Park Predators - The Antlers

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

In 1991, a Montana man and his beloved dog failed to return from a 4-day hike searching for shed elk antlers in Yellowstone National Park. Questions surrounding what happened to them range from accident to animal attack to murder and the truth of what really happened to Daniel Campbell remains hidden even three decades later. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit parkpredators.com  Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I have for you today is about a man and his dog who literally vanished into thin air in Yellowstone National Park and have remained missing for more than three decades. It's the kind of story where so many theories are out there that your head starts to spin. Yellowstone is one of the most iconic national parks in the world, and according to the National Park Service, Yellowstone is one of the most iconic national parks in the world, and according to the National Park Service, Yellowstone spans over 2.2 million acres. The majority of it is in Wyoming, but it stretches into southern Montana and even has a small sliver of its boundary in Idaho. I traveled there last summer, and I'm pretty sure we hit up all three of those states in the two

days we hiked and drove around. The thing that's widely known about Yellowstone, though, is that when it snows, it snows. Like a lot. Ice and fresh powder remain on trails inside the park until late May and sometimes even into June. Rivers that can be over 20 feet wide and 6 feet deep stay frozen for months and only thaw out when temperatures start to rise. In the winters, the landscape definitely transforms. Long gone are the crowds of tourists everywhere. Instead, natural wildlife survives in the park. Black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, bison, and mountain lions are just a few of the staple predators and big game that live in

Yellowstone. But the park is also home to an abundance of wild elk, which attract hunters looking to illegally profit off their shed antlers. In April of 1991, that's exactly what a man from Montana named Daniel Campbell was aiming to do when he set out on a four-day scavenging trip but never returned. The questions that still remain surrounding his disappearance are, did he succumb to the elements? Was he hunted by one of Yellowstone's many natural predators? Or was a human predator responsible for his mysterious fate?

This is Park Predators. On Monday, April 8, 1991, Tracy Erb hopped into her car and headed towards Jardine, Montana. She wanted to be right on time to pick up her boyfriend, 42-year-old Daniel Campbell, who had been dropped off a few days earlier at Hell Roaring Trailhead, a spot in Yellowstone National Park, about eight miles southeast of Jardine, but what equated to just shy of an hour's long drive. When she got to Jardine, Tracy parked her car and patiently waited for Daniel to show up. She'd come prepared to wait a little bit because she knew Daniel had been hiking in the backcountry of Yellowstone, from where the trail had started

in Wyoming. The plan had been for Daniel to make the trek from Wyoming over the Montana border and end up in the town of Jardine. Now, back in 1991, there was no way for Daniel to contact Tracy as he hiked to let her know he'd be delayed. So when minutes ticked by and 15 minutes turned into a half hour and a half hour into an hour, Tracy didn't immediately panic. She figured Daniel was just running late or maybe the going had been tougher than he'd anticipated. But after a few hours passed with no sign of him, Tracy got worried. When she couldn't take it anymore,

she called the sheriff's office in the town of White Sulphur Springs, Montana, and told them that Daniel was overdue from his four-day hike. Tracy explained that the last time anyone had seen him was when he'd been dropped off at the trailhead and was seen going into the national park with his Australian Blue Heeler Mix dog, Freckles, by his side. Tracy told the authorities that Dan, as everyone knew him, wasn't just hiking. He had actually gone into the park

to collect elk antlers, a lucrative side hustle that many locals did, despite it being illegal. Dan was from Big Timber, Montana, just about an hour and a half north of the park, and had worked as a logger and pole cutter in the past. He was an experienced outdoorsman who figured out how to make a profit off selling shed elk antlers. Not long after taking Tracy's call, White Sulphur Springs deputies contacted the National Park Service rangers in Yellowstone. NPS generated an official incident report listing Dan as an overdue hiker. Now, that term, overdue hiker, is used a lot in missing persons cases involving parks or forests. Really, all it means is that authorities assume the person missing is either lost or injured somewhere inside the park. Usually, it prompts search and rescue efforts to get underway quickly.

But in Dan's case, that didn't exactly happen. According to the Charlie Project, an initial ground search for Dan didn't get underway until April 9th, the day after he was reported overdue. It's not clear from the source material why this delay happened or when authorities reached out to Dan's family to notify them or if Tracy got word to Dan's family first about his disappearance. But however the news reached them, two of Dan's brothers, Bill and Rod Campbell, got involved right from the start. Both men lived in Idaho, and as soon as they could, they jumped in their cars and drove to Park County to join in the searches for their brother and help however they could. One of the reasons I tend to think that

the authorities reached out to Bill and Rod to deliver the news about Dan is according to an incident objectives report for the National Park Service, officials conducted something known as a bastard search prior to actually sending crews of rescue searchers out on foot in Yellowstone. A bastard search is park officials' way of ensuring that a missing hiker is actually missing and not just sitting at home watching a football game completely ignorant to the fact that there's a search party looking for them. So the only way I can think that authorities were able to get anywhere with the bastard search would have been for them to contact friends and family who knew Dan. But again, the research material isn't super clear on this, so that's just my best guess. Anyway, what's even more bizarre

is that according to search and rescue reports from NPS, an official full-scale search for Dan didn't begin until like two and a half days after he was reported missing, which would have been Thursday, April 11th. And just to clarify, depending on what sources you read, it seems like there was a small search that got started on the 9th, but it wasn't really that serious. However, by the 11th, it was all hands on deck to find Dan. It's also important to note here for clarity that some sources list the last sighting of Dan as April 6th and some as April 4th. I lean towards the 4th being more likely since it's consistently reported that Dan's hike was supposed to be a four-day hunting trip and he was reported missing on the 8th. Either way, a major search for him not starting until April 11th

seems a little odd to me, since at that point, no one had laid eyes on Dan since April 4th. To me, why there wasn't a greater sense of urgency from law enforcement in those initial 24 hours is alarming. I mean, almost a full week had passed since anyone had seen Dan. If he was lost or in trouble, the authorities knew he had only packed four days' worth of supplies with him to survive. He didn't have forever to wait for rescue teams to find him. But when search efforts did finally get underway, National Park Service officials and deputies from both Sweetgrass County and Park County Sheriff's Offices conducted ground searches on foot and on horseback. They also did aerial searches that focused on what they referred to as a high probability zone, which essentially followed the assumed route Dan would have taken to get through the backcountry and end up in Jardine, Montana. But we're not talking about a small

area here. This is a lot of land and wilderness. In the early spring, which for Yellowstone meant there was still lots of snow and ice on the ground. A safety message that went out to all of the rescue crews warned searchers that the elements they were up against were bad and they should, quote, guard against hypothermia, be aware of avalanche hazards,

watch footing, be cautious and observant of unlawful activities occurring in search area, end quote. According to the weather forecast from Search and Rescue reports, it was 30 degrees with high winds and snowstorms rolling in during the days volunteers were out. That weather forecast, coupled with the mountainous terrain and deep, cold rivers, meant the stretch of wilderness that the groups were going to be traversing was a dangerous place to be, period. But aside from the danger of the elements, it's the last sentence of that memo that particularly interested me,

the, quote, I have to think that what authorities were alluding to were other elk antler hunters or poachers operating in the park. There's clearly some information we're not getting from that brief statement, but I think it's important to note because it teases that NPS and Park County Sheriff's Office had some kind of knowledge, or at least expectation, that there were people in Yellowstone who shouldn't be, and doing things that were illegal. For three days, crews searched tirelessly all throughout the high probability zones, making sure to search any places where Dan maybe could have fallen or become injured, or any place they thought he could

be using as a shelter from the elements. Things like rock overhangs, thick trees, anything that might entice someone to set up a makeshift camp to survive. But unfortunately, no sign of him surfaced. Even when they widened the scope of their grid searches, not a trace of Dan popped up. To make matters worse, bad weather started to move in on April 14th. According to reporting in the Casper Star Tribune, snowstorms grounded helicopter searches, and only about 12 searchers were brave enough to go out on foot in the freezing temperatures to keep looking for Dan. Not only was that effort dangerous, but it wasn't productive. The visibility in the park had gotten so bad that it was actually possible to walk right past someone and never know it.

This obviously was counterproductive for rescue operations, because a searcher could have walked right past Dan and not even seen him or Freckles. According to that same article by the Casper Star Tribune, the park's assistant superintendent, a man named Joe Alston, told reporters that while they hadn't found any sign of Dan in the days they'd been looking, they were holding out hope that Dan had prepared himself before leaving for his hike. Authorities knew Dan had planned to camp for at least four days, so they presumed he had sharp enough survival skills and knowledge of the backcountry to be able to stretch out his supplies and make it through the bad conditions. However, the one exception was, if he hadn't packed skis or snowshoes, then officials felt that traversing the terrain,

given the recent storms and snowfall, would have been nearly impossible. According to reporting by the Billings Gazette, after the first week of searches and brutal conditions, a spokeswoman for Yellowstone National Park told reporters, He may be aware he is being looked for and does not want to be found. We simply don't know, and there is always a chance we will never know. But we've done an extensive search, and we believe we should have been able to find at least a sign of him or his dog, end quote. Now, that statement stands out to me for two reasons.

One, it indicated that authorities were considering Dan willingly disappeared in the park or had left on his own free will and was out there in the world somewhere living his life and just didn't want to be found. And two, investigators no longer felt hopeful that searching for him was going to result in finding him or Freckles alive. And this announcement by the NPS didn't come like months later. This happened like less than a week after the search for Dan began. The spokeswoman went on to state that during the almost 10 days Dan had been missing, the area of the park he was last known to be in had been covered in four to six feet of snow. His chances of survival had dwindled with every passing day. I guess the park service was working on prior statistics, because in 1991, Yellowstone had a history of

hikers going missing or being killed by the elements. According to a piece by the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, in the five years preceding Dan's disappearance, four people had disappeared in Northern Yellowstone. All of those cases were still unsolved by the time Dan went missing. Authorities officially concluded their formal searches for Dan by May and said if the weather cleared up, they would organize one last final sweep of that section of the park. Dan's brothers, Rod and Bill, were both pretty upset by this move. They were adamant in their belief that Dan had not come out of the park and was just choosing

to be missing. The brothers said that Dan was never more than a day late when he'd taken trips into the park before. They said he had sharp survival skills and could probably have lasted days if he was injured or battling the elements. They told the Montana Standard that Dan would do anything to protect his dog Freckles, but more than likely, coyotes would try and get to the dog first if they had the chance. Rod and Bill started up a search effort of their own and handed out flyers in multiple towns throughout southwest Montana. They were determined to leave no stone unturned. The posters featured a picture of Dan kneeling next to Freckles and gave a detailed description of the two of them.

It said Dan was five foot eight inches tall, weighed 165 pounds, had brown hair and green eyes, and was last seen wearing blue jeans and a blue jacket. Freckles was described as a one-year-old Australian Shepherd-Blue Heeler mix. Rod and Bill spent days knocking on strangers' doors, asking around, hoping anyone might have seen or heard from their brother. But their efforts were all in vain. Not one person they spoke with reported seeing or talking with Dan since he walked into Yellowstone on April 4th. In late May, about two months after Dan vanished, the snow melted and a group of searchers went back out looking for him. According to the Billings Gazette, these volunteers

found something. Campsites stocked with supplies that appeared to be completely untouched. According to the Billings Gazette, volunteers who returned to the backcountry of northern Yellowstone on May 30, 1991, stumbled upon two separate campsites stocked with supplies. Among the belongings they found were ready-to-eat meals, tobacco, tea, and dried beans. The article doesn't clarify who these camps belonged to or how far apart they were, but authorities assumed that at the time,

they might have belonged to Dan Campbell or other elk antler collectors who'd staged them in order to have pit stops for supplies as they traversed the park. What's interesting, though, is that according to a U.S. Department of the Interior incident report, officials did mark a camp on a map that they designated as likely belonging to Dan, but it's unclear when they located that camp, how they tied it to Dan, or if this is one of the camps mentioned in the Billings Gazette article,

or if it's a different camp altogether. But regardless, the site authorities believed to be one Dan had set up was found with a fire ring, tent poles, a gas can that was a fourth full, and burnt cans in the fire. There was no sign of Dan's body, though, or freckles. No bones, no tattered clothing, nothing. And just for full transparency, some of the source material for this story says that no camp determined to be linked to Dan was ever found. So I'm not sure if this Department of the Interior incident report saying that they found a camp that belonged to Dan was just a preliminary finding that eventually got changed, but in my mind, I have to think that at least for a short period of time,

they assumed that at least one campsite was tied to Dan, even though they couldn't prove it and they never told the public about it. The only thing the Park County Sheriff at the time who was leading the investigation, a guy named Charlie Johnson said, was that they weren't sure what to make of the campsites. He explained that Dan had voluntarily, quote, disappeared and reappeared before in his life, end quote. This statement by the sheriff, I think, goes back to the whole idea they'd been spinning all along, which is that they were considering the theory that Dan voluntarily walked away from his life. One of the big reasons authorities thought this theory might be true was because they discovered that right around the time Dan vanished, he'd been

having some financial problems. Not to mention, he was technically conducting an illegal activity within the boundary of the park. So they figured maybe he had just cut his losses, gathered as many elk antlers as he could, and then hightailed it out and was laying low somewhere, and had left all of his supplies behind. At the same time, the sheriff announced that that theory was a possibility. He sort of contradicted himself, though, and said that foul play could still be a factor, too. So, essentially, the cops had nothing. They were considering all theories and really had no hard evidence to prove one over the other. By the end of June 1991, Bill and Rod Campbell were a little fed up with Park County and Sheriff Johnson's handling of the case. No good leads had been developed and all official searches in the park had completely stopped. To make matters worse was the fact that for a brief period of time, Dan's name had been taken off a national computer listing of missing people.

According to an article in the Independent Record, a State Justice Department missing persons coordinator in Montana's capital noticed that the name Daniel Campbell was just gone from this database list one day. this database list one day. Apparently, miscommunication between Park County officials and Sweetgrass County officials had somehow resulted in Dan's name being taken off the list, which was a really big deal considering outlets and agencies all over the country pulled their data about missing persons from that list. Rod and Bill Campbell, along with their elderly parents, Marge and Gordon, were furious about this mistake and felt like the authorities were just not taking the case seriously. They desperately wanted one of their other brothers, who was a Montana law enforcement officer in a neighboring jurisdiction,

to at least be brought in on the case to help, but officials in Park and Sweetgrass counties wouldn't allow it. Despite what authorities believed, the Campbell brothers were fully convinced someone had killed Dan and buried him in Yellowstone. In their minds, it was the only thing that explained why no one had found a trace of his body. Bill told the Independent Record that the family knew Dan was having problems paying his bills and was in need of money to save up to move from where he lived in Big Timber to White Sulphur Springs, but there was no way he'd just walk away from his life. Bill went as far as defending his brother's illegal elk antler collecting,

saying it was the only thing he knew to do to make money fast and utilize his skills as an outdoorsman. Bill said that sometimes the people who engaged in that trade with Dan were not the most upstanding people. Referring to his brother, Bill told the newspaper, quote, he had been running with some shady characters. I'm not saying he's an angel, because he's not, end quote. Bill went on to explain that he felt strongly the shady characters he'd referred to had something to do with Dan's disappearance. Rod and Bill swore that their brother would never just choose to disappear, saying, quote,

If Dan is in the park, he's buried, end quote. Bill and Rod tried over and over again to express their concerns with the Park County Sheriff, and they even offered up four names of men who were acquaintances of Dan's that they thought could be involved. One of those acquaintances was a man who'd been in a dispute with Dan just two years earlier in 1989.

That dispute had been over a stash of elk antlers worth about $20,000. According to Bill and Rod, this acquaintance sold the antlers without sharing any of the profit with Dan, swindling him out of roughly 20 grand. Dan's brothers begged and pleaded with the sheriff's department to polygraph that guy and the other three men they felt could be involved. But in response to this outcry, Sheriff Johnson told reporters, quote, We've interviewed most of these people multiple times

and haven't developed any information. At what point does it become harassment? End quote. And I mean, the sheriff kind of has a point here. Don't get me wrong. The point that Bill and Rod were making about the sketchy acquaintances of Dan's is a legit one, but law enforcement only has so much power and reach to be able to force people to talk to them. And if you think about it, what good would a polygraph really do, since it's not like it can be used in court. It's merely a tool. Anyway, in the brother's defense, I totally get where they're coming from. They knew their brother and they knew the people in his life better than police did. I find it interesting that Sheriff Johnson said, quote, most of these people, quote, when he refers to how many of the acquaintances detectives

had interviewed. I mean, I don't know about you, but I'd like to know what most of four people means. Are we talking one, two, three? It's not that many people to cross off a list, so I can definitely understand the Campbell family's frustration there. The next glimmer of hope that some sort of traction was happening with the case, outside of local investigators handling it, came in early July 1991. That month, Montana's Criminal Investigation Bureau was brought in to assist. Interestingly, the request came from the Park County Sheriff, Charlie Johnson. The MCIB sent a special agent to Park County to sort of get a handle on the case and everything investigators knew so far. And his presence did give the Campbells renewed hope.

But that hope quickly faded because it seemed like after that, there was silence on the case. The special agent reportedly met with Park County officials and Yellowstone law enforcement investigators, but then nothing came of it. After this blip of an update about the State Bureau of Investigation, the coverage on Dan's case just stops. There is almost nothing out there about his disappearance until five years later in 1996. in 1996. That year, Outside Online published an article that mentioned Dan's disappearance while comparing elk horn hunters in Yellowstone to drug cartels. The author, Todd Wilkinson, interviewed park officials about how much of a problem horn hunting was inside of Yellowstone and how lucrative of a business it was on the black market. The article stated that in 1995 alone, antler poachers collected roughly $500,000 worth of elk antlers inside of Yellowstone. The piece goes on to state,

quote, most disturbing though was the disappearance a few years ago of Dan Campbell, a Yellowstone area man last seen in the park and now presumed dead. Authorities say that he was a horn hunter and was probably murdered in a bloody dispute over turf, end quote. For this article, Wilkinson interviewed a man named Brian Odea, who was a criminal investigator for Yellowstone National Park at the time. Odea was probably someone who had good insight into Dan's case. However, was probably someone who had good insight into Dan's case. However, Wilkinson, who wrote the article, didn't directly quote anyone when he said Dan was murdered in a bloody dispute over turf. He's not crediting that to Edea, so I don't know who exactly he got that information from. Because up until that point in the investigation, no law enforcement official had doubled down on the theory that Dan

was even confirmed to be dead, let alone killed in a fight with another elk antler collector. This was the first time anyone saw this claim about a murder made public alongside law enforcement interviews. I wish we knew more about the source for that quote about a bloody dispute and murder, but regardless of who said it, it is a plausible scenario, one that Dan's brothers believed was more in the realm of possibility than Dan just walking away from his life in problems. And there's no doubt that elk antler collecting was a dangerous trade. When you do a little research into elk antler or horn collecting in general, you'll find out pretty quickly that poachers who operate in that space

stand to make a lot of money from selling what they find. Dan was out in the back country, probably along with other collectors, in April of 1991. Yellowstone is home to the largest congregation of elk in the world, so it's not a far stretch to think that Dan wasn't alone. Elk antlers are sold for a variety of different

uses across the globe. Some people in North America buy them to decorate their homes or lodges as expensive furniture, while other consumers use them for medicinal purposes. According to Todd Wilkinson's article, customers in Asian countries buy the horn in order to thinly slice them and make powders that are used in folk medicines. The article stated that, at the time, the cost of a ground-up batch of antlers went for upwards of $300 per ounce. The article quotes park officials who explained that the tactics elk antler collectors used to protect their different territories of Yellowstone were kind of similar to drug cartels. Rangers said they knew poachers to carry semi-automatic weapons and monitor the radio frequencies of park rangers in order to

avoid getting busted. In the mid-90s, the issue got so bad that rangers were given military-grade surveillance cameras, satellite imaging devices, night vision, and remote-controlled ground cameras to try and combat the poachers. The main point the article drove home was that on any given day, elk antler collectors could earn a lot of money fast in the form of horns, and they were going to do whatever they needed to ensure their turf wasn't encroached on. A lot of citizens in rural Montana, men like Dan in particular, who were having a hard time finding long-term employment,

would often resort to poaching like this to make ends meet. But it's an illegal trade, and with illegal activity comes serious risks. Anyone who consumes true crime knows money is the oldest motive in the book when it comes to murder. It's entirely possible that Dan got in someone's way while out in the backcountry, and whoever he came in contact with decided to rob him and kill him, and just let people assume he got lost or injured or died from the elements. I mean, when you think about it, Dan was planning to be collecting antlers for four days. If he had a successful start, or by the end of his trek had bagged a lot of antlers, he would have been walking around with a small fortune,

all alone, isolated in the wilderness. In 1998, seven years after Dan disappeared, a new sheriff was elected in Park County. Charlie Johnson, who'd been running the show thus far, was out and was replaced by a new guy named Clark Carpenter. During Carpenter's first two years in office, no new developments occurred in the case, and by the year 2000, the Campbell family had finally had enough. It was time to take drastic measures.

Scott McMillian reported for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle that in January of 2000, Dan's brothers, Rod and Bill, filed a federal lawsuit against former Park County Sheriff Charlie Johnson, claiming, quote, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, end quote. The suit sought $100,000 in punitive damages for Rod and Bill. The brothers maintained that Dan had been murdered and alleged that former Sheriff Johnson knew that homicide was a strong possibility, but yet he continued to treat the investigation as a disappearance anyway, rather than murder. Bill told news outlets that he'd spent thousands of dollars of his own money

to investigate what happened to his brother, and what he discovered was eye-opening. The family's lawsuit claimed that not only had investigators in Park County been incompetent from day one, they'd also disposed of, lost, and mishandled evidence deputies initially found in the first few weeks of the investigation. and mishandled evidence deputies initially found in the first few weeks of the investigation. For example, Bill said that he found out during week one and week two of searching for Dan that Park County deputies had run into a pair of local horn hunters who'd been camping outside of Yellowstone's northern boundary, right in the area where Dan would have been collecting antlers during his hike. The men, like Dan, were illegally in pursuit of and possession of Elkhorns.

According to the lawsuit filing, police confiscated from these two men camping gear, firearm ammunition, spent cartridges, and what was, quote, reasonably believed to be a firearm, end quote. But here's the wild thing. All of that stuff was quickly returned to the men without undergoing fingerprint examination, forensic testing, or any of the normal analysis by law enforcement. On top of the allegations of evidence mishandling, some really damning news broke about former Sheriff Charlie Johnson around this same time. According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle,

in 1997, Johnson had been charged with misdemeanor sexual assault and misuse of his office. It stemmed from an incident in which a woman accused him of fondling her. Eventually, he was acquitted of those charges, but the woman who came forward sued Park County. The ordeal ended with the county settling and paying the woman, but that wasn't the end of Johnson's problems. In 1998, while running for office, deputies in the Park County Sheriff's Office sort of had a mutiny and signed an internal petition essentially boycotting Charlie Johnson and supporting Clark Carpenter for sheriff. So even though the way the sheriff was handling Dan's case and his other criminal issues were separate, the public sentiment was pretty clear that law enforcement in Park County had serious problems in the 1990s.

Bill claimed that those issues directly affected the department's ability to thoroughly investigate his brother's case. He told news outlets that during his investigation, he'd done his own detective work and spoken with another horn hunter who was out in the backcountry around the same time Dan was supposed to be. Bill said this guy told him that he'd heard two gunshots while out in the wilderness in April of 1991. Obviously, finding witnesses like that only fueled the family's belief that something very bad had happened to Dan in the park, but they just couldn't prove it. And every time they'd taken what they knew or had been told to the police, they were turned away. After filing their federal lawsuit, Bill told reporters, quote, from the evidence I've acquired through the years, I believe that my brother was murdered there. There was 14 people up there horn hunting in the area at that time, end quote. In that same newspaper article, the family also mentioned that they'd become aware of Dan about to receive a significant settlement from an ongoing court case that had been happening not long before his disappearance. Now, I don't know what court case this is referring to specifically because the research material doesn't go into a lot of detail, but I do wonder what the details of that case

were. If it was a civil suit and someone was being forced to give Dan money or settle with him over some amount of cash, that seems like a really big reason to maybe want Dan gone. It could point to a strong motive for someone needing him to disappear. It also worked against law enforcement's theory that Dan had just willingly walked It could point to a strong motive for someone needing him to disappear. It also worked against law enforcement's theory that Dan had just willingly walked away from his life. Because in my mind, why would someone who was about to get a significant influx of cash just walk away from their life if they were known to be having money problems? It just doesn't make sense.

The newspaper article's reference to another lawsuit prior to Dan vanishing is just another strange thing with this whole case. Odd things like this just being brought up without context is such a common theme. It's frustrating. Another thing that really had my brain spinning was the fact that Bill brought up discovering there were 14 horn hunters or poachers in the same area of Yellowstone as Dan in April of 91. So if that's true, how did not one of those hunters see or hear a thing or even bump into Dan? 14 people hunting for shed elk antlers is a lot, even in the vast backcountry of Yellowstone.

My questions are, who were these 14 people? Did investigators interview all of them? How did Bill come to learn about them? I spoke with Bill over the phone before writing this episode. He and his brother Rod are still alive. He declined to participate in an interview, but said he still thinks about Dan every day and wishes more would have been done to find him and find out what happened to him. Eventually, the family's lawsuit against Park

County went nowhere, and though it made a lot of noise in the media in 2000, ultimately, the threat of litigation from the family didn't push the police's investigation forward. After 2000, the case went cold for 18 years. In December 2018, the U.S. Department of the Interior fulfilled a FOIA request that a reporter for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle had submitted related to records in Dan's case. The reporter was a guy named Michael Wright, and he published the entire FOIA request online. A lot of the documents are just initial incident reports, as well as search and rescue maps and charts, along with Dan's missing persons flyer and other information already released to the public. A lot of the good stuff was left out due to the government claiming ongoing investigation exemptions. In total, the National Park Service only provided 48 pages and stated that there were more than 400 pages they could not release because doing so could

compromise the investigation. Included in what Michael Wright did get, though, was an incident report filed in February of 2017 by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The summary of that document states, quote, during the year 2016, and then the rest of that sentence is redacted, and it finishes, quote, further investigation is now being conducted

considering the new potential evidence, end quote. It's impossible to read what's between those two quotations in the redacted section. Even more interesting is that in an enclosed letter to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the FOIA officer who fulfilled the request wrote that the reason for redacting so much information was that certain individuals' names would be identified in the case that law enforcement did not want released to the public yet. The FOIA officer went on in their response to say, quote, We have determined that the individuals to whom this information pertains have a substantial privacy interest in withholding it, end quote.

So, to me, this means that law enforcement knows much more than they're saying, and they may even have suspects, like legitimate suspects they became focused on in 2016 when they said that further investigation was being conducted in light of new potential evidence. To be honest, I don't know exactly what they mean when they say that, but it gives me hope that more is being done on this case. Sadly, after this FOIA release in 2018, there wasn't much movement in Dan's case, so all we're left with is speculation. While Dan's family is certain that he was the victim of foul play,

it's not the only theory that's been put out there. From my research, there are only a few options for what could have happened to the 42-year-old. The first theory is that he went into the park, got lost or injured somehow along the backcountry trail he was on, and succumbed to either his injuries or the elements. I don't doubt that this could have happened in Yellowstone's backcountry. Like I've already said, hikers deal with harsh weather and dangerous terrain all the time. According to NPS reports and that FOIA request from 2018, there were active avalanche warnings in Yellowstone while searchers were out looking for Dan.

Him being overtaken by the outdoors is totally a possibility. The thing that sticks out to me about that theory, though, is the fact that he had freckles with him. Like, in an event, say Dan got hurt or fell or something, and maybe freckles didn't, wouldn't searchers or someone have heard him barking for help? I don't know. No trace of freckles being found or running around without Dan is just really strange to me. The second theory to consider is the undeniable fact that there are actual animal predators in Yellowstone that Dan could have run into. Though NPS will tell you that animal attacks are rare, they do happen

occasionally. Grizzly bears and mountain lions are wild animals, and especially coming off the winter season, their hunger could have made them ravenous. It's entirely possible that Dan and Freckles disturbed one of these predators and were attacked. But the problem I have with the animal attack theory is animals aren't going to worry about cleaning up a crime scene. They're animals, so they feed until they're full and then move on, leaving the carcass of their prey behind. So again, it's hard for me to believe that not a single shred of Dan's clothing or belongings were left behind for searchers to find if an animal attack is what happened. The third theory that took over this case for a long time, at least in law enforcement's eyes, is that Dan walked out of his life on purpose with no

intentions of returning. There's even been speculation that he never went into the park in the first place. Some rumors that have circulated around this case have suggested that he told everyone he was going on a four-day hike, but instead disappeared to start a new life. Authorities have pointed to the fact that they learned Dan had a history of going MIA for a few days and then would reappear.

Even his family members and girlfriend said that was common for him. There's no source material that strictly explains this, but I think just based on the fact that Dan lived a hard life, he would just get away on his own for a while in the backcountry and then always return. Combine that pattern of behavior with his alleged financial problems, and you can see where police felt pretty sure he just took off. But the problem with this theory, at least for me, is that Dan and Freckles have never been seen again. I mean, not even a trace. Now,

I know it's 2022 and Freckles is long gone, but if Dan is still alive, why has he never contacted his brothers? He had to have seen all the effort they put into finding him, so why just abandon your life and take off? If he is still alive somewhere today, he would be in his early 70s. The final theory that people have had to consider is that Dan fell victim to foul play. Like I've said, Dan's surviving family wholeheartedly believes this is the case and that he was buried somewhere in the park. But police have said multiple times that they have no reason to suspect foul play. wholeheartedly believes this is the case and that he was buried somewhere in the park. But police have said multiple times that they have no reason to suspect foul play. I don't know what it is that makes the authorities think murder can't be true,

but to me, money is a classic motive for murder. And Dan was in the park collecting elk antlers, which according to an article on GoHunt Online, can sell for up to $1,000 per antler, depending on their size. So I think in order to be thorough, you have to at least consider the possibility that Dan was killed because he was poaching antlers in someone else's territory, or simply because he had something they wanted. He could have been robbed and just a victim of a crime of opportunity. Who knows? Another possibility is that someone actually planned to kill Dan. As we know, Dan's brother Bill mentioned that Dan had a previous dispute with another horn hunter over a $20,000 stash that was sold without Dan getting his cut.

It's possible there could have been serious bad blood between Dan and that other guy. And we know Bill mentioned that this person was one of four people he thought were shady and could have had something to do with Dan's disappearance. The last thing that makes me tend to believe foul play was involved was that incident report from the U.S. Department of the Interior, where they summarize potential new evidence found in 2016, and then there's a full sentence that was redacted. If the potential evidence they were referring to was just remains or belongings of Dan's that had been found, it wouldn't make sense that they would need to redact that kind of information.

What they said was that the redacted information would identify certain people and that, quote, we have determined that the individuals to whom this information pertains have a substantial privacy interest in withholding it, end quote. At the very least, I think this means there is someone else that is of interest to authorities, and if someone has had information all this time about Dan's disappearance, then why would they conceal it for over 30 years if they're not involved in a crime? I have to be honest, this case has driven me a little bonkers. The information out there suggests that authorities know more than what has been reported on, and right now there's just no way of getting around that. To this day,

the Campbell brothers and law enforcement are still divided about whether or not Dan's vanishing is a result of a purposeful disappearing act or murder. No matter what you believe may have happened to Dan Campbell after he walked into Yellowstone National Park in the spring of 1991, the heartbreaking reality is we may never know the truth. The park is filled with thick forests, mountains, rivers, and diverse wildlife. So many winters have come and gone since Dan disappeared. So the possibilities of where he ended up are endless. More than 30 years going by only makes the chances of finding his remains slimmer and slimmer.

The vast and dangerous terrain on the backcountry trails of Yellowstone may forever hold the answer to his mystery. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?