typically this is done as part of reliving the crime. Gary Ridgeway (The Green River Killer) is one example of many who have also exhibited this behavior.

Given the location of this bottle, in context with the description of where Karen Lee’s clothing and bag were found, it’s possible this is from Ackroyd. That possibility is 100% speculation on my part, and without latent prints lifted from the glass, it would be impossible to confirm. Once thing I feel comfortable asserting is that whomever drank this, was in this spot deliberately, stayed here long enough to finish the bottle and then left it behind.

To say this has been gnawing at me since I found it, is an understatement. If it is correlated with the location where Karen’s clothing was found, it’s a strong indication that I am in the right area. I’m considering bringing a brush and powder back with me on the next search. After 47 years, developing and lifting a latent print is the longest of long shots, but worth the effort.

I finished the search of this particular debris field about 2pm. I had cleared a decent amount of ground, given the density of the grid I searched. I drove home via US20 and OR22, via the Santiam Junction. It was a good drive to think about that find and what it may mean, if anything.

Most of my April Saturdays have been taken up with SAR training, both for this year’s Academy students and ground team training. I had my first free Saturday since the last search, and despite the weather not being ideal, I went out to Soda Fork Rd in the morning.

I had two tasks for the day. The first was to locate the limit of tree felling operations on the hillside, then head out about 1/3rd of a mile from the landing along that limit. This would establish the day’s search box. From the 27 April location my plan is to work a line along the hillside connecting back to the 31 March 2024 search box. The second task was to locate a search zone within that line for the volunteers that are coming later this month to assist.

Locating the limit of tree felling, even almost 50 years on, isn’t that difficult. I found the last row of stumps on the hillside, then followed that until my GPS told me I had gone about 1/3 of a mile from where I started at the landing. According to contemporary news accounts, Karen’s clothing and bag were found in an area of second growth timber and heavy underbrush 1/4 mile from the landing. To me this indicates that it would have been along the limit of tree felling. Now since that limit would have expanded as trees were cut, I’m starting at the final line of stumps and working in from there.

I located a bench just above a steep drop to Soda Fork Creek, dropped my pack at roughly the center of the bench, gloved up, put the knee pads on and began the day’s grid search. It was 45 and raining fairly decently, so I got drenched from the 360 degree wet of working in the undergrowth. My search technique is clearing the ground of cover until bare earth and rocks are exposed. I was able to work for about 4 hours until I lost dexterity in my hands from the cold and wet. I still managed to search about 1.75 miles within the day’s search zone.

As you can see from the track, I’m pretty thorough on the section of ground I’m working on. This is slow and meticulous work, in very difficult terrain and with less than ideal weather. As the summer approaches, I should be able to search longer on each outing, covering more ground and hopefully making a recovery.

I completed the first search of 2024 today at the Lee Site. My search plan was informed by the 1982 aerial survey of the area, which provided a roughly contemporary view of the area that I could line up with news reports from when Karen’s clothing and belongings were located by Willamette Industries loggers and turned over to LCSO.

Since it has been about 5 months since I’ve been on the ground, my first order of business was to reorient myself to the site, locate where I stopped searching in October 2023, and then determine the area I wanted to search today. Winter storms have knocked down quite a few branches and trees, but without the new undergrowth springing up, the ground was fairly easy to move through and search. I wanted to start the year’s search where the “second growth timber and heavy underbrush” had been at the time. I was able to locate and follow the faint spur ridge that extends south-southwest from the landing in the 1982 photo. When I reached the end of the spur, roughly where the riparian barrier had been left in 1982, the hillside cliffed out then became flood plain about 15-20 below the cliff.

There was a network of drainage chutes leading from the knob at the end of the spur to the cliff edge. A fallen cedar became the northern boundary for today’s search, with my goal to clear the chutes to the south of that log.

My search procedure for today is the same as it was last year. Starting from the lowest portion of the boundary, I cleared the ground of vegetation and leaf litter until I reached the rock substrate of the hillside. Thankfully on a steep slope like this, the top layer is only about 1” – 3” deep before hitting rock. I worked uphill to the knob, then shifted south one arm length for the next lane.

This work is slow and methodical, and at this time of year, cold and damp. The air temp was in the low 40’s at this elevation and near the creek bottom. I was able to cover about 1.5 miles within the drainage chutes, clearing debris in a grid. One of the chutes was particularly tricky to search, being exceptionally steep and slick, and after a 90 degree turn to the south, it went under a rock fall and over a cliff into Soda Fork creek.

After 3 hours of clearing the chutes, I walked around the top of the cliff edge, making a site survey for the next search. I was able to locate the limit of the felling operation by the rather neat line of cut stumps. The area below this line will form the Spring 2024 search area for the Lee Site.

The forecast is clear this coming weekend, 30-31 March, and I have a search plan put together. Look for a ground search report at the beginning of the week.

I have taken a pause in on the ground searching for the winter. Until the weather improves in March / April, or we get an exceptionally fine stretch of decent weather, I’m focusing on desk research and re-examining assumptions and interpretations of the facts. This week I found an online repository of historical aerial surveys, and I bought the image for Upper Soda, Section 19.

Above is the current aerial image for Soda Fork, Section 19. You can see the trace of Soda Fork Road (FS 2041), the clearing where the Lee site landing is, and at the top of the photo, the log yard area that I cleared this summer. A persistent question I’ve had is “what did this area look like in 1977” and this week I found my answer.

This photo depicts the same area, but with much less timber and vegetation due to logging operations. On the left of the image you can see the boundary line of the Menagerie Wilderness and the amount of clear cutting on both sides of Soda Fork Rd.

What can we learn from the 1982 image that we can’t from the 2020 image or being on the ground? Let’s start with what we can infer from the image.

• Based on the sunlight and relative dry appearance of the road beds, this was most likely taken in late spring, summer or early fall 1982.
• Based on the shadows the trees are throwing, it is mid-morning, and while the sun has risen above the ridge to the east of Soda Creek, sunlight is not hitting the west facing slope of the ridge.
• Overlaying the 1982 image with the current image, we can see that the road network is static and has not shifted over time.
• Let’s annotate the 1982 image with the crime scenes

• We can see that the Log Yard (Green Box) is pretty much the same, although there is far less vegetation on the top of the berm.
• The Lee Site (Red Box) is very much the center of “logging operations” as noted in the 1977 reports on the finding of Karen’s clothing and bag.
• We can note two large piles of gravel or other loose bulk material stored at the landing.
• The Lee Site looks as though the timber has been thoroughly cut judging by how few shadows are being thrown between the creek bed and the landing. There looks to be about 3 tall firs remaining along the creek and a stand of timber to the southeast of the landing’s main gravel pile.
• Police and news reports state that Karen’s clothing and bag were found in an area of “second growth timber and thick vegetation”. Based on the 1982 image, there are only a few areas between the landing and creek that match that description.
• The Spring 2024 search will focus on the stand of timber to the southeast of the landing and the line of timber extending from that stand north and south along the creek.
• My last search of the Lee Site (21 October 2023) stopped on the edge of this timber stand. This is based on a comparison of my GPS tracks to this image. It may not be exact, but it is close.
• The Grissom Site is similarly harvested, with a stand of timber left along the creek bed and a stand on the hill side in between the Grissom Site and the Lee Site.
• Rodney Grissom’s clothing was recovered in November 1982. If this photo is from the summer of 1982, his clothing is present in the image, but the resolution is too poor to even try finding it.