I wish people that knew this young man would come forward and share something about his life, character, days leading up to his disappearance, friends etc. with us.
That would certainly help quite a bit, because at this point, there are numerous questions that have not been answered about the circumstances of his disappearance that could only be elaborated on by people who knew him. Especially the days leading up to his disappearance, because if he really is missing voluntarily or met with foul play, usually, if someone plans to disappear or thinks that someone might harm them, they express it. I would also really like to find out what, exactly, happened to the other boy who was in the desert and died 3 years later.
Upon reviewing this case yet again, there are more glaring things that pop out at me:
I missed something the first time I read the old newspaper article: the police changed Jason's case from a simple rescue effort to a full-on missing persons investigation the day after his disappearance and the search was ended, at least in the desert. Now, instead of search and rescue teams, the police were solely looking for Jason, presumably they were no longer searching in the desert, for whatever reason. I think that around this point, the police started to suspect that other things may have happened to Jason other than him just being lost in the desert. The question is, what made them think those things? Another thing is that from my experiences with some similar cases, search parties usually aren't called off after barely a day of searching, but since I'm no expert, correct me if I'm wrong. It seems as if they didn't give up the search, they prematurely stopped it for whatever reason and went somewhere else, thinking as if there's a better chance he was there than in the desert.
On another note, today (well, for me, it was yesterday, but for the people in the central areas and in the west, it still is) today is Thanksgiving and I can't imagine how hard it must be for Jason's parents on Thanksgiving not knowing where their child is.