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S2E2: The Search for Bob Smith · Blood Trails

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: At two o'clock on a clear November afternoon, a single
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: rifle shot cracked through the Big Woods of northern Maine.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Shirley Smith thought her husband had just tagged a deer,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: but Bob Smith was gone. There was no storm, no cliff,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: no rushing river, just thick timber, a healthy search radius,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: and a man who seemed to evaporate between one gunshot
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and the next. Thirty years later, investigators and Bob's family
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: are still trying to piece together what happened, and none
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: of the theories do much to ease their minds. That's
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: next on Blood Trails. Bob Smith wasn't what you'd call
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a serious deer hunter, but the lifelong Main resident still
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: knew how to bring home venison, even if his methods
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: were a little unorthodox.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: To go hunting wasn't something that really drove him a lot,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: but he liked being outdoors. Dad had told me one
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: time he got two deers and one of them he
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: loocked out because he sat down on a log and
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: fell asleep. When he woke up, the deer was there.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: So he wasn't a big tracker and really into it,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: just enjoying being outside.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: That's Marge byther Bob's daughter. Her father's love of the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: outdoors was known in the family, which is why in
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen ninety seven, Bob and his wife Shirley,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: traveled to a deer camp in northern Maine. Bob had
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: just survived a battle with lymphoma, and Shirley's brothers wanted
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: to give the seventy year old farmer a place to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: relax and recharge.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: She wanted to bring Dad in after the summer with
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: his cancer, to give him a week off, to get
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: away from everything, just to enjoy the time and to
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: have the trip together.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: But Bob and Shirley didn't just lays around camp. It
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: was deer season, this was Maine, and Bob was, by
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: all accounts a capable woodsman, So around one pm on
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: November eighteenth, the pair ventured into the surrounding timber company
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: land in hopes of scaring up a white tail. Here's
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: retired Maine State game Warden Dave Milligan describing what happened next.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: Surely, Bob had gone out what they called the town line,
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: which was a marked slash trail, pretty easy to follow.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: It's almost like.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: The best path you could ever want through the woods.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: The story was that they went out there, probably about
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: a half a mile maybe.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: A little more, stopped and Bob was going to leave
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: his wife on the town line so she could look
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: down the town line and kind of make a big
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: circle around her, you know, trying to push a deer
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: across in front of her.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: With no snow on the ground, that would allow them
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: to track a deer through the dense forest. It wasn't
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: a bad plan. Deer would likely be betted up at
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: that time of day and surely might get a chance
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: at a shot if Bob was able to push one
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: towards her. At first, it seemed like it might be working,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: but as Shirley later told game Ardans, there was something
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: off about the way her husband was acting.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: She said she saw Bob come back across the town line,
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: but his head was down and he never acknowledged her.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: He never looked at her, never acknowledged her. She thought, well,
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: maybe he's got a deer track going there or whatever,
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: even though she hadn't seen a deer go by. And
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: then he disappeared into the woods there.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: About twenty minutes past, when suddenly a gunshot broke the
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: stillness of the cool November afternoon. In the years that followed,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: that shot became known to investigators as the two o'clock shot.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: She heard a rifle shot, and she's like, oh, good,
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: he got you know, he took a shot at a deer,
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: So she was excited.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: She waited for a while.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: Then she went up closer to where she'd see him
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: cross and waited, and.
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: I think she probably yelled to him, I remember, right.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: No answer.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Shirley ventured into the woods. She scanned the forest yelled
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Bob's name, but her cries were swallowed up in the
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: silence of the trees. As the minutes ticked by, Shirley's
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: hope of a successful hunt, or even just a relaxing
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: day in the woods gave way to panic. Bob had vanished.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Shirley returned to camp in the hope that her husband
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: had somehow made it back unnoticed. When she still didn't
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: find him, she and her brothers called the main warden service.
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: All indications were was fairly straightforward.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Jim Fahey and Dave Milligan were among the first wardens
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: on the scene. Jim told me they expected to find
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Bob within just a few minutes.
• 4:40
  Speaker 5: You know, an elderly person that's been recovering from cancer physically,
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: how far can they actually go? You know, people can
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: surprise you. I've learned that personal good physical shape. At panics,
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: they can cover some ground. But indications were he should
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: be right there, but he wasn't.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: The search for Bob Smith was at the time the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: largest ground search in the Main Warden Service's one hundred
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and seventeen year history. Ninety six search teams of wardens
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: and volunteers scoured a six mile circle. Dog teams worked
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: to pick up Bob's trail, and the National Guard sent
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: helicopters equipped with infrared cameras. Officials at the time estimated
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: that searchers spent a combined one hundred and fifty thousand
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: hours looking for Bob. But as those hours stretched into
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: days and days into weeks, game wardens began to realize
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: that this might not be a simple case of a
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: missing hunter. The deeper they dug, the more they wondered
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: if something else had taken place on that quiet fall afternoon.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Nearby hunters came under suspicion, and recent investigations have uncovered
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: new information that shines an even more disturbing light on
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: the events of that tragic day for Jim and Dave.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Bob's case still haunts them nearly thirty years later.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very right.
• 6:02
  Speaker 6: I mean i'd be lying.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: Everybody said it didn't bother me, and you know, it
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: bothered me a lot because that night when we got there, though,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Shirley was crying, and you know what, I made the
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: mistake of saying, you know, don't worry. Surely we do
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: this all the time, We'll have him out, don't worry.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: And that was something I never said to anybody again
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: after that.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Margine didn't hear about what happened until the next day
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: when her aunt visited her at work. As she remembers it,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: she somehow couldn't make sense of what she was hearing.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: I was annoyed because she couldn't get to the point
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: because she kept saying that he was lost. I was like, well,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: you mean lost, he's dead. She says, no, no, he's lost,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: like she had a stroke and doesn't know his mind.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: What are you telling me? Because I couldn't fathom, oh,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: he was lost.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I'm Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails The Search
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: for Bob Smith, Part one, Bob and Shirley, Bob grew
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: up near Cariboo, a small town in northern Maine, just
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: a few miles from the Canadian border. He had a
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: short stint in the army during the Korean War, but
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: otherwise he spent his whole life in Cariboo.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: So he grew up on a potato farm with his
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: one brother. And the house that I grew up in
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: was like the house next door to that farmhouse. And
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: now so Dad and his brother potato farm together throughout
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: the years until like the early eighties.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Shirley worked with Bob on the farm for thirty years,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: and after Bob retired, they opened a roadside stand called
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Smith's Seedlings and Vegetables.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: And when they got done farming, he still turned to
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: working with the dirt and in the ground. He my
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: mother did a vestiball garden to sell vegetables by the road,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: as well as some greenhouses to grow seedlinks to sell.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Bob's humble life in the woods and fields of other
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Maine shaped his personality. Marge remembers her father as a
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: quiet man who always put others ahead of himself.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: But very gentle, very very gentle nature, and never glory
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: for himself. I know when he when he first found
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: out he had cancer. I had gone over and I said, Stad,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry about your news and what's going on.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: He says, don't feel bad for me. Is I lived
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: a good life? I mean, I'm going to work on
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: beating this. But I've lived a good life and done
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: what I wanted to do. But if you're going to
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: feel bad for little kids to get this, he said,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: don't feel bad for me. So he just took on
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: dealt with whatever came his way.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: He was a technician in Korea, a job that may
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: not have put him on the front lines of battle,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: but as with any military assignment, came with a certain
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: amount of risk. But Marge told me Bob was never
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: one to overstate the extent of his service. You said
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: he was in Korea.
• 8:56
  Speaker 6: Was was he fighting?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: I assume during the Who's like an optic repair technician. No,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: don't know if that's the right term or not.
• 9:04
  Speaker 7: But he.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Was always quick to stress that he wasn't someone who
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: was in the line of danger like a lot of
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: soldiers were. He kind of not less than what he did,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: but he thought he didn't do quite as much.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Bob was born in nineteen twenty seven, while Shirley was
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: born sixteen years later in nineteen forty three. Their age
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: gap meant that, rather than meeting in school or as
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: childhood friends, their relationship needed a bit of a jumpstart.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Marge doesn't remember all the details, but you can imagine
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Bob's mother worrying that her adult son might never get hitched,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: so she took matters into her own hands.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: His mother was a nurse, and she was always bringing
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: home young nurses for him to meet to try to
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: get him too, and it it never worked out. And
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: my mother had a good friend who happened to be
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: i think a cousin to my father. And this friend
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: kept saying, you have to meet Bob, you have to
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: meet Bob. The mom got kind of sick of it, saying,
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: I'm so tired of hearing about this man. But eventually
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: they How have they? They got together?
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Somehow, How Bob convinced his future bride to tie the knot,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: we may never know, but we do know that their
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: courtship included at least one run in with a game warden.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Here's Marge being interviewed alongside a warden named Cale O'Leary,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: who you'll hear more from later.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: In this episode, I probab shouldn't tell the story, but
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: they can't, sassin me. They're out when they're out one
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: night in the car off on a back road, and
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: I think it was a game warning that came up
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: to them and shine the fly slide in and says, well,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: can you show show me some ide? Do you have
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: a license on you? I guess Dad was fishing in
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: his wallet quite a bit and following the ward and well,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: hunting license will do it doesn't have to bear driver's license,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: you have anything on you, Just so that became a
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: story of of their some of their recording days.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right right, caught by the game warning. I'm sure
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: if it was Cale, he would be understanding and merciful.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 10:58
  Speaker 7: Yes.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: In the years that followed, Marge says Bob and Shirley's
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: relationship remained strong. They did everything together, raising Marge and
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: her brother in the same community where Bob grew up.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: They had their share of difficulties, but Marge remembers her
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: father as a steady presence, always willing to do whatever
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: was needed to help keep his family afloat.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: He was very hard working, very quiet, very even keel
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Loki had a sense of hue her. If anything had
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: to be done, he would just do what had to
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: be done. He didn't stress out about we got done farming.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: It was bankruptcy, so it was a little bit of
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen next, And as a kid, you
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: don't appreciate the hard work he went into. But he
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: started his ceilings and doing whatever he had to do
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: to take care of the family and to get a
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: job at a local factory. Just just quietly did what
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: needed to be done. Very content with his world and
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: his family around him, and didn't have a lot, but
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: very happy with his world, very happy with his life.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Bob's disappearance threatened to shatter that happy stability, and it
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: wasn't just that he disappeared, it was how he went missing.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: He didn't get lost in a snowstorm or violently abducted.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Scenarios that well, no less traumatic, are at least something
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: you can wrap your head around. Bob Smith disappeared on
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: a beautiful sunny day, apparently within a matter of just
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: a few minutes. His cancer had weakened him, but he
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: was still capable of calling for help or firing his
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: gun to indicate his position, but surely hadn't been able
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: to find any trace of him. It was like the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: woods had swallowed him up. Gun Orange Vest and all.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Stu is I think having a hard time to hold
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: it together. And she was trying to offer as much
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: information as she could. And I remember there were some
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: reporters that come to the house to talk to us,
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: and in hindsight, allright, right now, I'm thinking, well, there
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: any information we would talk to them would be good.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Bout none of us were in the mood to go
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: talk to them.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: It's no wonder she declined to be interviewed when reporters
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: came knocking. Even if she felt up to talking, What
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: was she supposed to say?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: It was tough. And then Thanksgiving was right afterwards, and
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: I remember having for my brother over and it.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: Was just.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Really tough.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Part two the fall search. As you already heard, Dave
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Milligan and Jim Fahey were the first game wardens on
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: the scene. They were both fairly new to the main
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: warden service, but that doesn't mean they were inexperienced. Game
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Wardens conduct most search and rescue operations in Maine, and
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: hunting season was an especially busy time.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Here's Dave back then, We did a lot of search
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: and rescues during hunting season. It's almost every night before
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: GPSS came out all that.
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: But we're even though we're young, we.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: We've done that, you know, lot every night, but quite
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: often I.
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: Got there after Dave and but we were the first ones,
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: you know, to initiate, you know, a formal search outside
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: of what the family had already done it on the
• 14:16
  Speaker 5: surface of it, I mean, we were there to save
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: a life, you know, to find someone. That's that's what
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: we do.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: The Warden Service is really good at finding people. Stories
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: like this and the LUSA Blandric case we covered last
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: season get a lot of attention because they're out of
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: the ordinary. As Dave told me, most searches are over
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: within a matter of hours, if not minutes.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, most normally we found like the place, the place
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: last scene, and we went there. We had a you know,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: if you're lucky, you had another warden with you, and
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: you split up a little bit and then you fired
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: three shots, waited for them bearing. The shot took accompass bearing,
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: and when anything got them. It was pretty simple most
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: of the time, but not always.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Hunters were trained to listen for those shots and then
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: fire their own guns in respect. Jim told me that
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: sometimes hunters wouldn't fire back because they didn't want to
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: waste ammunition, which, knowing how much hunters prized their guns
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: and ammo, I wasn't surprised to hear, but that would
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: have been out of character for Bob, and after learning
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of his bout with cancer, they were confident he was
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: still with an earshot of a firearm. Jim and Dave
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: arrived around six o'clock that evening and walked down to
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the place Shirley had seen Bob enter the woods. They
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: were joined in the search by one of Shirley's brothers,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: a man named Freeman, and one of her nephews, a
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: teenager named Millage.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: We got to the place last scene and I remember
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Jimbo when I said Jimbo, Le's fay. He He's like, everybody,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: plug your ears. That's what we did, plug your ears.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: He ripped off three shots with his Magnum three fifty
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: seven and we all listened, and.
• 15:49
  Speaker 6: You know, crickets. We didn't hear anything.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Bob had been carrying a thirty odd six bolt action
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: rifle along with four cartridges. If Bob was the one
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: who fired the two o'clock shot, they should have had
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: three carchges left. The fact that Bob didn't return fire
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: meant that either he wasn't close enough to hear Jim's
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: three fifty seven, which seemed unlikely, or he was somehow incapacitated.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: With temperatures dropping, they knew they had to act quickly. Milledge,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: the teenager went with Dave, and Freeman went with Jim.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: They searched as quickly and as carefully as they could,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: expecting to find Bob's prone body at any moment. They
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: hoped he was still conscious and hadn't been injured too badly,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: but at that point they still fully expected to find him,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: but they didn't. Instead, two things happened that first evening
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that left searchers with more questions than answers. As Dave
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: and Milledge worked their way out from where Bob was
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: last seen, they reached the point where Dave estimate surely
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: had heard the two o'clock shot. That's when they stumbled
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: upon a body, but not the kind they were looking for.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: I'm searching along with his kid, and I walk right
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: on to a dead, stinking moose and it was free
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: if somebody shot.
• 17:02
  Speaker 6: That at that day, and it was just just left there.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: Nobody had attempted to field dressed or anything. It was
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: just a pretty big, old most dead there. And I
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: remember turning around to militant saying, what's up with this?
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: And this isn't very far from their camp. I immediately
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: thought somebody there had.
• 17:20
  Speaker 6: Killed the moose.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, but then with the radio, I let my
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: sergeant know, and he's like, yeah, just flag the moose,
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: leave it and let's let's get.
• 17:27
  Speaker 6: On to the search. And so we did.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Shirley never reported hearing any other shots besides the one
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: she thought had been fired by her husband. It's possible
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: that whoever had killed that moose had shot it that morning,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: but as far as I know, no one from Bob
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and Shirley's camp reported having shot a moose. Bob may
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: have shot it, but if that was the case, why
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: wasn't he still with it? With no sign of Bob
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: and no obvious clues in the area, Dave noted the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: moose's location and continued his search.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: Miligi and I were going is a really sick spot
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: where you part in the trees and everything, and we
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: heard a shot way way off. I turned right around,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: and you know, took a notice of where I thought
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: the shot came from, and I asked the kid which
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: way he thought, and it was the same.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: This was long after Jim had fired his revolver, so
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: those shots didn't appear to be responding to Jim. But
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: it was also well after dark, which means it wasn't
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: a legal hunter. There are a million reasons someone might
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: fire a gun at night. But Dave wondered if it
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: was Bob signaling for help.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: I took the bearing.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: He just started walking a straight line as three as
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: they could, and I ran that out all the way
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: back to the Lynch Road, which are might be a
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: mile or two, I'm not sure, but anyway, I didn't
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: come up with anything.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: They continue the search throughout the night, but there was
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: still no sign of the missing hunter. The next morning,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: more game wardens arrived, along with volunteers from the local community.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: The next day, you know, it just there was more
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: the same. I mean, he's got to be here, got
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: to be here. Then you start to presume maybe he's
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: down with the medical emergency, you know, alive but in
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: need of rescue, unable to be verbal or to you know,
• 19:08
  Speaker 5: handle a firearm.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Time was of the essence. If Bob was still alive,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: he was almost certainly hypothermic. He was a large man,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: standing about six foot two and weighing two hundred and
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: twenty pounds, but the cancer had weakened him, and if
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: he was sick or injured, he might not last much
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: longer than the next twenty four hours. If you look
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: at this area on on X, which you can do
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: by visiting the Meat eater dot com slash Blood Trails
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and clicking on the case file for this episode, you'll
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: see that the area is mostly flat. There aren't any
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: mountains or cliffs, and other than a few small streams,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: there are relatively few natural features. There are some clearings,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: but most of the landscape at the time was blanketed
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: with mainz famous big woods.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: It was very thick. And I've talked to hunters that
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: come from other parts of the country where it's out
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: west where they do some spot in stocks at great distance,
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: even some of the from the Eastern Seaboard that are
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: in a hardwood ridge country. You know, they always come
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: to Maine and they're just they feel stifled sometimes, you know,
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: just overwhelmed by how thick the woods can be. In
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: places where you have to get down on your hands
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: and knees.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Hunters know that after you shoot an animal, you don't
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: just wander through the woods in hopes of finding it.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: You find a blood trail and patiently follow it, because
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: even a big animal can hide in a small amount
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: of brush. If Bob was unconscious, searchers knew that they'd
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: have to comb every square inch of those woods, which
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: is exactly what they did.
• 20:33
  Speaker 5: Your teams are only as good as your weakest link.
• 20:35
  Speaker 5: You know, if there's a blowdown a tangle of growth,
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: if someone doesn't persevere and push through and clear that,
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: then that becomes a dead spot. And so we've learned
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: sometimes if you reverse the direction of the search but
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: there's a hazard or an obstruction going one way, if
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: you do it one hundred eight degrees differently, you know
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: later that day or the following day gives a whole
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: different view. So we did that, and we use different teams,
• 21:00
  Speaker 5: different canine teams. It wasn't there was no single point
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: of failure as far as you know, one team not
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: being up to par. We covered it with multiple resources
• 21:09
  Speaker 5: and it then it expands from there.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: In the days that followed, hundreds of people and dogs
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: searched in a grid pattern that extended well beyond where
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Bob could have realistically traveled. Marge was in her late
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: twenties when her dad went missing, so she remembers clearly
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: waiting at the farmhouse where the search and rescue teams
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: had set up a makeshift headquarters.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: I just remember spending a lot of days there and
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: just watching out the window and hoping for some news.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And you'd see everyone showing up in the morning to
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: go out and search, and early in the morning, very energetic,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: They're ready to go, and seemed very serious. And then
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: at the end of the day they'd come back to
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: the vehicles and they'd been beating the woods all day
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: long and they were tired, and you just want to
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: go out and say thank you. But you could just
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: see what he just felt. It seemed like the just
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: felt bad that they didn't accomplish what they had set
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: out that morning to do.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I asked Marge what was going through her mind as
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: those searchers returned empty handed day after day.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Would never want to give up hope, And I just
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: remember it kind of put me into a little bit
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: of a blank numb stage. If that makes sense, and
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: I remember even whom I didn't want to drive. I
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: was so just shook up. I didn't want to drive.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: So finally someone said they'd bring me in. I remember saying, well,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: the best thing would be they'll find them and maybe
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: he needs a little medical help. And said, then then
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: they'll find him and he's going to be passed away,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: so or what if they never find him? But I
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: didn't think it would go that far. But I remember
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: thinking those three scenarios, and now I didn't think that
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: that would be the outcome. To be honest with you,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I thought they would find him either a lie or
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: or at least find find him after he died. I
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: thought he would be found.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: More after the break Part three clues, the search hadn't
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: progressed like Jim and Dave had hoped, but that doesn't
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: mean they came up empty handed. In fact, the day
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: after Bob went missing, one of the dogs appeared to
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: pick up his scent.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: I went in with a K nine unit. We went
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: to the place last see and the dog seemed to
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: hit on what we thought was Bob's trail where he
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: took it into the woods. I don't remember exactly two
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: or three arnered yards and he got to a place
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: where the dog just lost the track. I mean, then
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: the K nine handlers like, he doesn't no where to go.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: This is it, which is kind of weird.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: And that wasn't the only suggestive but still mysterious thing
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: searchers found over the course of their time in the woods.
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: There's three different clues you could say that were uncovered
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: or discovered that in and of themselves, each one might
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: have merit, but one person couldn't have done all three
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: because of the distance involved, if you follow me.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: The first was discovered by the owner of a nearby
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: hunting camp, who Jim described as an experienced woodsman.
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: He found what he thought was where someone had crossed
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: carry brooke and hefted themselves up on the far bank
• 24:33
  Speaker 5: by bunching up the swale grass and kind of lifting
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: themselves off the ice. But the thing that made it
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: more interesting is there was a logging job where they
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: were harvesting wood. And if you've been around those operations,
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: you're very noisy, and so Bob was basically tone deaf.
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: But on the farm he was a potato farm. They
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: said he could hear equipment at distances.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: The workers on that logging job were interviewed and they
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: said they stopped work around four o'clock the afternoon Bob
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: went missing.
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: So if you can picture yourself, you're using that to
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: guide your way. Then the equipment goes quiet, Then where
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: are you carry?
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Brook is located about a mile to the west of
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: where Bob was last seen. If he'd gotten lost around
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: two o'clock, it's conceivable that he would have been able
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: to hear the logging work and use that as a
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: point of reference to try to find his way out
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: of the woods. If he lost that point of reference
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: when that work stopped, he may have become even more
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: disoriented in the growing darkness. Unfortunately, that bunched up swale
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: grass was the only indication that anyone had been in
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: the area. Anyone trying to cross the brook could have
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: made the same sign, so it's impossible to say that
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Bob had gone in that direction. Speaking of direction, Jim says,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: searchers found another clue that had them wondering if Bob
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: was trying to communicate with them.
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: Another one that was on the surface of it, seemed
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: like a really good lead. Our supervisor, Dave Allen, found
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: a place on a twitch trail Coote Road, a place
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: where they would have dragged logs out of the woods
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: years ago. They turned into footpaths and trails. He found
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: where arrows had been constructed indicating one's direction of travel.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: I remember him saying, you know, the old it's like caribou,
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: the old Tata farmers.
• 26:10
  Speaker 6: That's how they did stuff.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: They take their heel and draw an arrow in the dirts,
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: which it would have been leaves, kind of indicating which
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: way he went.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe Bob had gotten lost, and knowing he didn't have
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: much time before hypothermia set in, he'd set off to
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: try to find help. But since he knew searchers would
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: be looking for him, he left them a sign as
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: to his whereabouts. This clue seemed more promising than the
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: swale grass, but it had a major flaw. Whoever had
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: left those arrows had been within thirty five yards of
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: a camp driveway.
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: And so how do you make it that far and
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: not stumble onto the dry Now the driveway was just
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: a one track, you know, deep rutted road. Someone not
• 26:49
  Speaker 5: thinking clearly in the dark, you could stagger over that.
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: But then there was a triangular shaped piece of land
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: there that had some containment. You know, there was a waterway,
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: there was a main road, there was the camp driveway,
• 27:00
  Speaker 5: and of course we searched that side.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Whoever had left those arrows, they didn't lead searchers to
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Bob or provide any indication that he'd been in the area,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: But that wasn't true of the final clue. About two
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: miles to the northeast of where Bob was last seen,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: a game warden named Alvin Terrio found a set of
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: footprints that looked like they'd been left by someone stumbling
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: through the dark.
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: Tario had located some footprints in moss that he deemed
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: were consistent with someone that was either in the dark
• 27:29
  Speaker 5: without a light, or confused or hypothermic, and this pattern
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: of tracks just didn't match with someone that was actually
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: searching through that area or someone that was just hunting through.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Alvin, Jim told me it was savvy. He knew that
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: snow was in the forecast, but he didn't have the
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: tools to make an impression that could be matched to
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Bob's boots. So he covered those bootprints with plastic and
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: returned after the snow had fallen, and.
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: We went back the next day after but a six
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: inench snowfall and removed the plat, and we had a
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: pair of Bob's like extra pair of boots that were
• 28:03
  Speaker 5: the same as what he was wearing the day that
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: he got lost, and they fit into that mossy impression
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: just perfectly.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Bob was wearing a pair of size eleven LLBean boots,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: a popular model in Maine even to this day. What
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: are the odds, even in a forest full of hunters,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: someone would be stumbling around in the same sized boots
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: just a few miles from where Bob went missing. Investigators
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Dave says, we're thinking the same thing.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: So for a while that post was just it was
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: searched pretty thoroughly.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: At the time, they were pretty hot on that.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, like the previous two clues, this one failed to
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: produce the result they were looking for. Even worse, further
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: investigation revealed counter evidence pointing to someone other than Bob.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: We went back in the springtime and we'd get into
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: that very spot we'd flagged it all off, and what
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: we did find we found some of those tracks, but
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: we also found i think it's like three or four
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: cigarette butts involved in smoke, and we also found a
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: dead buck deer. So the theory was that those tracks,
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: because the tracks looked like they were guy was lost
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: going this way going that way. We kind of came
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: to a conclusion that the guy had wounded a buck
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: in there and had the same size shoe with bookgrint.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: None of the clues that fall panned out, but as
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: you just heard Dave mention, they didn't give up. After
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: winter began to release its grip on the woods of
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: northern Maine, game wardens returned to the search area, hopeful
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: the melting snow would reveal something they'd missed the previous fall.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: It did, but not in the way that anyone had hoped.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Part four. The Spring Search.
• 29:43
  Speaker 8: My involvement with the Bob Smith search started in the
• 29:46
  Speaker 8: spring of ninety eight.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: That's Roger Gay, a veteran game warden who was tasked
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: with reviewing the search that had been done the previous
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: year and creating a game plan for the spring. That
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: game plan centered around the canine units, and he was
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: confident they'd find something to give the Smith family the
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: closure they were so desperately searching for.
• 30:06
  Speaker 8: And we were hoping, you know that in theory that
• 30:10
  Speaker 8: would have been fairly easy to do because of the
• 30:13
  Speaker 8: conditions of the body at that time, would really produce
• 30:18
  Speaker 8: some motor and we would be able to find it
• 30:21
  Speaker 8: find him pretty quick.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Six different canine teams helped in the search, but Roger's
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: dog was especially experienced. You might think that when it
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: comes to search and rescue, a dog as a dog,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: but Roger explained that just like people, a veteran canine
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: can be trusted to avoid rookie mistakes.
• 30:39
  Speaker 8: The dog that I used on the Bob Smiths search,
• 30:42
  Speaker 8: she was a chocolate lab. Her name was Riba and
• 30:44
  Speaker 8: she helped solve over twelve homicides and multiple search and
• 30:49
  Speaker 8: rescues finds and among over three hundred thousand dollars worth
• 30:55
  Speaker 8: of fish and waller convictions under her belt.
• 30:58
  Speaker 6: She was just a top top K nine.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Riba was trained on tracking, search and rescue and kadaver recovery.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: If it was out in the woods, she could find it.
• 31:08
  Speaker 8: She could find crime scene evidence, anything with human scent, gunpowder,
• 31:14
  Speaker 8: or something made of brass. You know, we tried to
• 31:18
  Speaker 8: not leave a single stone unturned. Now, the thing is
• 31:21
  Speaker 8: with dog teams, using the wind, the air currents, you know,
• 31:26
  Speaker 8: we can search a much bigger area than the ground
• 31:29
  Speaker 8: team would, right. I mean, a quarter mile is nothing
• 31:34
  Speaker 8: for a dog to pick up scent and go into
• 31:37
  Speaker 8: where the source comes from. I mean, you know, that's
• 31:39
  Speaker 8: what we were relying on with dogs.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: As terrible and macabre as it is to consider, the
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: scent of a decomposing body is much stronger in the
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: spring than in the fall. The spring also has another
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: gruesome advantage for finding a body.
• 31:54
  Speaker 8: In northern Maine, there are a lot of bears in
• 31:57
  Speaker 8: that country. We saw a lot of bears. Bears don't
• 32:01
  Speaker 8: eat humans in the fall for whatever reason. I guess
• 32:06
  Speaker 8: we don't taste good in the fall, But in the
• 32:08
  Speaker 8: spring they're hungry. And I've seen this personally multiple times.
• 32:13
  Speaker 8: They will feed on human remains in the spring where
• 32:17
  Speaker 8: they will consume the body, but they're going to tear
• 32:19
  Speaker 8: that clothing all over the place, right, there will be signs.
• 32:23
  Speaker 8: I had a case up near backs To Park where
• 32:27
  Speaker 8: the dogs were learning on coyote scat and bear scat
• 32:31
  Speaker 8: because there were fragments of human bone and we could
• 32:34
  Speaker 8: actually see wolf of the person's sweaters that yeah, and
• 32:40
  Speaker 8: the dogs were hitting on it.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Roger explained that if Bob had fallen in a spot
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: the searchers had missed the previous fall, the bears would
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: almost certainly have found it when they emerged from hibernation.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: When they did, they would have predated on his remains
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: and then spread those remains around the woods, which would
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: have increased the odds of being detected by a dog's
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: power nose.
• 33:01
  Speaker 8: Working in the spring with dogs, I mean, they worked phenomenally.
• 33:06
  Speaker 8: We had pretty decent conditions, and we just couldn't turn
• 33:11
  Speaker 8: up a thing.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Just like the previous November, dog teams crisscrossed the search
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: area without picking up the scent of Bob's remains, his clothing,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: or any of the things he was carrying. That day,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I asked Roger about what Dave had told me that
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: just a few days after Bob went missing, one of
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: the dogs seemed to be following his trail from the
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: point where he was last seen. Roger explained that while
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: it could have been Bob's trail, it's impossible to say
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: for sure. Unless the dogs started the search in a
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: place where only Bob's scent was present, it could have
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: been following the scent of a family member, one of
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: the searchers, or just nothing at all.
• 33:47
  Speaker 8: A lot of times the dog will go a distance
• 33:51
  Speaker 8: trying to find the track that you gave him a
• 33:54
  Speaker 8: center article from and they can't find it, so they
• 33:58
  Speaker 8: just basically stop. They stopped, and that's a signal to
• 34:01
  Speaker 8: you saying they he didn't have it.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: A dog's nose is incredibly powerful, but even the most
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: experienced canines would have trouble smelling Bob if his body
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: was underwater. There aren't any large, fast moving rivers in
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: the area, but there are a number of streams dotted
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: with beaver dams in that country.
• 34:20
  Speaker 8: It's kind of the headwaters for four or five brooks
• 34:23
  Speaker 8: go in different directions, and all of those little brooks,
• 34:27
  Speaker 8: no matter how big they were, had beaver activity. It
• 34:31
  Speaker 8: had been cold enough, there was ice enough ice that
• 34:35
  Speaker 8: maybe if you were turned around and you're trying to
• 34:38
  Speaker 8: hear or get a reference, you might walk out into
• 34:40
  Speaker 8: the open bog ice covered bog just if you can
• 34:44
  Speaker 8: get your bearings.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: The easiest way for searchers to inspect those beaver ponds
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: is to remove the dams and allow the water to
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: drain away. So that's exactly what they did.
• 34:56
  Speaker 8: So we had National Guard teams come up and blow
• 35:01
  Speaker 8: the beaver dams, and you know, I didn't get a
• 35:04
  Speaker 8: Christmas card from the beavers up there that year.
• 35:06
  Speaker 6: They're pretty mad at me.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: They inspected those drainages with searchers and dog teams and
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: even flew helicopters to peer down from the air.
• 35:15
  Speaker 6: It was as thorough as you could get. Yeah, you know,
• 35:20
  Speaker 6: and again you're dealing with.
• 35:22
  Speaker 8: Mud up to your eyeballs and things. But visually you
• 35:26
  Speaker 8: could see everything, and certainly you would see the color
• 35:30
  Speaker 8: and the orange. You know, it may be faded or dirty,
• 35:33
  Speaker 8: but you would still have the visual on it.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Still nothing. If you're getting tired of that refrain in
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: this episode, imagine how the searchers felt. Roger told me
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: the search teams had left so much flagging in the
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: woods to mark the areas that had been searched, it
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: was impossible to untangle it all. They even brought in
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: a GPS device to make absolutely certain they'd covered every
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: square foot of forest. This was the first time GPS
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: had been used in a search and rescue operation in Maine.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: But it didn't help. Bob Smith was nowhere to be found.
• 36:06
  Speaker 8: It was like, why aren't we finding this guy? You know,
• 36:10
  Speaker 8: this shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be this complicated.
• 36:13
  Speaker 8: After being involved, like three days searching, it's starting to
• 36:19
  Speaker 8: realize it, boy, there's something wrong here. Nothing is coming up,
• 36:23
  Speaker 8: not a glove, not a hat, nothing. It's starting to
• 36:27
  Speaker 8: shift your thought process to, Okay, this is not necessarily
• 36:31
  Speaker 8: a normal lost hunter. Something unusual has happened here. So
• 36:37
  Speaker 8: now we're starting to look at Okay, what are possible
• 36:40
  Speaker 8: scenarios that.
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: Would get him out of the area completely.
• 36:44
  Speaker 8: You know, we were trying to cover all the bases,
• 36:47
  Speaker 8: you know, the trout Brook area and the sound and
• 36:51
  Speaker 8: light attractors and everything. But now you know, we're thinking, well,
• 36:58
  Speaker 8: maybe this could involve some foul play.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Part five foul play game ordans at the time had
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: their suspicions, but as Jim Fahy explained, those suspicions didn't
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: start snowballing until well after Bob had vanished. By that time,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: collecting evidence and finding witnesses was exponentially more difficult.
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: Again, we weren't looking at it in the moment, That's
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: the important thing. In the moment, we weren't looking at
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: it like there was a possible you know, crime scene
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: or evidentiary value of you know, that type of thing.
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: I mean we're trying to find a god before he dies.
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: You know, that could be hypothermic and down with the
• 37:45
  Speaker 5: medical emergency.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: But difficult isn't the same as impossible. The Bob Smith
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: case is open and warning Kale O'Leary believes it can
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: still be solved.
• 37:54
  Speaker 7: I learned about this case when I was a brand
• 37:56
  Speaker 7: new game warden from the We were working together one
• 37:58
  Speaker 7: day and the've had like twenty years on when I
• 38:01
  Speaker 7: came on and we were out actually at the spot
• 38:04
  Speaker 7: where Bob went missing, and Dave first told me the story,
• 38:06
  Speaker 7: and it's just always stuck with me.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: The information we have today comes from warden's who were there,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: like Jim, Dave and Roger, along with what investigators recorded
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: in the case file.
• 38:16
  Speaker 7: I said, where's the folder the binder on Bob Smith?
• 38:20
  Speaker 7: And everybody was like, I have no idea, No, I
• 38:22
  Speaker 7: we haven't. So I actually went out into our garage
• 38:25
  Speaker 7: and I sifted through like layers of dust and dead flies,
• 38:29
  Speaker 7: and I find this.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: It was like the Holy Grail.
• 38:31
  Speaker 6: I pulled it out.
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: It was this massive binder with all the search masks.
• 38:34
  Speaker 7: I'm like, oh my god, I just found the Bob
• 38:35
  Speaker 7: Smith file.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: That file backed up what cale had already been told.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: The search for Bob Smith was incredibly thorough, and time
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: has only increased the odds that Bob isn't in those woods.
• 38:46
  Speaker 7: I think it's easier now going down the file play angle.
• 38:51
  Speaker 7: That's I think, I really. I only hope because the
• 38:55
  Speaker 7: search area itself is what it is. If he hasn't
• 38:58
  Speaker 7: been found, and that gun hasn't been found by loggers
• 39:01
  Speaker 7: and deer hunters in that area by now, I'm not
• 39:02
  Speaker 7: going to find it. I'm not naive to think that
• 39:05
  Speaker 7: I'm going to find Bob's remains there somewhere.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: If Bob didn't lose his way in the forest, if
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: someone else was involved in his disappearance. The first scenario
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: investigators considered is that he was killed by another hunter.
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure if something could have happened where there
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: was lack of attention to detail, you know, fate identify
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: one's target, maybe a sound shot. With the advent of
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: hunter safety, those types of scenarios, thankfully or less and less,
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: you know, but there was a time in our history
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: in probably in other states too, where there was some
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: hunting conduct that just wasn't safe acceptable.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Hunters are accidentally shot and killed every year even to
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: this day. It's conceivable that the two o'clock shot wasn't
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Bob firing at a deer, but was instead the shot
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: that killed him. But there's a pretty big problem with
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: this scenario.
• 39:54
  Speaker 5: If someone had shot him outright, how do you effectively
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: remove remove him? And we're talking about dsmen that make
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: their living, whether they're a guide or a game board
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: and discerning tracks and track evidence in drag marks and trajectories,
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: scarf marks on clip twigs and bark and bullet paths.
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: It's hard to fool.
• 40:14
  Speaker 6: You can.
• 40:14
  Speaker 5: You might be able to fool Jim and Dave, I guess,
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: but you're going to fool all these guys that were
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: brought in, you know. It's just doesn't seem likely.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: In other words, even if someone had killed Bob and
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: run away, searchers still would have found Bob's body. Not
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: only did they fail to find Bob's remains, they failed
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: to find any trace of him, no boots, no gun,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: no jacket, no gear. As you heard earlier, a dog
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: can detect the scent of a person's clothes after those
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: garments have been through the digestive tract of another animal.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: If Bob was murdered. Investigators were baffled by the fact
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: that none of his possessions were ever found. Someone may
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: have killed Bob and dragged him away, but even in
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: this scenario, some trace of him would surely have been
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: left behind a shell case, a hat, glasses, or a
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: glove accidentally dropped as the body was moved. What's more,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: a single individual would never have been able to move
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Bob's two hundred pound frame without leaving a trace. But
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: what if Bob was killed and moved by multiple people,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: And what if these people were not only capable woodsmen,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: but had knowledge of the best ways to hide evidence.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Jim acquired some information that just in that ten sixth country,
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: just where this all happened, there were these three hunters
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: and I thought they were from Pennsylvania, but I talked
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: to Jim and he said no, they were there from
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: New Jersey or New York. We weren't sure, but they
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: were law enforcement guys and they were staying at a
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: sporting camp off the Reality Road and they had been
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: hunting in there that day.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: The day after Bob went missing, Jim ran into three
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: out of staters who said they'd been hunting in the
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: same area Jim wasn't suspicious of them at the time,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: because again, foul play wasn't on anyone's mind that early
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: in the search. But he does remember that they mentioned
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: being law enforcement officers from a state somewhere in the northeast.
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: They showed up there and they saw that there was
• 42:11
  Speaker 5: they weren't going to be able to I don't know
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: why they showed up, maybe if they thought they were
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: going to hunt. The area had all sorts of you know, searchers.
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: But when they mentioned to me that they'd been in
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: that area the day before, I told one of our
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: investigators because I thought it deserved some follow up, you know,
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: just anybody that might have heard or seen something that
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: should be captured, you know, when it's timely.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: But at least according to the case file kil found
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: in that dusty file room, no one ever followed up.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: That's likely because those hunters had already left the area.
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: Those hunters left I think November eighteenth. I think it
• 42:46
  Speaker 5: was a Thursday, and those hunters just left town the
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: next day. And it would seem as if you had
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: book some vacation time and booked the cabin. It's three
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: and a half million acres in that North main Wood system.
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: You'd think you may you go find another place to hunt.
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: So I don't know if they know something and didn't
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: want to come forward, if whether it was whether they
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: came across the local and they felt intimidated, or whether
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: they it was part of their own group.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Jim doesn't remember much about what they looked like or
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: where they were from, and hindsight having the perfect vision
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: it does he wishes he jotted down a few notes.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: But their stated profession has peaked the interest of investigators
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: today because it might explain how Bob's body was removed
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: from the woods, almost like he'd never been there in
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: the first place.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: Police officers from New Jersey, what do they know how
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: to do? They know what evidence is, they know how
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: to get rid of evidence back in those days, and
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe not as much now, but Parry lose
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: as everybody carried one of those you know, I don't
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: want to call them tinfoil, but the survival blankets, you know,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: the moon blankets. How was your survival grid wrap somebody
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: up in that?
• 43:55
  Speaker 6: I don't know.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: And maybe they were wrapping him up in him so
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: not so much to keep the same off, but because
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: he was still alive and to rescue him. There's a
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: lot of times retired military people take a job as
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: a police officer. But he said, those guys know how
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: to get people out of the woods in a hurry
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: if they have to. You know, they know how to
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: carry them.
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: They're not how to do it.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: God, I hate to say anything bad about anyone in
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: law enforcement, but you know this, they were there and
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: then they if anybody could have pulled it off, it
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: would have been three guys that you know, they've been
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: law enforcement.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: This theory was supported by another piece of If not evidence,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: then let's call it a game Morgan's intuition. Remember the
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: owner of the hunting camp that claimed to have found
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: some bunched up swale grass where it looked like someone
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: had hoisted themselves out of a stream. Turns out that's
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: the hunting camp where these three law enforcement officers were staying.
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: If you want to talk a little, you know, conspiracy
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: theory was that fabricated did to get us a long
• 44:54
  Speaker 5: ways from where there was something of value, you know,
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: to be found, because it was a long ways on
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: the other side of the end. That particul person. You know,
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: when this is all said and done, within a couple
• 45:02
  Speaker 5: of years left the state for a number of years.
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: He returned, But I mean, if you want to dwell
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: on it, you could say, well, he'd left to see
• 45:09
  Speaker 5: if there's going to be any fallout.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Dave also mentioned having the feeling that this camp owner
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: might have known more than he was letting.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: On just being suspicious nothing you guys, anybody, but we
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: kind of had a feeling that he might know something
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: that was going on. He was at the way he acted,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: the way he kept telling us, and he's an old,
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: old woodsman, very knowledgeable.
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: The eric he kept telling us to go to Kerry Brook,
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: which would.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: Have been the opposite way of where he was and
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: where it made any sense for him to go, and
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: we all often sometimes felt like, why is he trying
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: to get us over there?
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Both Jim and Dave are quick to say that they
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: don't have any evidence beyond what you just heard. This
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: camp owner has also unfortunately passed away, so neither I
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: nor anyone else is able to pose these questions to
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: him directly. Still, finding those three hunters has become one
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: of Cale's top priority in this investigation. Of course, this
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: isn't the only theory about what happened to Bob. Several
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: years after the hunter went missing, Roger got a call
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: from the main State Police.
• 46:10
  Speaker 8: One of the Caribou police officer's son was hanging out
• 46:15
  Speaker 8: with this young fella, and this young fella told him
• 46:18
  Speaker 8: a story about accidentally shooting an old man and getting
• 46:22
  Speaker 8: him to his vehicle and he died, and he panicked
• 46:28
  Speaker 8: and drove down a different woods road and buried him.
• 46:32
  Speaker 8: Which really that story, you know, kind of fits all
• 46:35
  Speaker 8: the parameters.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Roger set out to find this young man and interview him,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: and he eventually did.
• 46:42
  Speaker 8: He was incarcerated at the time that this bubbled out
• 46:47
  Speaker 8: that we get wind of it, and we interviewed him
• 46:49
  Speaker 8: in jail, really not.
• 46:51
  Speaker 6: Cooperative at all.
• 46:52
  Speaker 8: But during our research we found out that he was
• 46:55
  Speaker 8: incarcerated during the week that the time for that Bob
• 47:00
  Speaker 8: Smith disappeared.
• 47:02
  Speaker 6: So why would a kid come up with that.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: This guy refused to give officers any additional information. He
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: wouldn't even acknowledge that he said anything about Bob Smith
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: in the first place. But Roger thinks that maybe he
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: heard the story from someone else, the real killer, and
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: then repeated it as his own.
• 47:21
  Speaker 8: You know, it's odd, but I always in the back
• 47:25
  Speaker 8: of my mind wondered if he borrowed somebody else's story
• 47:28
  Speaker 8: that he heard, you know, why would he dream that up?
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Whatever the reason, this man's story gave officers another potential
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: scenario to consider.
• 47:38
  Speaker 8: If a young fellow wounded this guy wounded an elderly
• 47:42
  Speaker 8: man like that, and he wasn't deceased, and he was
• 47:44
  Speaker 8: mobile but bleeding severely, obviously, you get him to your vehicle,
• 47:50
  Speaker 8: and you start out of the woods to get to
• 47:53
  Speaker 8: the hospital, and he dies, and you're a teenager. He's
• 47:57
  Speaker 8: dead in your front seat or in the back to
• 48:00
  Speaker 8: your truck. Could a young teenager panic with.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: That, whether it was a young hunter or a group
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: of hunters. If this theory is correct, finding Bob's remains
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: will be next to impossible unless the guilty party comes forward.
• 48:14
  Speaker 7: That could be potentially anywhere from you know, just miles
• 48:18
  Speaker 7: and miles of roads before they dump Bob somewhere nugget,
• 48:21
  Speaker 7: shallow grave or you know, I we very likely could
• 48:25
  Speaker 7: be looking forty miles in the wrong area.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Even with such a monumental task in front of them,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Jim and Dave pulled up a map and tried to
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: find the likely spots to bury a body on the
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: way to the hospital.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: We didn't do a thorough thorough search, but we did.
• 48:39
  Speaker 6: We didn't did all the walk around. See is there
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: anything here? Does?
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, if they were piece guys are a lot
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: of personal officers, they probably a little smarter than that.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: That wasn't anything official. That's just something that we we did.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Bob may have been killed by
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: those three out of state hunters or some other unrelated person.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: But the fact is, in any death investigation, detectives always
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: have to look closely at the family. Remember, Bob and
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Shirley were staying at a hunting camp owned by Shirley's brothers.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Those family members were interviewed by Game Mordens and participated
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: in the search efforts, and one of them, a man
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: named Tom, was remarkably close to Bob when he disappeared.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: In fact, he actually met Shirley along the town line
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: as she was looking for her husband.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: If I remember, at some point Tom, her brother, came
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: out of the woods up there where Bobby went in.
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: He appeared there somewhere on the trail.
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: And I don't remember all the details, but I remember
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: talking to somebody about this that they'd gone back to
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: camp at that time to see if he'd come back.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Tom's proximity to Bob and Shirley might be suspicious, but
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: there was never any real evidence that any of the
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: brothers had been involved in Bob's disappearance. However, after cale
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: reopened this investigation, Marge gave him her mother's diary. Shirley
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: passed away in two thousand and eight, but she'd written
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: extensively about the day her husband went missing. Investigators at
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: the time hadn't had access to these notes, and this
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: is the first time their contents are being made public.
• 50:21
  Speaker 7: The initial shot that she hears, the two o'clock shot,
• 50:24
  Speaker 7: jumped there. It startled there, and she thought that, like,
• 50:27
  Speaker 7: it never crossed her mind that it could possibly be
• 50:29
  Speaker 7: anything other than Bob. So the direction that he was
• 50:32
  Speaker 7: heading the shot was in that direction. So her initial
• 50:34
  Speaker 7: thought for that first ten minutes, as she's waiting there
• 50:37
  Speaker 7: and hasn't heard anything else, as geez, Bob got a deer.
• 50:40
  Speaker 7: Then it starts to turn annic, you know, was Bob
• 50:42
  Speaker 7: signaling me because he got turned around in there, So
• 50:45
  Speaker 7: I think, like, just going off, all we have is
• 50:48
  Speaker 7: what Chirley thought in her emotion, but she thought that
• 50:51
  Speaker 7: it was without a doubt, Bob.
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: It was the direction he was heading.
• 50:54
  Speaker 7: It was close enough that it had to have been
• 50:55
  Speaker 7: not necessarily Bob now looking back, but Bob's direct location
• 51:00
  Speaker 7: of where he had been heading.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: She bumped into Tom a short time later, and the
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: pair continued searching. Tom suggested they return to camp, but
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: not before. According to Shirley, they had an interaction that
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: might be nothing or it might be everything.
• 51:15
  Speaker 7: While she was standing there with Tom, they heard a
• 51:18
  Speaker 7: rustling noise and then she said, geez, what's that noise?
• 51:21
  Speaker 7: And Tom told her that he thought it might be
• 51:23
  Speaker 7: a moose, but he just dismisses her, don't know, that's
• 51:26
  Speaker 7: probably just a moose.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: That sounds like a moose walking.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: A short time later, Tom suggested they return to camp.
• 51:32
  Speaker 7: For me, it just appears like it was a diversion technique, Like, Sureley,
• 51:36
  Speaker 7: let's go back to camp.
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: See if you made it.
• 51:38
  Speaker 6: Why would you do that?
• 51:38
  Speaker 4: You just heard the shot. You know the woods really well.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine how Tom could have been so
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: confident that the rustling in the woods was a moose
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: and not a man, even if the two sounds are
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: different enough for a practiced ear to distinguish it seems
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: like you have to at least check it out. But
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: it's even more inexplicable in light of the other observation
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Sureley made in her diary.
• 52:01
  Speaker 7: The other weird thing is that in her journal she
• 52:03
  Speaker 7: describes Bob how he's shuffling his feet and you can't
• 52:05
  Speaker 7: lift his feet throughout the day, as sounding like a moose.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: And she describes him as sounding like a moose, like
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: even before anything happened, she wasn't theorizing, well, maybe someone
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: shot him because he sounds like a moose. This was
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: an observation she made a part from theorizing what happened
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: to Bob.
• 52:24
  Speaker 6: Correct.
• 52:24
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't think it's until years later, at least
• 52:28
  Speaker 7: from what I collect from her journal, that she started
• 52:30
  Speaker 7: thinking foul play as well.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Surely didn't have an ulterior motive for likening her husband's
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: footsteps to a moose, but considering Dave's discovery of a
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: freshly killed moose just a few hours later, it's nonetheless
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: incredibly relevant to this case. As Cale told me, Tom
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: was the only person that we know without question was
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: in the area with a high powered rifle. It's easy
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: to imagine a scenario in which Bob was killed by
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: accident in the course of someone else's moose hunt.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: One of the theories I had in my head was
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: that either the hunters or somebody in the family had
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: maybe shot that moose earlier in the day, wounded it,
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: and was tracking it, and in the course of tracking
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: that moose they misidentified Bob is the moose they see
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: moving in the bushes and take a shot in its bog,
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: whether it be the hundreds from out of state or
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: someone in the family.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Dave told me that game wardens later went back to
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: the moose and retrieved a bullet, but as far as
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: he knows, they never matched it to anyone's gun. Then,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: just the next spring, Tom approached the wardens with what
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: even back then was an eyebrow raising request.
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: Tom actually came in to see the Lieutenant or in
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: Ashland and asked if he could have those moose handlers,
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: because the ward had taken the moose handlers out as
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: part of the evidence, and they gave it. They gave
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: them the antlers, which we weren't too impressed with.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Tom had told the wardens that anytime they wanted to
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: search for Bob they were welcome to use his cabin.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: The first spring after Bob went missing, Dave and Jim
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: took him up on his offer.
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: And it's probably nothing at all, but we were in
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: there in the camp after and kind of got a
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: little nosey and I opened the woodstove and there was
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: some There were just a little bit of remains of
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: clothing that had been burned, which doesn't really necessarily need anything.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, we'd find a heigh evidence. Why would you
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: do it right there? But it was a little odd
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: bit these days are even a little bit after this time.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, probably would have taken that down to the
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: crime lab, but what would it approve even if it
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: was Bob's clothes, and it wouldn't prove anything really.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: Still, much like with the owner of the other hunting camp,
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: the game, Morgan's intuition was tickling the back of his brain.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: Jim and I both thought that Tom was like really
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: cool about the whole thing, like everybody else was pretty upset.
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: And maybe that's just the type of value was, you know,
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: maybe maybe he took things well, but it was almost
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: like someone was weird but.
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: Had to put no.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Now, I want to be clear, we don't know what
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: happened to Bob Dave. Cale and Jim presented the various
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: foul play theories as all equally plausible, and if anything,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Cale seems like he's most interested in tracking down the
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: three law enforcement hunters. Tom has passed away since Bob
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: went missing, and his widow suffers from dementia. Cale has
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: spoken with other family members, but he hasn't been able
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: to collect any new information, at least none he was
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: willing to share with me. Cale also pointed out that
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: even if Tom had accidentally shot Bob, he couldn't have
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: gotten the older man's body out on his own.
• 55:47
  Speaker 7: The hole in the Tom story would be, well, he
• 55:50
  Speaker 7: stays with Shirley the whole time, so he has an alibi.
• 55:52
  Speaker 7: How could he have gotten Bob out of that piece
• 55:54
  Speaker 7: of woods.
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: That's the hole in the Tom theory.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: It's possible Tom had help, maybe from some of the
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: other members of the hunting camp. Maybe he needed to
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: get Shirley out of the area so those co conspirators
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: could remove evidence. But the more people who were involved,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: the lower the odds that their crime would have remained
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: a secret all these years. What's more, Jim told me
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Tom was the tip of the spear and looking for
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: his brother in law.
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: As the days went on, Tom was relentless. I mean,
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: it wasn't like he took a day off.
• 56:23
  Speaker 6: He was there.
• 56:24
  Speaker 5: I was in my late twenties, he probably was in
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: his fifties. He was in good shape, and he worked
• 56:29
  Speaker 5: right alongside us. Again, could have fooled me, you know,
• 56:34
  Speaker 5: maybe he did. But there was a lot of overwatch.
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: It wasn't just Dave and Jim, like I say, we
• 56:39
  Speaker 5: were cogs in a wheel. There was you know, a
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: frontline field supervisor. There was a division lieutenant, there was
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: a search and rescue overhead team. Other people had access
• 56:48
  Speaker 5: to observe his body language and is just the way
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: he was. And he was not really on our radar
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: screen you know at that time, not online anyway, and
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: I don't know he was on anybody else's. But it's
• 57:01
  Speaker 5: easy to start to develop theories around that.
• 57:04
  Speaker 7: You know.
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: It wasn't like he packed up and said good luck boys.
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: You know, he he was right there.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: Part six. Small town Theories. You've likely never heard of
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Bob Smith's disappearance, but if you lived in northern Maine
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: in the late nineties, you wouldn't have been able to
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: avoid it.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: They had a posted picture of I still have one
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: in my trapping shed. It's the picture of Ball, you know,
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: dressed like he was when he got lost, and that
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: was posted everywhere. Everyone in town knows about it. Molstreakle
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: in town like anybody that would hunters or fishermen or
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: I mean they were involved in search, anybody they remember it.
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: We've published a copy of that poster at the meaeater
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: dot com. Slash Blood Trails surely snapped the photo on
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: their fateful afternoon hunt just a few minutes before Bob
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: went missing. Bob is sitting on what looks like a
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: tree stump, with his knees in front and his hands
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: folded between his legs. He's wearing an orange ball cap,
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: an orange vest over a blue coat. He's not looking
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: at the camera. He's looking down and to the left,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: and his hat and sunglasses make it tough to pick
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: out his facial features. It's really kind of unsettling, made
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: more so by the fact that the photo was taken
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: so soon before he went missing. Not to get melodramatic,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: but his expression and body language are almost resigned, like
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: he knows what's about to happen, and he's accepted his fate.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: This photo was part of the poster that Dave mentioned.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: It lists everything Bob was wearing and carrying that day,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: and it asks that people call the main State Police
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: if they find anything that matches those descriptions. It was
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: posted everywhere in the nearby towns, which means that when
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Shirley went out, she couldn't help but see her missing
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: husband and all the people who wanted to talk to
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: her about him.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: She would be a little frustrated. Sometimes she'd go to town,
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: let's go to the store, and people come up to
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: her and start asking her. She says, super questions, and
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: she wouldn't want to deal with them, so she's just shopping.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: To go into another town nearby and she would do
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: her shopping there, And we had this kind of running
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: joke that we'd say, well, I guess I got groceries.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: I sleppt on a smile and I headed out, you know,
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: just to face the world.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: Some of these individuals were well meaning. Others were just
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: attracted to tragedy and saw an opportunity to play the hero.
• 59:23
  Speaker 8: You know, when you get involved with the search that
• 59:25
  Speaker 8: lasts like this one, did you know, you get psychics
• 59:29
  Speaker 8: coming in and calling, and that's a whole other aspect.
• 59:33
  Speaker 8: But I remember one day this was doing the search
• 59:36
  Speaker 8: and a guy came in with a piece of string
• 59:38
  Speaker 8: with a washer No, I'm not. He had a bolt
• 59:42
  Speaker 8: nut and he was He set the map down and
• 59:45
  Speaker 8: he said, see when I hold it right over here,
• 59:47
  Speaker 8: then the bolt circles.
• 59:50
  Speaker 6: This is where he is. He's right here. And fortunately
• 59:54
  Speaker 6: is what it worked out because we were going there
• 59:57
  Speaker 6: that you know that day.
• 59:59
  Speaker 8: Anyway, that's what one of the areas we're looking into.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: In case it's not obvious by now, they didn't find anything.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 8: I had one person tell me that they saw what
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 8: they thought was a UFO flying around.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 6: Well, I know what it was.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 8: It was the Flare helicopter that was flying at night,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 8: you know, the heat seeking helicopter. That's what they saw.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 8: But you know, they would convinced it was a UFO
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 8: flying around.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: The rumor mill didn't just revolve around the supernatural. Cale
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: told me he's spoken to people that to this day.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Wonder if Bob's death was actually an insurance scam.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: Another kind of angle too.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 7: Jordan just but is that potentially Bob had wanted to
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 7: end his life in some fashion. Some of the people
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 7: that we talked to thought that there was a component
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 7: of collecting on a life insurance policy or something, and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 7: Bob knew he wasn't in good health and he was
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 7: probably never going to really truly recover back to the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 7: quality of life that he had before a cancer. So
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 7: maybe he committed suicide or something out there.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: The problem is, according to Dave, there wasn't much life
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: insurance money to collect. What's more, given the unusual circumstances
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: of Bob's death, there was never any guarantee that it
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: would be paid out at all. Surely did receive payment,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: but not until three years after her husband went missing.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: Kayles skeptical she was behind the plot and no one
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: else would have a motive to carry it out. She
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: would have needed help removing Bob's body from the woods,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: and there would have been easier ways to scan the
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: insurance company.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 7: It's something again, as an investigator, you have to be
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 7: unbiased and just take it all, the whole story, the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 7: whole cakes, all the rumors.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: But that's always something that we've heard.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: I guess the other prominent rumor, and it's one that
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: always pops up when someone goes missing. Is that Bob
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: simply ran away? Setting aside the near impossibility that a frail,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: seventy year old cancer survivor could escape Main's north Woods undetected,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Jim says, that's just not the kind of person Bob was.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: People have to say that he's on a beach in Hawaii. No,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: these folks us income, you know, farming people from Caribou.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 5: There was no indication that there was any opportunity in
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 5: resources to go somewhere else. You know, he wasn't gonna
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 5: leave his wife. I don't know how long he and
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: surely would marry, but it just wasn't that.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Part seven playing the odds. Unlike the Lujah Blandra disappearance
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: we covered last season, there are no obvious suspects in
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Bob Smith's case, no real evidence of foul play. Because
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: of that, we can never really discount the possibility that
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: searchers just missed something. Maybe an animal dragged Bob's remains
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: into a dense thicket, or Bob stepped into some kind
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: of sinkhole and was swallowed up. Maybe like the Aaron
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Hedges case from season one, he walked much farther than
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: searchers expected, and they would have found him if they
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: had expanded the search area. I asked Jim, Dave, Calee,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: and Roger how they estimate the odds that Bob is
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: still somewhere those woods.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: I'm convinced, like ninety nine point nine percent that he's
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: not there.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Part of the reason Dave is so confident is because
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: even in a panicked or adrenaline fueled state, Bob couldn't
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: have made it very far. We know this in part
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: thanks to Shirley's recently uncovered diary.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 7: Shirley remarks too, that the day before they went for
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 7: a walk and it took over an hour to go
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 7: half a mile down this trail. It was an open trail,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 7: It's as easy as you could possibly walk in that
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 7: stretch of woods, and it took him over an hour
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 7: to just mot it a half a mile. If Bob
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 7: had a hard time lifting his legs and he's shuffling
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 7: and he's you know, has a hard time lifting his legs,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 7: he would be tripping a lot once he gets off
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 7: that trail. He'd be tripping in blowdouts, he'd be tripping
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 7: getting over things, He'd be dropping things out of pockets,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 7: a glove might fall off in a you know, as
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 7: you start to get panicked that first night, he's getting cold.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: There's there had to have been things left.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: Jim agrees that the more time passes without any sign
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: of the missing hunter, the less likely it is that
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: is still in there. He also told me a story
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: that illustrates how thorough those original searches were.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 5: I remember leading a team one day and one of
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: my searchers lost a glove, and the next day they
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: had me back in there with a different group going
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: at it from a different direction, and I told the searchers,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: I said, we may not find what we're looking for,
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 5: but there's a glove here that I know was lost yesterday.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: We should at least find the glove, and we found them.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: Roger is a little less confident. He told me that
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: unless everyone belly crawls through the woods, you can never
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: say with one hundred percent certainty that something wasn't missed.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 8: Because there's always a rock or a blowdown that someone's
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 8: going to go around to the left versus the right,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 8: And you know, you can never get one hundred percent.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 8: I don't care what resources you throw at it, unless
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 8: you everybody's belly crawling shoulder to shoulder.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 6: You're not gonna cover every inch of it. It just isn't,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 6: you know, it's not possible.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 8: I would put it at eighty five percent likelihood that he.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 6: Is not there.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: Eighty five percent is less than ninety nine percent, but
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: it's still much more likely than not that Bob isn't there.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: That's even more true in twenty twenty six than it
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: was in nineteen ninety seven.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 8: A lot of hunters find deceased people that were missing,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 8: you know, a year or two earlier, that you know,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 8: during they find them. That's very common, and between hunters
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 8: and the search effort and everything is just like so
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 8: unlikely that.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Marge says, for a long time she believed her father
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: walked outside the search area.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: And I think that was easier for me to think
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: that because you wouldn't want to think of anything bad happen.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: New York thing've been with shooting them, whether it was
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: intentional or not intentional, and I and even to this day,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: I don't think if that's what happened, nothing was done intentionally,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: so but now I think he was shot maybe accidentally,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: and somehow they took him out of that area that's
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: that's that's where I'm thinking right now.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: Marge reiterated throughout our interview that she believes whatever happened
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: to her father was accidental, but that doesn't ease the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: pain of his absence or make her any less interested
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: in learning the truth.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: I would like to know what happened to him. He
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: deserves whatever the truth is to come out to be known,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: and that would that would want so I wouldn't be
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: looking for punishment, just the knowledge of what happened and
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: where his remains were placed. So he's at the veteran cemetery.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: My mother's in the wall with his name, with Dad's
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: name with hers, so then they put together again. He
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: was such a nice man, and no one would want
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: to be part of an accidental shooting. I can understand that,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: and it would be it'd be very, very scary to
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: come forward, but just just to know what happened to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: him would be good. If you knew something, please please
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: come forward with that information.
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: Please.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Part of the reason Cale approached me with this case
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: is because he believes that someone out there knows something.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 7: My hope of not being naive is that somebody knows
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 7: something and conscience and you know, guilty conscience.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: After all these something's going to come out. And I
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: truly believe that.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 7: I'm confident that, whether it's this podcast or me just
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 7: continuing to pound the ground that at some point someday
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 7: in my career, hopefully maybe after I'm retired or something,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 7: but something is going to come out, and me and
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 7: Dave and jam Will I'll celebrate and we'll know that we,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 7: you know, potentially brought closure to Bob's daughter and his grandkids.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: For the wardens I spoke with, and I'm sure everyone
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: who worked on this case Bob smith disappearance sticks with
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: them even three decades later.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 8: It just killed us to not be able to close
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 8: this case. But you know, it's one of those cases
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 8: that haunt you at at night. You wake up and go,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 8: where is what happened?
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 6: What'd we do? What could we have done differently? You know?
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 6: But you know we gave it everything we had. That
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 6: was for sure.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: It's easy to say that a disappearance like this robs
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: the family of closure, but Marg re called a memory
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: from some time after her father went missing that puts
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: flesh and blood on that truism. Without a chance to
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: say goodbye or even imagine where Bob's body lay. Marge
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: couldn't help, but wonder if he was still coming home.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: My husband, pat he came out and we wrote home together,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: and he was driving, and we weren't. We weren't really
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: talking a lot because it was just such a such
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: a big moment, and all of a sudden, you're going
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: home without him. And I remember saying that. Patty said, Yo,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: it feels like we're going to go around a corner
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: and he's gonna be walking there, kind of tired, holding
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: his rifle and just kneading a ride. I just felt like,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: I see that I don't know corner.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. If
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: you think you might know something about this case, no
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: matter how small, get in touch with Maine State Game
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: Warden Kale O'Leary at Kale dot O'Leary at Maine dot gov.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: That's k a l e o l e a r y,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: or give him a call at two O seven five
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: three two five four zero zero. Bob disappeared on November eighteenth,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, about seven miles southeast of Ashland, Maine.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Investigators are especially interested in a group of hunters from
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: a Northeastern state who may have worked as law enforcement officers.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to see images related to this case,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: including photos of Bob, his missing Persons poster, and a
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: map of relevant locations, head on over to the meeteater
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: dot com slash blood Trails. Huge thanks to Cale O'Leary,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: Jim Fahee, Dave Milligan, Roger Gay, and Marge by their
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: for their time and willingness to talk to me. See
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: you next time. Stay safe out there,