They Were Looking for Endangered Tortoises. They Found Human Bones Instead.

They Were Looking for Endangered Tortoises. They Found Human Bones Instead.

January 08, 2025 at 05:23AM

Starting as a missing person investigation, this piece instantly pulls you in before taking a sharp turn and placing you in the Mojave desert alongside some tortoise researchers. Mark Sundeen creates a story somewhere between a conservation lesson and Breaking Bad and proves that the desert is still the Wild West.

They smelled decaying flesh. Partly covered by sand, wrapped in some sort of bedspread, was—something. “At first we thought it was dead dogs,” Craig said, noting that locals sometimes buried their pets there. Then Craig found a clump of long blond hair.

The coyotes had discovered the body first. Craig pulled back the quilt to reveal human bones and a woman’s clothing. “There were two spent shotgun shells,” he told me.

It was clear that the woman had been dead for some time, so the trio finished their survey. Then they trekked back to the car, drove to a pay phone, and led the police back to the site. The cops located a skull not far from the quilt. “She’d been shot through the temple,” Craig said.

Pam and Craig checked in with the detectives after two months, six months, a year. Thirty years passed. No one claimed the woman they’d found.

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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/01/07/they-were-looking-for-endangered-tortoises-they-found-human-bones-instead/
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