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News & Features
From the Idyllwild Town Crier weekly newspaper, 11.19.09 edition.
RMRU
pair finds remains
— likely missing German
By Marshall Smith, Staff
Reporter
On
Thursday, Nov. 12, off-duty Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit (RMRU)
members Les Walker and Tom Mahood did what 200 previous searchers had
not done in 13 years of attempts. They found skeletal remains likely
those of at least one of four German tourists missing in Death Valley
since 1996.
Walker and Mahood organized the unofficial mission and employed a
search theory Mahood developed. After two months of preparation, they
canvassed an area not previously searched
They found skeletal remains they believe are those of Cornelia Meyer,
one of the two missing adults, in a remote area two hours drive
southwest of Furnace Creek Visitors Center near the Panamint Mountains.
“The scenario [which direction the tourists walked to seek help] laid
out exactly as we thought it would,” said Walker. Positive
identification awaits forensic confirmation.
Inyo County Sheriff’s Spokesperson Carma Roper said formal
identification of the remains would be a long process and that the case
is currently being handled as a criminal investigation. “But there is
no evidence of foul play at this point,” she said. The Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) and Interpol (the world’s largest international
police organization) are also involved in the investigation.
Mahood, a retired engineer, formulated a search theory based on
National Park Service (Park Service) maps probably used by the tourists
that showed a nearby military installation. Mahood and Walker focused
on an area at about 2,500 feet elevation between a saddle that looks
out over China Lake and the boundary of the China Lake Naval Weapons
Testing Center (Testing Center). The area was eight to 11 miles from
the tourists’ vehicle. “Tom put this whole plan together to look in an
area where no other teams had looked before,” said RMRU President Lee
Arnson. “All previous teams had GPS’d their search routes.”
“We called ahead and notified the National Park Service that we’d be
doing an unofficial search,” said Walker. “We tried to put ourselves in
their [the tourists’] shoes using the Park Service map they probably
used as a guide.”
Mahood’s theory focused on the Navy Testing Center marked on the Park
Service map. He theorized that the Germans, lost, on foot and
contending with temperatures near 110 degrees, might have decided to
walk toward the military base thinking they would find people there.
That logic paid off for Walker and Mahood. Walker found remains about
four miles from the Testing Center boundary. “We found them right where
we suspected we might find them,” he said.
“I first came across a wine bottle, something that was not in their
van’s inventory. Death Valley is a pristine area,” Walker said
describing his thought process as he discovered the site. “I was not on
any regular hiking route. The wine bottle seemed definitely out of
place. There was no reason for anyone to have been there.
“As I was looking at the bottom of the bottle to see if there were
identifying numbers on it, I looked down and saw white bits all around
me. I was standing in a bone field,” he continued. “Here I had picked
up a potential clue not knowing I was standing in the answer. Had I
missed the wine bottle, I might have walked on.
I next found partial vertebrae in a nearby bush. Then I saw a wallet. I
picked out a German photo ID of the missing woman,” he said.
“Once we had a cell [phone] signal, we notified the Park Service at
Furnace Creek. When we got there, we were told we needed to stay.”
Despite Walker’s protests that he had plans and appointments, officials
were firm. “Park Service officials related the words of the FBI, ‘Hold
them!’” Walker remembered. FBI officials arrived the next morning and
all returned to the discovery scene.
“They [official investigation coordinators] will fly us out there
Friday [Nov. 20] for a Saturday and Sunday search to locate the remains
of the other three,” said Walker. “They want to talk to us about our
way of looking at the search. About 100 people will be involved in the
search — FBI, Inyo County, and the Park Service.” The discovery area is
being secured as a potential crime scene.
The four Germans, Cornelia Meyer, 27, her son Max, 4, her boyfriend,
architect Egbert Rimkus, 33, and his son Georg Weber, 10, disappeared
in July 1996. Although over 200 people, in both public and private
search teams, had attempted to find the four during the last 13 years,
none had succeeded until Thursday.
Records indicate the German tourists checked out of a Las Vegas hotel
room on July 22, 1996 and arrived in Death Valley the same day.
Temperatures in the park had topped 120 degrees. Their last entry was
on July 23, 1996 left in a guest book kept in a box on a metal pole in
an abandoned mining camp, indicating the visitors were going through a
pass, probably Mengel Pass. The entry was signed “Conny, Egbert, Georg,
Max.”
A team of 45 searchers, eight horses and four helicopters from
California and Nevada law enforcement agencies mounted the initial
search for the missing tourists.
Marshall Smith can be reached at
marshall@towncrier.com.
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