Identified! ID - Nez Perce Co., WhtMale 229UMID, 18-99, in Snake River, Jun'82 Dewayne Surls

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johnnyhands said:
The drowning on June 14, 1982 happened in Riggins in Idaho County. Dewayne was found in Nez Perce county, just below Latah County, where the two were from. Nez Perce County is just below Latah, and has a small part of its southern border on Idaho County. Yet they couldn’t put the June 26, 1982 body found together. That is really strange. Note the sketch of Dewayne shown in the Doe Network article link I posted above, is, to me, a accurate enough likeness.
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It seems like he was ruled out for some reason.

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It’s going to be interesting
victoriarobinson642 said:
It seems like he was ruled out for some reason.

View attachment 530851
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The article (which I read in full on the Idaho Cold Cases facebook page, and there are more articles there) later said he had some red & white swim trunks on. Were family members or friends ever asked if they recognized those trunks? Was a picture ever shown to anyone (there was some bruising, but did it make him unrecognizable?)
 
victoriarobinson642 said:
Posts from his siblings spell it 'Dewayne', so I think the article got it wrong. I was searching Dewayne and not 'Dwayne'.
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Good enough for me. I’d like to hear what all the siblings were shown in 1982 to rule out a match, if anything, regarding the floating body case since the possibility of a link between the two-weeks-before drowning incident they knew involved Dewayne - was “being studied."
 
Here’s an article I found that says the two youths “had been bound for Boise.” Now I want to know if the strong current was known to be going north, which would have been another clue to match the floating body in the Snake River found two days after this article was written.

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Also, it looks like the articles that mentioned the Snake River near Riggins and Hwy 95 were wrong. It was the Salmon River. Which means Dewayne’s body had to be carried all the way up the Salmon River to where it meets the Snake, then up the Snake all the way up to near the Grande Rondo river. Were there some mountains in between? That current was really strong, apparently.
 
johnnyhands said:
Also, it looks like the articles that mentioned the Snake River near Riggins and Hwy 95 were wrong. It was the Salmon River. Which means Dewayne’s body had to be carried all the way up the Salmon River to where it meets the Snake, then up the Snake all the way up to near the Grande Rondo river. Were there some mountains in between? That current was really strong, apparently.
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The geography of it all is tripping me up o_O. I do wonder if something happened to Dewayne between where the crash was and where they left from.
 
breachtones said:
It's really odd. Riggins is about 90km south of Heller Bar where Surls was found, which is a really long distance to float through the river.
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I’m looking at elevations for Idaho towns nearby the rivers and it looks like from south to north seems to go downhill, though there’s a long stretch where there are no towns, for either the Salmon or Snake - and it looks like there are mountains, but the river cuts through a valley in between them, most of the way.

So I’m concluding the travel along the rivers was (mostly?) downhill.

Elevations going from south to north:
Riggins - 1821 ft.
White Bird - 1581 ft.
< Snake River meets Grande Rondo River - no towns on the map, where body was found>

further north along the Snake:
Asotin (Washington) - 801 ft.
Lewiston - 745 ft.
 
If the info about the GSW is correct (which I am starting to doubt) then my first thought would be that Michael or someone else shot him and either drove into the river with him on purpose or also shot Michael and managed to drive the car into the river with them both inside but not the killer (possible if you rig the car up). Or the GSW were postmortem and someone (maybe assuming he was a log or a deceased animal) shot at his body whilst it was in the river.

Or the person who did the autopsy made a mistake and the wounds were from the crash or from being in the river, but GSW are quite distinct and that would be quite a mistake for a pathologist to make. The other option is that some information got muddled up, lost and misremembered or incorrectly written down or incorrectly relayed somewhere along the line. Easy to happen with old cases.

Wonder if the car and/or Michael were ever found. Maybe there could be a sonar search to try to find the car if not.
 
johnnyhands said:
Here’s an article I found that says the two youths “had been bound for Boise.” Now I want to know if the strong current was known to be going north, which would have been another clue to match the floating body in the Snake River found two days after this article was written.

View attachment 530873
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Also notable about this story is it’s dated June 24, 1982 - a whole ten days after the two youths disappearances - and it was still too dangerous to search the Salmon River. I wonder if was just as dangerous far upstream in the Snake River where Dewayne’s body was found.
 
MarziPanda said:
If the info about the GSW is correct (which I am starting to doubt) then my first thought would be that Michael or someone else shot him and either drove into the river with him on purpose or also shot Michael and managed to drive the car into the river with them both inside but not the killer (possible if you rig the car up). Or the GSW were postmortem and someone (maybe assuming he was a log or a deceased animal) shot at his body whilst it was in the river.

Or the person who did the autopsy made a mistake and the wounds were from the crash or from being in the river, but GSW are quite distinct and that would be quite a mistake for a pathologist to make. The other option is that some information got muddled up, lost and misremembered or incorrectly written down or incorrectly relayed somewhere along the line. Easy to happen with old cases.

Wonder if the car and/or Michael were ever found. Maybe there could be a sonar search to try to find the car if not.
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If Michael was found drowned in the river, do you think he could now also be considered a homicide victim - because the gunfire caused Michael to veer the car he was driving off into the river? Not saying it would be easy to prove in court, but it seems like the most likely scenario. So now Nez Perce County might have a double murder on its hands.

On the other hand, if he and the vehicle were never found, I suppose you couldn't rule him out as a suspect (though the 18-yr-old master criminal who assumed a new identity would be have to be the explanation - extremely unlikely IMO.) What a strange case!
 
breachtones said:
I wonder if there was a fight or argument in the car that led to this between the two. The circumstances of disappearance compared to the presumed death Dewayne suffered are wildly different.
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Doesn't seem like you can rule it out, does it? To pursue that theory, it seems like they'd need witnesses to say Michael had that kind of weapon - or was obsessed with guns and irresponsible. Not that I think it was likely.

Did the ear-witnesses near Riggins who heard the car plunge into the river hear gunshots just before that? If not, why not? That will figure heavy into whatever theory LE comes up with.
 
I saw a new August 1, 1982 article posted on the Idaho Cold Cases facebook page regarding Michael Coffin’s body being found. It was found Friday, July 30, 1982, identified by dental records. The location was the Salmon River near Slate Creek, about 25 miles north of where the car went into the Salmon River. The article does say “(Dewayne) Surls has not yet been found” even though we now know he had been, over a month earlier.

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johnnyhands said:
I’m looking at elevations for Idaho towns nearby the rivers and it looks like from south to north seems to go downhill, though there’s a long stretch where there are no towns, for either the Salmon or Snake - and it looks like there are mountains, but the river cuts through a valley in between them, most of the way.

So I’m concluding the travel along the rivers was (mostly?) downhill.

Elevations going from south to north:
Riggins - 1821 ft.
White Bird - 1581 ft.
< Snake River meets Grande Rondo River - no towns on the map, where body was found>

further north along the Snake:
Asotin (Washington) - 801 ft.
Lewiston - 745 ft.
Click to expand...

Note, another town I missed that the Salmon River runs through south of White Bird is Slate Creek, elevation a whopping 8251 feet. Located about 25 miles from where the car crash happened - and where Michael body was found on July 30, 1982. Assuming that elevation figure of 8251 is somewhat close to where the Salmon River runs through the town, that would mean a serious uphill trip for both victims bodies. Then again, sources said the river was running at 20 mph, and we know that Dewayne’s body made it through there, so it happened.
 
Another
MarziPanda said:
If the info about the GSW is correct (which I am starting to doubt) then my first thought would be that Michael or someone else shot him and either drove into the river with him on purpose or also shot Michael and managed to drive the car into the river with them both inside but not the killer (possible if you rig the car up). Or the GSW were postmortem and someone (maybe assuming he was a log or a deceased animal) shot at his body whilst it was in the river.
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I suspect the last is the most likely. They seemed pretty certain of the make and model of firearm, which I don't think they would be if the ME mistook puncture sounds for GSW. I'm just not sure if in that time period it was possible for a rural ME to accurately determine whether the GSW were perimortem vs. postmortem.
 
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