National Park After Dark - The Lost Ranger: Chiricahua National Monument

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

It was a normal shift for Ranger Paul Fugate, when he left to patrol a trail and never returned. The investigation into his disappearance unveiled feuds with the National Park Service and his complicated romantic relationships. His past has had investigators questioning - was this an act of foul play? Or did he disappear intentionally?If you have information that can help, please contact the NPS Investigative Services Branch (ISB) in any of the following ways. Your identity will remain confidential:PHONE or TEXT the ISB Tip Line at 888-653-0009Go ONLINE to www.nps.gov/ISB and click “Submit a Tip”EMAIL the ISB at [e-mail] investigators via Facebook @InvestigativeServicesNPS or via Twitter @SpecialAgentNPSCheck out our 2025 NPAD Colorado trip!For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodesFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Prose: Use our link for a free in-depth hair consultation and 50% off your first subscription order.HelloFresh: Use our link to get free dessert for life.Storyworth: Use our link to get $10 off your first purchase. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture, my work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff,

knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress.

Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. When you research the job openings for park rangers, a description of their duties and responsibilities is one of the first things listed in the advertisement. It reads along the lines of,

Park Rangers help ensure that visitors enjoy and appreciate protected lands. They play a pivotal role in the appeal, accessibility, and safety of national parks, in addition to making sure they're maintained to the highest standards. Safety is just as crucial as love for the natural world in this role. Park rangers must enforce safety and fire codes, answer questions, and lead or take part in search and rescue missions. But what happens when the very person who is responsible for the safety of visitors and to lead the rescue missions to find them when they go missing disappears themselves? Welcome to National Park After Dark. We're on a disappearance kick, I feel like. We are.

We always do this. There's a series of the same theme and it's never on purpose, but it just happens. Yes, I know. I try and like, I'm actually looking up of like planning the next couple in the future. And I did like an animal encounter one, which will come out in a couple weeks. And then I had two others that I really wanted to do. But they're all, they're all animal attack ones. I'm like, okay, pump the brakes. Like this will be an animal attack summer. But yeah. And that's, I don't know. I don't want to do that to everyone. So, yeah, I'm pumping the brakes a little.

bit. But before we jump in to another disappearance case, we have an announcement. We sure do. We have a very exciting announcement. So we are launching another trip. We're giving you guys about a week's heads up if you're listening on Monday. So we are going to be going to drum roll, please. I broke my fingers so you can hear my, my metal splint hitting the desk. Well, we are going to drum roll Colorado. Yeah, we're going to be doing a camping trip in Colorado. It's going to be really, really fun. The itinerary is awesome. We're going to be checking off three national parks. We're going to be doing Rocky Mountain, great sand dunes, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Yeah. And the itinerary is crazy. We're doing whitewater rafting. We're hiking. We're e-biking.

We're sandboarding, which is really fun and cool and, of course, in beautiful Colorado. And we're really, this is one of the itineries that both of us looked at and we're like, we have to do this. This is like could not be more on par with our podcast with the adventure, the locations. It's just, it's going to be really, really cool. Yeah. And it is a camping trip. So we're going to be camping the entire time. And obviously, Colorado is near and dear to my heart.

So I am super stoked because I've done a lot of these things like over the years, but never consecutively in one week. So it's just going to be epic. So yeah, we are going to be doing that next year. The trip is going to be running in July of 2025. And we are having it available for booking next week, which is going to be June 7th, which is a Friday at noon Eastern. So if you want a spot, here is your warning, set an alarm, and we hope to see you there. Yeah. And definitely check out the page if you're interested in this trip. In the show description, we'll link the trip page so you can go over the whole itinerary, see if it's something you're interested in. And then on June 7th at 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, which I think is 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. It will go live for you to book.

And we'll make a post on social media too. So you can see trip prices and things like that. Yeah. So if you are interested, check out the trip page. It launches June 7th. And we're Excited. And it's also, so we have Antarctica next year and then we have Colorado that we'll be doing that we'll be on. Yeah. So it's going to be fun. A different experience, vastly different experiences. Yeah. But anyway, yeah. So if you've never been to Colorado or even if you have or live there like I do and just have never gotten the opportunity to take some time away to go check out different parts of the state, this is the trip for you. So hope to see you there. And Cassie, now the floor is yours. Thank you. I have a story. I'd love to hear it. That's why I'm here. I'd love to tell it to you. That's why I'm also here. So, as I alluded in the intro, we're going to be talking about a story of a park ranger who goes missing. So today I will be telling the controversial disappearance of a National Park Ranger with an Arizona's Churikawa National Monument. And the investigation into Ranger Paul Fugate's disappearance unfolded a longstanding feud between him and the National Ranger.

Park Service itself along with complicated relationships. He was in and out of court proceedings, and some said that the Park Service, quote unquote, had it out for him. Paul's tumultuous history had people questioning if his disappearance was an act of foul play or if it was intentional. And to this day, Paul is the only Park Service Ranger to ever go missing and never be accounted for. Okay. So like even his remains were never discovered. It's been a big mystery and there's a lot of theories and things around it that make it interesting and also heartbreaking that he hasn't been found. So I want to dive into his story, everything behind before his disappearance, and then also afterwards. And then of course, I also want to tell everyone about Churikawa National Monument because

if you're like me, you may not have really heard of this place before. And it seems really incredible. I've never been. You said it's in Arizona. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I haven't. I haven't spent a lot of time in Arizona. Me either. But I would like to. I still haven't been to the grand. Canyon, which is crazy. Which it blows my mind. For all the places that you have been, the Grand Canyon, it just seems like I should have been there. I guess. I don't know. I can't even really talk because I've technically been there, but I was five. Yeah. So you haven't been there either. I haven't been there either. But if you look at my scratch-off park thing, you've been there. I've been there. I've been to Suaro, but I haven't been to the Grand Canyon. See, that's what I mean. It's

just the obvious thing you haven't done. It's too, it's too streamlined and mainstream for Cassie. No, it's not. I would love to go there. I'm just kidding. But so we'll go into this National Monument, which is really cool and interesting. So let's learn about Cherokawa National Monument. It is a relatively small national park. It preserves 12,000 and 25 acres of land in southeastern Arizona. It's close to the New Mexico border. However, the small park established in 1924 packs it pretty large punch. This region of Arizona was hit by a massive volcanic eruption over 27 million years ago and left the landscape looking similar to the big famed park in Utah, Bryce Canyon.

There are even current bills in the house to redesignate it from a national monument to a national park. Located in the Cherokawa Mountains, the range is known as the Sky Islands because they rise more than 5,400 feet above the desert floor, and it is named after the Churikawa Apache people who have inhabited the area for thousands of years. And similarly to Bryce, this park is filled with rock hoodoos, which I didn't even know existed outside of Bryce Canyon. Well, I, that's not true. I've seen similar things in the badlands and stuff, but I didn't know they existed in this capacity until I researched this park. So for those of you who might not be familiar with hoodoos, they are tall, slender rock spires that form only under certain conditions. They're mostly found in high plateau regions like the Colorado

Plateau and in the Badlands region of the Northern Plains. Unlike Bryce, they are not made up of red rock, but instead have been carved by ice and water layers and layers of volcanic ash, giving it a gray color and providing an environment for lots of green lichen to grow on top of it. Because of their abundance, this park has been nicknamed a Wonderland of Rocks. And if you look up photos of it, it literally looks like a gray. version of Bryce Canyon. Like there are hundreds of these rock hoodoos that are there. Within the park, there's an eight mile paved road that takes you on a scenic drive throughout the whole park. Along with that, there are 17 miles of day-use hiking trails to explore that will have you walking in the valley

of all of their rock spires. One of their most popular trails is the heart of rocks trail and the National Park site details it stating that the heart of rocks loop has many of the most unusual rock formations in the monument. So basically the perfect spot if you really like rocks and hoodoos. Along with hiking, the park does have one campground for visitors, and it's a pretty remote campground. There's no facilities or anything like that. Because the park is in the region of the Churikawa Mountains, there are a range of wildlife that survive here and inhabits the area. Animals from all types of ecosystems, such as grasslands, desert scrub, riparian, and pine woodlands call this area home. There are over 71 mammals, 46 species of reptiles, 171 species of birds,

and more. They have animals such as the Western box turtles, white-tailed deer, black bears, rattlesnakes, and the white-nosed codis. I found the white-nose codis the most interesting, so I just wrote a little bit about them because we don't have them like up here. And I didn't know if everyone knows what they are, so I just wanted, I added a little tidbit about codize. And they live in an area ranging from Arizona. to Argentina. So we're like the only spot really, we're like the beginning portion before they're mostly in South America and Central America and stuff. They're part of the raccoon family, but they look a little bit different. White-nosed codeyes are reddish-brown to black with

lighter underparts. The codized face has black and gray markings with a white spot above and below each eye on each cheek and on the end of its muzzles. The tail is banded with black rings and the codize long, highly mobile snout is well adapted to investigate. crevices and holes and they have strong claws for digging. These are usually somewhere between 6 to 13 pounds or 3 to 6 kilograms and they're really cute if you see one. While the park boasts both adventure opportunities and wildlife viewing, it is surprisingly not very well visited at all. In fact, the number of visitors have been dropping to this park. The visitation was at its peak in the 1990s with about 100,000 annual visitors. Today, the numbers are closer to 48,000 each.

year. Still, the park rangers who call this monument home have lots to talk about and teach people who do come to this little gem of a park. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, The Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow Burns, Second Shoeh. chances. Chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. So now jumping into our story, I found this great article from outside online that I used for a lot of my research, but I also jumped around for other sources as well, which I'll put in the show notes,

but tells a really good story in a roundabout way of who Paul Fugate was. So Paul Fugate was a ranger and naturalist in the 70s and 80s who loved to socialize and answer questions of visitors. He would often curate exhibits, put together lists of important and interesting plants, and help visitors plan out their day hikes. Paul wasn't a typical clean-cut park ranger, though, and at first glance, he stood out. He was 41 years old with deep blue eyes and a deep Texan draw. Written in the Ranger Handbook is a list of appearance standards with the uniform they've agreed to wear and standards to their own personal appearance, to which Paul tested the limits.

Against those guidelines, he had a ponytail that ran to his shoulders and a bushy beard, that was slightly longer than allowed. He was also known to wander off to smoke a joint when the timing felt right, even if he was on the job. While he got along great with the visitors, he was not well liked within the National Park Service. In fact, he had been fired previously

from this particular park that we're talking about today, but after going to court ensuing to get his job back, he was reinstated. He had originally been fired after only a year of working there after being cited for a violation of their grooming standards when he continuously showed up to work with a handlebar mustache. Do you know if those guidelines and parameters and rules are still in place today?

I was looking it up and it seems like they're a little bit more lenient now. There are guidelines, but they're a lot more open about your personal appearance. But one thing that it seems like they're really strict about is how you wear your uniform. It has to be like perfectly in place, perfectly folded. Like name tag has to be a certain location. but it seems like your personal appearance is a little bit more lenient. You don't have to be as, like, clean, cut and groomed as, not that you are not supposed to be groomed and look nice, but their regulations seem a little different.

Yeah, well, I was going to say because long hair for a man, like, who can't, like, you said he had, like, a ponytail and stuff. It's like, I don't know, I feel like I see Park Rangers with. With ponytail. Ponietails, beards, like facial hair. types of like forms of expression that isn't very like standardized anymore so I didn't know and I know I mean oh god way back like month two or three maybe of the podcast when I covered for women's history month we did how women in the National Park Service have evolved over time and part of that was their uniforms their dresses that they had to wear yeah and what they were required to wear but yeah the details are very fuzzy but it's just it kind of gave me me like a flashback as far as like handbook stuff. I'm not going to say obviously our hospital's name. But I remember when I was first, first hired in 2013 and going over the handbook, which I actually did because usually you're like, yeah, just tell me where it's that or whatever.

I'm like, what do I need to do? So I was like reading the guidelines and stuff. And it was before we had like silly scrubs. You could wear whatever scrubs you wanted. Remember? it was like the standardized color. Yeah, we had to wear like only blue, couldn't have anything. Two types of blue. There was two shades of blue we could use or wear. And then there was like specific guidelines for footwear and stuff. And some of that was for safety reasons, right?

Like you're in a hospital. You need close-toed shoes that are like on your feet. You can't be wearing. Come in and flip-flops. Flip-flops or whatever. But I remember even that the, they're like for women. And it's outdated, obviously. And I'm sure they have updated their.

phrasing, but I remember it said for women, if you are to wear nail color, it can only be like a certain kind of shade or color. And I just remember being like, what am I doing? Like, where am I going? Like, why is this so strict? Why is this so strict? And then very quickly realized, I mean, not to call her out, but you know who I'm talking about. And she knows if she's listening to this, but her nails were not only wild colors, they were also for. five inches long and couldn't know. She's like, I can't do this? Can you do it?

I'm like, I know you're just cheating the system right now on purpose. Like, why can't you do it? Because her nails are six inches long? Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought. But yeah, anyway, so I just, the employee handbook like guidelines thing just brought me back to that.

It's just crazy. I'm glad that they're getting more lenient because I remember in high school, like, like don't put any piercings on your face. don't get tattoos. No one will hire you. And now it's like people are kind of dropping that and being like, people are allowed freedom of expression and they are allowed to look how they want to look. Right.

And well, it's funny because it's like the people who are being told how to dress and appear and express themselves are now creating the rules. So they're like, well, we're not going to do that anymore. So that's out. Yeah. What a time to be alive. What a time. Anyway, back to fall.

Back to fall. And those happenies, they were a lot more annoyed at him. him for his appearance. And they also, in his firing, they, going back to his firing, they cited that he had a handlebar mustache, which was not up to code. But also, the National Park Service referenced what they called a negative personal attitude and also cited abuse of government equipment, which he argued he was falsely accused of stealing hay for his wife's horses. And I'll get into that a little bit more later because it comes up again in the story. But basically, he ended up being falsely accused of things that he wasn't doing. Paul was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 2nd,

1938, but when World War II began his family moved to Fort Worth, Texas. He was a peculiar teenager as he spent his time growing plants and with his pet crow. It was a wild crow that he had actually tamed and befriended, and he just had this crow friend who was known for like skinning mice outside their window. Like it was, it was very wild. This crow. Wait, the crow did that? Yeah, the crow. Oh, okay. Yeah, not him. He wasn't hurting animals. He's an animal lover. But it was just people were like, why do you have a pet crow that's like murdering mice outside her window? But that's what he did as a teenager. He was the oldest of five and he grew up in a pretty strict household, too. Paul met his wife, Doty during summer vacation of college. She had known his sisters as kids through Girl Scouts and stopped by to visit one day on summer break.

Paul was there going off on an educational tangent about the history of Inuit people and eventually asked Doty if she wanted to see his guns. At the time, Doty was on the women's shooting team at the Arlington State College and she was immediately intrigued. Paul was also at the same college studying biology and by the end of the night, she told his sisters that she was going to marry Paul. Doty followed through on her word and married Paul on December 11, 1964, just five months before he started his career with the National. Park Service. His first job was in New Mexico at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Here he conducted evening ranger talks with the bat flight program where each sunset during the summer, thousands of Brazilian freetail bats emerged to find food. It's this famous spectacle in the park where people from around the world come to see and his talks were guest favorites. And we talk about the bat

spectacle, the bat program and everything in our Carlsbad episode a little bit more in depth if people are interested in that. It's a lot older of an episode, so it's like early in her, but we do talk about it. After Carlsbad, Paul was stationed at the Navajo National Monument in Northern Arizona. This monument is known for its preservation of three cliff dwellings of the ancestral Pueblan people. Here, Paul also led ranger talks and educated visitors on the incredible history of the park. This park was also where record of his disagreements with the park service began. In particular, he did not get along with the superintendent of the park at the time, Jack William, and had nicknamed him Smokey Pig. He wasn't the only one who disliked him. He would

joke with another employee, according to the outside online article, about sending Jack tumbling off a cliff on a horse. Jack Williams had a problem with Paul as well, so the feelings were mutual. He didn't approve of his anti-authority opinions, called him lazy, and didn't approve of his personal appearance within the field. He stated, quote, if you want to look and live like a hippie, that is certainly your prerogative, but not here at Navajo National Monument. He even voiced his complaints and opinions of Paul to the regional director, where he told him, quote, I do not understand the breed now coming to the National Park Service. Jack wanted Paul fired, but at the time, the National Park Service didn't agree. Instead, they decided it would be best for all involved to transfer

Paul to another National Park Service site. And this was how he ended up at Chiracawa National Monument in 1970 as a year-round employee. So there are some people who stay seasonally for positions he was there year-round and they also gave him an apartment on site to live there. Doty moved with him to the new location and this was where their relationship began to change. It was at this time that they agreed on opening up their marriage to other relationships. But this was mostly just for Paul. Doty was more of an animal person and kept herself very busy, caring for her horses and dogs, and wasn't interested in another relationship.

She agreed to allow Paul to see other people, but under the condition that these other relationships were strictly physical. Part of why Doty was okay with allowing Paul to have sex with other people was because she was experiencing medical issues. The doctor had found lesions near her uterus that they were treating, but the treatments only worked temporarily and she was finding sex to be painful. So she wanted him to be able to have that part of his life still exist. And she was fine as long as it was just a physical relationship. Paul respected her wishes. And his first relationship, and this is where I think things get controversial because of the age differences. But his first relationship was with a 19-year-old named Becky, who worked as a park aide.

And at this point, he's like in his 30s. Later, Becky reported that Paul would not allow her to talk to him about. emotional stuff and he made it very clear he was committed to his marriage with his wife and that he would never be leaving her. So exactly what Doty expected from him, he was respecting that. When Paul was fired from the park just a year later, the couple moved to Tucson, Arizona where they both began graduate studies at the University of Arizona. While in graduate school, Paul contacted a civil rights lawyer and spent the next five years in court arguing for his job at the park to be reinstated. At the same time, He had taken up studies in botany at the university where he was excelling.

His professors had so much positive things to say about him and much more positive things than the Park Service were saying. His supervisor said that he was amongst the top 10 students he had worked with within the department in the 25 years that he had been there and called him a pleasure to work with. So completely opposite experience from the National Park Service. It kind of sounds like he just didn't like the authority and like strict regimen. but wanted to be in the national parks is kind of the vibe I got. Yeah.

Yeah. Like he's a naturalist. He likes outdoorsy things. He wants to talk about plants and educate people. He doesn't want to dress to a certain standard or be like this police officer. It was kind of the vibe that I was getting. Doddy was also making her way in Tucson and found a job as a scientific photographer. In 1976, Paul's job was reinstated.

And through the court hearings, the National Park Service was ordered to give Paul back pay for the years he had missed work. with them along with a few thousand dollars for the false accusations of the misuse of government equipment. And that's the hay thing. The hay. And then there was a couple other things that it sounded like they thought he was doing. But at the end of it, none of it panned out. And he was like, you fired me for no reason. You fired me because you don't like me. It was essentially what it came down to. Right. Yeah. When Paul went back to the monument, Doty chose to stay behind in Tucson because she had her job that she loved and she didn't want to up and move again. Instead, Paul would drive up about twice a month to see her. He would typically go on these 10-day stretches of working within the park,

and then he would come home on the weekends or whatever days to see her. And they did this for a few years. Two years later, in March of 1978, he began a relationship with another girl named Bonnie. And the other relationship has ended. So this is just a different one. He was 40 years old and she was just 20. From all accounts of his personality, it sounds like Paul remained younger at heart, and he tended to befriend and hang out with younger seasonal employees. He would often smoke weed with them. He would take part in full moon hikes. He just wasn't hanging out with people his age in general. He seemed to kind of stay with the younger crowd. And Bonnie fell in love with Paul and their relationship tested the boundaries that Doty had set. But still, Bonnie knew and said that she knew that he wouldn't

leave his wife for her, but she had fallen in love with him. So it's apparent that he made that relatively clear, I would say. Because Becky, the first one, was like very, very clear on the boundaries. Knew the boundaries, yeah. And obviously, Bonnie now, if she knows that, then obviously he had to have had that conversation. And voiced it to her. Once or repeatedly. But yeah, so at least he's communicating it. Yeah. He's definitely communicating it. But with her, it was a little bit different because with Bonnie, they had a longstanding relationship that continued for two years. and it continued up until his disappearance. Okay.

But it was still under those guidelines of the open relationship, as far as we know. Yes. It sounds like, well, it changed. I'll get into it a little bit more because it sounds like they were really testing the boundaries of the relationship. And eventually, Doty is not okay with it. Okay. So the day that he disappeared was on Sunday, January 13th, 1980. And it was a normal day on the job for Paul.

He was working in the visitor center that day with the seasonal employee answering questions and helping visitors map out the trails that they wanted to explore that day. At around 2 p.m., he left the visitor center to patrol trails that led to the faraway ranch area of the park. This was a 400-acre parcel of land that the park had recently acquired that had a long history in the area. The homestead built here was owned by Swedish immigrants Neil and Emma Erickson, and they raised three children there.

When they, quote unquote, discovered the Wonderland of Rocks, all these rock hoodoos, they promoted tourism in the area and ran a guest ranch for visitors, which they named the Far Away Ranch. So long before this was a national park, a recreation area, they were bringing in tourism to see this place. And for Paul to go out here was a typical day working. It was really common for him to go out to the Faraway Ranch area and other trails just to patrol and make sure everything was okay. Before he left the visitor center, he told his co-exam. coworker that if he wasn't back before 4.30 p.m. to just close up without him. It was assumed since Paul lived on site, he would just go home after his patrol. He left the visitor center in his full ranger uniform and badge. When Paul, in fact, did not show up for closing time, they followed

his instructions and shut down the visitor center without him and went home without much thought about it. Little did this person know that they would be the last known person to have ever seen Paul. The following day, when Paul did not show up for work, the superintendent called his wife to see if she had heard from him. Doty reported that she had not heard from him and she thought he was on his 10-day working stretch, which was really normal for his schedule and was normal for her to not hear from him and she didn't really expect to. The superintendent then explained to her that he had been missing since the previous day and never returned from his shift after hiking into the park. He then proceeded to instruct her to stay home and wait to see if he showed up there. and that he would call in a search party for the park before he then hung up.

Doty was in shock immediately, and something inside her knew that something terrible had happened to her husband. He was not the type of person to not show up for work and certainly was not one to just disappear. There were a lot of thoughts that were racing through her mind. Was he lost? Was he injured? Did someone harm him? And as she imagined a search party trying to find him within the park, She realized what a difficult task it would be to find him in that rocky terrain. With all these thoughts, she collapsed on the floor, screaming and sobbing for what felt like hours.

Meanwhile, the park dispatched a major search party to comb the area in hopes of finding him. The superintendent had contacted Cochice County Sheriff's Office, which brought in 22 men and women to search the area along with a search dog. The following day, the National Guard joined in the search with a helicopter, plus 16 volunteers from the Southern Arizona Rescue Association were added to the ground search. The teams were scrambling over rock formations, rappelling down into canyons and gullies

where he possibly could have fallen, and they were calming any location they believed he could have been. But there was no sign of Paul at all. After two days of sitting at home, Doty had had enough, and she drove to the park to aid in the search as well. On the fourth day of searching for Paul,

it began snowing inside the park and the hopes for finding him alive were beginning to fade. Everyone who knew Paul was very concerned. If he had fallen or been injured in the park and was alive, he had the proper training to find a way to alert people to his location. What was also really bothering searchers was that there was no sign of Paul at all. They didn't find footprints, they could connect to him, they didn't find a piece of his clothing, or anything that indicated they were getting closer to finding him. The theory that something very bad could have happened came to investigators' minds.

They were located not that far from the Mexico border, and turned. drug smuggling operations were not unheard of in the area. Investigators theorized that it was possible that Paul came across something he shouldn't have and was kidnapped or murdered for it. This theory also came from recent reports of a possible marijuana grow operation in the park and reports of quote, sketchy people in the faraway area. In fact, Paul had asked to further patrol the area because of these occurrences, but he was denied. The idea that Paul was mistaken as a police officer because he was.

he was in uniform and kidnapped and killed by people involved in a drug operation became a very real theory for investigators. Well, especially now knowing, I mean, you covered illegal grow operations within national parks in a kind of recent episode. I mean, within this year, right? Yeah. So now knowing a little bit of background about that, that doesn't seem like a very off-based assumption or theory. Yeah, especially someone who. who is alone. Right. And, you know, you think that you're about to get caught.

Your grow operation is going to completely go under. You're going to lose so much money. And there's no one there to protect this guy who just came out alone. But I guess my question is they didn't find any sort of evidence of any illegal grow operations, did they? No. In this search for Paul. Not in the search. But again, this terrain is very difficult to navigate.

and it could be in any kind of pockets and corners and it's within the mountain range. So they had heard, someone had reported that there was a marijuana grow operation happening in the park, but they hadn't found anything. Okay. Okay. So someone knew something, but that was kind of like all the clarity that I got on it. And I will also add to this that Paul had left on this patrol without his radio. He had left it in the park center, which was common for him to do, but obviously is not

something that should have been done. Right. As the Krispy Chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me and baby I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley through 62326 participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. Meanwhile, while all of this is happening, things were beginning to stir up in his personal life in the wake of his absence as well.

Things that later, investigators would theorize were reasons he could have disappeared on purpose. On the evening of January 17th, Doty had a conversation in Paul's cabin with Bonnie, her husband's mistress. Doty had met Bonnie for the first time just a week before when Paul picked her up from the airport and they all drink wine to. together at their home. Doty had become uncomfortable with the relationship after Bonnie had used Paul for emotional support when her father passed away, and she told Paul she wanted the relationship to end. Their evening together was supposed to be a parting of ways in understanding between them and Paul was supposed to officially end it. However, if that conversation ever happened, is unclear because as far as Bonnie was concerned, they were still together and she didn't get that vibe from that night at all. On this day, Doty took a moment to be a moment. to sit down and speak with her and have a serious conversation. Several days prior to Paul's disappearance, Bonnie had confided in Paul about pregnancy symptoms that she was having, but he had told her that he had a vasectomy.

Now, Doty took this moment to ask Bonnie if she was pregnant. Bonnie at first was taken aback by the question and asked why she would think that. She then told Doty how Paul had told her that he had gotten a vasectomy. The problem was, this was the first time Doty had ever heard of the possibility of Paul having. having a vasectomy, and she told her that she was completely unaware of that. With this new information, the following morning, while the searches for Paul resumed, Bonnie drove back to Tucson and bought a pregnancy test. When it came back positive, she realized that she had been lied to,

and later she went on to have an abortion. The searches for Paul continued, but still yielded nothing, and after two weeks, the park service stopped looking within the park and focused on the idea that something more sinister could have happened. Part of the reason for this show, came from an eyewitness account that they were told of five days into the search. A man named Dick Horton, who was a volunteer for the park service, said that he had seen Paul the day of his disappearance. He was sitting in the car with his wife Joy when he saw a pickup truck speeding away from the park at about 50 miles per hour.

Inside, slumped over between two men, he saw Paul in uniform without his glasses on. Doty later reported that this would be very unusual because Paul could not see without his glasses and because he would never wear his uniform if he wasn't on duty and the vehicle he was seen in did not belong to the park service. After questioning Dick more about what he saw and wanting more details, the detective decided the best move to investigate this further was to have Dick put under hypnosis. This was an attempt to allow him to recall more detailed information. He agreed and underwent this in a nearby hotel, which I think this whole thing sounds super sketchy. One, hypnosis is not like admissible and this is the 80s so things were different,

but you're doing an investigation on a missing person and now you're putting someone a potential witness under hypnosis in a hotel room. It's like not a very controlled environment. Is that what you're getting at? Not only that. It just seems sketchy. Like this guy, who is this person putting him under hypnosis in a random hotel room? Like, why aren't you at the police station? Why is this being done so oddly? I don't know. I don't know. I don't. know, I'm very intrigued. I've had the, I just had the opposite reaction as you. I mean, I don't know, like a ton, ton about hypnosis other than, I'm not going to get into it, but I've been looking into it for myself personally. Okay. For like past life regressions and life between life

regressions. But I don't know, like, I've never heard of that in any sort of investigation hypnosis being used in an investigation obviously you know of lie detector tests and we know all that about how you know that's not something that can be used the validity of of those tests are questionable so i would venture a guess as to i don't know the hypnosis thing seems kind of weird but again it's not a trial it's just a like they're just trying to find more information more information yeah that's a good point and i mean i've heard of it in for hypnosis and therapy to try and go back to trauma or work through things through hypnosis. So I've heard of that.

And I will always remember the first time I saw hypnosis in real time. Was it at school? Yes. It was my freshman year of college and it was like the orientation week. And they had this guy come up on stage and hypnotize like a bunch of students into doing all this stuff. And I remember I was not, I wasn't there for it. I was like, I don't want to be like tricked into doing some weird shit on stage. Like he had some people doing embarrassing things that were funny and retro, like were funny when

they were happening. But if I was the person that was doing it, I don't think I would think it was funny. We had that in high school. I remember the same type of thing. Like, I don't, is that a thing that schools still do? Maybe I saw it in high school too. I don't know. I didn't see it in college, but I definitely saw it in high school.

And I remember they selected, I would say like five, I don't know, five people. Yeah. And it only worked on like three of them, like two of them. It didn't, they weren't in the space. They couldn't be put under what, I don't know what the phrase is. But yeah. And I just remember, same thing. Yeah, like they were just doing weird crap, you know, in front of an auditorium of your entire class.

I'm like, I don't want to be that person. Yeah, no, like I don't want to be like quacking like a duck on stage or whatever. You know, they had you do. Yeah. But yeah. So anyway, did it work? Well, they do put him under hypnosis and some things come to light. So Dick, during his hip.

hypnosis he was sweating and he cried when he recalled that Paul looked sad and dejected. He also reported that the truck he witnessed was a dark green pickup with a camper shell and Arizona plates. He remembered the driver to look to be around his 30s with a mustache and beard that connected as one. He said that the driver was wearing a black, white, and red plaid shirt, while the other man was wearing a green jacket. So he was able to recall like all of these details that before hypnosis, he didn't, he didn't remember. I mean, I think that's pretty cool. It is cool.

If it's true. Because there's also, and I remember reading about this in psychology, is especially in therapy, in hypnosis, you can lead people to remember things that maybe didn't actually happen or lead people to think things. You can kind of guide the conversation in the way that you want. Right. So that I think is the problem with it, not to. say that it's not real and things don't happen, but I think that that is like a important thing

to realize that people can guide you in a certain way. Right. So of course, I mean, hopefully this person who was doing the session was adequately and properly trained. But in a hotel room in the middle of the desert. Maybe he's more comfortable there and can like actually go under. Imagine sitting in a plastic chair at a police station and being like, okay, get comfortable and relaxed. We're going to put you under hypnosis. There's no way. That's a good point. You can just like lay down and I don't know. That's just like my first thought. But I mean, it's interesting because Dr. Michael Newton, who's the author of the books that I rave about all the time, Journey of Souls, Destiny Souls, all that. He was a therapist, trained therapist. And he would do,

like you said, for trauma and different things like regressing people and are doing hypnotherapy, I don't know, modalities. I don't know the term. But basically like that's what he did for a career. And then over time, he realized that, you know, people would go back to, you know, age two, three, you know, early childhood to try and recall things to obviously help work through different issues. And then like a lot of his patients over the decades would be going somewhere out. He's like, where are you? Like, where are you in time? And he realized that they were going back to not only past lives, but life between life like in the, I hate using the word heaven because I don't believe that. But, you know, in like, in like, in like, in the, I hate using the word heaven because I don't believe that. But, you know, in like, in like, in. between life, like when you die, you know, and over the decades of regressing people, he put together, like, all of these common themes that people were experiencing. And they're like, and that's how he wrote his books. And so he's like, I was an agnostic or atheist. I forget the difference. But he basically, he was not a religious person at all, didn't believe anything happened to you after you died, etc, et cetera, et cetera. And it's through his work with hypnotherapy that he discovered all of this.

And that's how he unintentionally. Unintentionally came across all this. So interesting. That's the hypnotherapy tie in to my love of that. Fun. Well, this was definitely used in here. And it did bring up some information whether or not it was true. We still don't know. But some other witnesses also reported that they saw vehicle spin out tracks on the dirt road near the far away. Plus some signs of some type of struggle in the dirt, which it didn't specify what those looked like. But people did say that, yeah, we saw things that could indicate what he's saying about a truck and spinning out and driving away. So authorities put a bolo out on this type of vehicle and hopes to find it, but nothing turned up. And the superintendent also did not think that a hypnosis witness account was a credible enough statement to strictly go off of that for an investigation.

and he wanted to look into other possibilities. Because even with the account of this witness, not under hypnosis, the car that was driving by, the truck that drove by, it was going 50 miles per hour. It was a really quick second. And he was like,

who knows if that was actually Paul and he wanted to look into other possibilities as well. And one of those possibilities that he wanted to pursue was the idea that Paul just up and left because he was unhappy in his marriage to Doty. They already had this non-traditional open marriage and they lived apart. When they discovered that Bonnie had been pregnant, they used that as another reason for Paul to want to up and run away.

Doty, however, wholeheartedly disagreed with this theory. They were happy with their agreement on their marriage, and Bonnie hadn't officially found out about the pregnancy until after he had disappeared. Despite that, she had her own personal reasons for why she believed Paul would never leave her like that. First, back at his cabin, authorities had found his wallet, his ID, and cash, along with all of his clothing. If he was going to leave, he would have at the very very very. very least, taken some clothes, and the cash that he left behind. On top of that, he disappeared while on shift, which would have certainly led to a manhunt within the park. If he was trying to disappear, he could have done it quietly when he was not working. Another reason she flagged was that he was in the

process of creating an insurance policy that would have taken care of her financially in the event that anything happened to him, but he had never gotten the chance to officially sign it. In addition to that, Paul had written a letter to Doty that he kept in a safety deposit box in the event that anything ever happened to him with instructions on how to take care of herself. It gave specific instructions on how to sell some of his guns from the antique rifle collection that he had, gave her permission to do a cheap burial, and detailed a strategy that would ensure that she could claim his government benefits. According to the outside online article that I found, it was dated on December 23,

1978 and within it it said quote you won't be opening this unless something bad has happened or at least I hope not I have done what I could to see that you can be self-sufficient and believe that it is possible now I know that I've been a long way from perfect and all and seem to have got worse as the time has passed but I still love you dearly so for Doty this was proof that Paul would never just up and leave especially without making sure she was okay first and she wholeheartedly believe that something bad happened. This to her was like, look at this. If he had disappeared, he would have made sure I was okay before he left. And she also said he would never disappear. Like even though to the outside eye, our marriage doesn't look like a happy one, we were okay

with the arrangement and we liked what we had. I mean, plenty of people. Of course, it's not, you know, it's a different time. I kind of hate that phrase. It's a different time. But it was. And the acceptance for non-traditional, like non-monogamous relationships, the tolerance for that and the understanding for that was way lower than it is now. So I can understand trying to like defend that to other people to the outside. You know, it's like just because we have this different type of relationship doesn't mean, doesn't equal that he would do this. You know, like that the two don't, just because one is happening doesn't mean it's an explanation for this. You know. what I mean?

Yeah. So I can understand how frustrating that would be. Yeah. And they were arguing that he wasn't committed to her. And she's saying the opposite. Like, okay, he has other physical relationships with other people, but we are fully committed to each other. And this is proof.

Yeah. I mean, I would argue kind of the opposite. Like, I think it takes an immense amount of commitment to have an open relationship with someone. The amount of communication and care and love you would have to have for that other person. Because the easiest thing is to just be like, okay, well, then let's just not be together. Exactly. Right?

Like, I mean, I've never pet. I don't know from personal experience, but just from just actually like breaking it down and knowing people who have been in open relationships. I mean, the amount of care and love you have for that other person or other people involved is arguably like maybe even greater than some people in monogamous relationships. Yeah, because you are committing to having these open conversations that are difficult and you're also talking to each other about your needs and making a conscious effort to make sure that your partner's needs are met while also committing to stay together and committing

to certain boundaries and not passing those and yeah so she she was not having it she was just like that there's no way there's no way he just disappeared because he didn't want to be with me anymore the park service also investigated the idea that doughty had assisted in his disappearance they were suspicious of her because of the way she was acting. After two weeks of him being gone, she asked about when she could receive his retirement benefits. Investigators felt it was pretty premature for her to be asking such questions, but she was struggling financially, especially without Paul, and she was just trying to prepare. She even agreed to take a polygraph test about her involvement, to which she denied having any involvement. The test deemed she was being truthful,

and even though polygraphs are notoriously not admissible and totally accurate, it was enough for investigators to leave her alone. When the National Park Service stopped the search after two weeks, Doty continued it for several more days with the help of volunteers. But still, there was no sign of him. The National Park Service put up a $5,000 reward for any information leading to his whereabouts. And Paul's family matched that, so $10,000 a reward. When he was declared missing, the National Park Service policy, however, did allow Doty,

to collect partial payments to help her out for the rest of the year of 1980. But that didn't last very long. The park service was split between two theories. One, that Paul was taken off park grounds, or two, that he ran away. A park service investigator named Pat Hanley strongly believed that Paul had just run away from what he deemed as a failed career, a broken marriage, and his pregnant girlfriend. He argued that because he had voluntarily abandoned his position, he should be officially fired from the National Park Service. When the director of the Park Service Western Region reviewed

the case, he sided with Pat Hanley. They argued that because he already had a lot of marks on his employment record, it was likely that he was tired of his job and didn't like how conservative they were and decided to up and leave. I could not disagree more with that. Same. I was just going to say, what do you think about that? He fought, didn't you say he fought for five years to get his job back? To get his job back, yeah. Why the hell? Like, why would he do that? Yeah, that's does not make any sense to me. I agree, but they did not. They thought it made perfect sense. And on February 23rd, 1981, Doty received a letter in the mail that officially fired Paul from his position. It also stated, quote, since Paul Fugate has been officially determined to be absent from his

post of duty without authority, all payments of the amount by allotment for the period while he was under missing status must be repaid to the United States. The letter demanded that Doty pay back the park service $6,900 plus 11% interest on the payment she received. Doty was also told that she was not able to appeal this decision because appeals had to be filed within 20 days of dismissal and they backdated his termination to the day he went missing the year prior. Ouch. Like not only. Like adding salt to the wound. That's like cutting the wound again.

Yeah. To put it lightly. Yeah. Wow. Her husband's missing. She's struggling financially. She's worried sick. And now they're making her, they fired Paul officially, even though he's missing from the job he was working. It's like a little overkill. Like, come on. Yeah. They fired him because then they wouldn't have to pay Doty his benefits. Right. Well, yeah, that's true. And she would have to pay them back. Like you're going to take $6,900 from a woman who's struggling financially and lost her husband. And you're going to charge her 11% interest. Yeah, not a good. look at all. For a man who dedicated his career to the park service. And fought to be a ranger. Yeah. You know, like he could have, I mean, I don't know, but, you know, he obviously had an education. He had experience when he first was fired from the park service. It's not like he could

only work at the park service. I'm sure he had other options or other avenues of employment. He could have, he could have pursued, but he was obviously really want, he wanted to work with the park service for a reason, you know, and for them, they did him dirty. They really did. They really did. I mean, not even him, but his wife. His wife, yeah. I mean, he's gone. He's not the one who has to deal with this right now, but Doty, yeah. And I don't really know the logistics of how this happened or why or those Doty who made this happen. But eventually the bill was switched from making Doty pay to taking the money from Paul's retirement money that he had earned.

So they're just like, we'll just take it out of his retirement account and make him pay instead of Doty. Yeah, who she would be the person who would be able to have access to his retirement account. So they're still taking the money from her, essentially. Yeah. Either way, she's still giving up that money. Yeah. But with all of this in the scheme of things, Doty didn't even care about the money.

She was just so concerned about her husband and wanted to find him that she was just like, you know what? Kind of like, hook you guys. I don't even care about this. Like, where is my husband? And she reached out to the FBI in hopes that they would take over the case. But they were not interested. Because there was no evidence that a crime had took place, they would not take it on and investigate it. Over the years, various reports of sightings of Paul were reported, but each that were followed up on were found to be dead ends.

Or when they did find the person, it was not Paul. One report, however, has investigators still intrigued to this day. About two hours from the monument in Arizona City of Sierra Vista, one man thinks he may have seen Paul. This person had known Paul from a training that they both had five years prior. While he was sitting down at the bar, he saw a man who looked like Paul walk in and then sit down across the room and order a drink. He watched for several minutes uncertain of what he was seeing, but then the two locked eyes. When they did, this person seemed to immediately recognize him as well. Just as quickly as he saw him, he grabbed his bag and quickly walked out.

This man was so certain that who he saw was Paul that he grabbed a plastic bag and collected the cup and brought it to the sheriff's office to be pulled for fingerprints. The results were inconclusive, but during this, they also realized that even though Paul was a federal employee for years, they had never actually gathered his fingerprints. So when nothing came back, they realized that they didn't. have anything anyway to like to compare it to compare it to yeah okay so my my obviously i don't think you know the answer to this but my first question is was he wearing glasses because you said he wasn't wearing glasses and he can't see without them it didn't say i didn't say if this guy was wearing glasses

so it's like if he looked at him across the bar and lock dies with him how do you he does he even know who that it do you know what i mean yeah his like his statement that he said was that it was clear you know when you look at someone and you both see each other and you're like Oh, and you don't want to see each other and there's the recognition. That's how he described it. But I'm saying if Paul didn't have his glasses on. Maybe he just... Did he even recognize?

I don't know. Whatever. I guess that makes no sense. Maybe he got a new pair of glasses or like he just... Contacts. Contacts. Yeah, I don't know. Well, Paul was officially listed as missing until finally, in 1988, the National Park Service

declared him dead. In 1989, the government finally agreed to pay Doty Paul's retirement benefits, and she also received $40,000 in back pay. She pursued her interests in archaeology and took trips around the world to places like Ecuador, Chile, and Peru. She then got a job as a research curator at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2010, Doty held a 30-year anniversary vigil of his disappearance at the monument.

In the Faraway Ranch area, they planted an apple tree in his honor, which was in remembrance to his time in the park and a pig he had befriended there that he would always feed apples. Under the tree they placed a memorial plaque that reads, This tree has been planted in memory of Paul Braxton Fugate, the Lost Ranger. In 2018, renewed interest in the case happened when human bones were found in Coronado National Forest. This national forest borders the park and investigators thought that they might have been finding the remains of Paul.

When DNA testing came back, it turned out to not be him, but a woman who had gone missing in the area. Despite this not being Paul, it incentivized the Park Service to re-look into the case. They've raised their award fund to $60,000 and are requesting the public's help to solve it. If you're listening right now and can offer any help or tips in Paul's whereabouts, you can contact the National Park Service, investigative service branch, and your identity will remain confidential. You can contact them in several ways. You can call or text their tip line at 888653-0009. You can also go online to nps.gov slash ISB and click the submit a tip button. You can also send an email or message them on Facebook or Twitter,

now X, and I will include these ways in the show notes for easier access. But that is the story of Paul Fugate and his disappearance. And also the National Park Service stated that they had like renewed interest and information in the case. And that was in 2018. So nothing has come further. But I don't, but it sounds like, and it shows on their website that they are still actively pursuing the case and it is open. Very interesting. So the, um, the theory that he may have got lost or whatever was kind of just like dismissed right off the bat. So it sounds like now, from the research that I was doing, it sounds like they're more leaning towards the drug operation that he was taken from the park and that some people think that he might have been

taken across the Mexican border because there are roads and trails that lead from outside the park over the border that are, I guess, it was described as easier to get through. And then others think that he was murdered somewhere outside the park. And those are just theories. Obviously, there's no, there's no evidence that he was murdered or any of this occurred. But people are starting to really think that something might have happened that he came across someone he shouldn't have in the park and they did something to him. I mean, that's what I would lean towards the most. I think the whole thing with the relationship and him bouncing is just, I think that's not

really. Like relevant to his disappearance. I agree. So that kind of nixes that out in my list. But I mean, and then obviously anyone can get lost, of course. Like I know you mentioned earlier if he was. injured or something happened to him, he had the wherewithal in the training and the experience to kind of work through that type of situation. But as we know, even the most seasoned professionals

and people who recreate in the outdoors their entire lives, like anything can happen to anybody. So to me, that's not really off the table, but it's definitely, I think, less likely than the foul play situation, especially with the tip that there was some sort of sketchy behavior going on and he was patrolling more because of that. I don't know. I just think it just lines up. I agree. And I think that the person who saw that it was a really quick drive by, but to see someone in uniform who he recognized as Paul, that just I feel like there's something to that. And maybe not. I mean, they say eyewitness accounts are some of the most unreliable resources that you can have. So maybe not. But I just think a combination of all of those things happening, I think that it's probably likely that something did happen. Or, you know,

I mean, if a accident did happen and he fell and died, we see in searches a lot that it's really hard to find people. Yeah. So I think that's definitely a possibility. But those are the two. I don't think he left on, I don't think any chance he left on his own accord. Intentionally, right. Yeah. And yeah, especially if there's no activity in any of his accounts or anything like that. Like, you can't just disappear. Yeah, zap out of reality. So, cool. Well, I mean, well, not cool, but thank you for covering it. Yeah, it's been a story that people have recommended and one that I have looked into before and I've had it on my list of things to look into and this just seemed like a good time to cover it. Yeah. Well, hopefully something does come about, especially with renewed interest and

resources going into looking further into it. I mean, of course, I'm sure his family is still desperate for answers, whatever they may be. So hopefully something comes of that. I agree. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in. We will see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch your back. Bye, everyone. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at Stories at NPADPodcast.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Join our Outsiders-only community on Patreon or Apple subscriptions to listen ad-free, unlock monthly bonus episodes, and exclusive content.

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