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

[victoriarobinson642]

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.

It seems like he was ruled out for some reason.

 

[victoriarobinson642]

Are you thinking the 1982 news article got it wrong (left out the first ‘e’ in Dewayne?) And Othram got it right?

Posts from his siblings spell it 'Dewayne', so I think the article got it wrong. I was searching Dewayne and not 'Dwayne'.

 

[johnnyhands]

It’s going to be interesting

It seems like he was ruled out for some reason.

View attachment 530851

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?)

 

[johnnyhands]

Posts from his siblings spell it 'Dewayne', so I think the article got it wrong. I was searching Dewayne and not 'Dwayne'.

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."

 

[johnnyhands]

Here’s a link to the Lewiston Tribune about the investigation into the unidentified man from 2012:

No DNA match for Snake River body

TRIBUNEThe recent DNA test of a 30-year-old homicide victim still awaiting identification did not result in any matches, the Nez Perce County Sheriff's Office said Friday.County…

www.lmtribune.com

 

[johnnyhands]

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.

 

[johnnyhands]

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.

 

[breachtones]

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.

 

[victoriarobinson642]

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.

The geography of it all is tripping me up . I do wonder if something happened to Dewayne between where the crash was and where they left from.

 

[breachtones]

The geography of it all is tripping me up . I do wonder if something happened to Dewayne between where the crash was and where they left from.

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.

 

[johnnyhands]

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.

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.

 

[MarziPanda]

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.