Found Deceased OR - Gwen Brunelle, 27, from Boise ID, Last Seen in Jordan Valley, 27 June 2023 *Car Found*

[PommyMommy]

MAY 3, 2024

Mystery of woman missing on road trip solved by stranger examining aerial images

Four days after she left Idaho, Gwen Brunelle’s van was found abandoned in a pullout off an Oregon highway.

www.mercurynews.com

After extensive searching by law enforcement agencies and volunteers, Brunelle’s family hired a drone operator to take images of 4,000 acres of rugged high desert near the Oregon-Idaho line. In March, those images were given to Aloft Drone Search, a nonprofit group focused on missing-person cases, the sheriff’s office said.

On April 7, one of the group’s volunteers who was examining the drone images reported something that may have been human remains. The Malheur County sheriff was notified, and the following day deputies found the body at those coordinates — 2 miles from where Brunelle’s van had been. The sheriff’s office credited the family and Aloft Drone for “truly a remarkable find.”

 

[cocomod]

This is incredibly frustrating

 

[Mary-Belle]

So she just wandered off? It’s sad that her family will probably never have answers as to where she was going and what she was doing out there.

 

[ChatteringBirds]

Sincere condolences to her family.

 

[PommyMommy]

MAY 8, 2024

Missing no more – behind the effort to solve the mystery of Gwen Brunelle - Salem Reporter

AROUND OREGON: Searchers for months covered hundreds of miles of range, trails and roads in southeast Oregon trying to find Gwen Brunelle. A drone photograph taken in October 2023 finally gave authorities what they needed to find the missing Boise woman's remains in April.

www.salemreporter.com

[...]

When Brunelle left her Boise home the morning of Monday, June 26, her fiance and parents believed she was on her way to a California town outside of Fresno. She took 11 of her prize show rabbits, telling her family she was going to meet a show judge who could tutor her on her own judging ambitions.

[...]

She stopped three hours later but only 20 miles from home, wearing clothing different than what she wore out the door.

She burned up nearly a tank of gas but never made it to California, instead fueling up in Jordan Valley the day after her departure. The town is less than two hours from Boise.

[...]

That Friday, a Malheur County sheriff’s deputy checking out another call stopped at the pullout. As routine, he ran the Idaho license plate. He got an alert that the driver was listed as missing.

Inside the vehicle, five rabbits had perished in the summer heat, apparently untended for days. The surviving rabbits were rescued, later moved to the home of Brunelle’s parents.

Near the vehicle, police found Brunelle’s bathrobe, folded on the ground, as if to form a makeshift seat.

[...]

They found human bones, roughly a mile northwest of where Brunelle had left her boots – and just outside the area searched last year. Andy Brunelle later calculated that his own searching on foot last Nov. 18 had taken him to within 400 feet of his daughter’s remains.

A secondary search was launched, seeking more clues but none was found.

[...]

Johnson said no cause of death has yet been established, but murder or other violence isn’t likely. He said she likely died where she was found.

The family had worried that Gwen Brunelle’s mental health led to her disappearance. They had discovered from her private writings that she had developed what her mother, a psychiatric nurse, described as “delusional thinking and paranoia.”

[...]

 

[Knox]

I hadn't realized Gwen had been found. My thoughts are with her family, greatful they were able to at least find her remains

 

[MangoCove]

I think I'm just realizing that her mother was a psychiatric nurse that missed her own daughter's “delusional thinking and paranoia.” So heartbreaking. RIP Gwen. So glad her family has found some answers.