Post by johnnyhands1 on Sept 14, 2024 22:24:20 GMT
Here’s the link to the Othram press release:
dnasolves.com/articles/dewayne-surls-idaho/
But Othram leaves out the fact that the victim, now known to be 16- or 17-year-old Moscow, Idaho high school student Dewayne Surls, had bullet wounds in his neck and shoulder when he was found floating in the Snake River.
They also left out that Dewayne was then a known, but still missing victim along with his 18-year-old friend Michael Coffin, when Michael’s vehicle - just ten days earlier - crashed into the Salmon River , with current surging at 20 mph northward, which delayed rescue efforts for many days. The Salmon River flows north through the mountains to meet the Snake River to the west. Some newspaper articles mistakenly said the crash happened in the Snake River, but it was the Salmon.
The boys were driving down from Moscow on Highway 95 along the Salmon River on their way to Boise where Michael was going to start college in a couple of months and had already been hired for a new job.
The car crash with Dewayne and Michael disappearing happened on June 14, 1982, just north of Riggins, ID, Idaho County.
The unknown body with bullet wounds, now known to be Dewayne, was found ten days later on June 24, 1982 about 25 south of Lewiston, ID, Nez Perce County.
Michael’s body was found about 25 miles north of the crash site on July 30, 1982, still in the Salmon River. No mention of any bullet wounds to Michael in the one short article I saw. It says dental records were used to confirm his identity. I haven’t seen anything about a dental comparison of Dewayne to the John Doe, but the John Doe was said to have perfect teeth.
The vehicle has never been found, but blue paint matching the car’s color was found on rocks at the bank of the Salmon River where nearby residents heard a vehicle plunge into the river at night. No one was reported to have heard gunshots preceding the plunge sound.
Somehow, the Nez Perce County Sheriff investigated the possibility that the unidentified body was one of the missing boys, but concluded it wasn’t. Nothing yet about what the investigators showed to Dewayne's family, if anything. He had all his clothes on, plus some blue swim trunks with red and white striping. He had family and siblings who might have been able to identify the body and or the clothes, you would think.
So Dewayne Surls was Snake River John Doe until just a couple of days ago.
The Doe Network page for the John Doe case even identifies the weapon used to shoot the victim in the neck and shoulder (Dewayne) as a 38-caliber Smith and Wesson.
www.doenetwork.org/cases/software/main.html?id=229UMID
So now there is a potential homicide with a known victim (or double homicide if the crash occurred when they were being chased by someone shooting at them - if that’s what happened.) Could have been as accidental as one of the boys screwing around with the gun (and a ricochet to cause the second wound?) Or something else.
Crickets from Idaho newspapers on this, from what I’ve seen via google. The one local TV Idaho station I saw reporting about Othram identification also didn’t mentioned Dewayne’s bullet wounds or the related car crash.
Crickets from Nez Perce County Sheriff other than the same Othram identification information. They botched this case badly.
Fortunately, the Idaho Cold Cases facebook page has posted many newspaper clippings from 1982 regarding both the missing boys case and the unidentified shooting victim (scroll down to see the photos):
www.facebook.com/EastIdahoColdCases/posts/pfbid022HuZProeDVifPsXcNVC5kWx8vDG2c6tPRSuxgpb7BTkzvKKB5PuWUiDa2JJABJPKl
