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Delia D'Ambra (16:16)

Call or visit comcastbusiness.com to learn more. Authorities learned from several hikers that an older, quiet woman matching Jerry's description had been spotted hiking alone on the trail near the Spalding Mountain Lean to shelter on the night of July 22, the same night Jerry was supposed to have stayed there. That woman then left the shelter and kept hiking. So in light of this information, search crews turned their attention to scouring stretches of the trail around that area. But unfortunately, they weren't able to locate Jerry. Then, not long after getting that tip, a woman in her 60s who shared similar features as Jerry contacted the authorities and let them know that she'd been the person who'd been seen at the Spalding Mountain lean to on July 22. This woman is only referred to in the source material by the name Ivanich, or possibly Ivanich. But it became pretty clear that after she came forward and spoke with investigators, she and Jerry had just been caught up in a case of mistaken identity. Speaking with the doppelganger wasn't a total bust for the authorities, though, because investigators did learn that the woman had been at all the places Jerry had been during the days in question. She said that on the morning of Monday, July 22, she'd left the Poplar Ridge shelter after spending the night. She departed about two hours after Jerry left, and when she started her hike to Spaulding Mountain Lean to, she hadn't passed Jerry while on the AT. That information caused investigators to suspect that Jerry might have never made it to Spalding Mountain. Perhaps she'd gotten off the trail after leaving Poplar Ridge shelter, and whatever befell her happened much sooner than they'd originally thought. Armed with this assumption, they specifically narrowed down their search radius to 4.2 square miles of the AT. However, despite their diligence, they still didn't find Jerry. The problem was, investigators just had no idea where to specifically look. I mean, they'd narrowed down their search parameters somewhat to those specific grids, but like I mentioned earlier, it was challenging terrain to traverse and the sense of urgency to clear every side trail and linear land feature day in and day out was at an all time high. But Certainly not an easy task. In early August, after exhausting numerous avenues and resources, the search was drastically scaled back and the lead lieutenant for the main warden service expressed to the media that he and Jerry's family had grave concerns at that point about her well being. Still, no one was giving up hope that she might be found alive. A spokesman for Jerry's family told the media that everyone was extremely grateful for all the work that was being put into trying to find her. He said, quote, they have been doing this as though they were looking for their own spouse or their own mother or their own family, their own friend. It's been an unbelievable thing, and there's just no way to express how much the family appreciates that. End quote. After three weeks of making no progress, though, Jerry's family began to come to terms with the reality of the situation and started planning a memorial service for her. George, the couple's daughter Carrie, their son Ryan, and their grandkids had all resigned themselves to the fact that she might be dead simply because of how much time had passed. They told reporter Jessica Pace that Jerry was a woman who lived life to the fullest, cared about others, and was always positive. She had a lot of love to give and especially enjoyed spending time with her family, going camping and quilting. Her daughter Carrie said that the entire ordeal had been difficult to process because there just didn't seem to be a good explanation of what happened to her mother. She told Jessica Pace, we would love some closure for sure, but we have to rely on the family and our faith. It's strange. I keep calling it our new normal. No one can tell us what the next step is because no one we know has been through this. End quote. On October 12, 2013, more than two months after she vanished, Gerry's friends and family held a memorial service for her at a Catholic church outside of Atlanta. It was where she and George had been living for more than 10 years prior to her setting off on her hike. A small memorial was also placed at the Wyman Township Appalachian Trail crossing in Jerry's honor. In September, a smaller group of searchers set out to look for her along the routes that she would have taken, but again, they came up empty handed. The main warden service remained optimistic that the flyers that had been placed throughout the region with Jerry's description and information would catch the eye of hunters and hikers and hopefully generate new leads. However, it doesn't appear that was successful because searches were still happening nearly a year later in June 2014, with no new results. In September 2014, a reward for information offered by Jerry's family was increased from $15,000 to $25,000. Interestingly, Dana Prochovnik and Hutch Brown wrote that the actual land Jerry was believed to have disappeared close to or possibly on is owned by the US Navy. Soldiers used it for specialized survival training exercises and escape maneuver drills, essentially war games. The property doesn't have fences or clearly marked boundaries on most maps, only a few signs that warn against trespassing. Hutch Brown speculated in his article that perhaps it was possible Jerry had wandered off the AT in the wrong spot, encountered some of the trainees on the Navy's property who'd been in the thick of extreme survival training, and something bad had happened to her. Prior news coverage by the Bangor Daily News described the Navy's facility as a torture camp that had been around since 1961. Some participants told journalists over the years that they'd been subjected to starvation, beatings, humiliation, waterboarding, and other extreme tactics while completing the program. Even Jerry's daughter Carrie told reporters that she couldn't help but wonder if something worse than just an accident befell her mother. She said, quote, if something had happened to her on the trail, she would have known to stay put and someone would have found her. Clearly, something other than that happened. End quote. At a later point in the search, some members of survival teams that trained on the Navy's property went into the woods to look for Jerry. But despite their enhanced training, they still weren't able to find her. And the Navy was more or less like, if she's lost, she's not lost on our land because otherwise we would have found her. However, their tune would change more than two years after she disappeared, when a tree surveyor passing through that exact same tract of land made a disturbing discovery.

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Delia D'Ambra (23:40)

On Sunday, October 11, 2015, two years, two months and 20 days after Gerry Largay first disappeared, a surveyor for a private company was walking through the Navy's property just off the Appalachian Trail on his way to A job site near Rangeley, Maine, when all of a sudden, he stumbled across something unusual. Deep in the middle of the woods, he saw what looked like a flattened tent just sitting by itself. And not too far away, there was a backpack and what he believed was a human skull. Unsure of what the heck he'd just come across, the worker called the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to report what he'd found. Eventually, NCIS looped in the main warden service, Maine State Police, and main office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Thanks to the surveyor providing officials with specific GPS coordinates, all of the involved agencies were able to send personnel directly to the remote scene. When investigators arrived the next morning, they happened to have an Animal Planet film crew with them that had been working on a series called Northwood's Law. So the entire thing was captured on video. I know. Talk about being in the right place at the right time as a journalist. When officials looked around, they saw a sleeping bag sitting on the ground roughly 20ft away from a tent and what looked like attempts to burn some nearby trees. Inside the bag, they found a human skull and various other bones. Inside the tent, they discovered more belongings and stains that the ME Noted had likely come from a body decomposing there. The tent itself had been ripped, which prompted investigators to conclude that animals had most likely gotten into it and dragged out the sleeping bag, which explained why it was located so far away from the tent. In the backpack, they found a Samsung cell phone and other stuff like clothing, Jerry's Georgia driver's license, water bottles, duct tape, a Swiss army knife, Ziploc bags, tent poles, a toothbrush, earplugs, a first aid kit, lighters, candles, athletic tape, batteries, a blue baseball hat, a whistle, and a flashlight. I know that's a lot of stuff, but all of these were supplies that an experienced hiker would need to survive. A quick scan of the skeletal remains revealed that a few arm, hand and knee bones were missing, but overall, the remains were fairly intact. The ME Concluded that the missing bones were likely the result of scavenging animal activity. Law enforcement's overall consensus was that the remains and tent were most likely certainly connected to Jerry's disappearance from two years earlier. But to be absolutely sure, they needed to do a bit more investigating. When they examined the sleeping bag and green backpack's contents more closely, they found a cell phone, a compass, and a notebook. That's last entry date was dated August 18, 2013. There was some discrepancy about this date, though, because some sources stated the last entry was dated Aug. 6, while others confirmed it was the 18th. The warden service wrote in their report that they weren't exactly sure if the dates that Jerry had written in her journal were 100% accurate because she could have been delirious and off on her timing after being in the elements for so long. But regardless of when exactly she made her last entry, One sentence she wrote stated, quote, george, please read xoxo, end quote. Additional review of the journal revealed several more entries, which were lengthy letters addressed to Jerry's family members. And it was that specific language that suggested the remains were definitely her. The next day, October 15, a medical examiner from Augusta, Maine, Traveled to the scene. And then the Maine State Police Evidence response team removed the skeletal remains from the campsite and transported them back to the Emmy's office for further study. Jerry's ID was officially confirmed through DNA testing the following morning because that was really the only way to know for sure that the bones were hers. The ME Noted that an official autopsy Couldn't be conducted Due to the fact that she was fully skeletonized by that point. So instead of typing up an autopsy report, the ME Prepared what's known as a forensic anthropology report. That document stated that Jerry's skeleton was nearly complete when it was found. With the exception of those few missing hand, arm, and knee bones, none of her remains showed any signs of trauma. And they were all consistent with having been exposed to the elements for more than two years. The Emmy ruled her cause of death as inanition, which just essentially means starvation and lack of water Due to prolonged exposure to the elements. On October 28, nearly two weeks after the discovery, Officials escorted George, his children, and his son in law to the spot in the woods where Jerry had been found. They erected a small cross and left several mementos at the location to remember her. News reports state that Jerry's body was found less than two miles from the at itself and only about a half hour away from a designated lodging site. If she had just gone a little further south of where she pitched her tent, she would have been able to get correctly oriented with the trail and continue on with her journey. Investigators final conclusion was that Jerry had gotten lost in the woods at some point on July 22. That conclusion was supported by information they learned from her friend and former hiking partner, Jane Lee. According to Dana Prochovnik and Alan Juhas's reporting, Jane said that in the weeks they'd been hiking together, she'd noticed that Jerry had the tendency to get turned around on the trail fairly easily. There had even been a few instances where she said Jerry had gotten flustered or combative about which way to go, but Jane sort of acted as their collective compass and always got them back on track. In the end, the Navy had to face the reality that Jerry's tent and remains had been on their land all along. And despite multiple searches, professional searchers looking, and their expert trackers, everyone had simply missed her. It was like people had searched all around her tent, but never close enough to spot her, which to me is just super tragic. The Warden Service did clarify, though, that because Jerry's remains were essentially sealed up in her sleeping bag and tent during those early days of searching, that might explain why scent dogs had been unable to catch the odor of decomposition. In the forensic anthropology report, the ME Noted that the tree canopy over top of where Jerry had set up her tent was very dense, and even if you'd been searching from an airplane, the visibility would have been limited. Additional reporting stated that because the woods were so thick, searchers also likely didn't hear Jerry blow her whistle if, in fact, she attempted to do so. Most unfortunate of all, though, was that Jerry owned a GPS device, but she'd left it at a motel during one of her previous stops with George before she disappeared. So it was just a perfect storm of events across the board that resulted in searchers coming so close to her but missing her. Compounding the tragic bad luck Jerry encountered was the fact that text message data authorities pulled from her phone after the discovery revealed that on July 22, at 11:01am she'd typed a message to George alerting him of her plight, but it never went through. The message reportedly said, quote, in some trouble, got off trail to go to br. Now lost. Can you call AMC to see if a trail maintainer can help me? Somewhere north of Woods Road. Xox, end quote. It's believed that the entity Jerry was asking George to call was the Appalachian Mountain Club. According to the Warden Service's official report, Jerry attempted to send that text 10 additional times, with that last attempt happening at 12:25pm on the 22nd. Unfortunately, because of the bad cell reception in the area, it just never went through. The next day, July 23, at 4:18pm she texted George again and wrote, quote, lost since Yesterday, off Trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do, please, xox, end quote. Additional text. Tried to send again on July 27 and July 30, but failed. More message activity in her phone showed that on August 6, two weeks to the day after vanishing, Jerry's phone had turned on and someone deleted two texts what those deleted messages said, I don't know, but I find it kind of odd they were erased. The investigators did, too, but in the end, they had no explanation as to why that had happened, just that it happened. According to the Warden Services report, there were also no pictures or videos on Jerry's device that had timestamps from July 22 through August 6 or anytime after the 6th, which, again, seems odd to me because we know that Jerry was hiking and seeing some cool things on July 22, at least before she reportedly got lost. I mean, I guess she probably wouldn't have been taking pictures if she was trying to survive, but I don't know. It still seems odd to me that there wasn't any kind of visual content captured on the phone during the dates in question. Anyway, when authorities read further through her notebook, they discovered that one of the last entries she'd written said, quote, when you find my body, please call my husband George, and my daughter Carrie. It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me. No matter how many years from now, please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them. End quote. Authorities later confirmed that Jerry had made it to a stream just northeast of Poplar Ridge Shelter and most likely survived for a few days by drinking water and rationing her minimal food supply. But ultimately, she ran out of energy and died from starvation and exposure. Prior to her death, they believed she'd strung pieces of a silver space blanket that she'd had in her backpack on some tree branches near where she pitched her tent in an attempt to get over flying planes to spot her. But unfortunately, we know that wasn't successful. In the wake of losing his wife under such difficult circumstances, George told the press that something he thought about a lot was just how long Jerry had tried to survive on her own. He said, quote, that was gut wrenching. I knew she was one tough cookie. I just didn't realize how tough she was. End quote. Despite the tragic outcome, George heralded his wife's legacy as an inspiration to others. He told Josh Brown with the Tennessean that Jerry would have wanted her story to make other people who were older in life and perhaps hesitant to take on a feat like hiking the Appalachian Trail to not be afraid to do it. He also remarked to other journalists that the long letters Jerry had left behind in her tent were all written to her surviving family members and were full of lovely messages and thoughts. George was proud of his wife for being so poignant in her last moments and spending what little time she had left thinking of him, their kids, their grandkids, and other people in her life that she knew were cheering her on despite the fact that the journey she'd spent so long dreaming about turned out to be the last one she'd ever take. A quick reminder. Park Predators is off next week, so there won't be a new episode. But don't worry, I'll be back the following week with a brand new case. 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. So what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?

Autotrader Speaker (35:19)

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