US Park Ranger Paul Fugate went for a hike and vanished without a trace on January 13, 1980. He was wearing his NPS uniform with the official NPS Arrowhead patch and a gold-colored NPS ranger badge.
Nearly four decades ago, on January 13, 1980, Ranger Paul Fugate took a break from his job at Chiricahua National Monument in southeastern Arizona to take a hike, and vanished.
Now renewed interested in the case has prompted the National Park Service to triple its reward to $60,000 for information that could solve the mystery.
Without providing details, the Park Service's Investigative Services Branch announced Tuesday that new information has prompted NPS investigators and Cochise County (AZ) Sheriff Mark Dannels to renew their request for the public’s help in solving the 38-year-old mystery.
Ranger Fugate, then age 41, was working in the monument’s visitor center on the day he disappeared. At about 2 p.m. that day, he left the building to hike a park trail and was never seen again. Ranger Fugate was wearing his “green and gray” Park Service uniform, including the official NPS Arrowhead patch on his upper shirtsleeve and a gold-colored ranger badge pinned over his heart.
Although search teams combed the surrounding area extensively multiple times, they found no sign of the missing ranger, a Park Service release said. Investigators suspected foul play early on, and a formal missing-person case remains open. During the first few years after Fugate’s disappearance, the reward fund grew to $20,000. With this renewed focus, the National Park Service is now offering up to $60,000 for information leading to Fugate’s whereabouts and/or the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible for his disappearance.
Searching in Chiricahua is certainly no picnic, Rick Smith, a retired Park Service ranger, wrote back in 2009 in reviewing the case.. The park sprawls over 12,000 acres and has complex terrain with numerous canyons, arroyos, and barrancas.
Had Paul been killed after stumbling onto a drug smuggling or illegal immigration operation? Had he decided that the NPS was too conservative for him and just walked away? The latter notion was born of the fact that Paul had been known as a bit of a non-conformist. He was, for example, one of the first rangers who pushed the boundaries on the Park Service's conservative grooming standards.
Agents with the Park Service's Investigative Services Branch ask that any leads in the case be directed to them via any of the following ways. Your identity will remain confidential:
PHONE or TEXT the ISB Tip Line at 888-653-0009
Go ONLINE to www.nps.gov/ISB and click “Submit a Tip”
EMAIL the ISB at [email protected]
MESSAGE investigators via Facebook @InvestigativeServicesNPS or via Twitter @SpecialAgentNPS
Comments
Wonder if Paul is on this guys list?
A 78-year-old serial killer who claims to have killed 90 people pleaded guilty to murder on Thursday in connection with a 1994 slaying.
Samuel Little, who says he committed the murders in 20 states over four decades, received yet another life sentence after entering his plea in an Odessa courtroom. nydailynews
Oh c'mon! This was not Samuel Little's MO at all! He murdered prostitues, and women that got into his car. No men. He was an opportunist, and all the crimes happened in the city. He took numberous pictures of his victims dead, dying, and while they were alive. If there were any men as victims, he most certainly would have photograped them, and none were found.
Dear Dody, I am just learning about Paul today. All these years in which I have known you, I had no idea! What a terrible loss and ordeal you have gone through. I am so very sorry. Can't imagine how I can help, but I would if I could. Wishing you the very best in 2020...Jane Buchsbaum
I would like to be in touch with W.B. Murray - I was an SCP Volunteer the summer of 1980 at Chirachua.
I have lived in Tucson, Az since 1975 and spent the first 30 years of my life hiking, backpacking, and camping in in the Chirachaua Mountains. For most of that time it was a relatively safe recreational area without much criminal or cartel activity. However, that all changed in towards the end of the 1990s and early 2000s. Around that time due to the events of 9/11 coupled with a new administration in Washington D.C. that took a hardline approach to illegal immigration the Border Patrol and Customs were absorbed into a massive new bureaucracy we now know as the Dept of Homeland Security. With these changes came a massive influx of money and equipment along with a change the culture at ICE/CBP. New policy, procedures and tactics brought a massive build up of manpower, improved border barriers, and surveilance tech to the troubled spots for illegal immigaration and drug running in the populated areas and border crossings along the border in Texas and California.
These new tactics worked and human smuggling and drud smuggling was heavily impacted in those areas but it didn't disappear. Human smuggling and drug running was simply funneled into the wilderness and rural areas along the border in New Mexico and Arizona. Now the border areas in these states had always had some human smuggling and drug activity but due to the vast and harsh wilderness terrain along with triple digit heat for 4 to 5 months a year kept these activities to minimum. Now the cartels focused there operations and all off a sudden places like the Chirachauas and Organ Pipe National Monument that went right up to the border. F drug smuggling super highways. This turned one of the most beautiful and exciting outdoor recreational areasin AZ into a dangerous and crime ridden area.
I no will longer will hike alone or unarmed in the Chirachauas and some parts of the range are just better to stay away from. I have no dout that many of the disappearances in the past 25 years are folks who were simply hiking or camping in the wrong place at the wrong time. The cartel soldiers aren't afraid to murder Border Patrol agents or any other LEO so an unsuspecting hiker isn't going to be allowed to compromise an operation. The cartel activity has also added another creepy factor to spending time the mountains. The cartels have spotters equiped with high power spotter scopes, encrypted satelite phones, and even military grade night vision and FLIR optics camped out along high points along their routes and they're constantly running counterintelligence operations against the variou law enforcement agencies in the area. This gives you that creepy feeling of being constantly watched by some unknown presence. You'll be hiking along and all of sudden you feel the hairs on the back of your neck raise up and the whole atmosphere just changes. I've learned to trust that feeling and leave the area immediately. I'm no gun nut but i would implore you to always be armed when hiking in the areas along our border.
Just listened to your interview with Delia D'Ambra. Over the years I've found myself enthralled in the massive cases and numbers of missing people from national parks here. Truly hope and pray answers about what happened to Paul can happen soon. Power and money can make skeletons in closets disappear but not forever. It's only a matter of time before someone opens that closet and starts talking. Keeping you in my thoughts Dody!
I think there are 2 possibilities here. Either Paul stumbled upon a drug deal going on and was eliminated, or he decided to go off trail and ended up somewhere complelety different, had an accident and died. A 3rd possibility is that a few persons from the NPS hung around the area Paul was headed and they got rid of him. Anything could have been possible. I cannot say for certain what happened to Paul but whatever happened is horrendous for all his loved ones. I really pray someone comes forwards with information and he is found. I also hope that the NPS conducts a more thorough search.
I just came across this case. I have a very bad feeling Paul Fugate did not leave the office to hike a trail. My suspicions are with the people he worked with and for! Drug smugglers or coyotes aka traffickers.. I don't believe would of gathered his belongings, since not one of his possessions were found! Did the investigators investigate EVERYONE associated with him and the park service? Someone has evidently committed the perfect crime!
I do not believe he died in that park, just MHO.
This is and old article, so I'm not sure anyone will read it. I would bet big money that I'm not the only one who believes this to be true.