The remains of Mitchell Dale Stehling have been found at Mesa Verde National Park/NPS
Seven years after a Texas man vanished while on a hike at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado his remains have been found.
Mitchell Dale Stehling, 51, had set out in June 2013 for a short hike to the park's Spruce Tree House, a 130-room archaeological site with eight ceremonial chambers, known as kivas. The man's wife, Denean Stehling, speculated that her “directionally challenged” husband, hiking without water or a map on a hot and sunny day, might have been misled by a sign pointing to the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum and inadvertently went off trail.
A family spotted him on the nearby Petroglyph Point Trail. This 2.4-mile-long, narrow, and rocky path requires hikers to clamber in places up a stone staircase to reach the top. There are places along the trail where it wouldn’t be hard for someone to wander into the backcountry.
The family told Stehling’s wife they leapfrogged past one another and were together at the petroglyph panel 1.4 miles from the trailhead, but they never saw him afterwards. Neither did anyone else, though later there were reports from a hiker on the Petroglyph Point Trail who claimed to have heard someone calling for help.
Mesa Verde officials announced Friday that an anonymous tip led to the discovery of human remains in a remote area of the park. Park law enforcement rangers, with assistance from ISB and Montezuma County Coroner’s Office, located and retrieved the remains on Thursday.
"Personal items located with the remains are consistent with identification, and the presumptive identity of the remains is that of Mitchell Dale Stehling," the park said in a release. "DNA analysis will be performed to positively identify the remains. There is no indication of foul play. The remains were found approximately 4.2 miles from the point where Stehling was last seen."
Comments
Does anyone besides me think something isn't adding up? Isn't it seeming like there is a whole lot missing? nothing makes sense re this story. Almost 4.5 miles away from where last seen? Found according to news on east side of the park and west of Durango. They searched immediately and for days even with dogs and no trace? Either foul play is involved or he wanted to go away and disappear and die on purpose. could there be drug problems in the park? Or something else more nefarious? And no I don't beleive in any wierd superstitious reasons for this. Maybe in time there will be more detail and more answers.
I have to agree that things are so weird with this case. His body found 7 years later by an anonymous tipster? Articles said the initial search lasted for 2 weeks with dogs, and the area where he was found had been searched. I watched a documentary on TV a few years back on several people that had disappeared in the same area. Weird. Maybe something to do with an Indian burial in the park? Foul play? More investigating needs to be done to protect the visitors..
When people hike "without a map and without water", as was stated in this case, and are described by their own spouse as being "directionally challenged", as was also stated, one has to believe this is just yet another classic case of foolish human error made in the harsh elements. When a person gets dehydrated and disoriented, they begin wandering, without realizing that they are actually making their condition worse and making it harder for people to find them. They do this out of desperation. It makes no sense. His body was found more than 4 miles from "where he was last seen", and to me, that sounds like an area wider than what the search teams would have covered with their dogs. It is also a very realistic amount of miles for a desperate, hot, confused, dying person to wander as they try to get help. Sad, but realistic.
Failed searches happen all time. Elizabeth Smart; Eric Rudolph; the lis tis endless.
I'm more interested in the anonymous tipster. Who calls in an anonymous tip for finding skeletal remains? Seeing that the call came in from a person or persons in a remote part of the park, I wonder what they may have been doing there...
I would bet the tipster was pot hunting. Found more than expected, and reported it.
It's very possible for a "directionally challenged" individual, hiking without water or map on a hot and sunny day at that elevation and in that kind of brush and terrain, might have become lost, gone in the wrong direction, and eventually succumbed to the elements or even to one of the rattlers that are all over in that area. Those parts of the story raise absolutely no questions in my mind. That's rough, hot, dry, high elevation country where the air is thin and the winds disorienting. Some of us don't mind it at all, after ten to fifteen thousand years of getting used to it; but, for others, a deadly confusion certainly can come on quick.
However, when you add in the reports about an immediate search, with dogs, that lasted close to two weeks and covered the area where the body was found, it does seem strange. In June, in that country and at that elevation, it would have seemed that a body that large would have soon made itself known, either by advertising itself to aerial scavengers or to the noses of the search dogs or both. Why didn't it? Was it really there the whole time? If so, is the area actually so remote, so rugged, so brushy that a trained search team with trained search dogs spent two weeks scouring the area and still couldn't find a fresh body seven years ago? It does seem strange. Or, maybe the NPS just needs to hire the right kind of folks for their search teams in that kind of country, maybe the kind of folks who have had ten to fifteen thousand years to get used to it.
Then there are the other questions. Who does call in an anonymous tip after finding skeletal remains in a remote part of a national park? Was it actually an anonymous tipster or a tipster who wanted to remain anonymous? There's a difference. And, if the area actually is so remote, so rugged, so brushy that a trained search team with trained search dogs spent two weeks scouring the area and still couldn't find a fresh body seven years ago, then what was that anonymous tipster doing in that area, so remote, so rugged, and so brushy? Gathering pinions? I like pinions.
Have you actually been there and hiked? It's not an easy trail to get lost on. Even if he has gotten lost on the pinion trail he would not have ended up down at the bottom of a canyon on the east side of the park. Not unless he willfully and purposely hiked the top trail at the very end of the hike where you can see the gift shop et of the spruce treehouse area. why would he go directly to hike the petroglyph trail rather than simply the spruce treehouse little walk right there to see the ruins as he had supposedly told his wife. Even if he had just decided spur of the moment to hike the Petroglyph trail it would have taken only about an hour and then you are right back wheee you started. Other people last saw him in an area close to the end of the hike. If he further and without water decided to hike the top road over to say balcony house or the sun temple how did he end up at the bottom of a canyon dying from natural causes. There is no way down but to jump or fall. Did he commit suicide? did someone take him there another way as in by car and hike in from canyon side? Was he invoved wi something illegal? Was he meeting up wi someone for some reason? What was his occupation? nothing on internet. Family says he's ex military. Did he know secrets. is it a cover up? What the heck is going on that is what I want to know. This is not the type of place you wonder off and get lost unless you want to. Even if he were disoriented from dehydration there area is fairly populated wi tourist espec on a Sunday in June. Someone would have seen him and helped.
Without dna evidence we don't know if the skeleton is truly his. Just bc they found his id means nothing.