Found Deceased CA - Paul Miller, 51, Canadian missing in Joshua Tree National Park, San Bernardino Co., 13 Jul 2018

[RickshawFan]

Do we know how many days their trip was for? Do we know the order of the trip? I know JTSP was last. I'm going to guess Grand Canyon start and JTSP to finish.

Google Maps

The above map shows the 4 national parks + Vegas.

Google Maps

The above map shows a route from the Grand Canyon to Bryce, Zion, Vegas (maybe they stopped?), then onto Joshua Tree.

They could fly into Flagstaff airport and fly out of Palm Springs.

There is a whole lotta of nothin', beautiful nothin' but desolate- many areas that are just miles and miles of similar scenery and not a lot of people about. I've driven many of those routes and it is gorgeous.

PS. I'm new to this case and I have read the thread but if anything I contribute is redundant I apologize. I'm hazey from my foster kittens getting spayed and neutered today and all the stress that comes with it.

No. They could have done that in a week, though. Maybe they were out there 10 days.

 

[RickshawFan]

Do we know how many days their trip was for? Do we know the order of the trip? I know JTSP was last. I'm going to guess Grand Canyon start and JTSP to finish.

Google Maps

The above map shows the 4 national parks + Vegas.

Google Maps

The above map shows a route from the Grand Canyon to Bryce, Zion, Vegas (maybe they stopped?), then onto Joshua Tree.

They could fly into Flagstaff airport and fly out of Palm Springs.

There is a whole lotta of nothin', beautiful nothin' but desolate- many areas that are just miles and miles of similar scenery and not a lot of people about. I've driven many of those routes and it is gorgeous.

PS. I'm new to this case and I have read the thread but if anything I contribute is redundant I apologize. I'm hazey from my foster kittens getting spayed and neutered today and all the stress that comes with it.

The drive on that map is to the north rim of Grand Canyon. They almost certainly would have gone to the south rim. From Bryce/Zion, they would have gone via Page, which is on Lake Powell.

Still, Joshua Tree is crazy out of the way. They must REALLY have wanted to go there.

 

[PaulR]

Bakersfield?

Interesting, I think it's unlikely, the only flights I'm seeing to Toronto are 6:15am (American, through Pheonix and Chicago), 12:15 (American, Pheonix/Chicago and a redeye), 1:25pm (United, through Denver) and 7:17pm (American, Phoenix and then either Chicago or Philly.) None of these seem like good fits for an afternoon flight, either they are way too early to be catching a plane driving from JTNP or they aren't afternoon flights.

Las Vegas airport is about three hours away. It's possible they flew into/out of LAS, and avoided the open jaw and having to return the rental car to a different airport, since LAS is pretty close to their other destinations and is probably where they flew into. I'd call someone a numbskull for even thinking about getting in a three hour hike at 9am and expecting to be back at noon in time for a three hour drive to pick up an afternoon flight. But there are plenty of flights from LAS to Toronto. They're all going to be redeyes leaving that late in the day (4pm at the very, very earliest.) The actual afternoon flights (leaving around 5 or 6) have connections through Calgary or something. The non-stop redeyes all leave at midnight. All will get you into Toronto early in the morning.

 

[Snoopster]

Search scaled back for missing Guelph hiker in California

A local (to their home) news report with a few more details:

- they were supposed to catch their flight home the afternoon of the day he went missing (explains why Mrs Miller reported him missing so quickly)

- gives children’s details (some were wondering)

- a family member flew to California to help Mrs Miller & came home with her

ETA:

Land said he’s been working at the park for eight years and never has he seen anyone lost like this. Park staff respond to calls about missing hikers all the time, but sooner or later those hikers are found. This year, the park has already had five successful rescues.

The 49 Palms Oasis trail goes straight to the oasis and you walk the same trail back to the parking lot, Land said. “It’s not an extremely confusing or difficult trail to negotiate."

“Because of the way the area is, it’s literally in a canyon,” he said. “If he was going to go anywhere, there’s only one place kind of off the trail he would go, and we searched that extensively.”

Perhaps he didn't want to go home? Or someone 'interfered' with him?

 

[PaulR]

The drive on that map is to the north rim of Grand Canyon. They almost certainly would have gone to the south rim. From Bryce/Zion, they would have gone via Page, which is on Lake Powell.

Still, Joshua Tree is crazy out of the way. They must REALLY have wanted to go there.

51, assume wife is the same age - that's about the right age to be young when U2 became big. He'd have been 20 when their "Joshua Tree" album came out.

30 Years on, U2's 'The Joshua Tree' Still Draws Fans to the Edge of Death Valley

 

[Poppyflower]

What about this loop - Google Maps

Vegas > Zion (2h 39m) > Bryce (1h 49m)> Grand Canyon (south rim)(5h 2m) > JTNP (5h 43m)> Vegas (3h 8m)

I wonder if they listened to U2 on the juke box (do they still call it that)while playing cricket?

(I've tried to edit out my failed attempt of embedding a map but it doesn't show up here in the edit post window?)

 

[RickshawFan]

What about this loop - Google Maps

Vegas > Zion (2h 39m) > Bryce (1h 49m)> Grand Canyon (south rim)(5h 2m) > JTNP (5h 43m)> Vegas (3h 8m)

I wonder if they listened to U2 on the juke box (do they still call it that)while playing cricket?

Yes, that loop. I've done most of that route in reverse myself. Not Joshua Tree and not Grand Canyon per se. I stayed at Lake Powell (which I love for unknown reasons) near Page, followed up by Bryce and Zion.

 

[RickshawFan]

I'd call someone a numbskull for even thinking about getting in a three hour hike at 9am and expecting to be back at noon in time for a three hour drive to pick up an afternoon flight. But there are plenty of flights from LAS to Toronto. They're all going to be redeyes leaving that late in the day (4pm at the very, very earliest.) The actual afternoon flights (leaving around 5 or 6) have connections through Calgary or something. The non-stop redeyes all leave at midnight. All will get you into Toronto early in the morning.

That was a Friday, correct? So he likely didn't have to go to work 'til Monday. A red eye would have given plenty of time to recuperate.

 

[Poppyflower]

If they left when they were supposed to, drove to Vegas, that would give them time to play in Vegas a little bit too, prior to their flight.

There are plenty of red eyes from Vegas to Toronto on all the major airlines.

(sorry for the run on sentence, still hazy but at least ALL the kittens are finally asleep)

 

[PaulR]

That was a Friday, correct? So he likely didn't have to go to work 'til Monday. A red eye would have given plenty of time to recuperate.

Agreed, but there's a difference between them. The late night ones are nonstop, you get on the plane, sleep for ~4 hours, wake up and get your luggage. The ones earlier in the day - here's an example, WestJet 5:05pm - is a short (<3 hour) flight to Calgary, 3 hour layover, then a three hour flight into Toronto. I'm looking a month out, but they cost the same.

If this was a hiking vacation, I wonder why his wife didn't go on the hike with him?

 

[Poppyflower]

That was a Friday, correct? So he likely didn't have to go to work 'til Monday. A red eye would have given plenty of time to recuperate.

Yes, it was a Friday he went missing.

The flights I checked were a few weeks out on a Friday.

 

[SeesSeas]

If this was a hiking vacation, I wonder why his wife didn't go on the hike with him?

That does seem somewhat odd. I wonder if together they hiked the previous day on other trails in JTNP. They likely had to check out of their motel by 11am or noon. She probably didn't want to take a rushed shower (or no shower) after getting sweaty from a hike.

 

[PaulR]

That does seem somewhat odd. I wonder if together they hiked the previous day on other trails in JTNP. They likely had to check out of their motel by 11am or noon. She probably didn't want to take a rushed shower (or no shower) after getting sweaty from a hike.

The only thing worse than not taking a shower after a long hike is having to ride in a hot car for three hours with someone who didn't take a shower after a long hike.

Having to be out by 11/noon makes sense, except that means she's camped out in the lobby even if everything goes according to plan, unless checkout is at noon and she's walking out the door while he's pulling up to hotel in their rental car.

 

[Snoopster]

<snip>

If this was a hiking vacation, I wonder why his wife didn't go on the hike with him?

Perhaps she liked hiking to a certain degree, but didn't like hiking in extreme heat?
I might agree to go along with my spouse on a golfing vacation, but I can guarantee that he would want to golf more than I would. I would want him to have a vacation to could cater to his passion, but if I was a bit less passionate, but still enjoyed it, I might say that I'd sit out a couple of times.

These are reasonable compromises that couples make.

 

[Poppyflower]

If this was a hiking vacation, I wonder why his wife didn't go on the hike with him?

Could be many reasons. Maybe she wanted a leisurely morning, perhaps a break from him, was sick of the heat, slept in to focus on slots later?

Any reasons you think she may have not gone?

 

[PaulR]

Could be many reasons. Maybe she wanted a leisurely morning, perhaps a break from him, was sick of the heat, slept in to focus on slots later?

Any reasons you think she may have not gone?

No idea. A few people here have said that they'd just hang out at the trailhead. I'm not sure if I'd do that but it seems more interesting to me than sitting in a hotel room alone for three hours.

Someone earlier asked if there were other trails starting at this trailhead, and it doesn't look like it. But a walk from the trailhead to Twentynine Palms Highway is 1.7 miles along the road, downhill. Probably less if you just wanted to be within cell range to call an Uber, the nearest home is under a mile away. I think they said the car was in working order, and even if Paul was mistaken, he'd likely be hiking directly along the road hoping to flag someone down.

 

[RickshawFan]

Could be many reasons. Maybe she wanted a leisurely morning, perhaps a break from him, was sick of the heat, slept in to focus on slots later?

Any reasons you think she may have not gone?

He was being stubborn, and they had an argument about it? So he didn't get going 'til 9, and then promised he'd be back by 12 to give her a little morsel of a win in the argument?

 

[RickshawFan]

I think they said the car was in working order, and even if Paul was mistaken, he'd likely be hiking directly along the road hoping to flag someone down.

If that was an asphalt road, walking on it in that heat could have been deadly.

 

[PaulR]

OK, as my favorite TV "criminal lawyer" likes to say, let's get down to brass tacks. Here are some thoughts on the possibilities I listed earlier, and why they fit (or don't).

Suicide

I don't think there is nearly enough information to be able to rule this in or out. We frankly don't know a lot about Paul. He's married, has two college-aged kids, likes hiking, goes to church, did I miss anything? If he's sick, we don't know. If he's having problems that he's working through, we don't know.

And to be fair, there are reasons why his family and friends wouldn't be broadcasting that during the first few days of the search when he was most likely to be alive - one, his dirty laundry is out in the press, and two, there's a chance that people will say "ok, he went to die surrounded by natural beauty" and searchers won't risk heat stroke looking for him/fewer people talking about him/etc. Sad but there is a bit of truth to that.

Death by stranger

I still don't think this is likely. The police don't seem to have found anything; if they did, the search would have been pulled back much earlier; as it was, people were risking heat stroke being out there. Walter White is not going to be cooking meth at the trailhead to a semi-popular trail just outside town and killing anyone who comes by. The hiker who claims not to have seen Paul didn't seem to see anything else notable, at least not that we know of. (Though I'd like to know if he saw Paul's car.) They didn't take his car or his phone, and as far as we know he didn't carry anything of value with him (expensive watch or camera, etc.) that could have tempted a thief enough to use a deadly level of violence.

Walkaway

I think this is possible (Paul parks his car at the trailhead and meets someone to run away with, or walks close enough to town to call an Uber who will keep quiet with enough $$), but I don't get a motive. There aren't all that many adult walkaways, and usually there is a reason, like severe family problems (Kimberly McLean/Lori Erica Ruff), mental problems (Robert Ivan Nichols/Joseph Newton Chandler), etc. Not something we've heard about. If he wanted to get divorced, he could get divorced, nobody cares. If he was coming out of the closet, nobody cares. If he was afraid that his close friends at church would judge him, they're not going to be in his social circle anymore anyway, regardless of what he does. The kids are college age so there's no child support, and a 51 year old man is going to have a tough time in a foreign country getting a job.

Actually missing

One of the articles about this trail mentioned what a searcher had referenced about the only way him not being on the trail being completely obvious - specifically it's walking on past the oasis at the end of the trail. Everything else seems to be a canyon. No footprints, he didn't leave clothing behind or any evidence that he was here in the hopes that searchers would find something and track him down. I assume they've looked for footprints to see if he wandered off in another direction from the trailhead for some reason. Of course it is possible he's on the trail and was missed, but from the way the local SAR people have described it, it's almost impossible unless he was being deliberate about it, which means it was either suicide or intentionally risky/dangerous behavior, to the point where it may as well be suicide.

Wife killed him

Their kids are college aged, the youngest is 19. I know more than a few couples who got married, had kids, bought a house, became empty nesters, looked at one another for the first time in decades, and got divorced. Or stayed together only because of the kids. And we certainly know of cases where things started to get ugly, especially when it comes to division of assets, and one spouse ends up dead but it's staged to look like something else. Sometimes even for the insurance money.

We don't know right now if Paul was sighted at the hotel near Joshua Tree. Specifically Paul. The stretch of road between the Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree has a lot of nothing, plenty of places for a body to be dumped and nobody would ever see it.

Why the trip? Maybe the couple was having problems and this was a chance to rekindle their romance, or to give it one last chance before calling it quits.

Insurance fraud

I mentioned that cases like this have happened before, where one spouse plays dead and the other collects on the insurance money. Here we have a classic case of this if this was the plan - they won't find a body as there is no body to find, the chances of him actually living if he was on the trail are increasingly slim, and good luck proving he is alive. Paul may have driven to the trailhead and walked out, with the plan that he eventually meets his wife somewhere, perhaps back in Canada after they move away from Guelph, or to another country where a $1M policy will provide them with a comfortable living and that won't extradite for insurance fraud. He'd almost certainly be flagged if he crossed an official border back to Canada, but an experienced hiker may be able to make it in a more isolated part of the Canadian-American border, one that may not be heavily patrolled due to remoteness for instance.

 

[musicaljoke]

Agreed, but there's a difference between them. The late night ones are nonstop, you get on the plane, sleep for ~4 hours, wake up and get your luggage. The ones earlier in the day - here's an example, WestJet 5:05pm - is a short (<3 hour) flight to Calgary, 3 hour layover, then a three hour flight into Toronto. I'm looking a month out, but they cost the same.

When we lived in Guelph, we would fly into Buffalo and then drive home. It was a lot cheaper and took nearly the same time because you didn't need to go through customs at the airport. Plus you could take more luggage if it wasn't an international flight. It's much faster going through customs at a land crossing.