Delia d'Ambra (4:30)
On Thursday night, August 21, 1975, three men who'd been hiking for several days in Kings Canyon national park made their way up to the Simpson Meadow Ranger Station. The group was a bit worse for wear and had some concerning news to report. Their friend and fourth companion, 66 year old Fred Gist, was missing. Unfortunately, on Thursday night, the group couldn't relay that news right away though, because a ranger wasn't on duty at the station. So they had to wait until Friday morning to file an official missing persons report for Fred. When the information did make it to rangers who showed up on Friday, those officers and about a dozen other rangers quickly mobilized to launch a search for Fred. At the top of their to do list was to speak with the three men who reported him missing and learn as much as they could about where he'd last been seen in the park. Those three guys were Bob Osborne, Bud Coiner, and Abe Brazil. Abe was an attorney, Bob was a hardware store manager, and Bud was neighbors with both of them. The trio told park rangers that they and their missing friend were all from San Luis Obispo, California, about five hours away from the national Park. They'd all been en route to go fishing and had left on horseback from Cedar Grove in the direction of Simpson Meadow on Tuesday, August 19th. During that first day, they ended up riding a little too far into the park and ended up in an area closer to Simpson Meadow where the Park Service didn't allow pack animals to graze overnight. So to avoid getting in trouble, a man the group had hired to bring them supplies during their trip had instructed the men to backtrack a few miles to a section of the park where their horses could feed. It seems that because it had already been a long day for everyone on that Tuesday, Fred had decided to hang back and let his three friends take his horse to the area where it could graze with the other horses. And he made camp on the side of the trail by himself. Basically, he'd complained of being tired and didn't want to backtrack, so he'd told his buddies he'd see them the next morning when they passed in his direction and they'd all head toward Simpson Meadow together. However, when Wednesday morning came bright and early and Abe, Bud and Bob rode up the trail to reconvene with Fred, he wasn't where they'd left him. On the ground, they found what looked like remnants of a campfire. He'd seemingly made, a few empty juice cans and a cheese wrapper. But that was it. They didn't see Fred, and they didn't see anything else that gave them a clue about where he'd gone. And because he didn't have his horse, they knew that wherever he was, he had to be hiking on foot. Not necessarily assuming the worst at that moment, they continued hiking toward Simpson Meadow, hoping that Fred was just somewhere up ahead of them and was going to beat them to their final destination. But Wednesday passed, and then Thursday, and eventually, when the group made it to the ranger station without coming across Fred, that's when they knew something wasn't right. When the park service launched its search for Fred, they allocated 15 Rangers to the task. But by the end of the first week, more than 25 people had gotten involved. Authorities initial assessment of the area near the trail where Fred had camped was that nothing unusual had happened there. There was no evidence that indicated a struggle or disturbance had taken place or even a possible animal attack. An information officer for the NPS told the then Telegram Tribune that Kings Canyon national park in general was home to mountain lions and bears. But in his opinion, he thought it would have been highly unusual for one of those predators to attack a person. He cited an abundance of prey in the park as one reason why a mountain lion or bear would not feel the need to go after Fred. Plus, like I mentioned a second ago, according to the source material, there was no evidence found at Fred's campsite that he'd been attacked. No blood, no shredded clothing, no drag marks, nothing. When he disappeared, he reportedly only had a poncho, a few candy bars, bread, lunch meat, jam, beer, cheese, boots, pants, and a cowboy hat with him, but no sleeping bag, pillow, or tent. The rest of his stuff was, I believe, with his horse and travel companions. After the group of men parted ways Tuesday night, Fred had stayed in an area of the park that was estimated to be about 9,400ft in elevation. And it's no surprise that he reportedly made a campfire for himself because on the night he was alone, temperatures dipped into the high 20s and stayed in that range or the low 30s overnight. Every night he was unaccounted for. During the day, though, conditions climbed into the 70s, which I imagine had to feel like a small glimmer of hope to the people who were rooting for him to survive. Three of those people who wanted to see him come home safe and sound were Abe, Bud and Bob, who the Telegram Tribune reported stayed in the park for several days after they reported Fred missing. All of the men ranged in age from 55 to 70 years old and informed authorities that Fred was a diabetic, which was reportedly one of the reasons he'd made sure to pack candy bars for the trip. But those bars were only going to last so long, so finding him fast was everyone's top priority. By Monday, August 25, additional resources arrived to help in the search. A helicopter from the US Forest Service was brought in, A search and rescue team came up from San Diego, and four tracking dogs arrived from Washington State. Together, crews scoured all levels of terrain along the section of the Sierra Nevadas where Fred was last seen. But as each day passed, crews kept coming up empty handed. The description they had of Fred was that he was white, about 6ft tall, weighed 190 pounds, and had blue eyes and gray hair. At the same time all of this was going on, another investigation was underway, looking at a set of human remains that hunters had found at a backcountry campsite in neighboring Sequoia National Park. On the same day, Fred's companions had reported him missing. According to coverage by the Fresno Bee, the coroner's office in Tulare county, which was responsible for identifying the remains, made some preliminary conclusions. By the following Tuesday, August 26, they determined through dental records that the skeleton belonged to a 19 year old who'd been missing from Glendale, Arizona for several months. That young man's name was Ross Simmons, and early tests on his remains showed he died of asphyxiation after a small grill he'd had in his tent consumed all of the oxygen while he slept. It doesn't appear that his case was ever connected to Fred's or believed to be related. It was just a coincidence that while Fred's search was happening, authorities realized that human remains had been found in a park that butted up next to Kings Canyon National Park. So of course the two cases were mentioned simultaneously in press coverage. And I have to assume Ross's case was a story that investigators working Fred's case paid close attention to, at least at the outset of their investigation anyway. One week after Fred was last seen, a spokesman for the National Park Service announced that resources which had been allocated to find him would likely scale back within a matter of days. It was also at that time the NPS publicly stated foul play was being considered a possibility in the case. The agency had assigned an investigative specialist to work Fred's disappearance because the circumstances of his vanishing just seemed worth probing into as a potential crime. The NPS spokesman told the Telegram Tribune that no evidence had been found that pointed directly to murder, but it was extremely puzzling, maybe even suspicious, that searchers had found no sign of the 66 year old at all. And one person who raised similar concerns about what had happened was Fred's wife, Lolita Gist. You see, she'd been monitoring some of the information that authorities were being told by Fred's buddies and she realized there were some notable discrepancies.
