By C. C. FISHER
Most summer vacation stories are about trips to the beach, camping or touring Yellowstone National Park. For 13 BYU archeology students, one of the highlights of summer was finding the body of a missing man.
Nearly 26 years ago, John S. Jones went hunting with his son Ken near Capitol Reef National Park. Due to a severe snowstorm and thickness of trees, Jones lost his way. Though several searches were conducted by the Wayne County sheriff and Ken Jones, John Jones’ body lay undiscovered.
On May 14, the mystery of what happened to John Jones was solved by a group of BYU students and two of their instructors.
The students were part of a seven-week archeology class surveying the north part of Capitol Reef. As a requirement for graduation, archaeology students must take one field class in which they survey landscapes for old bones, pottery and other artifacts connected with the past.
The first person to spot the body was Lane Richens, Office of Public Archeology staff member and field guide.
“At first I thought the bones looked like human bones, but I figured they were probably just cow bones because we see cow bones all the time. When I got closer I saw it had boots and the bones were sticking through the boots,” Richens said.
Twenty feet behind Richens was Dana Wood, a senior archeology student from Ennis, Texas.
“Lane is always joking around, so when he said he found some human bones, I figured he was just kidding. Then I saw the shoes and said, ‘Oh my gosh. There’s shoes. There’s pants. It’s a man,'” Wood said.
She ran back to the group shouting, “There’s a skeleton, there’s a skeleton. Get the cameras.” Wood was so excited that she forgot the cameras, but fellow classmate Aubrey Baadsgaard brought the cameras and other students followed.
Joel Janetski, a professor of anthropology and director of the field school, was with another group at a different part of the park. When he was called over to inspect the body, Janetski knew immediately that this was a newer body.
“His gun was still by his side, and the make of his gun was obviously a newer model. Plus his clothing was of a newer style,” Janetski said.
“It doesn’t matter if a body is recent or old, it’s always startling to find at first,” Janetski said.
“The most surprising thing to me was after all these years, no one had come across his body,” Richens said.
The body was six miles from the nearest road.
After the initial shock of seeing the body, the students looked around for other artifacts.
“We found his glasses and belt,” Baadsgaard said, “but we didn’t find his head until later. It was buried under the ground.”
A wallet was found in the pocket of Jones’ pants. Inside was his Social Security number and driver’s license. The group went back to camp and radioed the park service that they had found the body of John Jones.
Wayne County Sheriff Don Torgerson brought two officers and a park authority with him to investigate the body.
“We brought paper bags and metal detectors. We treated the artifacts as evidence,” Torgerson said.
“It appeared like Jones wasn’t wearing warm clothes, so he probably died of hypothermia,” Torgerson said.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, Jones left camp on a warm opening day of deer season. He apparently became trapped by the first snowstorm of the season.
Torgerson said the sheriff of Wayne County at the time Jones disappeared searched for him several times.
“The area is very remote. No one goes down there,” Torgerson said.
Torgerson phoned Ken Jones, 70, from San Jose, Calif., to tell him that his father’s body had been found. Ken Jones hadn’t seen his father since October 1971.
Ken and his son Steve, 37, traveled to Utah to claim the body. Torgerson took the men on horseback to the area where they found his father.
“He was glad to finally know what happened to his father,” Torgerson said.
