The father as well as the ranger traversed the distance to make the Key sighting credible and were able to verify it was possible. There are always watchers in the woods whether they are animals or humans.
My intuition tells me that Dennis was more than likely missing for longer than 5 minutes from his father's sight. His father was engaged in conversation and that 5 minutes could have easily been 10+. The average a 10-year-old in good health can run a mile is at max 12 minutes. Dennis was 6, so let's say he could do it in 25 minutes. Meaning in roughly 12 minutes he could make it half a mile. Being this is the forest and not a straight run, let's say he possibly could have made 1/4 mile in 12 minutes. Thus, if he had been missing say 10 minutes .... he would have made some good ground. A lot can happen in that 1/4 mile to a 6 year-old. Plus, in the dense forest sound would be obscured for a number of reasons. He may never have heard his father calling. His father never have heard him calling. If an animal or person had been watching this child, this was the perfect time to attack/grab him. He had no chance. It also would be the "perfect storm" for him to have an accident that leads to his death.
The fact that many of the searchers weren't trained to search as well as the constant raining, hindered this investigation almost immediately. The mention of the Green Beret involvement does intrigue me. The secrecy surrounding their presence as well as the fact they were well-armed, speaks volumes in the consideration that this was a human abduction. Dennis never left that National Park.
I do hope that one day there is definition evidence of what happened to this sweet little boy. His family deserves that much. Sadly, his father died before knowing the truth. However, they get to be together in Heaven, so they are both at peace together.
Snipped and EBM
I agree with much of what you say, but I disagree with your conclusions regarding the green berets. First of all, what secrecy? Their participation doesn't seem to have been much of a secret. Moreover, even if government officials suspected an abduction, that doesn't say anything about what actually happened: their theory could as easily have been wrong as right. The point is probably moot because I don't think abduction was ever their main theory. That they conducted such an intensive search tells me that they hoped to find Dennis alive.
As a direct result of failing to find Dennis, some officials may have opted to consider abduction rather than accept the reality that their search was inadequate. We now know that searchers often
drastically underestimate how far a lost person might travel. Many people who have wandered off have subsequently been found (sometimes alive, sometimes not) far outside the search area. In this case, the search area was 56 square miles--that's roughly 7.5 miles by 7.5 miles. That's nothing. Dennis could have been outside that search area within a couple of hours, maybe sooner.
The father chose to believe in the abduction theory because that essentially absolved him and his other sons of guilt. It couldn't be that they weren't watching six-year-old Dennis closely enough, no--it must have been some bad person's fault. (Never mind that they were essentially in the middle of nowhere.)
Even today searches can be intensive yet unsuccessful. Hiker Geraldine Largay died in her tent two or three miles from where she was last seen. Her body was found two years later. Search dogs came within 100 feet of her campsite during the initial search efforts yet failed to locate her.
As for the Key sighting, there was no sighting of Dennis. Have you ever heard an owl kill a rabbit? I have, and that's a blood-curdling scream. (Moreover, I've never heard of a case where a child abducted by an adult was known to scream at the time of the abduction let alone an hour later. Children are usually too afraid to do anything but comply quietly.) The boy who saw a man leaving the woods may have seen a poacher, or he might have had an overactive imagination.
I believe we have something close to definitive evidence in the testimony of the ginseng hunter. He had no reason to lie and every reason not to cone forward at all. The skeleton he saw was surely Dennis. Unfortunately, I don't believe there would be anything left at this point. Even Dennis's baby teeth would have decayed by now. He might have had a couple of his adult incisors, and there could have been some plastic buttons on his clothing. Good luck finding those in the middle of the Smoky Mountains.
I enjoy a good mystery as much as anyone, but there's no mystery here. There hasn't been since 1985 when the ginseng hunter came forward.
