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The man who called the Sheriff's office on July 5 said that when he'd seen Sandra on July 4, she'd been near an area known as Mugler Creek. This guy and some other people who were with him eventually stumbled upon a campsite that they said looked abandoned. And a little further away from there, down an embankment that ran next to a roadway, they'd noticed a car wrecked into some trees near Chiquito Creek trailhead. After that is when they saw a woman who looked like Sandra. This witness said she'd waved at his group and then kept walking. After learning that information, the sheriff's office got in touch with the officer from the US Forest Service who'd been helping them out, and that officer responded to the area where the witnesses said the crashed car was. When the officer arrived, a man on an all terrain vehicle there who claimed he'd seen Sandra the previous day, showed her where the vehicle was, but there was no sign of Sandra anywhere. The man who was escorting the forestry officer said when he'd seen Sandra, it was apparent she'd been involved in the crash because she had some small scratches on her and was the only person around the vehicle at the time. Overall, though, she seemed unfazed and in good spirits. He'd returned on his ATV the next morning to see if she'd gotten some help but didn't find her. By the end of the day on July 6, investigators with the sheriff's office rode out to the crash scene and canvassed it again for clues, but unfortunately they didn't find anything useful. They'd also utilized tracking dogs, which had briefly picked up Sandra's scent, But the animals eventually lost it along the roadway. Authorities observed that the front end of her 2001 silver colored Saab station wagon was damaged, but in general, the vehicle appeared mostly unscathed. Pictures of it that were taken after it was found were included in the investigative reports I got from the sheriff's office, and they show it had a cracked front fender, but as far as car wreck damage goes, it's pretty mild. The keys had been left inside of it along with trash, personal belongings and camping supplies. The sheriff's office later clarified that the way the vehicle was positioned when it was found indicated to them that Sandra had not been going very fast when it crashed. Investigators looked up the vehicle's information, but quickly discovered that Sandra didn't actually hold the title to it. A person from Coarse Gold, California, who ran an organic farm and would often rent rooms to visitors was the actual owner. Turns out Sandra had stayed with this individual for about six weeks before she disappeared, and when investigators spoke to them, they confirmed that they'd sold Sandra their Saab but were presently still in the process of transferring the title to her. When Sandra left in the vehicle, the seller said that she'd mentioned she was going to go to Hawaii. When investigators asked the seller if Sandra had been experiencing mental health issues or suicidal thoughts, they told them no. They emphasized that when they'd last seen the 53 year old, she'd seemed happy. Between July 8 and July 19, even more resources were put into conducting a ground search for Sandra. Everything from helicopters with infrared capabilities to people on horseback. And ATVs scoured about 120 square miles of forest between where her Saab was located and the national forest border with Yosemite National Park. During the search, several items were found that authorities were confident belonged to Sandra. For example, at the abandoned campsite, they discovered a duffel bag, jewelry, a green fanny pack, and grocery receipts that were dated for late June. A member of one of the search and rescue teams also found a Coleman brand flashlight propped on a rock. And another searcher discovered a blue and yellow sleeping bag that was REI brand, which matched a purchase from one of Sandra's recent receipts. According to coverage by Fox 26, the sleeping bag was located inside the boundary of Yosemite national park, about two and a half miles from where Sandra's wrecked car was discovered. But there was also a lot of stuff that investigators weren't sure was related to her disappearance. For example, they'd collected several drink bottles, tissues, wipes, shoe impressions, and other belongings that they knew could have easily come from other hikers. Because the trails in that area were super popular, it was difficult to know what truly belonged to Sandra and what didn't. During that time, additional witnesses also came forward to report sightings of her. But many of these stories ended the same way. They all said that they'd seen Sandra, but she'd either declined help, didn't appear to be in distress, or she'd run away. One witness said that on July 3, they'd found a pair of sandals on the side of the road not far from her crashed car. And shortly before that, they'd encountered a group of people who claimed to have seen a barefoot woman with a large bruise on the side of her head walking alone on the roadway carrying a bag of clothing. But when that group had offered the woman assistance, she declined. The possibility that Sandra might be out in the wilderness without proper attire, shoes, or survival supplies was concerning to authorities because they knew that the likely routes she was hiking consisted of rough terrain. There were rocks and loose soil that would have made the trails dangerous to try and trek while barefoot. The description that went out for Sandra was that she was white, five foot three, with brown hair, dyed blue, brown eyes, and she weighed between 130 and 150 pounds. The outfit she was believed to have been wearing when she vanished was a T shirt and a long multicolored dress. Five days into the investigation, a different deputy for the sheriff's office was assigned the case and started conducting follow up interviews with a few of Sandra's family members and friends. Her sister told the investigator that Sandra was normally really good about checking in to let loved ones know she was okay. In fact, she'd usually call or text one of them every week or two if she was ever out of touch. For Longer than that, her sister would send her an email and Sandra would always respond rather quickly. A prior friend of hers said that in the years before traveling the U.S. sandra had been living in Moscow, Idaho. In 2018, she'd amicably divorced from her then husband and then spent time at a two week survival course in Wisconsin. While there, she'd picked up a lot of camping and backpacking skills and become quite the outdoor enthusiast. News articles about this case state that Sandra had reportedly studied earlier in her life to become a park ranger and had hiked the entirety of the Appalachian Trail. According to the Charlie Project and other coverage about this case, Sandra didn't have any children, so she was free to go wherever she wanted. She moved to Hawaii at some point in either 2018 or 2019, but after moving to California in June 2020, she told her sister and family that she thought she'd come down with COVID 19 and so she planned to quarantine herself while camping in the National Forest. One of Sandra's former co workers told authorities that Sandra briefly lived with them after her most recent divorce and went through some noticeable lifestyle changes during that time. For example, Sandra had started donning blue tinted hair, left her job, changed the kinds of food she ate, and seemed to be spending a lot of money rather quickly. Another friend who spoke with investigators told them that prior to getting divorced, Sandra had become involved with a group of people in Spokane, Washington who promoted soulplay retreats. I wasn't familiar with what Soul Play was, so I looked it up and according to their website, it's a gathering of people who participate in workshops, dancing and community building and self expression, typically in an outdoor setting. Sandra's friend who shared this information with the sheriff's office said that Sandra had gone on several spiritual retreats with this group and over time the two of them had stopped hanging out as much. Since Sandra had become so involved with the Soul Play folks, Sandra and another one of her friends had also poured a lot of their time into repurposing an old school bus as a camper. Another person the investigator interviewed about Sandra was her brother, who told authorities that he'd last spoken with her on June 20. During their conversation, he said she'd seem fine and mentioned to him that she might travel to Santa Barbara, California. When the investigator described all of the circumstances of what was going on to Sandra's brother, he indicated that the behavior Sandra had reportedly exhibited during the last week of June and first week of July seemed out of character for her. He knew she was pretty respectful of the great outdoors. So he didn't think she'd abandon a campsite and leave trash behind, Let alone all of her personal documents. He suggested that it was possible she'd suffered some kind of head or brain injury, which might explain her strange behavior and disappearance. Her niece told kfsn something similar when she said, quote, she's trained in outdoor survival. She's trained for it. She would never leave her campsite a mess. Even a piece of litter on the ground would bother her. So there's so much that happened that's just as a family, we can't really explain it, End quote. According to investigative reports, During Sandra's brother's interview with law enforcement, he mentioned that towards the end of 2018, or maybe early 2019, Sandra had developed a friendship with someone whose name authorities redacted from their reports. So I don't know who they are. But according to Sandra's brother, this person was someone he suspected might have taken advantage of his sister for a period of time. But recently, Sandra had informed her brother that her and this unnamed friend had parted ways. The same day those interviews took place, the sheriff's office searched Sandra's station wagon and photographed it inside and out. They wanted to inventory the contents to make sure all of the stuff belonged to her and not someone else. In the trunk, they found a tidy assortment of clothing. Clothing organizers, Camping supplies, Food, napkins, and personal hygiene items. And in the backseat, they discovered even more camping gear, Some of which had the name sandy Written in black ink. In the glove box, there was the car's registration and two service documents from 2019 that originated from different auto shops in California and oregon. Authorities also found Sandra's passport and personal checks, too. Now, instead of towing the vehicle away from where it had been crashed, Investigators left it alone for the time being in case Sandra came back for it. They also stuck a note on it Asking her to get in touch with them. About a month later, deputies chased down several reports that she'd been seen alive. Some of these sightings came from hunters who'd indicated Sandra was still in the national forest, While other witnesses claimed she'd been spotted At a retail store in a nearby town. The investigative reports I got don't clearly explain what came from those leads, but it doesn't seem like much did because sandra was never formally identified or found in early October 2020. So three months after she vanished, the sheriff's office got in touch with her bank in idaho to see if there had been any activity on her accounts. But there hadn't been, which usually isn't a great sign. Another ominous indication that something bad had happened to her was that her Saab had remained in the same spot authorities left it in. In mid November 2020. Authorities realized it was unlikely at that point she was going to return to it. So they towed it to a storage yard for safekeeping and inventoried the contents once again. For the next four months, the case languished. Authorities had seemingly exhausted all their leads, and they were no closer to figuring out where Sandra was. A spokesperson for the sheriff's office emphasized that the agency was not giving up hope. During that time, the department had released several of Sandra's personal belongings and camping gear to her brother. In March 2021, after a long winter, an investigator doing a review of the case realized that the sheriff's office had never obtained copies of Sandra's dental records. So he called several dentist offices in Moscow before eventually finding one that confirmed she'd been a prior patient. After filing the necessary paperwork, Sandra's records were sent over to the sheriff's office and quickly entered into the California Department of Justice missing persons database. It was also at that point in time that the California Attorney General's missing persons website generated a profile for Sandra, which featured her photo and a summary of the circumstances surrounding her disappearance. Since the start of the investigation, she'd been listed in the National Missing and Unidentified Person System database, known as namus. But I guess getting her into California's system too, only made the likelihood of locating and identifying her that much higher. A few months later, in mid July 2021, which was just after the one year anniversary of her disappearance, the sheriff's office received a message that reignited the investigation and introduced a theory they likely never saw coming.

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Investigators with Madera county spoke with a man who claimed that on July 21, 2021, while off roading with his three year old son in Sierra National Forest, the boy had spotted a woman in a meadow who indicated she needed help. Except when the dad went back to try and find the woman, she was gone. This guy told authorities that he was convinced his son had seen the spirit of Sandra Johnson Hughes. The day after receiving this information, the sheriff's office sent personnel to search the meadow where the family had been, but they didn't find Sandra or anything connected to her. According to Fox 26 News, the family who claimed their son had seen Sandra's spirit told the press that the boy vividly remembered speaking to a woman with blue hair who'd been lying face down in the meadow and appeared dead. She'd been unable to speak or move, but indicated she needed assistance. The experience was so unsettling to this family that they decided to cut their off roading trip short and head home early. A month after that, a paranormal investigation group contacted the sheriff's office claiming that one of their mediums had received a vision that Sandra was dead in a shallow grave off of an area forest service road. That medium reportedly relayed that a man had carried Sandra to the spot and buried her. Unwilling to leave any stone unturned, the sheriff's office dispatched a deputy to search the general area where the medium said Sandra would be, but he didn't locate her or any human remains. It's worth noting, though, that authorities were less likely to find a lot of viable clues or potential remnants of a makeshift gravesite at that point in time, because a few months after Sandra vanished, a large wildfire had swept through that part of California and burned a significant amount of forest land. The fire didn't consume the area where Sandra's vehicle had been left, but it did make some of the potential areas where she'd likely hiked unrecognizable. Nearly a year later, in June 2022, the Sheriff's Office received a tip from a horseback rider that their dog had unearthed a distinctly round shaped bone while trail riding near the Chiquito trailhead, which, if you remember, was close to where Sandra had last been seen. Authorities went out to that area and retrieved the bone as well as another one that a Forest Service K9 officer had found. But unfortunately, as promising as that lead seemed, it was quickly Determined that neither of the bones were human that same month. So June 2022, the sheriff's office got back in touch With Sandra's brother To retrieve some of the personal belongings they'd previously released to him. In their reports, Investigators stated that they realized at that time they'd inadvertently given him stuff that they needed for evidentiary purposes. Something else that struck me as kind of unusual Was that the sheriff's office Never actually collected what they believed was Sandra's sleeping bag when they first found it during the initial searches for her in July 2020. I know. Wild, right? According to investigative reports, when searchers first spotted it, they looked it over, but then just left it on the ground. It sat there for two years before investigators, in July 2022, finally went back and retrieved it as evidence. Why there was such a delay in getting the sleeping bag Is a question I can't answer. But what I can tell you Is that when it was finally retained by the sheriff's office, they sent it off for forensic testing to see if there was any DNA on it. There was also some lag time between when authorities properly stored the coleman brand flashlight that had been found in 2020 and when further forensic testing Was done on that item. Investigative reports state that after the flashlight was discovered, it stayed on a yosemite national park search and rescue team member's desk for two years. It wasn't until mid August 2022 that Madera county got ahold of it and sent it off for latent fingerprint processing. But by that point, though, it was assumed to have been contaminated because it had been in someone else's possession For a long period of time. The only compartment that wasn't believed to be contaminated Was the battery storage area. Later examination of the flashlight Resulted in one usable latent print being found, but analysts at the bureau of forensic services lab in fresno Determined it wasn't identifiable or suitable for comparison to Sandra's prints, which, by the way, authorities didn't even have because they weren't available in the state's database to begin with. Yeah, I know. I definitely still have some questions about what was going on there, But I don't have answers anyway. That same year, a man from belgium who said he'd become very interested In Sandra's case Called the sheriff's office to let them know he'd spoken with the medium who'd provided detailed insight into what happened to sandra. This guy claimed that she'd been the victim of foul play at the hands of a serial killer, and she was buried in yosemite National Park. I imagine curious about this guy's motives, A sheriff's investigator went along with this tip and communicated back and forth with the guy for several days. But ultimately, his claims never proved useful. In July 2022, a deputy patrolling a section of Sierra National Forest stumbled across six small bones. But those two were eventually determined not to be human. In subsequent months and years, the sheriff's office continued to go out into the areas where Sandra had last been seen and where her car was found. But to date, no new clues about what happened to her have surfaced. Some additional bones were discovered and tested in 2023, but were once again confirmed not to be human. Madera County Sheriff Tyson Pogue told Fox 26 that the case is uniquely challenging in 2023. He stated, quote, one of the hardest things with this case is just really the lack of clues. We found a campsite. We found a sleeping bag we believed belonged to her. He later continued, we had people who came across her, offered her assistance. She was. I don't know if despondent is the right word, but she didn't accept help. And in many cases, she just kind of ignored the people and went on. So we don't know really what her mind frame was. We don't know if she had an injury from the accident, end quote. He went on to discuss how the wildfire that altered parts of the original search radius in September 2020 had made the investigation that much more difficult to navigate. In March 2025, a detective wrote in the agency's case file that he specifically recommended Sandra's investigation be closed until further leads emerged. Prior to releasing this episode, I asked Sheriff Tyson Pogue for an interview, which his public information officer confirmed he was interested in doing. But a few weeks later, the agency rescinded its desire to speak with me. They did, however, fulfill my records request, which was very helpful in putting together this episode. So there's that, at least. Sandra's niece told the Mariposa Gazette a few years ago that her family has thought about her every day since she disappeared, and they pray for a miracle. The reason why I wanted to put out this episode is because I believe Sandra is still out there somewhere at this point. Could she be deceased? Possibly. Did she suffer a head injury that caused her to become disoriented and wander off into the woods? That's possible, too. And I think the other obvious theory is that she could have been killed by someone. But until she's found, law enforcement can't even attempt to answer those questions with certainty. So if you're someone who frequently visits Chiquito Trailhead or the Johnson Meadows area of Sierra National Forest. Please be on the lookout for anything that stands out and that also goes to folks who visit Yosemite's border with the National Forest, too. Keep your eyes peeled for a piece of clothing, personal belongings, anything that you think might be useful to investigators. In this case, the Sheriff's Office has asked visitors to mark on a GPS app the specific location where they find something noteworthy. If you're one of those people I just talked about or feel you can help locate Sandra Johnson Hughes, please contact the Madera County Sheriff's office at 559-675-7770. That information, as well as Sandra's NAMUS profile are linked in the show Notes and blog post for this episode. Park Predators is an Audio Chuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website parkpredators.com and you can also follow park predators on Instagram arcpredators. I think Chuck would approve.

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