Discussion: Bar S F orienteering map featured on Court TV

I was channel surfing and saw an orienteering map on Forensic Files. Evidently someone saw a skull on the grounds of the Bar S F Boy Scout ranch and was able to use the map to pinpoint the location. Does anyone know about this?

Here is the story as I know it...

Back in 1987/8, Raimo Pitkanen from Finland was mapping the S-F Scout Ranch (where one of the days of the team trials will be held this spring). When he had nearly completed the map, he discovered some weathered human bones poking out of the ground in a reentrant. Just before leaving the country, he gave the map to Teena Orling of the St. Louis Orienteering Club and put an x on the map where he had found the skeleton. Teena notified the rangers, and thereby the police, and they went out to investigate but found nothing. At that point, either Teena contacted Raimo or he realized his mistake and he told her that he had made a parallel error when marking the x on the map-- it was the next reentrant over. Then she had to convince the rangers and police to again go out into the woods and investigate, not knowing what they would find. They did find evidence of a skeleton and upon investigation found that it was the skeleton of an Asian female. They began their further investigation, analyzing the skeleton and searching records of missing people.

At the same time, the orienteerers in the area heard this story and one of them was leading an orienteering workshop for a group of boy scout leaders at S-F. He mentioned that a human skeleton had recently been found nearby on the ranch while the map was being made.

The police investigation continued and eventually the police found that there had been a Asian women reported missing who was the wife of a boy scout leader and the mother of two children. Eventually they found that the man had murdered his wife and burried her on the boy scout ranch after storing her in a freezer for several months.

That boy scout leader, the murderer, had been in the group in that orienteering workshop when the orienteerer had mentioned that a body had been found.

That's the story that I had always heard.

I don't suppose there is an IOF symbol for shallow grave in a reentrant?

see you at team trials!!!

(and.. anyone else who knows the story... definately correct me or add details:)

That jibes with the account I saw. I tuned in just as they were showing an X on an orienteering map and missed where the map came from. Thanks for clearing that up, Suzanne.

And wasn't it clever of Raimo to return to Finland before the authorities were notified!

Rami Pitkanen speaks very little English, and is not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the US legal system or society. He didn't know what sort of complications he might get into if he went to the authorities (e.g. not being able to leave the country if he was needed as a witness), so I believe he didn't actually say anything until he was home in Finland, at which point he mailed Teena a map (or at least, that was my understanding, but it's been a number of years since I discussed this with her). I don't remember whether Rami realized his mistake, or if Teena just kept looking around until she found the bones. It wasn't far from the parking lot.

I believe the culprit had told the neighbors that his wife had gone back to Vietnam for an extended visit with relatives. And I believe he was convicted and is in jail.

Not the only case of a fieldchecker finding human remains -- Sara Mae Berman found a relatively fresh corpse on the Pine Hill map, and brought the police in. My understanding is that that death was never explained or understood.

The most famous case in Australia is in Belanglo State Forest, about 100 miles SW of Sydney and just off the main Sydney-Melbourne road. The first of (so far) seven bodies found in the forest were found in 1992 by orienteers running a course (and were not far from a control, but the course setting team had not noticed anything). Orienteers training in the forest independently the next day and wondering what all the police were doing there were briefly of interest to said police. I guess it's one of the few mentions of orienteering in Wikipedia, beyond the main 'orienteering' entry. The map is named "Executioner's Drop" (after a cliff on its northern edge, away from the road and where the bodies were found, but still...).

A discussion on O-net at the time decided that a black 'x' (for 'man-made object') was the appropriate symbol.

I think orienteers in Britain have also found at least one body.

When I was vetting a control point for the Blue Hills Traverse, I met a state trooper with a dog who had been looking for a man who had been missing since Oct. 22. His car had been found in the parking lot near the Trailside Museum (on the west side of the map). The trooper told me that they strongly felt he was "down" (a euphemism, clearly) somewhere in the park. When he heard I was an orienteer and that there was going to be a race across the Blue Hills, he asked me to ask the runners to be on the lookout.

Subsequently to that, I heard from someone that he had been found, so I didn't issue the warning. Turned out that person was wrong -- he was still missing.

There's a happy ending -- he turned up on Nov. 22, 2 days after the Traverse. I don't know if it's public knowledge where he'd been. Here's a link to the discussion from which I gleaned the above information:

http://www.angelsmissing.com/forum/index.php?showt...