Excellent lengthy article from 2002
Why We Want Their Bodies Back | DiscoverMagazine.com
Why We Want Their Bodies Back
As humans have evolved, they've learned there are good reasons not to bury an empty coffin
By
Kristine Larsen,
Robert Sapolsky|Friday, February 01, 2002
"In the case of Bonnie and Mitch, my schoolmates and I realized years ago that they were never coming home. But because we never got the bodies back, there will always be a measure of uncertainty about what happened to them and about the man who finally made that phone call to the police. Allyn Smith was 24 at the time of the Watkins Glen rock festival. On the way home he hitched a ride in a Volkswagen bus. There was a scrawny young couple riding in the back, also hitching from the festival. Smith and the driver smoked a joint. It was a hot day and there was a river nearby. They stopped, planning to cool off in the water. As Smith crouched to take off his shoes, wondering at the wisdom of going in the rough water, he heard a shout. He turned to see that the girl was in the river. The boy—her companion—leaped in to try to save her. Then they were both swept away, down the rapids, still very much alive.
That is the story Smith told the police. No names were exchanged in the van, but he overheard the two talking about a summer camp where the girl had worked and recalled identifying details about her clothes. It would appear that the couple had been Bonnie and Mitch. Smith is now cooperating with the police, trying to identify the stretch of river where he says they disappeared. "I felt he was credible," says Roy Streever, the investigating detective with the New York State police. Nonetheless, something didn't happen that day. Smith, an athletic Navy vet, didn't try to rescue Bonnie and Mitch. Nor did the driver of the bus. Eventually they drove off. At the next exit, Smith got out and headed in another direction. The driver said he'd make an anonymous phone call to the police from a gas station and report that the two kids had been swept down the river. Police have no record that a call was made.
The parents of Bonnie and Mitch had to cope not only with the loss of their children but also with a burden of horrible uncertainty. One father and one stepfather went to their graves never knowing what had happened. The rest of us finally got the answer to the mystery that plagued us for decades.
Once we were kids who believed enough in our immortality that we would hitch rides with strangers. Now we flaunt the same irrationality by cheating on our low-cholesterol diets. Once we had not yet learned that life brings tragedies beyond control. Now we wonder how we can spare our own children from that knowledge. Once we lost two friends and could only imagine florid, violent sins of commission. Now, instead, we have a doughy, middle-aged lesson about the toxic consequences of quiet sins of omission and indifference.
Sometimes, when you get the body back, or at least find out the whole story, you learn something critical about the nature of the living and of those who knew all along what happened."