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[{"type":"text","text":"He must have been really thirsty....."}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>🚧 Bonus Video 1: Monday, July 22, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

He must have been really thirsty.....

Bonus Video 1: Monday, July 22, 2024

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Crime & Courts

Courts

CASPER — An 18-year-old Sheridan man who fought with Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers and tried to drive away after a traffic stop Saturday afternoon is also linked to crime sprees in Gillette, Sheridan and Casper, according to court records.

Bryson Cross appeared in court during his initial appearance Monday in Natrona County on four charges related to a traffic stop Saturday afternoon where police said he was a passenger in a speeding 2025 Jeep Compass on Wyoming Highway 258 in Casper.

Also Monday, a warrant was issued for his arrest out of Sheridan County on three felony charges related to stealing vehicles and weapons from those vehicles between June and October of this year.

Court records show Cross is charged in Natrona County with interference with a peace officer, possession of a controlled substance, reckless endangerment and driving while under the influence.

In Sheridan County, Cross faces charges of conspiracy to commit burglary, conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary and theft, $1,000 or more.

Wyoming Highway Patrol Trooper Kolton Carbon was on patrol Saturday afternoon when he clocked the Jeep going 60 mph in a 40-mph zone. After activating his lights, the Jeep pulled over near the intersection of WY-258 and East 2nd Street, according to an arrest affidavit.

The Jeep had an expired temporary license tag, and Carbon wrote that the driver told him he did not have his license with him. Carbon also asked the passenger for his license due to the smell of marijuana in the vehicle.

Carbon wrote that the driver seemed to be attempting to conceal his identity, and when the trooper asked him to get out of the vehicle, it appeared the driver was going to put the Jeep in gear and drive away.

As Carbon pulled the driver out of the vehicle, he told the passenger, later identified as Cross, to stay seated in the car. Carbon wrote that after handcuffing the driver and placing him beside the car on his knees, Carbon went to the passenger side and Cross jumped out and ran around the front of the vehicle and jumped into the driver’s seat.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Struggle"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Carbon pulled his weapon and chased."}]

“I was able to get ahold of Bryson’s left arm and smash the driver’s door against his left leg attempting to keep him from fleeing in the vehicle,” Carbon wrote. “I holstered my weapon and focused on applying physical control.”

The trooper reported that he opened the door and attempted to gain control over the gear selector, but Cross was able to get the vehicle in drive and started to pull away.

“I told Bryson to stop or he would be shot,” Carbon wrote. “Bryson stated he was a minor.”

At that point, Carbon wrote that a bystander arrived and went in through the passenger door and helped the vehicle stay in park and another trooper arrived to block the vehicle from being driven through the busy intersection.

With the second trooper’s assistance from the back seat, he pulled Cross from the vehicle and 

to help put Cross in handcuffs. A search of the vehicle found a loaded Glock 32 handgun on the floorboard in front of the passenger seat where Cross had been sitting. There was a round in the chamber and 12 rounds in an extended magazine, Carbon wrote.

A trooper assisting found three nicotine vape cartridges. Cross was taken to the hospital to check for any injuries. A THC vape was located in Cross’ pocket, the affidavit states.

Cross told the trooper at the hospital that he had used cocaine and Percocet along with marijuana prior to the incident, the affidavit states.

The driver was cited for careless driving, an expired registration and being a minor in possession of nicotine and released. Cross was transported to the Natrona County jail.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sheridan Warrant"}]

Meanwhile, the warrant and police affidavit from Sheridan allege that from June through October, Sheridan Police officers have investigated 17 thefts from vehicles. Four of the thefts involved vehicle owners reporting missing firearms.

The affidavit by Sheridan Police Officer Meagan Phillips states that Cross’ brother, Leland Cross, was arrested in August on charges related to the auto burglaries and that two juveniles were arrested with him. Both Cross brothers as well as the juveniles had spent time in the Wyoming Boys School and were released earlier this year, the affidavit states.

Phillips wrote that on Aug. 17, a black Ford Taurus stolen from Gillette was recovered in the 1400 block of Parker Avenue in Sheridan.

“During a search … several stolen items such as cards and personal property belonging to people in Gillette, Buffalo and Casper (were recovered),” Phillips wrote. “I was informed by detectives in Gillette that Bryson Cross was a suspect in the vehicle theft of the black Taurus. I was informed by Casper Police Department that the black Ford Taurus we recovered was involved in a pursuit on (Aug. 16) in Casper.”

Phillips wrote that Bryson Cross was a suspect in the Casper incidents.

 entered a plea deal on Oct. 31 in Natrona County District Court, for his involvement in the Casper crime spree. He told the court that he and “some guys” were out stealing cars the night he was caught. The police affidavit involved in the spree showed the black Taurus as well as the stolen vehicle Forbes drove initially took off as a Natrona County Sheriff’s deputy tried to pull them over.

Several items from Buffalo residents that had been reported stolen were found in the Taurus.

Phillips wrote that five suspects arrested for vehicle burglaries by Sheridan County Sheriff’s deputies on Oct. 10, included a teen she interviewed who told her that he had been involved in “car hopping” and “gooning,” and that he believed Bryson Cross had four-to-five firearms that he had stolen from vehicles.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Handgun"}]

Phillips wrote she also interviewed a juvenile after a call from a concerned mother who found a 9 mm handgun in his bedroom. Police recovered the handgun, and the juvenile told Phillips that Bryson Cross had asked him to “conceal the firearm for him.”

The mother later called police and told the officer her son had been threatened by Cross and the juvenile recanted his story and said he had received the weapon from another teen. However, police located a photo of the same weapon on the phone of an alleged co-conspirator that indicated Cross had attempted to sell it.

Court records show Cross has had several interactions with police since 2022 that include vehicle violations, driving without a license on more than one occasion, possession of a controlled substance, a minor consuming alcohol and more.

The charges Cross faces in Natrona County are all misdemeanors and the interference with a peace officer, possession of a controlled substance, and reckless endangerment charges carry potential penalties of up to a year in jail. The driving while under the influence charge carries the potential for six months in jail.

The charges against Cross in Sheridan County are all felonies. The conspiracy to commit burglary and theft charges are punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 fines. The conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary charge is punishable by not less than five years in prison and not more than 25 years. It also carries a potential $50,000 fine.

Cross remains in the Natrona County jail under a $7,500 cash or surety bond.

Highway patrol and Natrona county detention center 11 26 25

<title>🚧 Teen Accused Of Fighting With Troopers In Casper Also Tied To Summer Crime Sprees | Cowboy State Daily</title>

An 18-year-old Sheridan man accused of fighting with troopers during a Casper traffic stop Saturday tried to drive off with drugs and a loaded handgun in his SUV. He also faces charges related to summer crime sprees across northeast Wyoming.

Teen Accused Of Fighting With Troopers In Casper Also Tied To Summer Crime Sprees

John Thompson

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Brittany Heseltine knows straight away when a predator is nearby. The cattle she tends tell her when something's wrong. 

When they're calm, paired up and grazing, all is well. When the cows are not cooperative, spread out and bawling for their calves, there's a chance she'll find a bloody mess. 

Run-ins with predators, namely grizzly bears, black bears and wolves can be fairly common here near the headwaters of the Green River. 

Heseltine is a foreman and range rider for the Upper Green River Cattle Association. She's 31 and has worked this job for the last five years. She has three horses, four dogs, four other range riders, and 800 cattle in her charge. 

She spends five months each year, June through October, mostly on her own, working in the shadow of the Wind River Range. Days off are as rare as shooting stars, but she says it's not a bad place to hang her hat. 

People from all over the world travel through this area every summer on the Continental Divide Trail. 

The road through here is as rough as a corn cob. It leads over Union Pass and connects Dubois with Highway 352 at the north end of Kendall Valley. 

"If I get lonely and want to talk to someone, there's always people on the road," she said. 

Sometimes the ranchers she works for stop in to say hello and bring salt for the cattle. Her boyfriend and family members stop in once in a while too. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Green River Drift"}]

Eleven ranchers are members of the cattle association. They turn out about 5,000 head of cattle every spring. It's part of the famous Green River Drift, a 58-mile-long cattle trail used continuously since the 1890s.

The Drift as it's known, was featured by the television news magazine “60 Minutes” in 2021. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Day by Day"}]

Every morning she saddles up and heads out among the grazing pastures surrounded by dense mixed conifer forest. The grass is lush this year.  

She understands that predators own the night and that makes mornings the most interesting time of the day. She's like a detective traveling out to investigate a potential crime scene. 

First off, her border collies, Tory, Jenny, Gyp and Roe fan out among the willows in a river bottom. They will "clean out" this area, pushing cattle uphill to the open ridges and sidehills where she wants them to graze for the day. 

"The cattle tend to move down into the river bottom at night," she said. "They prefer to be out on open, flat ground so there aren't a lot of obstacles in their way if they need to escape. But they come down here because they know it's safer when they're closer to people." 

After they clean the river bottom, she rides among the herd and checks for any animals that might have respiratory problems or lameness. Dealing with foot rot, pneumonia, pink eye and other ailments are among a range rider's common tasks. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Doctoring"}]

Her saddlebag unbuckles and folds open to reveal a veterinary kit containing a large bottle of oxytetracycline, syringes, needles and a marking crayon. With a sick calf she'll rope it, throw it and hold it down with her knees to give it a shot, while her horse holds the rope tight. Then she'll mark it with a crayon and record the calf's ear tag number and brand. 

She knows how to estimate a sick cow's weight and calculate the correct dosage of medicine. Heseltine earned two associate degrees from Western Wyoming College and a Bachelor of Animal Science from the University of Wyoming.

With the bigger yearlings, cows and bulls she has the option to call for help from another range rider, or she knows a couple of tricks. The first, easiest, and less risky is to pull out her dart gun and administer medicine from a distance. 

The other is to rope the animal and if it will stand quietly with the rope around its neck she will toss a length of the rope around the front of its body on the ground and try to get it to step over the rope. If it steps just right she can catch the rear legs and the head at the same time and put it on the ground where she can administer medicine. 

Most of the ailments she encounters aren't difficult to diagnose, she said. With foot rot there will be swelling and lameness, pink eye causes runny red eyes and with respiratory diseases they have a hard time breathing. 

"When they're stressed their ears are droopy and they'll hold their head low," she said. "But you have to know the difference between sick and just tired because you just pushed them up a hill." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Investigating Depredation"}]

"Walking wounded" is another problem she sometimes encounters. This is when a calf is injured by a predator but still on its feet. When this happens, she ropes and throws the animal on the ground and then ties its legs together. It waits that way until Wyoming Game and Fish shows up to investigate what happened. 

She will use an In-Reach satellite phone to send Game and Fish a message and a location with a global position sensor. Then a predator biologist will drive up and investigate what happened and try to pin down the culprit. 

Bears generally leave wounds on an animal's back between its front shoulders and on its brisket. Wolves leave bite marks on the back legs and rump. When they find a dead cow or calf they will skin it and look for teeth marks to determine what killed it, she said. 

Ranchers can receive a payout from the state when predators are proven responsible for livestock deaths. 

Sometimes she will find an animal that died from natural causes and a predator came along after the death and fed on the carcass. In this case she'll skin the carcass and look for pooling blood or bruising from bite marks. If there's no bruising of the meat or pooling blood under the hide, it's most likely the predator didn't kill it, she said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Day To Day"}]

On other days Heseltine will ride along and fix fences, pack salt blocks for the cattle to lick or move cattle from one pasture to the next. When it's time to change pastures a Forest Service range manager and the grazing association president come up and take measurements of the plants growing at specified places. They measure the same spots every year. 

"They take measurements at several sites and calculate an average length of the grass," she said. "If the average meets their requirements, then I have a couple of days before I change pastures. If the average is below their requirements, I start moving cattle immediately." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What’s required"}]

Range riders provide their own horses, dogs, horse trailers, trucks and tack. They also shoe their own horses so they need the tools for that job. The grazing association provides five cabins for the riders. Heseltine starts the season living in a house trailer and will move to a higher elevation cabin later this summer. 

In her spare time she likes Marvel movies and fantasy novels. She also spends time making chaps, purses and other leather goods. She has a small house trailer where she keeps a heavy-duty leather sewing machine and the other tools of that trade. 

As a youngster she rode horses but didn't have any experience with livestock until she was 16. Her stepfather Eddie Wardell, a Big Piney rancher, took her along to fix fences once and she met a woman range rider and decided that was what she wanted. 

"Eddie wasn't sure if I could handle this work, but after college they had an opening and I jumped at it," she said. "After my first year, Albert (Sommers) who was the grazing association president at the time, said 'you're coming back next year right?' I said if you'll have me. Now the current president Coke Landers told me I can't quit." 

John Thompson can be reached at News@CowboyStateDaily.com

Brittany Heseltine 2 7123

<title>🚧 Wyoming People: Brittany Heseltine Is A Real Working Cowgirl And Range Rider | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Brittany Heseltine is foreman and range rider for the Upper Green River Cattle Association. She has 3 horses, 4 dogs, 4 other range riders, and 800 cattle in her charge. She spends 5 months each year, June through October, mostly on her own, working in the shadow of the Wind River Range.

Wyoming People: Brittany Heseltine Is A Real Working Cowgirl And Range Rider

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily political columnist, Rod Miller.

Rod Miller

Opinion

CSD Columnists

Our Wyoming Legislature is considering rules that will 

The rationale given is that these areas are the only places where legislators can have private discussions.

That begs the question: why would any elected official want to conduct the public’s business in private?

The Wyoming Legislature is a public institution, the capitol building is a public space and the work of the legislature is the public’s work. Anyone with an election certificate needs to understand that very clearly, and conduct themselves accordingly.

The press, charged by our Constitution to be the eyes and ears of the public, must be free to see and hear what publicly elected officials are doing and saying in order for the press to discharge its responsibility to the public. That responsibility is to report to the citizens what their government is doing on the citizens’ behalf.

If the presence of the free press makes legislators – or any other public officials – nervous or uncomfortable to the point that they deny access to the press, then those officials are unworthy of the public trust. Those officials’ job descriptions, I’ll bet a dollar to a donut, do not include being comfortable.

There should be no “safe spaces” in the capitol where legislators can go to hide so their feelings don’t get hurt by a curious press or a demanding public.

Any public official in Wyoming who thinks otherwise would be well-advised to remember Richard Nixon.

Nixon, if you recall, taped conversations in his office while president, because he wanted a private record of those sensitive discussions. When Congress found out about the tapes during the Watergate investigation, and asked Nixon to turn them over, he refused.

He based his refusal on his claim that there were some things that a president did that Congress or the public should not know about. 

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, and forced Nixon to turn over his tapes. Sure enough, within those taped conversations was the “smoking gun” that ended Nixon’s presidency.

That example should convince Wyoming’s Legislature that there really is nothing that a public official does that should be kept from the public’s knowledge. It should also teach that there are things that a public official just shouldn’t do.

For our legislators to want to keep some shadowy corner or dark nook in the capitol where the press and the public just aren’t welcome is to invite the conclusion that they just didn’t take Nixon’s downfall to heart. That desire for secrecy, in itself, is a violation of the public’s trust.

I can just hear the opponents of government transparency now, ginning up their arguments to justify hiding their work from the public. 

They’ll likely throw up in my face that, in 1787, our Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was conducted behind closed doors, with no access to the public or the press granted. And that is a fact.

I’ll counter that argument by pointing out that the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, wasn’t ratified until four years later. Since then, the people’s right to know what their government is doing through a rigorous free press that shall not be abridged.

Here’s hoping that wiser heads prevail in the Wyoming Legislature, and that these bone-headed rules are voted down. The citizens of Wyoming deserve, and should demand, a legislative body that is unafraid to conduct its business in the clear, bright sunshine. 

We deserve a legislature that is proud to show us what it is doing, and doesn’t want to hide in the dark, shadowy corners of the capitol building. 

Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@Yahoo.com

Rod miller headshot scaled

<title>🚧 Rod Miller: Where the Sun Don’t Shine In The Wyoming Legislature | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Rod Miller writes: "There should be no 'safe spaces' in the capitol where legislators can go to hide so their feelings don’t get hurt by a curious press or a demanding public. Any public official in Wyoming who thinks otherwise would be well-advised to remember Richard Nixon."

Rod Miller: Where the Sun Don’t Shine In The Wyoming Legislature

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Dan Campbell was illegally hunting elk antler sheds in Yellowstone Park when he disappeared more than three decades ago. 

Campbell had set off from Hellroaring Trailhead to Jardine, Montana, outside of the park's boundaries, with his dog Freckles for a four-day trek. 

However, when the 42-year-old Montana man failed to appear at the designated location and time, his girlfriend, Tracy Erb, reported him missing April 8, 1991.

Campbell is one of at least six people to mysteriously disappear in the park since the late 1960s. 

[{"type":"text","text":"There may be more, but it’s difficult to get a handle on the numbers.  "}]

Officially, the park doesn’t appear to track the missing. When asked for a list of missing people, the Yellowstone Park Public Affairs Office referred Cowboy State Daily to the 

 containing 25 missing persons cold cases for all national parks.

Campbell was the only person cited on the list to have gone missing in Yellowstone. Of the others, nine went missing in Yosemite State National Park in California while five disappeared in Grand Canyon National Park.  

The other five missing persons who disappeared in Yellowstone were culled from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s 

National Missing and Unidentified Persons System

Along with Campbell, those never found include Luke Sanburg, Bruce Pike, Stuart Isaac, Kim Cumbo and 8-year-old Dennis Johnson, all of whom disappeared in the park between 1966 and 2021. 

[{"type":"text","text":"‘Bastard’ Search"}]

Campbell’s disappearance serves as an example of the challenges faced when trying to unravel the enigma of a person gone missing in Yellowstone. It also sheds light on the struggles that park rangers and search and rescue teams face in their efforts to locate individuals within the vast 2.2-million-acre park.

An incident report released by the U.S. Department of Interior gives insight into how the search unfolded for Campbell, beginning with gathering additional information about him and determining if he was actually missing in what’s called a “bastard search.”

In search and rescue terms, a "bastard" search refers to checking all the obvious locations to make sure the supposed victim isn’t sitting at home watching baseball and snacking on chips. The derogatory term, hence, describes that person who is hiding out and not missing. 

Once it was established that Campbell was indeed missing, the park dispatched ground and air crews. Spring snowstorms with up to a foot of snow slowed searchers on their weeks-long search of seven areas in the park. They found no trace of Campbell or his dog.  

[{"type":"text","text":"Warring Theories"}]

In the absence of answers, speculation abounded. Some said Campbell may have intentionally disappeared to avoid paying debts while others surmised that he thumbed a ride out of the park, fell into a hole or had a run in with a grizzly.  

His family, however, believes Campbell was likely killed by rival hunters in the corrupt, yet highly profitable, underground shed hunting market that continues to thrive today. 

Shed hunting is a popular pastime in Wyoming and elsewhere whereby collectors gather shed antlers from deer, elk and moose on public lands in the spring. Shed antlers have become popular for home décor, arts and crafts and can sell for $15 or more per pound for each antler.

It’s illegal to collect sheds in Yellowstone and other national parks, but it remains a lucrative market for poachers. 

A 1996 article in Outside Magazine outlines the “infamous antler wars” between poachers, rangers and each other in which the author describes how the lucrative industry has spiraled into small cartels carving up park territory and guarding it with semiautomatic weapons. 

Campbell’s brother Bill, likewise, did his own investigation and told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that there had been 14 horn hunters out in the area the day Campbell went missing and that one of them heard two shots fired.

The Campbell family hired a private investigator, according to documents released by the U.S. Department of Interior in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Bozeman newspaper, and the Montana Criminal Investigation Bureau were also called in to help that July. 

Law enforcement, however, didn’t seem to consider homicide a possibility, prompting Campbell’s three brothers to sue former Park County Montana Sheriff Charlie Johnson for $100,000 each for legal fees and associated hardships for what they claimed was a botched investigation. 

At the heart of the lawsuit was the fact that during the course of his investigation, the sheriff confiscated – but later returned equipment – belonging to two horn hunters who were legally camping outside of the park's northern boundaries. Sheriff’s officers collected ammunition and spent cartridges but did not subject them to forensic tests, according to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. 

This prevented them from getting fingerprints or doing other evidentiary analysis to determine if they had any involvement, the brothers stated in their lawsuit, which was later thrown out of court.

Regardless of how or why he disappeared, no signs of Campbell’s body and that of his dog have ever turned up never been located all these years later. The case remains open. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Car Crashes, Heart Attacks Top The List"}]

Apart from getting lost or criminal activity, there are many ways for people to disappear in the park. 

In his book, “Death in Yellowstone: Accidents and Foolhardiness in the First National Park,” attorney and longtime Yellowstone tour guide and park ranger Lee H. Whittlesey 

 in which people have been hurt or killed in Yellowstone. 

To date, there have been 52 deaths in the park, according to a 2022 survey by Outforia, a nature and outdoor resource, which does not specify when the deaths occurred. The most common cause of death in the park, according to the survey, is a tie at 12 each for motor vehicle crashes and heart attacks. 

The second most common cause of death is a tie between falling and a category simply classified as “undetermined” causes. Both have resulted in seven deaths each, followed by drownings that accounted for five deaths. 

Accordingly, between 2018 and 2020, Yellowstone ranked fourth of all national parks for the greatest number of search and rescues between 2018 and 2020 at 371, according to Outforia. Grand Teton National Park ranked eighth with 224 search and rescues during that same period.

[{"type":"text","text":"Odds Are Slim Of Disappearing "}]

Former park ranger Richard Jones puts no stock in what he calls “click bait” surveys that emphasize the dangers of dying or disappearing in Yellowstone or any other national park. 

Jones is the son of a former Yellowstone ranger who spent five years of his life as a boy living in the park during the 1950s at a time where bears roamed freely prior to the park implementing its bear management plan.

He started his career as a ranger in national parks in New Mexico, the Virgin Islands and Big Horn Canyon National Recreational Area and also worked in law enforcement. During his tenure as a ranger, he specialized in cave rescues and participated in hundreds of searches for people – all of whom were found.  

The odds are slim of disappearing in Yellowstone given the number of people who pass through the park each year, according to Jones. 

 Multiply this by yearly visitors to the 62 other national parks and the fact that there’s only 25 reported missing persons cold cases to date is testament to the rarity of vanishing at a national park. 

In cases where a person is reported missing, they are almost always found.

[{"type":"text","text":"However, deaths do happen and people do disappear. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Bodies disappear"}]

In Jones’ experience, many of those cases involve missing people who wander off, get lost, fall off cliffs or have a medical emergency that renders them incapacitated and vulnerable to the elements. 

In some instances, people deliberately go into the woods to commit suicide by falling into a raging river or scalding geyser. One such case was Il Hun Ro, a tourist from Los Angeles, whose 

 on the surface of the Abyss Pool in August 2022. 

In rare instances, missing people might get attacked by an animal, but very rarely is foul play involved, Jones said. Committing murder in a park is a lot harder than other places, he added.

“Accidents happen, but I think criminal activity is probably exceedingly, exceedingly rare,” he said, noting there are typically 700 successful missing person searches and rescues in national parks each year.  

It’s also difficult to state with full certainty that some of the missing are dead because their remains are not likely to be left undisturbed by wildlife roaming the park.

However, if a person does die, it’s likely their remains will never be found. Due to the number of animals roaming the park, bodies do not stay undeterred for long, he said. 

“If you die off in this part of the country, your body is not to going to stay around long,” he said. “There’s going to be bears, wolves, coyotes and foxes … within a week, there’s not going to be much evidence left of the body.”

Though visitors may befall dangers in state and national parks, Jones said he thinks they are still much safer than in urban parks and cities. 

The biggest danger to tourists visiting Yellowstone and other national parks in his estimation are the bison, which people tend to underestimate. 

“They’re like cows and not terribly afraid of people, but they have their own spatial distance,” he said. “You get too close, they might whack you, and you can’t get whacked by a 2000-pound animal without getting hurt.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Swept Downstream "}]

Of particular danger, Jones said, is anyone who falls into the river and gets swept downstream as in the cases of three of the people currently listed as missing whose bodies have never been recovered.  

Luke Sanburg disappeared after he was swept downstream in the Yellowstone River on June 24, 2005. The 13-year-old and his Boy Scout troop had been pushing logs into the river when one hit him and shoved him into the 50-degree water, according to reporting by the Associated Press. 

The river conditions were “unswimmable,” incident commander Tim Reid told the family.

Despite a rigorous three-day investigation along the 14-mile span of river, Sanburg's body was never found. The only clue: A set of shoes believed to be his were found in the area.

Nicholas Mostert, 20, of Salt Lake City, is another missing person presumed to have drowned. Several people witnessed him jumping into the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River from an observation deck 308 feet above on June 16, 2009, in what appeared to be a deliberate act of suicide.

He was swept over the waterfall into a raging river roiling with nearly 6,000 cubic feet of flowing water per second, according to the 

. He was never found despite a helicopter and ground search. 

Kim Crumbo is Yellowstone’s latest missing persons case in which investigators suspect drowning. The 74-year-old Ogden, Utah, man was camping with his half-brother Mark O’Neill in September 2021 when he disappeared. Meanwhile, 

 he’d died of hypothermia. Despite extensive searching, Crumbo, a former U.S. Navy Seal, has never been found.

[{"type":"text","text":"Biggest Search In Park History"}]

The youngest person to disappear in Yellowstone is 8-year-old Dennis Johnson, who was reported missing April 12, 1966.

Johnson and his family had been visiting the park from Inyokern, Calif. They stopped in the Cascade picnic area near Canyon Village for lunch, when the boy’s seven-year-old sister wandered off. 

Johnson, and his dad, William, headed off in different directions to find the girl. William quickly located her, but his son never returned from the woods.  

Searchers scoured a 100-square mile radius around where the boy was last seen but didn’t find any traces of him or other signs of danger.

Whittlesey discusses this search in his book and said it was one of the most intensive searches in Yellowstone history. The park spent thousands of man hours in searching for Johnson by ground, air and with dogs for three weeks. 

Whittlesey, the former ranger and attorney, wrote in his book that Johnson’s brother told park officials that he thought they’d done everything possible to find him. 

Later, the family would hire a psychic to divine the teen’s whereabouts, Whittlesey reported. The psychic divined that the boy had drowned in a shallow ditch near the location he was last seen or had fallen into a canyon, according to Whittlesey. 

Despite huge acreage and treacherous terrain, most missing persons at Yellowstone National Park are found. But a small number of disappearances have never been solved. The reasons why are as vast as the park.

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