Author Archives: Ryan Auclair

Karen Jean Lee and Rodney L Grissom. Missing since May 26, 1977 at 3:18pm.

We are back to searching this season. I started grid searching last weekend and I have an HRD K9 team coming out this weekend. I am hopeful for this coming year, and I’ll post an update when I have one.

Wish me luck!

I had a major, yet unexpected development in this search last week. It is the best opportunity yet to try to locate Karen and Rodneys’ remains. Due to receiving this info in October, I won’t be able to fully pursue it until spring. I’ve notified family members that have been in contact with me about it, and I wanted to put a note here as to why grid searches stopped last week.

I will be site surveying for the rest of the fall, and working up the search plan during the winter. Talk to you soon.

Things have been rather busy for me during the work week, and while I was able to carve out a few hours on the 20th to search the grid, I did not have time to write up the day’s work. I’m going to combine both reports into one. Both days were spent on the Northwest quadrant, and that quarter of the total is now searched. We have searched 50% of the total area. The half that remains is uphill from where Trooper alerted. I should have that half complete by the end of October.

The Northwest quad was searched fairly quickly since it was far more open, with less deadfall tangles to contend with than the northeast quadrant. There is a small drainage channel that cuts the northwest quad into two roughly equal sections. Starting at that channel, each half would be a gentle uphill search, so I cleared west of the channel on the 20th and east of it on the 27th.

It was good searching, with a light duff layer and pretty open ground. I finished the first half of the northwest quad in about 4 hours. I checked animal burrows and rolled over deadfall as I was working.

There is a rock type on this hillside that does throw constant false visual alerts. I’m not a rock expert, but this one does have the appearance and color of weathered bone.

On 27 September, I took a new route into the site. Trooper, the HRD K9, detected odor of interest while walking in. It was at a turn-out on the skidder track, and there was a spur running downhill in the general direction of the grid. I decided to walk that spur down to see where it led. The spur has a very defined game trail on it, and is a much shallower angle down than the draws on either side of it. The game trail led almost directly to the grid, while the natural line of drift on the spur would have led to the End of the Road.

I started again at the drainage line and worked eastward. There was a little more deadfall on the eastern side, particularly as I got closer to the centerline and border with the northeast quad. This section, although slightly smaller overall, took about 5 hours to finish.

Temps were cool in the morning, then rose up to about 80 in the afternoon. I was able to complete the northeast quadrant of the grid. I had an “L” shaped segment left to search. The short leg of the L ran from where I stopped last weekend. It ran north-south and was a couple of lanes wide to reach the stump at the center line. The long leg of the L ran east-west for 50 ft, and was about 15ft wide.

The short leg of the L and the first 1/3 of the long leg took the longest. This area is closest to the center point where the HRD K9 indicated, so I went slow and methodical through this area. There is evidence of a low intensity fire at some point in the past. The old growth stumps have some fire damage around them, and there are coals and partially burned dead fall in the deepest layer of duff. None of the current trees have burn scars and the understory and ground layer is very verdant. I checked a few sources and couldn’t find information on a fire occurring in this area. I’m hoping that means the fire was pre-1977. Evidence of the burn is throughout the saddle.

Some of the rocks in the soil layer look remarkably like bone, and three similar to this were discovered during the day.

The most interesting item found was later in the afternoon, I found a 300 WinMag shell casing along the long leg of the L. It was been the first man-made object I’ve found in the grid. It was most likely ejected by an elk hunter, and probably not too long ago. The casing is tarnished and lightly pitted, but not yet deeply corroded. I’m guessing it laid here less than 10 years. I still flagged it and added a way point.

I finished the last bit and felt pretty satisfied with getting this quadrant completed. The next one will be the adjoining northwest quadrant. It’s more open, with less deadfall.

Remy and I returned early Saturday morning and started up on the next section of the grid. We are continuing the outside working in methodology, beginning at the lane adjacent to the last one finished the week before. This next section is a tangle of deadfall, fern and huckleberry, enough of a tangle that I didn’t even try to lay the grid across it.

Remy settled into a cool patch of bare earth from last week, and I turned on the GPS, added knee pads and gloves and began the day’s search. It was slow work in the tangle, clearing the ground and moving through the brush. I worked the tangle until it was complete and I had “broke through” to the ground cleared last Saturday. There was a raven vocalizing in the canopy above me, which was a nice accompaniment to the morning.

The area to the west of the tangle was more open, mostly box sorrel and fern for the ground cover. After the effort of getting around the tangle, this relative openness was deeply appreciated. I still went slow as I could see the center-point where Trooper, the HRD K9, had found odor of interest.

After reaching the deadfall, I paused the ground search. The deadfall formed two legs of a triangle heading back towards tangle. I took a few minutes to drink water and then limb off the trunks to make the next part easier.

This was the limit of the day’s progress. I am within 15 feet of the north-south centerline and about the same distance from the east-west centerline. I’m slowly finishing the northeast quadrant. I’m hoping to complete this quad and begin a new one next weekend.

After a weekend working in Coos County on 23 & 24 August, Remy and I went back to Soda Fork Saturday and got started on clearing the grid. This is the first hands and knees search since I finished working the former timber boundary around Landing 3 in Section 19. We arrived at the alternate location, walked down the skidder track , walked down to the grid, dropped the pack and got to work.

Since I have lanes clearly marked, my plan for the grid is to start at northeast corner and work my through each quadrant until complete. My goal for the day was to clear one 2500 square foot quadrant. The grid is 100×100 and centered on the area where the HRD K9 indicated “odor of interest” back on 2 August. That’s a 10,000 square foot area subdivided into 2500 square foot quadrants, and further subdivided into 5×5’ grid squares.

I began with my usual silent appeal to Karen and Rodney that Remy and I were there to help them come home, and if they wanted, today could be the day that the return journey began. With that, I gloved up, put the knee pads on, and started clearing the area.

I used the lawn mowing technique, where I cleared one lane to the bare earth, moving forward one grid square at a time. I was thorough and it was slow going all day. Since this location matches both the news accounts, the suspected offender’s preference for a murder / major assault / body dump locations (for this offender, both phases of his offense pattern would be the same location) and an HRD K9 showed strong interest, I am very deliberate and thorough. 48 years is a long time for a skeleton to disarticulate and scatter, so literally any grid square could be “the one”.

I hit the wall of my endurance at 4pm. I had cleared about 1500 square feet of ground, and I really couldn’t do much more that day. Based on what I was able to clear, I will be working this location through the fall. I am content with the thoroughness of the area searched, and that I would rather be slow and thorough than go faster and miss something.

I’ll continue the grid search next weekend.

Yesterday’s work was the measurement and layout of a grid centered on the marker where the HRD K9 gave his strongest indication of human remains. Based on the terrain in the area, I decided to start with a box 100’x100’, or 10,000 square feet of area. I stopped at the hardware store Friday and bought 500 blaze orange pin flags. I also bought a pack of pin flags in a different color for marking anything found. I packed a 100’ landscaper tape measure, stakes, spikes and other tools into my pack and had an early start.

I arrived at the search site about 8am and rucked the supplies down the skidder track and then down the hill from the End of the Road to the spot Trooper identified. I drove a spike into the stump where he whined and stamped the ground. I looped the tape measure over the spike and walked due north for 50 feet. I placed a pin flag every five feet along the tape until I had the line marked. I wound the tape back onto the reel, and repeated this process in the four cardinal directions.

Once I had the horizontal and vertical centerlines marked out, I then started the process to connect them and form four squares that share a corner on the center stump. I placed a spike at the 50’ mark, turned 90 degrees and ran the tape out another 50’. I repeated this in each direction from each of the four centerlines. This connected lines, forming the aforementioned boxes.

Once the larger 50’ x 50’ boxes were marked, I then subdivided each one into 5’ square grids. I ran a tape from centerline flag to the opposite centerline flag, then dropped flags every 5 feet. I repeated this ten times for each box, creating the grid.

I took me until 2:30pm to complete the grid. My original plan had me starting the grid search once laying the grid itself was done. We had some light rain in the Valley Friday and early Saturday, but those light rains stacked up on the Cascades and I was working in really wet conditions. I was a little too worn out to start the grid search, so that is for next time. We take a step at a time until the work is done.

The HRD K9 team and I met up at Soda Fork Rd and US20 at 0700 and drove into the new search area. We geared up, readied a chainsaw in case I needed to cut more of a path down the road and we headed out. Thankfully, the path was open enough. As we were walking in, Kathy let me know that Trooper (K9) caught “odor of interest” when we were on the road above the area I wanted to search. 

We rounded the turn to head east towards the end of the road, Trooper departed the road and went slightly north towards No-Name and Named Creek. His nose, to my eyes, definitely caught something and we followed him around that area for a bit. Kathy marked it on her GPS and I flagged roughly the center of the area he was interested in. We got to the End of the Road shortly thereafter. We walked the perimeter of the End of the Road, then dropped down the game trail towards the saddle and the hill opposite.

We were about 1/2 way down the hill from the End of the Road when Trooper again picked up “odor of interest” near a rock on the hillside. We GPS’d the location and flagged it. Trooper got back on the search and immediately went on his own to the south, towards the base of the hill that the road runs along. He moved with a purpose and without regard to how close Kathy and I were to him. He showed odor interest in a really compact area. Although he did not show his “trained final response” to locating a human remain, his behavior indicated that he was smelling human decomp. I lightly searched the immediate area where he sat down and started whining, but I found no bones or other items of interest.

Kathy and I went back up to the landing for a short break and some water. Once refreshed, we dropped back down the hill. Trooper again detected “odor of interest” in the same two spots, which was very encouraging. We led him around the beginning area of the Dry Drainage and about 150 yards down it. He showed no interest in the drainage. He also showed no interest in the north side of the hill, where Named Creek runs. 

After that we hiked back up to the trucks. Trooper again demonstrated “odor of interest” when we were above the area he went to on the south side of the landing. When we got to the trucks, Kathy hid some human bone training specimens for Trooper to find so he could get a treat after working so hard. What I noticed while he was working to find the training specimens was that his behavior when he caught the specimen’s scent was the same that he demonstrated earlier that morning in the woods.

My go forward plan is to create a 100’ x 100’ grid with pin flags around the area where he showed the most interest. In the context of the terrain, that area fits all the descriptions and the terrain also supports being a major assault / murder site.

On the attached GPS screenshot, yesterday’s track is in red. The areas where Trooper detected “odor of interest” are the red dog icons. The white dog icons were pre-planned search areas for him that he showed either no interest or we didn’t go because he didn’t lead us there.

Ryan

This past Saturday I completed the third and final site survey before running HRD K9s this coming weekend. I located the 1982 timber boundary, which is anchored on a very prominent terrain feature, which also serves as a barrier to further travel. It’s a fairly deep and cliffed out ravine that Named Creek runs through.

I also identified a natural line of drift from the saddle between the End of the Road and the hill. That line of drift channels foot traffic into a dry drainage that runs east-west parallel to Named Creek and south of the hill. This dry drainage is the area I’ve identified as the first search area. We will see how the day goes.