INTRODUCTION

On October 2, 2008, Jack Nels Gordon disappeared from the face of the earth.  I mean he literally disappeared.  To this day, now almost twelve years later, no trace has ever been found.  This blog will explore different aspects of adult missing persons, particularly those where violent crime is suspected.  Future posts will give links to news articles related to Jack Gordon's disappearance or similar/related cases as well as relevant statistics or other interesting information.
Stay tuned!

ALAMOSA VALLEY COURIER- FORT GARLAND MAN MISSING SINCE OCT 2 2008

When Jack Gordon disappeared in 2008 there was no television news coverage. There were no satellite trucks with reporters doing live feeds. There were no somber faced talking heads reading the spine-chilling details on the six o'clock news.  There were just a few short paragraphs in the Alamosa Valley Courier published almost a week after his disappearance.

Costilla County Sheriff information officer Sgt. James Chavez confirmed that Jack Gordon, 77, has not been seen since approximately 9:30 a.m. Oct. 2, near Fort Garland. Chavez said over the last three days the search for Gordon has included elements of the Costilla County search and rescue unit and rescue dogs from Fort Carson.

The whole report was succinct, with not much in the way of facts.  Within a short time the mystery would deepen.

[Sgt.] Chavez said that as of Wednesday morning, Oct. 8 the investigation has not involved the FBI or the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. There is no evidence of foul play at this time, said Chavez

No foul play?  We shall see.


Full article:

Fort Garland man missing since Oct. 2
Posted: Wednesday, Oct 8th, 2008

ALAMOSA — The Costilla County Sheriff’s Office is conducting a search for a Fort Garland man missing since Oct. 2.
Costilla County Sheriff information officer Sgt. James Chavez confirmed that Jack Gordon, 77, has not been seen since approximately 9:30 a.m. Oct. 2, near Fort Garland. Chavez said over the last three days the search for Gordon has included elements of the Costilla County search and rescue unit and rescue dogs from Fort Carson.
Chavez said that as of Wednesday morning, Oct. 8 the investigation has not involved the FBI or the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. There is no evidence of foul play at this time, said Chavez, and the CCSO has concentrated the search on backcountry in Costilla County.
Chavez said he has received two reports that someone closely matching Gordon’s description was seen recently in the Walsenburg area. One of those tips was received Oct. 7 and the other on the morning of Oct. 8.
Gordon’s country home in Costilla County sits at the western foot of 9,400-foot La Veta Pass and the town of Walsenburg, in Huerfano County, is located at the eastern base of the pass.
Huerfano County Under Sheriff Dave McCain contacted the Costilla Sheriff’s office, said Chavez, and reported that he saw a man of Gordon’s description near the I-25 exit 49, near Walsenburg. A private citizen told the CCSO that he was “99.9 percent sure” that he saw Gordon in Huerfano County. Chavez is trying to confirm the sightings, determine where theytook place and if they do relate to Gordon.
According to a flyer issued by Gordon’s family he is described as 77 years old, 6’ 2” tall, is stoutly built, weighing 235 pounds. Gordon has a shock of white hair and a short, white beard and mustache. He was last seen wearing a grey, zip-up hooded sweatshirt and jeans. Gordon uses reading glasses but does not wear them all the time.
Gordon’s wife Leni Gordon said he has no history of mental problems or lapses. She said Gordon is an ordained clergyman, but if he wanted to conduct a retreat he would have gone to their home, which is under construction in the Sangre de Cristo Ranches subdivision of Costilla County. It appears that Gordon disappeared from that location. His van was found parked at the country home, but his car keys and a coffee cup he had when last seen are both gone.
Leni Gordon said there was no evidence of foul play, no footprints leading into remote country and no sign of a struggle at the home. She said she knew of no reason for her husband to disappear. “We have two children he loves very much. He would never take off and leave them. He would be gone for two hours and come home and say ‘I missed my family and I wish you could have been with me.’ He would say he missed us when he was only gone two hours,” Leni Gordon said.
Anyone with information on Gordon’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Costilla County Sheriff at (719) 672-0673.

THE LAY OF THE LAND- Part 1

Let's gradually zoom in on the scene of the events in question, using Google Earth ™ mapping services.

Jack Gordon disappeared on October 2, 2008 in Costilla County in south central Colorado about 80 miles north of Taos NM, 30 miles east of Alamosa CO and 50 miles west of Walsenburg CO.

Located in south central Colorado, the San Luis Valley is a high mountain plain bounded by the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the east and the San Juan Mountains on the west. The valley comes to its northern apex at Poncha Pass just south of Salida. At its southern end the valley merges into northern New Mexico.

 Alamosa is the largest town in the Valley.  Highway 160 traverses the San Luis Valley from La Veta pass in the east to Wolf Creek Pass in the west. Costilla County is the southeasternmost of the five counties in the San Luis Valley.

The northeastern part of Costilla county contains the subdivided Forbes Ranch, including the Sangre de Cristo Ranches.

The Ranches are traversed by a dense network of dirt roads and are comprised of several thousand five-acre ranchette lots. One of these lots is the site of Jack Gordon’s home building site on Luke Road.  This is the general setting of the Mysterious Disappearance...







ORIGINALLY POSTED 6/7/2012
RE-POSTED 10/29/2012

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.

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.

EVENTS AS VIEWED BY A NEIGHBOR OF JACK GORDON

I have been trying to maintain a sense of the chronologic order in which the case unfolded for us.  Now would be a good time to introduce one of Jack's neighbors. A self-described corporate drop-out, this  intelligent young single guy blogged under the handle of 'Big Bear'.  His blog describes his experiences during the construction of an off-grid cabin in the San Luis Valley.  His cabin is about a quarter of a mile from Jack's.   At the end of October, 2008 Big Bear posted his version of Jack's disappearance titled "Strange Events" (NOTE: 'Hank' = Jack Gordon, 'Bob' = John Busby).

Friday, October 31, 2008 

Strange Events

No, I am not going to be speaking about alien abductions. Yes, there were unexplained disappearances and mysterious lights in the sky but it was most certainly not an alien abduction. Indeed, the San Luis Valley does have a problem with missing persons, secret bases, unworldly creatures and strange flying craft but this is not about alien abductions. That being said...I arrived at the cabin around 6 pm on Thursday October 2nd. I had planed to spend several days down there working on the sun room and fixing some foundation issues. This was also a bug out simulation...I was worried about the possible declaration of martial law if the bail out did not pass. So I scheduled off a few days to wait it out.Within a few minutes of arriving my closest neighbor Mary dropped by to inform me that Hank, our neighbor down the road who is also building a cabin, was missing and had not been scene since around 9 that morning. I could see Hank's van sitting in front of his place. Hank is a gentleman in his upper 70's who had suffered a recent stroke and has heart problems. It was our opinion that he probably suffered another stroke, wandered off and passed out in the sage brush or nearby woods.I got the power going at the house, put the dogs up and headed over to join a small group of neighbors and family friends searching the immediate area for Hank. It was about 6:30 pm at this time. We all wandered through the sage and around the house looking. It got dark and sometime between 7:30 and 8:00 pm two sheriff's deputies came out I think they had their lights on. They joined in the search, looked through the van and ask us when we had last seen him.The deputies asked about our other neighbor who lived a little further up the road. It dawned on us that Bob was not around. The deputies ran up to Bob's place sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 pm to see if he knew anything. Bob was also missing so everyone assumed that the two had gone off to look at the Aspens turning or something. The deputies said that if Hank had not shown up by Friday morning they would bring in a search and rescue team.So Friday comes and still no Hank. The deputies showed back up around noon followed by the search and rescue (SAR) team. The SAR team brought ATV's, horses and may people going through the brush on foot. The searched for several hours and finished up around 4:30 pm. I drove over to speak with the deputies about 5 pm assuming that they had found him. When I got over there they were bagging the contents of the van.They told me that Hank would show up and that this kind of thing was common. It was strange that they were bagging stuff from the van. The deputies stayed by the van until dark when another car showed up to relieve them. I looked through the binoculars and noticed that they had taped off the van and house with yellow tape. Very odd if they were sure Hank was coming back.Around 1:30 am on Saturday I heard an engine revving jumped up and looked out the window. The deputies were driving up along the ridge behind Hanks house through the sage with all the searchlights on one deputy driving the other out walking next to their cruiser. They were searching for someone. After 30 minutes or so they left, 10 minutes later I heard someone yelling couldn't make out what they were saying. I guess the deputies were waiting just down the road because they came roaring back in with spot lights on looking again. Unnerving.Saturday morning brought a different SAR team which did an arm linked search of the surrounding area...they found nothing. Saturday evening Mary and I met with a deputy to find out if we needed to worry about our safety. We wanted to know if there was a killer running lose...he would not answer. I slept with my pistol under the pillow and rifle next to the bed that night.On Sunday they brought in a dog team andseveral "specialist" searchers, not sure what their specialty was but they were strange. No hits, nothing. Hanks extended family had started to arrive and were wandering the hills surrounding the area. Through the night there where many cars and people showing up over at Hanks. My guess is that as family members showed up in town the first thing they wanted to do was go searching. So the evening was filled with flashlights and people yelling.Hank had left the house on that Thursday morning wearing a gray hooded sweat shirt and faded jeans. Unfortunately his wardrobe choice matches the sage brush that covers the ground out here. He could be lying five feet from you in the bushes and you wouldn't notice him.No one was searching for Bob although there were several stories circulating about his whereabouts. He had posted a comment on his blog from home on Thursday night at 7:30 pm, about the time the deputies drove by, regarding a camera he purchased. The camera was to be delivered Monday and he was excited. By 9 pm when the deputies stopped by he had vanished. The final story given by his mother was that he had decided to leave everything and go live with his ex-wife in Texas. Bob self-built a wonderful off grid cabin, had a horse and other livestock but gave all that up on a whim to go live with an ex-wife.Hank's family was allowed to take his van back to town on Monday. I visited with one of his nephews Monday afternoon. He told me they suspected foul play. He thought that "someone" forced Hank into a vehicle, took him somewhere and killed him. There was no blood or signs of a struggle at the site and strangers just don't happen down these rural roads.It has been almost a month now. Hank and Bob are both still missing without a trace. In the week before they went missing a body was found burning in a barrel placed in thefound laying across a country road on the south face of Mt Blanca in the northern part of this county. Violence is everywhere, moving out of a city will not remove you from it's presence.Hank and Bob both went missing on the same day, it could be a coincidence or foul play the question hangs and we may never know....of course it is possible that they were both abducted by aliens!The names of the neighbors have been changed to protect the families privacy.Posted by BigBear at 12:01 PM

     Big Bear has since moved away from Luke Road and relocated to another state.

JOHN BUSBY'S BLOG- PART 2

We've been reading some excerpts from the blog of the neighbor John Busby (aka John Robert Fureigh).  See the previous post here,  The "Alpine Acres" blog has been de-published.

On the afternoon of June 5, 2008, Jack Gordon's neighbor John tried to take a nap, but was interrupted, resulting in this reaction on his blog:

NEWSPAPER UPDATE- MARCH 2011

In March 2011, the Alamosa Valley Courier printed a follow-up article (no longer available on-line) summarizing the status of several missing persons cases from the region, including Michael Rust and Casey Berry.  Jack Gordon merited a brief mention.

"Jack N. Gordon, 77, disappeared Oct. 2, 2008. Gordon is described as 6’2” tall and weighing about 235 pounds. He is described as a Caucasian with brown eyes and hair that would be gray or partially gray. He was last seen in Ft. Garland."

RECAP AND SUMMATION

So, let's have a brief recap of the mysterious case of Jack Gordon's disappearance. To restate the basic known facts:
          1. Elderly gentleman disappears without a trace from a remote rural property in Southern Colorado in October 2008.
          2. Mr. Gordon is reported missing by his wife, and subsequent search turns up no physical evidence on his property or the surrounding countryside.
          3. In the years since then there has been no subsequent trace of activity on any of his financial accounts or any other indication that he is alive.
          4. A second person disappears on the same day from his residence on the same remote road.
          5. The second man is NOT reported missing by his relatives, who tell authorities he "left the state".
          6. The second man (missing neighbor) is found to be a felony sex offender who absconded and failed to register as a sex offender when he moved to the San Luis Valley from El Paso County, in violation of the terms of his previous probation. He is living under an assumed name at the time.
          7. The missing neighbor kept a blog that contained implied and explicit threats of physical violence against his neighbors.
          8. The neighbor's blog ceased active posting on the same day the two men disappeared.

Two basic conclusions can be drawn:
          1. Jack Gordon is dead
          2. John Fureigh left his self-built home on Luke Road in rural Costilla County suddenly

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Analysis of this set of facts points to three possible scenarios.

SCENARIO ONE: Jack Gordon was killed by person or persons unknown, and the same person either threatened or scared off the sex-offender neighbor to the point that he left the area permanently.  (i.e. the two disappearances are related and due to a third party perpretrator)

SCENARIO TWO: Jack Gordon was killed either accidentally or purposefully by the sex-offender neighbor who then hid or disposed of the body in unknown fashion and then voluntarily left the area to avoid apprehension and prosecution.

SCENARIO THREE: Jack Gordon was killed by person or persons unknown who hid or disposed of the body.  The sex-offender neigbor left the area on the same day and quit making entries on his blog on the exact same day for purely coincidental reasons unrelated to the disappearance of Jack Gordon.


(PERSONAL INVITATION: If you are the neighbor John Fureigh I would be interested to hear your account of the events of October 2, 2008.  You may be the only one who can show me where I may have gone wrong in my analysis.)