POLICE INCIDENT REPORT--10/02/2008



ORIGINALLY POSTED 6/12/2012

RE-POSTED 11/14/2012

THE LAY OF THE LAND- Part 2

Let's zoom in for a little closer look at the terrain surrounding Luke Road. (NOTE: Refer to the Lay of the Land- Part 1 and  Search and Rescue for a wider frame of reference.) If we swing around to the north and look back in a south by southeasterly direction we can see the main portion of Luke Road as viewed by Google Earth:

I have cobbled together an amateurish photographic panorama of this same view from almost the same perspective:

To the left (east), you can see the cul-de-sac with Jack's roofline and Big Bear's place across the way.  Back toward the right (west) you see the neighbor John's place and the mid-portion of Luke Road.

Here is a closer look at the cul-de-sac:

Jack's house is on the left of this view, Big Bear's to the right of center. Between those two is another neighbor's house.

And here is a close-up of Jack's rough-hewn house, sitting atop a small knoll surrounded by pinon pines and sagebrush:

This is about the stage of completion it was at when Jack disappeared.

TIMELINE FOR 10/02/2008

     Up until now, this blog has attempted to tell the story of Jack Gordon's mysterious disappearance on October 2, 2008 in broad strokes.  There is a limited paper trail.  A small handful of news reports and the original sheriff's incident report are the main reference sources.  There are, however, other sources of information and we can try to fill in some of the gaps in the story from first-hand accounts and see if we can pick out any useful details. 

   I'd like to start with a timeline of that day, as well as we can reconstruct it.

October 2, 2008
          8:00 a.m.-  Between 8:00 and 8:30 that morning one of Jack's neighbors sees him leaving his residence in Fort Garland, coffee cup in  hand bound for his home site on Luke Road for the morning.
          8:30 a.m.-  Jack leaves the apartment in Fort Garland in their white conversion van.
          8:40 a.m.-  One of the neighbors from Luke Road bumps into Jack at the Fort Garland post office and chats with him briefly. Nothing seems amiss.
          8:50 a.m.-  Jack stops in at the home of a local auto mechanic on Hwy 159 and speaks with him for a few minutes. He leaves at about 9:00 a.m.
          9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.- No reported contact with or sightings of Jack by any of the neighbors
          1:00 p.m.- Jack's wife starts to wonder why he is not back yet.
          2:00 p.m.-  Jack's wife calls the auto mechanic's home and speaks to his daughter asking if someone can drive out to the place on Luke Road and check on Jack.
          4:00 p.m.-  Jack's wife gets a ride with one of her Fort Garland neighbors the ~5 miles out to Luke Road. The van is parked in its usual spot in the driveway, but there is no sign of Jack on or near the premises.
          4:30 p.m.- Jack's wife goes to one of the neighbor's nearby homes and calls the Sheriff's office. The dispatcher contacts Deputy Jacob Vigil to respond.
          5:00 p.m.- Deputy Vigil talks with Jack's wife at the scene and conducts a brief search of the house and vicinity.  He spots a single set of footprints that "went to the back of the house and around the other side and onto the road where I lost track."  He is unable to identify any distinct tire tracks on the road.  We think he tried to make contact with the neighbor John Busby during this time, but that is not specified in the incident report. He advises Jack's wife to contact him if she has not heard from Jack by 8:30 p.m. She returns to Fort Garland.
          7:30 p.m.- Jack's wife contacts me (as well as other family members to inform us that he is missing.
          8:30 p.m.- Jack's wife contacts Deputy Vigil, informing him she has not heard from Jack
          9:00 p.m.-  Deputy Vigil and a small group of neighbors search the area around the house on Luke Road on foot, with flashlights, find no trace of Jack.
          10:00 p.m.- Deputy Vigil speaks with Jack's wife in Fort Garland and advises her to contact the sheriff's office at 8:00 a.m. the next day if Jack has not turned up, so that Search and Rescue can be mobilized to join the search. On his way back to the Sheriff's office Deputy Vigil returns to the house of the neighbor John Busby (aka John Robert Fureigh) and attempts to contact him.  There is a chain across the driveway and there are no lights on at the house.
      
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS-
     1. Who made the single set of footprints?  Jack? One of the civilian searchers? Jack's wife?  Jack's killer?  Or perhaps Deputy Vigil (remember Winnie the Pooh and Piglet?)
     2. What happened during the time gap from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.?

SEARCH AND RESCUE

     Based on the initial presumption that Jack Gordon had suffered some type of medical event, our first efforts focused on the immediate vicinity of the house on Luke Road, in rural Costilla County on the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley.
     Within about 36 hours of the time Jack was last seen, leaving his apartment in Fort Garland to drive out to the homesite on Luke Road, Costilla County Search and Rescue was on the scene. On Friday October 3, 2008 a general area quadrant search was undertaken by several team members on ATV's and on horseback, covering about a one mile circular perimeter centered on Jack's homesite. The searchers focused on roadways and trails, not much off road searching was done. No trace of Jack was found.
     On Sunday, October 5, 2008 a close interval line search was carried out by about 30-40 volunteers under the direction of the SAR team covering a radius of about 1/3 mile without results.
     On Monday, October 6, 2008 an air tracker dog team was brought in and performed a search for about a 1/4 mile perimeter. No trace of Jack was found away from the house.  Individual searches were also carried out on two other five acre properties that Jack owned in the area, with no trace.
     These satellite views from Google Earth ™ mapping services show the general area of the events. For a wider perspective, check here.
    
     On this map, the dark red square is an approximation of Jack's five-acre property, the pink inner circle is the area covered by the close interval search, and the lighter outer circle is the approximate perimeter covered by the general area search (one mile radius from Jack's place).

     The second pushpin is the house of Jack's neighbor John, who was mentioned in the original police report. That house is just over 1/2 mile from Jack's house. Oddly enough, the neighbor John disappeared from the Fort Garland area on the saame day Jack disappeared.  His mother told the Sheriff that he moved out of the state. We don't know if the Sheriff ever contacted him.  We don't know if he knows anything about that day.

JOHN BUSBY'S BLOG- PART 3

To continue with our perusal of the blog written by Jack Gordon's neighbor John, let me offer another interesting selection. The middle of July 2008 was a sad time for John Busby (aka John Robert Fureigh).  His longtime four-legged companion Chief was hit and killed by a truck passing by his house on Luke Road.

My Chief

July 13, 2008 6:27 PM
 
Today I was working on the fence out by the road and Chief was lounging around in the truck like he usually does when I leave the doors open. A truck came down the road so my Chief wanted to see what or who that was and the driver of the truck was too busy looking at my house to see my dog standing in the road and Chief got hit.

I don't know whether this incident had anything to do with the events a scant two months later.  Was Busby (aka Fureigh) angry at inconsiderate drivers along Luke Road?  Jack Gordon drove by Busby's (aka Fureigh's) house every time he went out to his building site.  Was he the driver who hit Chief?  Only John Busby (aka John Robert Fureigh) would be able to enlighten us in that regard.  Perhaps someday he will be willing to talk with the Sheriff about that summer.  We would sure like to hear his side of the story, but his blog went inactive the day Jack Gordon disappeared and the blogger known as John Busby (aka John Robert Fureigh) never made another blog entry at that site.  Not surprisingly, his blog was de-published a short time later, as you can see if you try the link.  And he reportedly has not returned to the San Luis Valley since that day in October 2008.
 
PREVIOUS POSTS ABOUT THE NEIGHBOR'S BLOG:
JOHN BUSBY'S BLOG- PART 1
JOHN BUSBY'S BLOG- PART 2

THE MYSTERY OF TWO MEN'S DISAPPEARANCE ON THE SAME DAY

Crime reporter Kirk Mitchell of the Denver Post picked up the story of Jack Gordon's disappearance in June 2010. Read the whole thing here:

Here are a couple of excerpts:

Did they leave together? Did they both choose to coincidentally disappear on the same day? Or did one or both of them meet with foul play that night?

The only evidence left behind was a dark stain found on the dirt driveway leading to Fureigh's home. But even that has a mystery attached — the sheriff, strapped for time in patrolling a 1,200-square-mile county — didn't test the spot to see whether it was blood, or, if so, whose.  "It's real frustrating. We don't have enough evidence for a search warrant of his place," said Costilla County sheriff's Lt. James Chavez of Fureigh's home. "It's just one of those things that happens when someone goes missing."

Just one of those things that happens.