Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
went missing. But the call never came. There could be a hundred good reasons they never
reached out. Or none. It was one of those times when I sat and waited.
Most people with dementia or Alzheimer's—nearly 90 percent—are found less than a mile
from their point of departure and within thirty yards of a road. I know that because, when I
was waiting for the call, I did the research. It wasn't wasted effort. I've used that knowledge
for other searches. I still think about that one man and his family. Perhaps even more than if
I had gone on the search.
• • •
How do you search properly along a roadside? How many yards back would your basic pan-
icked or lazy murderer drag a victim? Not far. Twenty-five yards. Check farther back. Anim-
als are more industrious: How much farther back might they drag something? Much farther,
depending on the animal. Dogs have been known to carry parts of people up to a couple of
miles. What kinds of animals inhabit the search area? Bears tend to go downhill to a clearing
or creek; they can move a whole body, crack femurs, and bat heads around like soccer balls.
Coyotes can go uphill to a den, carrying limbs. Possums and raccoons tend to dine on the
spot, although they can drag material vertically. We have coyotes in every county in North
Carolina. We have black bears in 60 percent of North Carolina, throughout the mountains
of western Carolina, and down through the swamps and shrubby pocosins of what we call
“Down East.”
Then there are the obvious areas that need searching, as Brad Dennis pointed out: aban-
doned properties and outbuildings. Piles of wood and debris that can be used to conceal a
body. Impromptu garbage dumps where someone can drag an old mattress over the body. For
clandestine burials, natural holes made by roots and erosion that form ready-made graves,
with only minimal additional digging needed. Did the suspect have easy access to a shovel?
Wasn't he homeless? Most clandestine burials are no deeper than two and a half feet, yet that's
enough for someone to disappear forever. Arpad Vass calls the clandestine burial his “nemes-
is.”
There's the time frame to consider. In North Carolina, areas can get overgrown in one
season. Hunters tend to find skeletal remains more often than law enforcement officers do.
Mostly skulls, as they are the easiest to identify. A turkey hunter found a skull more than a
year and a half after a young girl disappeared. The search for her remains was one of the most
thorough mounted in recent memory in North Carolina. Other bones tend to blend in with
leaf litter like chameleons. But anyone who has searched in North Carolina woods knows
that heart-stopping moment when you see a light brown or green-moss-covered turtle shell,
a hump coming out of the surrounding humus or leaf fall, and momentarily mistake it for a
skull.