WY WY - Kim Crumbo, 74, Shoshone Lake, 19 Sep 2021

DNA Solves
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DNA Solves
As the search continues for a missing former Navy SEAL in Utah, an autopsy determined that his brother died of hypothermia while the two were on a trip at Yellowstone National Park, park officials said Tuesday.

Mark O'Neill, 67, of Chimacum, Washington, and Kim Crumbo, 74, of Ogden, Utah — both retired from the National Park Service — were reported missing by a family member on Sep. 19 after they failed to return from their four-night backcountry trip, the agency said.

"On Sunday, Sept. 19, park crews located a vacant campsite with gear on the south side of Shoshone Lake, as well as a canoe, paddle, PFD and other personal belongings on the east shore of the lake," the NPS said. Crews found the body of O'Neill the next morning.

Recovery efforts for Crumbo by foot and boat are expected to continue this week, with the help of sonar equipment, dog teams and a helicopter crew.

Brother of missing former Navy SEAL in Yellowstone died of hypothermia, autopsy finds
 
Kim-Crumbo-625x938.jpg

Kim Crumbo is pictured in this undated photo.
Photo supplied, Wild Arizona




John Davis is torn in talking about Kim Crumbo, the highly regarded conservationist who was reported missing last week during a visit to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

The Rewilding Insitute executive director and fellow conservationist lapses into the past tense, then stops himself and returns to the present tense. Crumbo served on the Rewilding Institute board and was very active in the organization, among others. “He’s a hero. He’s a legend,” Davis said.

It’s been a tough time for friends, family and associates of Crumbo, of Ogden, not to mention Mark O’Neill. The two men, half-brothers, were reported overdue by a family member on Sept. 19 from a four-night trip to Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone and the body of O’Neill, of Chimacum, Washington, was found the next day along the lake shore.

Park search-and-rescue crews have been searching for Crumbo, 74, and last Friday, the National Park Service announced the mission had moved from a rescue to recovery effort. The rescue mode is utilized when there’s a chance of saving somebody’s life while recovery mode typically implies the focus of a search has probably died, according to rescue organizations.

Kim Crumbo lauded for conservation efforts as search in Yellowstone continues
 
What happened to Kim Crumbo?

Nov 2021; Updated Dec 2021

Since her husband’s disappearance, Becky Crumbo has gotten several messages and phone calls from people who knew him well, convinced that “something sinister” happened to him, she said. But his wife of 48 years doesn’t believe that. “It was a fluke thing, and it was an act of nature,” she said.

“And yeah, they both survived a whole lot of things in their life,” she continued. “But they didn’t survive this one.

Unofficial searches also are ongoing, Crumbo’s wife said, as volunteers continue to walk the perimeter of Shoshone Lake.
 
In Remembrance: Kim Crumbo Fund for the Wild

The Rewilding team and our close wildlands partners have been rocked and saddened by the news of Kim Crumbo’s disappearance.

Kim was a Rewilding board member, Rewilding Leadership Council member, and Wildlands Coordinator staff member. Before launching his career in wilderness and river conservation and management, he spent four years with the Navy’s SEAL Team One completing two combat deployments to Vietnam. He worked as a professional river guide for 10 years and served 20 years with the National Park Service in Grand Canyon as the river ranger and later as Wilderness Coordinator.
 
Kim Crumbo

Initial Report
According to the New York Post, Search crews in Yellowstone National Park are looking for an ex-Navy SEAL described as a “monumental hero” who vanished during a canoe trip with his half-brother, who was found dead, officials said. Kim Crumbo, a 74-year-old Navy SEAL veteran who served two tours in Vietnam, was still missing Wednesday, September 22, 2021, after he never returned with his half-brother from their four-night trip on Shoshone Lake in Wyoming, park officials said. Rescuers on Monday, September 20, found the body of his brother, Mark O’Neill of Chimacum, Washington, along the eastern shore. O’Neill likely drowned, but an official cause of death has not been determined, park spokeswoman Morgan Warthin said. Near where his body was found, crews located a canoe, paddle, flotation device and other items, officials said. A vacant campsite was also located on the south side of the lake, which can be subject to high winds and sudden storms. A relative had reported the two experienced boaters missing Sunday when it became apparent they were overdue from their backcountry canoe trip. Both of the men had previously worked at Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park in various capacities, including as river rangers, park officials said. Crumbo had co-founded the conservation group Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, which later joined forces with another group to form Wild Arizona. His colleague Kelly Burke said those who know Crumbo have been reconnecting over his disappearance “to hold each other up and put that energy in leaving the door open for him to walk back in.” “It’s Kim Crumbo, after all,” she said. “He’s a monumental hero and legend of a man. We can’t bring ourselves to believe he wouldn’t emerge from this.”


Missing From
Yellowstone National Park


Investigative Entities
National Park Service Law Enforcement Rangers


Case Updates:

  1. The search for Kim Crumbo has become a recovery mission; cause of death released for Mark O'Neill
 

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Details of Disappearance​

Crumbo was last seen at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming on September 12, 2021. He is from Ogden, Utah and went to Wyoming with his brother, Mark Crumbo O'Neill, a Chimacum, Washington resident. They went on a four-night camping trip in the Shoshone Lake area of Yellowstone and never returned. A photo of O'Neill is posted with this case summary.

The men were reported overdue on September 19, and a search began. Searchers located a vacant campsite on the south side of Shoshone Lake and found a canoe, one paddle, a personal flotation device and some other belongings on the lake's east shore. On September 20, O'Neill's body was also found on the east shore. He had died of exposure. There was no sign of Crumbo, however; he has never been located.

Crumbo, a former Navy Seal who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, is a noted conservationist with extensive skills and experience outdoors. He was on the board of Wild Arizona, a conservation organization, and had worked as a National Park Service river ranger and river guide at Grand Canyon National Park. He is presumed deceased.
 
Sept 22, 2021


Kim Crumbo.
Veteran Kim Crumbo, 74, was a Navy SEAL who served two tours in Vietnam.Instagram


Search crews in Yellowstone National Park are looking for an ex-Navy SEAL described as a “monumental hero” who vanished during a canoe trip with his half-brother, who was found dead, officials said.​

Kim Crumbo, a 74-year-old Navy SEAL veteran who served two tours in Vietnam, was still missing Wednesday after he never returned with his half-brother from their four-night trip on Shoshone Lake in Wyoming, park officials said.

Rescuers on Monday found the body of his brother, Mark O’Neill of Chimacum, Washington, along the eastern shore.

O’Neill likely drowned, but an official cause of death has not been determined, park spokeswoman Morgan Warthin said.

Near where his body was found, crews located a canoe, paddle, flotation device and other items, officials said.
A vacant campsite was also located on the south side of the lake, which can be subject to high winds and sudden storms.

A relative had reported the two experienced boaters missing Sunday when it became apparent they were overdue from their backcountry canoe trip.
Both of the men had previously worked at Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park in various capacities, including as river rangers, park officials said.

Shoshone Lake.The body of Mark O’Neill, Kim Crumbo’s half-brother, was found along the eastern shore of Shoshone Lake.

Crumbo had co-founded the conservation group Grand Canyon Wildlands Council, which later joined forces with another group to form Wild Arizona.

His colleague Kelly Burke said those who know Crumbo have been reconnecting over his disappearance “to hold each other up and put that energy in leaving the door open for him to walk back in.”

“It’s Kim Crumbo, after all,” she said. “He’s a monumental hero and legend of a man. We can’t bring ourselves to believe he wouldn’t emerge from this.”
 
SEP 15, 2023
[...]

Crumbo, who was a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation through his father, swam with barracuda while growing up in Hawaii as part of a military family. He became a Navy SEAL and served two tours in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star.

In 1971, he traded the mayhem of the Mekong for the more peaceful if tumultuous Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, hiring on as the first guide at Holiday River Expeditions. The job would propel him into the National Park Service ranger corps and on to deep work in conservation.

A decade as a river guide and 20 years with the Park Service made Crumbo part of the patina of the red rock southwest. He published a river runners’ historical guide to the Grand Canyon. Five environmental groups honored his conservation work, which included aiding the reintroduction of the endangered Mexican wolf to New Mexico and Arizona.

At the time he disappeared, Crumbo was working in Utah as wilderness coordinator for The Rewildling Institute, a New Mexico conservation group. Eight months before he vanished, he completed a 50-page report titled America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act. ...

[...]

*Lengthy article; much more at link
 
JUN 29, 2024
Officially, the park doesn’t appear to track the missing. When asked for a list of missing people, the Yellowstone Park Public Affairs Office referred Cowboy State Daily to the national park’s cold case database containing 25 missing persons cold cases for all national parks.

Campbell was the only person cited on the list to have gone missing in Yellowstone. Of the others, nine went missing in Yosemite State National Park in California while five disappeared in Grand Canyon National Park.

The other five missing persons who disappeared in Yellowstone were culled from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s missing person database and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).

Along with Campbell, those never found include Luke Sanburg, Bruce Pike, Stuart Isaac, Kim Crumbo and 8-year-old Dennis Johnson, all of whom disappeared in the park between 1966 and 2021.
 

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