The skeletal remains of missing Maine hiker Geraldine Largay (below) were found in a restricted military zone off the Appalachian Trail this week by an independent Naval contractor.
The 66-year-old Tennessean was a skilled outdoorswoman, but mysteriously vanished without a trace during the final leg of the Appalachia odyssey she launched from West Virginia in the spring of 2013.
Largay’s husband -- who acted as her pickup and dropoff man -- told investigators she failed to make a scheduled rendezvous with him at Spaulding Lean-to in Maine’s Mount Abram Township on July 23rd.
She had been sighted on track at a trailhead just the day before less than 10 miles south of that location and had reportedly even made cell phone contact with her spouse, which is how they normally communicated.
According to their plan, he was supposed to have hiked a short distance into the “isolated section” of the trail himself to meet up with his wife that morning, but said he didn’t attempt it due to torrential rains.
The daylong heavy downpour he figured was also responsible for her own inordinate delay, as he sat in his vehicle “waiting” for her to arrive for the remainder of the day and overnight.
She never showed up, and, despite extensive searches and generous reward offers for help in solving her puzzling missing-persons case, hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Along Gerry Largay’s 1000-mile hike in 2013 though, the gregarious woman had met many others undertaking the arduous journey -- all of whom later expressed doubts that the athletic and disciplined trekker would have wandered from the Appalachian Trail even for a minute.
Yet on Wednesday her remains “and some of her belongings” were discovered over two miles off course, in a “harsh” and “prohibited” wooded area used exclusively by the U.S. Navy for military training exercises.
Because of that, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service will be working with officials from the Maine Warden Service in determining whether or not Geraldine Largay was the victim of foul play.
Her cause and manner of death hasn’t been pinpointed yet.
Appalachian Trail, missing persons, found dead, Gerry Largay
