Will Raynor and his dad, Dale Ainsworth, stumbled onto a what appeared to be a leg bone and a moss-covered shoe while deer hunting in the woods near Sams Valley in October, kicking off a search for answers. [courtesy photo]
A bone and an old shoe found in the woods by deer hunters prompted a call to the “bone phone.” [courtesy photo]
When Medford resident Will Raynor and his dad, Dale Ainsworth, stumbled onto a what appeared to be a leg bone neat to a moss-covered shoe while deer hunting in the woods near Sams Valley in October, they were flabbergasted.
Had they found evidence that would end up cracking a cold case, perhaps a decades-old murder or a missing person’s story? Would they bring closure to a family that had endured tragedy or heartbreak?
Raynor, 39, and Ainsworth, 66, were walking through a clearing on BLM land along Meadows Road when Ainsworth discovered the bone and the old running shoe.
It stopped him in his tracks.
“We were just walkin’ around, obviously huntin’ and stuff. I seen the shoe at first and noticed it had some moss on it. I walked up and then I see the bone and I just thought, ‘What is that?’” said the Shady Cove resident.
“I noticed there’s this long piece of bone next to the shoe and I go, ‘Oh, s–t, it looks like a leg bone.’ We’ve found lots of bones up there, but this was just different. So, I motioned Will to come over.”
Raynor said the look on Ainsworth’s face, “like he’d seen a ghost,” sent chills down his spine.
“The funny part was I had been out a couple weeks prior, hunting with my brother, and we didn’t even look in the direction where we found it,” said Raynor.
“When I went out with my dad, working this section of BLM to try and jump up some deer, he just suddenly stopped moving. I looked back and his eyes were wide and he’s pointing down going, ‘There’s a bone — with a shoe!”
Using a glove, Raynor inspected the shoe for signs of additional remains. Some leathery material attached to the inside seemed like something other than peeling shoe innards.
“Inside, the bone was all cracked open. You could see that the bone cavity was all stripped out because it was obviously really old. We initially thought it looked like bone and skin inside the shoe,” he said.
“We start pulling the shoe apart and realized it was the sole of the shoe, old and withered away, and thank God it wasn’t mummified, leathery skin. Just shoe lining.”
After the CSI-inspired inspection of the bone and shoe — and destruction of potential crime scene — the two men deliberated their next step.
“We were like, F—, do we call it in?’ But we were like, ‘Nah.’ I mean, judging from the moss growth on it — you know that s–t don’t grow overnight — it had to have been sitting out there for quite a few years. But we just weren’t sure what we had found,” said Raynor.
Ainsworth added, “I thought we better leave it where it was at, in case we’d walked into a crime scene area. It was just kind of weird the way it was laid out. I’d never seen anything like that before in my life.”
They took pictures, and when Raynor returned home, his wife thought a phone call was in order.
“I get home and I show my wife the picture and she’s like, ‘Did you call it in? You gotta call that in,’” Raynor recalled.
Jackson County Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Kammel fielded Raynor’s call and requested the photos.
“I sent some pictures and they called right back and said, ‘Oh, yeah, we definitely want to go collect that.’ So we go all the way back out there and hike into the woods with the sheriff,” said Raynor. He reported his adventure on social media hours later, declaring, “No luck hunting, but found an old shoe and a leg bone!”
Amateur crime sleuths immediately imagined every possible scenario, with one asking Raynor whether the bone appeared to have been broken or sawn off.
Several friends were certain Raynor was pulling their own leg bones, while others wondered if Raynor had been in close proximity to any shallow graves recently disturbed by wild animals.
Kammel sent the bone and shoe to JCSO Detective Chris Adams, and a photo to state forensic anthropologist Nici Vance. While both ruled out the bone being of human origin, they agreed that a closer look had certainly been warranted. Adams, who inspected the bone and suspected it could be an elk bone, said found bones are reported on a pretty regular basis.
“It probably happens every couple of months around here, depending on the season. Whenever we get a report, we always have to rule out the possibility they’re human remains, and whether it’s a case that needs to be investigated or something else like potentially Native American remains,” Adams said.
“A lot of times, it’s pretty easy to tell what it is and what it isn’t. Animal bones have a lot of characteristics that human bones just don’t, but sometimes it can be hard to tell.”
He added, “One of the harder ones to tell with is when people find bears, whether it’s post-hunt discards or a natural death. Bear bone structures are actually very similar to humans.”
Vance said identification of random bones is a service provided by state medical examiners to conserves resources.
“It’s actually a service that the state medical examiner’s office provides. They all have my number. We call it the bone phone. All 36 counties use the bone phone,” Vance said.
“Basically, if a private citizen finds something and they’re like, ‘Oh, shoot, it’s wrapped in a baby blanket. It’s a child,’ law enforcement responds and they can throw a ruler down next to it because size matters. … And then I’ll take a look at the pictures they send me and I can usually make a determination between human vs. non-human and let them know right then and there.”
Vance said 104 calls to review non-human bones have come in this year.
“It helps law enforcement a ton,” Vance said. “If it’s late at night, we don’t want someone … sitting for seven-plus hours, until the sun comes up, thinking they’re securing a crime scene. It just saves money and time resources … and, of course, I always direct them to please dispose of whatever they found properly so that somebody else doesn’t find it in a week.”
Vance said the business of identifying suspicious bones brings about some interesting stories and unlikely conversation starters.
“It’s an unusual skill to be able to decipher between the distinct physical characteristics of something that walks on four legs vs. something that walks on two legs,” said Vance.
“And a weirdly unknown fact … a deer tibia is about the same size as a human tibia. Yes, there are a lot of differences between the two, but if you’re looking solely based on size, it’s pretty funky. Somebody like me can tell the difference pretty quickly, but if you’re just a random mushroom hunter in the woods, it could scare the bejesus out of you.”
Adams said its always best to call it in.
“It’s always kind of a good exercise, for us, just in seeing what’s there and going through the motions, getting some practice, for later potentially uncovering a crime scene,” he said.
“We have enough cold cases, just in this county, that the potential for something like that to be more than what it was … is very real. I hope it makes folks feel better to know it was investigated and that we’re out there working, taking things seriously that turn up in the woods.”
Raynor wasn’t sure whether he was more relieved or intrigued with the process. He could imagine some crackpot hunters, 30 years before, staging a bone inside an old shoe.
“It was definitely pretty trippy when we found it. Judging from the size of the shoe, we knew it definitely was not a man, so it was either a kid, or maybe someone in their teens or a woman. I thought, oh, my god, we’re gonna solve a cold case for sure,” Raynor said.
“I kept hunting the same area two or three more times in the season, and I’d get out there to hunt and a couple hours would go by and I’d realize I wasn’t even hunting because I was so busy searching for shallow graves or more of these old bones.
“Part of me wanted it to be human so we could bring some closure to a family that might’ve not been able to know what happened to one of their loved ones. Once we found out it wasn’t human, I was like, ‘What a bunch of (bleeping a–holes to just set this thing out here to mess with someone.”
Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 541-776-8784 or bpollock@rosebudmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal.
