Park Predators - The Councilman

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

When a Central California businessman vanishes while on a fishing trip in Kings Canyon National Park with friends, few clues emerge as to what happened. When his background reveals a substantial windfall decades earlier in his life, the mystery only deepens.NAMUS: The investigating agency for the disappearance of Fred Gist in August 1975 is the National Park Service in Sequoia and Kings Canyon. They can be reached at 559-565-4228.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-councilman Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators  | /audiochuckllcTikTok:  @audiochuck Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Dillia Diambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in Kings Canyon National Park in California. The specific section of the park I'm going to be focusing on is an expanse of the Sierra Nevada Mountains between areas known as Cedar Grove and Simpson Meadow. On foot or by horseback, traversing this landscape could take the average hiker some time to complete. It's over 25 miles, but not all in a straight line. Looking at it in 2D on Google Maps doesn't do it justice. To make this trek, you have to climb thousands of feet in elevation in some parts and hike through territory notoriously inhabited by mountain lions and bears. Simpson Meadow itself is a lush green field along the Middle Fort King's River that you can get to via the Copper Creek Trail or Simpson Meadow Trail. Though parts of it are harsh and unforgiving, many people who've traveled to this area of the park say it's worth it for the views.

Two words I kept seeing used to describe the route to this location were beautiful but secluded. And it's that last description that I think is most vital to this case, seclusion. Because as far as anyone has ever been able to tell, it might be the very aspect of the park that prevented law enforcement from finding a prominent central California man who vanished there seemingly into thin air. This is Park Predators.

I don't know. I'm going to be able to I'm going to be able to I'm going to be. On Thursday, night, August 21st, 1975, three men who'd been hiking for several days in Kings Canyon National Park made their way up to the Simpson Meadow Ranger Station. The group was a bit worse for where and had some concerning news to report. Their friend and fourth companion, 66-year-old

Fred Gist, was missing. Unfortunately, on Thursday night, the group couldn't relay that news right away, though, because a ranger wasn't on duty at the station. So they had to wait until Friday morning to file an official missing persons report for Fred. When the information did make it to Rangers who showed up on Friday, those officers and about a dozen other Rangers quickly mobilized to launch a search for Fred. At the top of their to-do list was to speak with the three men who reported him missing and learned as much as they could about where he'd last been seen in the park. Those three guys were Bob Osborne, Bud Coiner, and Abe Brazil. Abe was an attorney. Bob was a hardware store manager and Bud was neighbors with both of them. The trio told park rangers that

they and their missing friend were all from San Luis Obispo, California, about five hours away from the national park. They'd all been en route to go fishing and had left on horseback from Cedar Grove in the direction of Simpson Meadow on Tuesday, August 19th. During that first day, they ended up riding a little too far into the park and ended up in an area closer to Simpson and meadow where the park service didn't allow pack animals to graze overnight. So to avoid getting in trouble, a man the group had hired to bring them supplies during their trip had instructed the men to backtrack a few miles to a section of the park where their horses could feed.

It seems that because it had already been a long day for everyone on that Tuesday, Fred had decided to hang back and let his three friends take his horse to the area where it could graze with the other horses. And he made camp on the side of the trail by himself. Basically, he'd complained of being tired and didn't want to backtrack. So he'd told his buddies he'd see them the next morning when they passed in his direction and they'd all head towards Simpson Meadow together. However, when Wednesday morning came Bright and Early and Abe, Bud, and Bob rode up the trail

to reconvene with Fred, he wasn't where they'd left him. On the ground, they found what looked like remnants of a campfire he'd seemingly made, a few empty juice cans and a cheese wrapper, but that was it. They didn't see Fred, and they didn't see anything else that gave them a clue about where he'd gone. And because he didn't have his horse, they knew that wherever he was, he had to be hiking on foot. Not necessarily assuming the worst at that moment, they continued hiking towards Simpson Meadow, hoping that Fred was just somewhere up ahead of them and was going to beat them to their final destination. But Wednesday passed, and then Thursday.

And eventually, when the group made it to the ranger station without coming across Fred, that's when they knew something wasn't right. When the Park Service launched its search for Fred, they allocated 15 rangers to the task, but by the end of the first week, more than 25 people had gotten involved. Authority's initial assessment of the area near the trail where Fred had camped

was that nothing unusual had happened there. There was no evidence that indicated a struggle or disturbance had taken place, or even a possible animal attack. An information officer for the NPS told the then telegram tribune that Kings Canyon National Park in general was home to Mountain Lions and Bears. But in his opinion, he thought it would have been highly unusual for one of those predators to attack a person. He cited an abundance of prey in the park as one reason

why a mountain lion or bear would not feel the need to go after Fred. Plus, like I mentioned a second ago, according to the source material, there was no evidence found at Fred's campsite that he'd been attacked. No blood, no shredded clothing, no drag marks, nothing. When he disappeared, he reportedly only had a poncho, a few candy bars, bread, lunch meat, jam, beer, cheese, boots, pants, and a cowboy hat with him. But no sleeping bag, pillow, or tent. The rest of his stuff was, I believe, with his horse and travel companions. After the group of men parted ways Tuesday night, Fred had stayed in an area of the park that was estimated to be about 9,400 feet in elevation. And it's no surprise that he reportedly

made a campfire for himself, because on the night he was alone, temperatures dipped into the high 20s and stayed in that range or the low 30s overnight every night he was unaccounted for. During the day, though, conditions climbed into the 70s, which I imagine had to feel like a small glimmer of hope to the people who were rooting for him to survive. Three of those people who wanted to see him come home safe and sound were Abe, Bud, and Bob, who the telegram Tribune reported stayed in the park for several days after they reported. Fred missing. All of the men ranged in age from 55 to 70 years old and informed authorities that Fred was a diabetic, which was reportedly one of the reasons he'd made sure to pack

candy bars for the trip. But those bars were only going to last so long, so finding him fast was everyone's top priority. By Monday, August 25th, additional resources arrived to help in the search. A helicopter from the U.S. Forest Service was brought in. A search and rescue team came up from San Diego, and four tracking dogs arrived from Washington State. Together, Cruz scoured all levels of terrain along the section of the Sierra Nevada's where Fred was last seen, but as each day passed, Cruz kept coming up empty-handed. The description they had of Fred was that he was white, about six feet tall, weighed 190 pounds, and had blue eyes and gray hair.

At the same time all of this was going on, another investigation was underway looking at a set of human remains that hunters had found at a backcountry campsite in neighboring Sequoia National Park on the same day Fred's companions had reported him missing. According to coverage by the Fresno B, the coroner's office in Tulare County, which was responsible for identifying the remains, made some preliminary conclusions by the following Tuesday, August 26th. They determined through dental records that the skeleton belonged to a 19-year-old who'd been missing from Glendale, Arizona for several months. That young man's name was Ross Simmons, and early tests on his remains showed he died of

asphyxiation after a small grill he'd had in his tent consumed all of the oxygen while he slept. It doesn't appear that his case was ever connected to Fred's or believed to be related. It was just a coincidence that while Fred's search was happening, authorities realized that human remains had been found in a park that butted up next to King's Canyon National. Park. So of course, the two cases were mentioned simultaneously in press coverage, and I have to assume Ross's case was a story that investigators working Fred's case paid close attention to, at least at the outset of their investigation. Anyway, one week after Fred was last seen, a spokesman for the National Park Service announced

that resources which had been allocated to find him would likely scale back within a matter of days. It was also at that time the NPS publicly stated foul play was being considered a possibility in the case. The agency had assigned an investigative specialist to work Fred's disappearance because the circumstances of his vanishing just seemed worth probing into as a potential crime. The NPS spokesman told the telegram tribune that no evidence had been found that pointed directly to murder, but it was extremely puzzling, maybe even suspicious, that searchers had found no sign of the 66-year-old at all. And one person who raised similar concerns about what had happened

was Fred's wife, Lolita Gist. You see, she'd been monitoring some of the information that authorities were being told by Fred's buddies, and she realized there were some notable discrepancies. According to coverage by the Telegram Tribune, one week after Fred vanished, Lolita Giss told the press that the information investigators had been told by his friends

about him being a diabetic was completely untrue. She said that other than her husband, maybe being a bit overweight, he was in really good shape for his age and had no health issues, other than a prior bout with cataracts, which had been surgically addressed prior to the trip. Fred was also the member of his backpacking group

who was the most familiar with the trail in Kings Canyon National Park that the men were traveling on. Lolita said that he had experienced camping and packing along trails and he'd actually traversed this exact area two years earlier. In fact, everyone in Fred's hiking group had agreed ahead of time to make him their designated leader because he seemed to know his way around better than the rest of them. So it begged the question, if Fred was the group's designated leader, why and how had the four men overshot their intended destination on the first day of their trip? In addition to that puzzling fact, as the investigation continued,

more information began to trickle out that only raised more questions than answers. For example, Bud Coiner did an interview with the Telegram Tribune where he explained in detail Fred's disposition at the time their group split up. He also mentioned some things he and the rest of the men had observed on the trail after Fred vanished. Bud said that when everyone in the group realized on Tuesday the 19th that they'd overshot their planned camping spot for the night, Fred became frustrated and seemed to be fairly exhausted. Bud told the newspaper, quote, Fred got down off his horse and said, I'll be damned if I'll go back, and he started walking down the trail, end quote. Immediately following that, Bud, Bob, and Abe all tried to convince Fred to stop walking and instead joined them, but he refused and continued moving away from them. Fred's companions eventually departed with his horse, but Bud said before they left,

he made sure to leave Fred a knapsack that contained beer, jam, lunch meat, bread, and cheese. Bud told the newspaper that the last time anyone in the group saw Fred, he was still walking down the trail alone. In hindsight, Bud said he wished his friend had exercised a little more wisdom. He said in his interview, quote, Because he was familiar with the area and, as an experienced camper, should have known better than to stay in that wilderness by himself without proper supplies. End quote.

But went on to explain that the following morning when he and the other men didn't find Fred, they'd all yelled for him for a while but didn't get a response. After that, they found what they believed were the remnants of a campfire, some empty cans of fruit juice and a cheese wrapper laying on the ground nearby. A little ways away in an area that was wooded, the helper the group had hired as a supply packer, discovered a beer can sitting on the top of some rocks. A short distance away, Bud said he'd also located several bootprints

in an area of ground that was wet. Now, whether law enforcement knew all these details at the outset of their investigation or not is unclear from the source material. But even if they did, the only thing this information really points to definitively is that Fred was at the spot his friends last saw him at on Tuesday evening. But for unknown reasons,

departed from there before Wednesday morning. Lolita told the telegram Tribune she learned from investigators that a beer can had been found about a quarter of a mile away from Fred's last known location, but it wasn't a brand he would usually drink. Now, I don't know if the can she was referring to as the same beer can Bud Koiner mentioned in his interview, but it's possible it was. But that discovery begged another question, whose beer was it? Fred's or someone else's.

It doesn't seem like Lolita or investigators ever conclusively found the answers to those questions, though. She maintained that no matter the circumstances, her husband would have known better than to veer off the trail, which made it all the more confusing why not a single trace of him was found. By Wednesday, August 27th, eight days after Fred was last seen alive, a park spokeswoman told the press that the search was downsizing to just 18 searchers and one helicopter which would make periodic flyovers. The following day, the leaner team started the investigation over, essentially back at square one,

trying to retrace Fred's steps from the campsite they believed he'd stayed at. The goal was to cover as much ground as possible before Labor Day weekend. Once Saturday came, the search was going to be scaled back even more to let the three-day weekend pass. And if Fred wasn't found during that time, the NPS said it was committed to renewing a full-scale search the following day. Tuesday. However, that didn't happen. According to coverage in the Telegram Tribune, when Tuesday September 2nd rolled around, the park service officially disbanded its search for Fred and told the

press that all things being considered, he was most likely dead. The agency stated that it was highly unlikely the 66-year-old had survived for two weeks alone in the fluctuating temperatures of the park with no survival supplies. After that, the case went cold. Eight months later, in May 1976, the Superior Court in San Luis Obispo held an estate hearing to iron out what would happen with Fred's assets. Now, when I first read this, I was a bit confused because I'd assumed, like most people would, that everything he owned would go to his wife, Lolita. But at that hearing, it was clear another woman had a history with Fred. In fact, she had a petition alongside Lolita to become a trustee in his estate. When Fred Gist disappeared, he was a successful real estate appraiser who'd formerly held a council seat for the city of San Luis Obispo.

In August 1975, he and Lolita had been married for about seven years, but prior to that, he'd had a first wife, Winnie, whom he'd married in 1936, and had two daughters with him. named Anne and Judy. In the early 1950s, Winnie had suffered two traumatizing medical procedures that ended with her and Fred filing a malpractice lawsuit against a San Luis Obispo doctor

named Edison French. According to court documents, Dr. French was accused of botching two hysterectomy surgeries without Winnie's consent and being grossly negligent when it came to her post-op follow-up care, which nearly resulted in her death.

The after effects of these events changed the couple's life immensely in their family's well-being as a whole. So they sued Dr. French and his hospital for between $200,000 and $350,000. In October 1953, a jury awarded them $79,000 in damages, which when you take into account inflation would be close to $1 million in today's currency. Interestingly, in the court filings and in an article by the then-telegram Tribune, one of the San Luis Obispo-based attorneys defending Dr. Edison and his hospital staff in the civil suit was none other than a guy with the initials, A.H. Brazil.

Now, I'm not 100% sure that that A.H. Brazil is the same San Luis Obispo attorney named A. Brazil, who went into Kings Canyon National Park with Fred in 1975 shortly before he vanished. But by similarities in their names, I suspect it could be. What I can't figure out, though, is if why Fred and one of the attorneys who defended a doctor who Fred and his first wife sued for a lot of money and one would ever hang out together, let alone journey into the wiles of a national park for a fishing trip several decades after they were battling it out on opposite sides of the courtroom. I mean, for Pete's sake, the AH Brazil who represented the doctor Fred and Winnie sued

told the press after that verdict was read that he 100% believed the verdict was unjust and his team would pursue an immediate appeal for a new trial. But that appeal was ultimately denied a few months later and again at a higher court level in 1955. But something the civil malpractice suit did, or at least the outcome did, was make Fred Gist's name way more publicly known.

It was basically considered a landmark case in California with regards to medical malpractice. practice lawsuits. Every day at the trial between 40 and 80 people attended to see which way it was going to go and it became in some respects a bit of a public spectacle. I think it's fair to say that when the verdict was awarded in Fred and Winnie's favor, a lot of people became aware that they'd come into a substantial sum of money very quickly. However, as far as I can tell, it seems like Fred was doing all right for himself financially even before that civil suit wrapped up. He and Winnie were pretty active in the community and the local business and political scene and seemed to be the all-American

success story. He was a Stanford University graduate with a degree in economics who'd taken control of his father's San Luis Obispo-based real estate business in 1932. Not long after that, he served a two-year term as a city councilman in San Luis Obispo and went on to hold a position as the commissioner of finance. In the mid-1940s, he was appointed to work on a commission that drafted the first master zoning plan for San Luis Obispo, and he stayed in that position for a decade. In 1966, when he was in his late 50s, he sold his family's real estate company and got more involved in real estate appraising.

He maintained close ties to his community, his alma mater, Stanford, and was a dedicated member of his local Rotary Club. Toward the end of the 1960s, he and Winnie divorced, and he married Lolita shortly afterwards in Las Vegas. Fast forward to September 1982, though, and his missing person's case had languished for several long years.

So Lolita and his two daughters began to pursue the process of having him legally declared deceased. They held a memorial service for him at a church in San Luis Obisbo, and that act, for all intents and purposes, seemed to mark the official closure of his case. By the end of 1982, Lolita petitioned to be the administrator of his estate, and that's where nearly all of the reporting on Fred's story ends. His first wife, Winnie, died in 2010, and according to her obituary, remained living in the house she and Fred had shared when they first got married. I have to assume that was part of their divorce agreement,

but a small detail I read a little further down in her obituary was that the horseback trip Fred banished on in 1975 was characterized as an annual trip, meaning it was something he'd do year after year, either by himself or with friends, which to me is noteworthy. I think it speaks to a fact that we already know about him, which was that he knew King's Canyon National Park well. So why did he just drop off the face of the earth? And why have his remains never been found?

One theory that's emerged over the years is that he could have been attacked by a predatory animal. But like I mentioned earlier, there was little to no physical evidence discovered that supported that. Sure, anything is possible, but I would have expected that if that were the case, searchers would have found some kind of a mountain lion or bear near where he was last known to be. You'd also think that they would have found drag marks, blood, clothing, or human remains fairly early on in the ground searches if they were looking at a scenario where Fred was mauled to death. Then there's also the suggestion that perhaps Fred wanted to disappear. This theory is, in my opinion, the hardest to believe,

because at the time of his disappearance, it wasn't like Fred's life was in the pits. He was remarried, had adult children, and seemed to have no custody issues or disputes with his first wife, and seemed to have a thriving business. The estate he left for Lolita was reportedly pretty sizable, so it's hard to imagine he would just walk away from that. The one scenario that can never be ruled out is foul play. I found some news clippings that explained how Fred was involved in some high-profile real estate deals in the 1930s that involved selling San Luis Obispo City Hall, and securing a multi-year lease for a county-owned airport that the military and commercial companies both used. But I didn't read anywhere that he had any enemies in that line of work

or had gotten tied up with people who would want him gone. I don't know to what extent law enforcement questioned his traveling companions or the hired supply packer who joined them, but even if, hypothetically, one of those guys had done something to Fred, in my mind, it would have been pretty challenging to get away with the crime without someone else noticing. Plus, like, what would any of them have had to gain from him dying? There is a part of me, though, that wonders if in all of Fred's dealings as a real estate agent,

appraiser, and former city official, if he ever made any enemies that maybe even he wasn't fully aware of. How that person or people would have managed to get to him during his hiking trip, though, is probably something will never be able to ascertain, if, in fact, foul play was involved in his disappearance. Sadly, according to Ancestry.com records, it appears Lolita passed away in 2001, without ever getting answers about what happened to her late husband. For those of you who don't necessarily trust everything the internet has to say, but still

like looking anyway, there's a pretty interesting Reddit thread for this case that I got deep in the weeds with. And one poster on that thread alleged that back in 2008, Fred's youngest daughter Judy, who was in her upper 60s at the time, and her husband filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain all the documentation related to the case, but what exactly came from that effort? I don't know. Because Fred was born in 1909, it's unlikely that even if he did survive whatever happened to him in August 1975, that he would still be alive today. If my math is correct, he'd be like 116 years old, which statistically is almost impossible. Still, there's

The National Missing and Unidentified Person System created a case number for him in 2024 with the hopes of getting his information out there so that if remains are ever uncovered, he could possibly be identified. Namus lists the investigating agency to contact as the National Park Service in Sequoia and Kings Canyon. You can reach them at 559-565-4-2-8. Park Predators is an audio Chuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpreditors.com.

You can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. I think Chuck would approve.