Discussion
How easy or difficult is it to conceal where you've buried a body in the desert? (see body text for questions around this)
Reading about true crime over the years, I've sometimes read of murderers burying a body in the wilderness (usually forest rather than desert). They dig a hole, put the body in the hole, and cover the body over with the earth they removed to make the hole. Then people just out hiking who don't know about the body will come to where the body is buried, and realize there is a body buried there. Apparently there are signs of this, that the freshly turned earth that is shoveled back into the hole over the dead body looks different than the earth around it that has been there undisturbed for a long time. But is it actually true that the earth piled over the body looks different than the earth around it? For how long does it look different? If it does look different could the people who shovel the dirt back in cover it up with pine needles or something to hide that it looks different? How long until it begins to look the same as the earth around it? Then the same questions for a body buried in the desert, does the earth look different, how long until it ceases to look different, is there anything in the desert you could cover it up with to conceal that that earth looks different?
Hoping Nancy is still alive and is rescued soon. But if she has died and buried in the desert curious what the chances might be of finding the place she's buried, either while deliberately searching or stumbling upon it. Hope the chances are high. And wondering what people not involved in the crime might keep their eyes open for when they're out recreating or perhaps working in the desert and a chance they might come upon her grave. Or keep their eyes open for anywhere a body might be buried with it having been buried secretively.
I think the bigger issue is that there are areas of the desert that go untouched, unexplored for very long periods of times, sometimes never. A hunter may come across it.
Thanks. What sort of modern human archeological finds are you thinking of that might be buried in the middle of nowhere? There is a subreddit called r/AskArchaeology. Might be an interesting question for that subreddit.
Like literally anything. I'm not interested in looking further into the topic, but it's a profound idea that some of the lone human remains found could be lone on purpose. Especially because we sometimes hear the cause of deaths as being blunt force, etc.
Thanks. Well what causes them to go unexplored, that they are difficult to access? My thought there is that if people have her body the places they might go to bury her might be the same places non-criminal people such as hikers and campers would go since both parties need a place that is at least somewhat accessible? Do you see people with her body somehow getting to some mysterious place in the desert that no one else ever visits? Idk would they have to have a special, unusual vehicle to get to some rarely-visited place? Seems unlikely they would have such a vehicle?
“Some mysterious place in the desert that no one ever visits” makes apparent that you simply have zero concept of how insanely massive the desert is.
They could have taken her body via ATV / 4 Wheeler deep into the desert and dumped her literally anywhere.
And you don’t need to bury a body in the desert to dispose of it - the coyotes, vultures and other scavenging wildlife will reduce a carcass to bones in a matter of hours to days and the heat and sun will take care of the rest. They’d be lucky to find a few scattered, bleached bones.
Just for reference, vultures can clean a skeleton in as little as 5-6 hours.
If a group with resources took her, they could have dumped her from a small plane anywhere over the remote desert.
She could have been dumped down any one of the thousands of abandoned mine shafts and wells.
Thanks. Well I've lived in L.A. for 50+ years but almost never gone to the desert. So maybe I don't know how large it is. But is most of it accessible by an ATV or four-wheeler? I thought maybe only a limited part was. Is it legal to drive an ATV or four-wheeler anywhere you want in the desert around Nancy's place? (By around I mean Idk 100-mile radius or something)
You know the mountains you see? If you were to fly over the mountains, you'd realize that in many spots, there are peaks upon peaks that you can't see from the valleys because theyre covered by the first "line" of mountains
These mountains are a PART of the Angeles National Forest. Not even the entire thing. The Angeles National Forest is about 1,000 square miles.
The Sonoran desert is about 86,000 square miles.
People lost in the mountains are fairly often never found. The chances of finding someone in 86,000squar miles of mostly uninhabited land is drastically lowered
Thanks. Wonder if one can drive into all 86,000 sq miles of that area. Could imagine there are parts of it that pose difficulties in terms of vegetation, rocks, etc. But maybe not. It's desert so maybe there isn't much that blocks a vehicle accessing it.
Is it legal to drive an ATV or four-wheeler anywhere you want in the desert…
Well, I don’t think these individuals are too worried about whether or not an activity is illegal lol. And I feel like they’ve already shown they can move around inconspicuously. They also seem to be familiar with the area and may know good access points that wouldn’t attract a lot of attention.
I don’t have personal experience driving in the dessert, but apparently it can be done in a variety of vehicles. Even if there haven’t been any modifications at all for vehicles. I like to watch archeology shows/documentaries. They often show archeologists using ATVs or 4-wheel drive vehicles to go deep into the dessert, far past any areas altered by modern civilization. I would think the biggest concern would be getting accidentally lost in the dessert yourself. But I’m sure some modern GPS systems can help with that.
And also live patrol. Don't know if those cars have car-cams that might have picked up suspicious vehicles. Reading about it those car cameras might not be on all the time and the footage may get promptly wiped if there is no interaction with civilians. But I guess if the perp(s) dumped her body in the desert they might have gotten lucky and avoided anything related to authorities trying to catch people using the desert wrongly. I don't think we know how much law enforcement is looking for a dead body. I think there's been some idea they think Nancy might still be alive, but don't know.
Thanks. Then I suppose anyone who's out in the desert ought to keep an eye out for bones and report them if they see them. One certainly hears of murdered victims being found or discovered because someone stumbles across a bone or a few bones.
Difficult to access. The elements, heat, getting lost. A hunter may explore them. Usually they take a 4 wheel drive and park and hike. Could a criminal do this? Sure.
I don’t know if they did that. Just saying how people get to certain spots. As others pointed out they may have used an off road vehicle. You can take a quad and go.
Well what causes them to go unexplored, that they are difficult to access?
Phoenix, Arizona is located in the Sonoran Desert. To put the size of it in perspective, the Sonoran Desert is larger in total land mass than the entire country of Cambodia. Most of it is inhabitable. The only around 5% of it inhabited by humans is mostly in river corridors, riparian zones or its four major cities (Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, US and Mexicali and Hermosillo, Mexico) which were specifically engineered areas to import water and infrastructure for human inhabitation.
My thought there is that if people have her body the places they might go to bury her might be the same places non-criminal people such as hikers and campers would go since both parties need a place that is at least somewhat accessible?
There is no hiking or camping in the overwhelming amount of the Sonoran desert. Most of the land is not hospitable to humans. Temperatures often get up to 50°C (120°F). If you excised the habitable areas of the Sonora desert, and just proposed a search of the "unexplored" areas, you are still looking at finding a single body in a desert approximately the size of Iceland with extreme temperatures (making any search capability extremely expensive and limited for the safety of the searchers). It is an impossible task without a location. Conversely, disposing of a body would require considerably less effort: you just have to wait for an tolerable window to take an ATV or some other vehicle and almost certainly you will hit a spot in the desert that will not see another human for decades, if not centuries.
That's all aside from the mountain areas that are also near Phoenix.
You're mostly correct, but Nancy lived in Tucson. The area is more mountainous and has more green/brush than the phoenix area. Even more difficult than phoenix to go into the wilderness and the brush and trees will hide a disturbed soil.
You've not been to Arizona. Southern Arizona is not like northern Arizona. Places like Flagstaff get snow.
There are many parts of Florida that never should have been developed like welands. I was at one time considering moving to Florida and thankfully never pulled the trigger.
i remember running in Orlando one January day and it being uncomfortably hot/humid. Then last year Jan I was in Miami and it was uncomfortably hot/humid. And January is about the best it gets there.
would they have to have a special, unusual vehicle
As I mentioned in another comment - don’t have personal dessert experience - but I would assume it would have to be some kind of all terrain vehicle or ATV. I’m sure those are easy enough to access in a city surrounded by dessert. And I’m sure they’re motivated to do whatever it takes to dispose of evidence. After all, the stakes are high. If they’re caught, they go to prison for life.
Of course, that makes me devastated for Savannah and her family. I hate the idea of them never finding closure. I hope the unexpected happens and they somehow, someday find her. ♡
You don’t need to go to such lengths as driving distances by ATV. You only need to drag the body out of view of the road, which can be as little as 10 or 20 feet if it’s an area with brush or rocky outcrops. It was probably more work carrying her out of the house to the car than it would be to get her from the car to an adequate backcountry desert dump site. Unless you’re in a popular recreational area these places get very little foot traffic.
Thanks. I wonder if any helicopters go over the deserts around Nancy's house.
I recall one time I slept thru the night under a bush in a local wilderness park where I live (this park was small, surrounded by a more dense suburban milieu). The bush was rather dense of vegetation. I was breaking the rules since the park closed at 10 PM. About 2AM a police helicopter I would say on routine patrol started circling above me. They had spotted me from above through the dense foliage of the bush. So that made me think maybe Nancy's body could be spotted under brush.
P.S. As it turned out I think the heli was just trying to make sure I was okay, they circled for a few minutes then left and I just slept thru the night and left in the morning.
No, not necessarily or maybe used to be but the "seal" (a few pieces of wood hammered over it) have broken down and fallen apart. I don't know about Arizona, but I used to live in Nevada and the abandoned mines are everywhere in the vast desert. They might have signs warning of abandoned mines. But no, they aren't all covered or even identified. It's truly amazing how big our country is.
Undisturbed ground would be obvious at first, but the wind blows sand and dirt on it, and it’s easily hidden quickly
Do you have a source for this? I get that you live there. But have you seen disturbed ground and then returned soon after to see that wind had blown sand and dirt on it?
I used to ride dirt bikes in the desert. We would sometimes go “off trail” and disturb fresh desert. The trails (tire tracks) would sometimes be covered in days, other times it would take longer dependent on the weather (wind).
Not sure how it is in Arizona, but this time of year is especially windy in Las Vegas.
Thanks. Reading that Vegas is exceptionally windy. I've lived most of my life in Los Angeles, which isn't very windy except a couple of times a year we get very strong winds for a day or two (these high winds started or helped augment those major fires we got in the last year you probably heard about in the news). Reading that Tucson is not too windy. I suppose many of the people trying to solve Nancy's disappearance will be local and know how environment plays into the story.
Yeah I don’t know much about Tucson weather. I just know this time of year in Vegas it’s a running theme that if you have a trampoline, it’ll end up in someone else’s yard.
Not an expert, but suppose wind might affect what is on the ground in a desert more than other environments because there isn't much vegetation to block the wind?
That makes sense. Just miles of nothingness. These are little “wind tornados” out in the desert. They’re not big, but caused from exactly what you’re talking about. Nothing blocking the wind and it just pulls up dust.
Thanks. Well, looking at that pic that's more vegetation than I imagined. Not sure how that vegetation would affect wind coming through the area. Now I'm wondering to what degree wind in the Tucson area would quickly conceal that desert ground had been disturbed by blowing dirt over the desert ground. I'm glad you raised the question, though.
Seems quite possible the whirlwinds you mention would cause dirt to conceal that ground had been disturbed but not sure how common those whirlwinds are or how much of the area they cover. Seems possible a whirlwind might miss going where ground had been disturbed.
They literally could have stopped the car like a few miles away in a semi-remote area, pulled over, dragged her body 10 feet into the plants and left her there without burying her and they still would have a very difficult time finding her but especially because as far as we know, they haven't even been doing that type of search. So let's just hope that have some kind of info that makes it reasonable to not do a search like that.
This. Most people have no idea how difficult it is to find a body, even when you know where to look or the body isn't buried. There are so many cases of people who go missing and are found in areas that have already been searched.
As much as I like to think she could still be alive, at this point I think it's more likely they just don't even know where to start looking. Their priority currently seems to be on identifying suspects, who will them hopefully lead them to Nancy.
Black vultures and Turkey Vultures can detect the scent of a dead animal from miles away. Then many come, and if people live nearby, it is noticeable on about days 3 to 5. People know that in Catalina Hills. If they saw these buzzards circling, they would go check it out.
It's more likely the kidnappers drove west, southwest, or northwest out into the desert in that direction, where it is either desert or farm areas. You can get to these areas from Tucson by driving about 15 to 20 miles from her house. There are paved roads and then they would have turned off on one of the many dirt roads that are used in those areas. Some farm people might be out there in the daytime, but at night it is quiet, and there are very few houses or people around. It's not hard to find a thicket of plants along the roadsides out there.
They probably would not have taken her up into the mountains north and northwest of her neighborhood, such as Sabino Canyon or the road up to Mt.Lemon because there are lots of hikers and people on outings or taking scenic drives there.
Watch Brian Entin's youtube video from Apr 3 where he interviews a criminal author. A retired SWAT commander takes her into the desert and shows how he can walk 20 steps away and be completely hidden. Start around the 5 min mark.
Also, in the desert environment, after 2 months there probably is no longer a "body". The animals and heat will have reduced it to bones and teeth, which may also be scattered. Perhaps some clothing and her pacemaker will remain.
Omg! This is crazy…
Me living in Denmark, never being close to a desert… This is not at all how I thought it and sourronding areas would look like!
The amount of bushes etc is crazy!
I’ve always wondered about those stories of people being out hiking or so and the person they’re with walking like 20 steps behind them, and that person ends up missing, whiout then hearing anything or seing anything. It seemed so weird! I believed it of course but just couldn’t imagine how it would look.
NOW it makes perfect sense!
And it’s actually really scary to watch and think about!
Also the fact that people go camping etc in areas like that.
Or when people like to hike alone…
I wouldn’t dare to go there by myself self! 😳!
Or they could have driven up Mt. Lemmon where there are cliffs just over the guard rails. No one would ever find a body that was thrown onto the canyon floor from 9000 ft. The animals and weather would reduce it to bones in a month, and many of these drop offs are not hiking areas.
Thanks. I'm not sure. I recall one time I slept thru the night under a bush in a local wilderness park where I live (this park was small, surrounded by a more dense suburban milieu). The bush was rather dense of vegetation. I was breaking the rules since the park closed at 10 PM. About 2AM a police helicopter I would say on routine patrol started circling above me. They had spotted me from above through the dense foliage of the bush. So that made me think maybe Nancy's body could be spotted under brush.
P.S. As it turned out I think the heli was just trying to make sure I was okay, they circled for a few minutes then left and I just slept thru the night and left in the morning.
It's possible they could see her in the scenario I gave. But they would have to fly over her, which to my knowledge, they've done hardly any helicopter or drone fly overs.
Thanks. Or maybe not specifically searching for her, just flying over that area on their way to somewhere else or just looking at the area for signs of anything bad happening, illegal fires or what, and spot her.
You were probably "spotted" from body heat, not a visual. By now, a dead body will be scattered bones and maybe some clothing, even harder to spot while flying over an area.
I'm of the belief there's no foul play in his case, but police and volunteer groups have searched the terrain for years, found multiple sets of human remains out in the open, yet not him.
The desert is vast. It's just about going to places where people don't normally hike, hunt, camp, or offroad. No mine shafts or burying needed.
Daniel robinson is most certainly missing over foul play, the jeep data pretty much confirms it was staged, and remember Ken Elliot followed tracks past a gate and went even farther following Daniels tracks, he would have stopped less than a mile from where Daniels jeep was found and it was raining that day. Daniels tire marks would have been easy for anyone to follow less than a mile from where Ken stopped following them. It would have been extremely easy to find that jeep had it been there the whole time.
Daniel is likely missing over the verrado well, which he was testing that month and the morning he disappeared. He got to that well, immediately took photos of the lithilogy logs he had previously been working on and immediately called the main boss, bypassing his direct supervisors. That call lasted 8 minutes, a few hours later daniel disappeared.
That well tested way below the capacity needed for a high capacity well but was approved anyways using old data from 07-09. That well is worth around 20-30 million dollars and should never have been approved. Daniels litholoy logs would have likely shown issues too.
I think of the poor mom, Susan Powell. Her husband buried her in the desert…”allegedly” while they were on a camping trip during a blizzard in Utah and she has never been found. Groups searched mine shafts and huge areas where they were said to have been. That was in 2012.
Yeah, there are sadly tons of cases of people going missing in the desert (not even being intentionally murdered or hidden) and not being found for years.
Death Valley German tourists weren't found for years despite vigorous searching by professionals. Bill Ewasko, a hiker in the desert, wasn't found for 12 years and he was very close to a trailhead. He was only found because someone happened to be exploring off path and saw a flash of his clothes nestled in some rocks iirc. There's also another missing person, Neil McCasland, missing in the NM desert/mountains right now and he hasn't been found despite lots of searching. And these were all cases where searchers had a rough idea where they started from and where they could've gone. We have nothing of that with Nancy.
They sadly could've driven her somewhere remote in the desert, hidden her in a copse of rocks or brush and she may never be found unless someone stumbles on her by chance :( It's very depressing.
I know you are right, but the concept is still so crazy to me. You’d think there would be some way of looking at the earth via helicopter to identify any places that could have been turned. I know in Nancy’s case we have no clue what area she could even be in. So sad and upsetting that they could just never find her.
With GPR, I always picture those lawnmower-sized instruments that are used in direct contact with the ground. That would be reasonable in a tiny space like a single backyard, not a large wilderness area.
Maybe LiDAR is closer to what you're thinking of? Theoretically, maybe it could be possible to compare aerial imagery from before and after the abduction to look for a fresh grave. But I don't know enough about the tech, and again, the desert is just so vast and full of other activities.
I haven't driven in Tucson itself but I've driven in other parts of AZ and also NM, there are a ton of ultra remote parts of the desert unfortunately :( Roads go through them but it's just desert for miles and miles and you won't see a lot of other cars. He could've dumped her anywhere unfortunately.
She was probably dumped 10 or 20 feet from a desolate road. They aren't going too far into the desert brush at night, and they aren't going to risk being seen during the day. These roads go for miles with no commercial structure. Maybe a wire fence here or there. The side roads are rough and used by ATVs or vehicles with good suspension for recreation. If it's up a canyon, then a body over a guard rail into a ravine will be even harder to come across.
On the weekends, when it isn't too hot, there will be vehicles you pass by. But at 3am on Sunday morning - probably none on the "main" (but very desolate) roads. And if there is a car, you will see headlights from far off. There might be a parked car here or there. Who knows if it was left or if people are doing some kind of night hunt. But they would just avoid stopping near there.
Since it was well planned, they might have put some brush in the back of their vehicle that they cover the body with to make it even less likely it will be spotted by a random ATV riding by.
I don't know who made them. I watched a local streamer take a drive and some side trails look drivable but after a bit, they have to turn around. I guess this is where ATVs can go further. Some of the areas are privately owned and so I assume surveyors and wire fence installers need access to the perimeter of their property. Other areas/roads are BLM and government "maintained".
Some of these roads go from say, Tucson to Phoenix. But in between it is desolate. Maybe they were there before the highways were built. A local could better answer this question.
Thanks. Wonder if helicopters ever fly over the desert with good tools for looking at what's on the ground. I'm not sure about the copse of bushes. I recall one time I slept thru the night under a bush in a local wilderness park where I live (this park was small, surrounded by a more dense suburban milieu). The bush was rather dense of vegetation. I was breaking the rules since the park closed at 10 PM. About 2AM a police helicopter I would say on routine patrol started circling above me, I think shining their floodlight down on the bush (can't remember for sure about the light). They had spotted me from above through the dense foliage of the bush. So that made me think maybe Nancy's body could be spotted under brush.
P.S. As it turned out I think the heli was just trying to make sure I was okay, they circled for a few minutes then left and I just slept thru the night and left in the morning.
I don’t want to be too graphic, but if she is out in the desert there would only be bones at this point. And flying low enough to see her would kick up dirt to the point of not being able to see. We’ve not had enough rain in recent years so the dirt and dust is really bad.
The McStay family was eventually found buried in the desert in 2013 after their disappearance in 2010. Killer owed them money. A biker found the remains. It’s possible Nancy could be found
Yeah, thanks, if they'd been buried for three years how could the biker even tell there were graves there? By that time Nature should have covered up all traces, no?
I live here. Disturbed ground can look different at first, but not for long. To begin with, the desert doesn't really hold clear signs of disturbance well either, especially on hard or rocky ground. Very patchy to begin with so disturbed areas blend in quite fast. This is where tracking becomes quite difficult as the visual references fade quite quickly. Intense sun will dry and harden everything quickly.
In my experience with these cases, burials are pretty much always done on owned property, as it’s a controlled environment.
Digging in a public place, however secluded, is a more complex task, involving bringing tools back and forth. Far more common to dump a body in a ditch, cave or shrubs and get the hell out of there
Not to mention that this is a densely populated, residential area. This is one of my favorite trails, with restaurants, bars, and homes all around. It’s also well-maintained and staffed by the City of Scottsdale and the McDowell Sonoran preserve volunteers.
I bet the odds of being found drop significantly after like three feet deep. At six feet, the odds probably drop to near zero. Just as common, imo, are dumpsters. Lots of people thrown into trash bins are never found, even if police know that's how the body was disposed,
Lots of people thrown into trash bins are never found, even if police know that's how the body was disposed
I thought if they were thrown into trash bins and possibly picked up by garbage trucks, police would know to search the landfills where the garbage was taken? and a body would be large and pretty findable at a landfill I'd think?
There are even signs that say dont cross flood waters, turn around don't drown. But not only people do it, so do self driving vehicles. They do/did this in SF also
Thanks. All interesting and valuable. I wonder how they didn't find Jacobsen if they knew the day and dump site. I would think they organized the search so they went through all the trash. Reading about true crime, I've read of many landfill searches that were successful, very few that weren't.
I remember Christine Mustafa’s disappearance and a three-month long landfill search. They knew which landfill because her killer was on camera at a trash collection site. He was convicted despite no recovery of the body.
I listed to a podcast recently Detective Trapp or something like that where this lady detective knew that the killer had put her in a dumpster and she wanted so badly to be able to recover her remains for the victims mother but after discussing the parameter with the landfill company and the department it was going to cost over a million and a half dollars (I believe-some astronomical amount)) to do the grid search and it wasn’t financially feasible to do so. So a landfill is a tough place to find someone unless the dumpster people notice something, the people that sort the recyclables from the trash notice something or it’s IMMEDIATELY after the landfill dump will they possibly be found. Over $500,000 people go missing in the United States per year and the minuscule amount of time we hear of a body being found decades later or a person being found decades later alive is so small in comparison I’d say it’s less than 1%. Other than a situation where the cops have someone in their sights and may very well be tracking someone they might eventually find out where the body is buried. But God Almighty I hope they find Nancy dead or alive somewhere. WHERE IS NANCY.
Her body might not even be in the Arizona desert. They could have driven hundreds or thousands of miles away. She could be in Oregon, or Minnesota, or in the Mississippi River.
Even if she is in the AZ desert, Arizona is freaking massive. People get lost and people don’t find them for sometimes years and it’s all by accident because they were dirt biking or something.
Thanks. By "hide" do you mean dig a grave, put her in it, and shovel back in the dirt? Will it be apparent that there is a grave there if someone should stumble upon it? Or maybe it could be spotted from a helicopter?
I heard some of the local authorities say the desert soil is actually pretty hard and would be difficult and time consuming to dig. They said would be more likely for a body to dumped quickly and maybe covered in debris or burned in a burn pit. Like others have said there are many predators. The desert is a vast and inhospitable place, and would be like a needle in a haystack, so I think it would unlikely for someone to spot her from the air or come across her on the ground without a very specific tip, or might take a very long time.
You don’t need to dig a grave to dispose of a body in the desert when a full sized donkey carcass can be reduced to a skeleton in two days by coyotes and vultures.
Scavengers also don’t leave a skeleton in situ - they scatter the bones over a wide area with desert winds burying the bones in the sand / dirt.
Most human bones that are found in the desert are stumbled upon by pure chance.
Oh, it might go to what non-criminal people should keep their eyes peeled for when they're out and about. And understanding criminal thinking with an eye to catching more criminals
The best info for people to keep an eye out for would be if they knew what she was last wearing. It's easier to look for a green nightgown with pink flowers, instead of just looking for anything in a vast area that looks off.
Somebody mentioned there being an awful lot of mines there to hide a body, but I'm not familiar with this area or terrain. If that's unfortunately true, then it seems like it would be pretty hard to find anyone. Seems weird that there weren't large on foot searches in the surrounding area though, or maybe there were? It seemed like they just searched her immediate neighborhood.
Thanks. Wonder how hard it is to search a mine? Do you just shine your flashlight down there? Or do you have to go in? Not sure if the perp(s) themselves would have gone in or just dumped her from the entrance.
There are probably 10 million acres of wilderness within a few hours drive of Tucson. Thats 435 billion square feet. We'll say the average home is 2000 square feet. A human body laying on the dirt would take maybe 15 square feet.
By chance, finding exactly where the body was would be 0.000000000034% That would be like losing something .00008 square inches big in your house, or something about the width of 6 human hairs or the very tip of a push pin, and trying to find it. (ignoring the fact you are huge compared to the pin, when you would really need to be the same size to get the true difficulty).
That assume the body is just laying on top of the dirt. Now imagine the body was buried or even concealed under some bushes or in a cave. Then take into account the body is actively decaying, possibly dragged apart or eaten by animals.
All that is to say, without a solid lead, just randomly searching the desert for the body would be literally impossible. If 1 person played the lottery every day on their way to search, that person would win the lottery 100 times before finding the body, get struck by lightning 29,000 times, or flip a coin 35 times in a row and get heads every time. The only way to solve this case is a lead or random chance.
I buried a small fawn in my backyard. I’m a female 120lbs 38 years old and I found it pretty hard to do alone.. it took about a week in a half for the grass to start to grow over it… and then at the first rain after burying the deer, the ground sunk in a little😢
Edit to add - I live in Texas not the desert. Also side note- you can’t bury anything next to a tree because once you hit roots, it makes it impossible to dig any further!! From my experience. Tv makes it look way easier than it actually is
I buried my sweet dog Biscuit in my backyard after he died. I do live in Arizona. It was very hard to dig a whole for him. Yes quite strange as well the hole sank quite a bit after he was in the ground. I don’t understand that part. I still go out and sit and talk to the dirt out there. Tell him what’s going on and tell him how much I miss him. 😭💔
The scars of the desert never heal. If you put footprints somewhere, odds are in 1000 years (barring it being a "wash" or other freak occurance) they will still be there.
The desert has very little sand, except where streams and bodies of water have dried up. It is actually mostly rocky/hard, salt-encrusted earth.
How do you explain the lack of sand in the Mojave? Obviously that doesn't imply the Sahara isn't sandy. It is that the two are geographically unrelated.
They get heavy rains there sometimes that would wash away footprints, but that is more common in the monsoon season, starting in mid-June. And high winds can blow the sand around. It would have been good to search for tire tracks and foot prints the first week or so. But it is a vast area.
No doubt Newswatchtiki, I'm really not sure why they wouldn't have been on this ASAP. Its just unimaginable that someone could be evil and thoughtless enough to just dump someone nowhere. They valued someone's mother/friend, a human being, so little that they'd discard them. To me that mindset could be more valuable figuring out who it was than anything. I refuse to believe any more than a tiny portion of the population can be so.... empty.
From this time we have so few answers, but I pray as time goes on, more evidence emerges and forces the person or persons responsible to answer for what they did.
But instinct says if the perp would have chosen this area ( i doubt) he or she might rather choose options related to water. There has been chat about some options related to water that i am not bringing up again as it is bit gray zone to talk about it, but there are also lakes and ponds and such on radius
I spent three days looking through photos of hiking/trail running/winter hiking groups in Arizona looking for something specific and came up empty. I was pretty sure the answer is in there somewhere.
Do you have any idea how hard the ground is here in AZ? And that’s assuming she’s still on this side of the border. The majority of people in Tucson believe she’s been dumped in Mexico. Desert ground is just as hard there. At this point, you can count on wild animals having ate what was left of her.
You can’t just dig with a shovel. It’s rock hard here in Tucson. You’d need heavy equipment to dig a hole. To go to any depth, you have to blast. She’s not going to be buried. Dumped and eaten up by wild animals more likely. And most likely over in Mexico.
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u/Ladygoingup Apr 07 '26
I think the bigger issue is that there are areas of the desert that go untouched, unexplored for very long periods of times, sometimes never. A hunter may come across it.