Harmon was known to keep to himself and was described by some as a man who minded his own business to the point of ignoring obvious problems.

The task force reached out to him under the pretense of investigating illegal timber cutting to avoid tipping their real interest.

During the interview, Harmon admitted to visiting the Bitterroot cabin multiple times in late 2018 and early 2019.

When asked if he had ever seen a boy there, he hesitated, then said he remembered someone younger than the usual crowd staying there with Carver.

He could not give a name, but recalled the boy seemed out of place.

He wore newer clothes than the typical drifters and often sat alone outside carving small pieces of wood.

Harmon said he had traded the boy a pocketk knife for a bag of jerky, a detail that caused immediate interest among the detectives.

When shown an old photograph of Mason from 2018, Harmon’s expression shifted subtly, but he stopped short of confirming it was the same boy saying only that it could have been.

Pressed further, he mentioned that during one visit, Carver had been preparing to head north toward Missoula, Montana with the boy and tow claiming they were meeting friends.

Harmon did not know if they ever made it.

Detectives now had a possible continuation of the trail moving the search area toward Montana.

They began pulling data on missing minors reported in Montana from late 2018 onward, cross-referencing any sightings of unidentified youths with Carver’s known presence.

The results were slim, but one report from a Missoula outreach shelter stood out.

In October 2018, staff had logged an encounter with a boy around 13 who refused to give his name and left after only one night.

The intake notes described a bandage on his left wrist and an unusual wooden token he carried in his pocket matching the description of the disc found in the Bitterroot cabin.

The shelter staff had not seen him again, and no official missing person report had been linked to the visit.

This sighting placed a boy matching Mason’s description in Montana within months of his disappearance.

The task force traveled to the shelter to interview any remaining staff who had worked there at the time.

Only one woman still employed remembered the boy.

She recalled he avoided eye contact and seemed frightened of anyone asking questions.

She thought he might have been waiting for someone because he kept glancing toward the door during the evening meal.

Her memory was vague, but she believed he left early the next morning with an older man wearing a faded green jacket, a detail that resonated with earlier descriptions of Maddox’s truck and clothing style.

The woman could not provide more, but the consistency across accounts was building a chain of movement from Colorado to Wyoming to Idaho and now potentially Montana.

For Hannah, each new link was a painful balance of hope and dread.

The thought that Mason might have been alive for months after the murder was both a gift and a torment.

The investigation pressed on, but the trail was now 5 years old, and every new lead felt like chasing shadows across a map that kept expanding faster than they could cover it.

Following the lead into Missoula, the task force shifted resources north, hoping to pin down who the older man in the faded green jacket might have been.

Detectives revisited known associates of Curtis Maddox and Leonard Price, cross-referencing them with anyone who had documented travel or residence in Montana during the fall of 2018.

The search produced a short list of six names, but one in particular drew immediate attention.

Raymond Cole, a 58-year-old drifter with a criminal history for transporting stolen property across state lines.

Cole had once worked seasonal construction jobs at Timberline Peaks and was rumored to have been close to Maddox before the bike parks collapse.

His name had never appeared in the original 2018 investigation, likely because he had left Colorado months earlier.

Cole’s known vehicle at the time, a beatup Green Ford pickup, matched the shelter worker’s description.

Almost exactly, detectives began piecing together his movements in late 2018 using a combination of old traffic citations, gas station receipts, and interviews with transient acquaintances.

This effort painted a loose path that placed him in Missoula during the same week the unidentified boy appeared at the shelter.

The strongest piece of circumstantial evidence came from a pawn shop security log dated October 12th, 2018, showing Cole pawning a high-end mountain bike helmet.

The make and design were consistent with Masons, but the item had long since been resold and could not be recovered for confirmation.

When confronted with the evidence, Cole initially denied any involvement, then shifted to vague statements about giving rides to hitchhikers.

Detectives pushed harder, presenting the sequence of sightings from Colorado to Wyoming to Idaho, and finally Montana Cole’s demeanor tightened.

He refused to answer further questions and asked for a lawyer.

While this effectively ended the interview, it also confirmed to investigators that they had touched on something real.

The challenge remained that without physical evidence, they could not charge him in relation to Mason’s disappearance.

The task force then turned to tracking other unconfirmed sightings of the boy in the Montana and Idaho border regions in late 2018 and early 2019.

One lead came from a retired park ranger in Lolo National Forest who claimed to have encountered a young teenager camping alone near a backcountry trail in November 2018.

The ranger had spoken briefly with him and remembered the boy’s guarded behavior and reluctance to share his name.

He also noticed the boy kept a small carved token in his hand at all times, matching descriptions from earlier accounts.

The ranger said that when he offered to take the boy to a ranger station, the boy refused and by the next morning, the campsite was gone, leaving no trace.

Detectives considered this another possible Mason sighting, but again the gap between possibility and proof was wide.

The cumulative effect of these accounts, however, was undeniable.

A pattern of a boy matching Mason’s description surfacing repeatedly in remote or transient settings, always accompanied by an older man or seen alone shortly after such an encounter.

For Hannah, the updates were a painful cycle.

Each time she heard a new story, her mind leapt to the possibility of rescue, followed by the crushing weight of uncertainty.

The task force was realistic.

They knew the trail was growing colder with each passing month, but they also knew they were closer than ever to mapping Mason’s path after the day his father was killed.

The hope was that one more break, one overlooked witness or artifact could finally anchor the investigation to a place and time that would allow them to find him or at least learn his fate.

By the summer of 2023, the Mercer task force was operating under the belief that Mason’s trail could be reconstructed through a chain of witnesses, even if no single one could confirm his identity.

Outright, detectives revisited every location tied to a sighting, conducting deeper interviews and searching for physical remnants that might have been overlooked years before.

In Missoula, they combed through shelter intake logs, community food bank records, and church charity lists, looking for any boy of Mason’s age who had used only a first name or no name at all during late 2018 and early 2019.

They found several possible matches, but most were quickly ruled out through follow-up.

In Lolo National Forest, they hiked into the area described by the retired ranger, hoping the boy’s abandoned campsite might still yield something.

For days, they searched the surrounding terrain with metal detectors and sifted soil samples from likely fire pits.

On the third day, one of the team members uncovered a small rusted tin tucked beneath a rotting log.

Inside was a scrap of cloth cut from a shirt with a printed design that Hannah immediately recognized from a family photo Mason had worn that same shirt on his 13th birthday.

The fabric was too degraded to produce DNA, but the pattern was distinctive enough for her to be certain.

This discovery, while still circumstantial, added another link to the trail, placing Mason in that area.

Weeks after the shelter sighting, detectives mapped the sequence of movements and noticed a pattern.

Each confirmed or likely sighting placed him progressively farther north and west, as if he was being moved deliberately through remote corridors toward an unknown destination.

The theory emerged that someone, perhaps Carver or Cole, was tasked with keeping him off-rid until a final handoff could be made.

The problem was identifying who might have been waiting at the end of that route.

Attention shifted to small unlicensed camps and ranches operating along the Montana Idaho border, where oversight was minimal and transient workers were common.

One such property belonged to a man named Owen Briggs, a survivalist with a history of taking in runaway teens under the guise of teaching them self-sufficiency.

Briggs had never been charged with any crime, but locals described his operation as secretive and insulated.

Detectives learned that in early 2019, Briggs abruptly sold the property and vanished from the area.

Witnesses recalled seeing him with a teenage boy that winter, but no one could provide a name or clear description.

The task force tracked Briggs to a remote part of Eastern Washington, but by the time they arrived, he had already moved on, leaving behind no forwarding information.

For Hannah, the possibility that her son had been moved yet again was both maddening and terrifying.

Each time she thought they might be close, the trail splintered into another set of unanswered questions.

The case had now stretched across multiple states, dozens of witnesses, and a timeline spanning years.

Yet still, there was no conclusive proof of where Mason was or whether he was still alive.

Detectives knew they were fighting time and memory, both prone to erasing the details they needed.

But the combination of the cloth fragment, the wooden disc, and the multiple consistent witness statements kept them pushing forward.

One more link, one solid lead could turn the entire investigation from speculation into recovery.

And that hope, no matter how faint, was enough to keep the search alive.

The search for Owen Briggs became the primary focus of the task force through the fall of 2023.

Detectives knew that if Briggs had indeed been in possession of Mason in early 2019, he could hold the key to everything.

Briggs had no digital footprint, living entirely in cash, and avoiding anything that required identification.

The break came when a wildlife officer in rural eastern Washington reported encountering a man matching Briggs’s description in the Okanogan Highlands in mid 2021.

The officer had issued him a warning for illegal fishing and noted that he was accompanied by a young male in his late teens.

The youth had said nothing during the encounter.

Standing back with a distant expression, the officer remembered that the boy had a faint scar along his left wrist, something Hannah confirmed Mason had received after a fall years before.

While the sighting was 2 years old, it was the first possible indication that Mason might have remained with Briggs for an extended period.

Detectives traveled to the Okanagan area and canvased remote supply stores, feed shops, and gas stations.

They learned that Briggs occasionally worked under the table for a logging outfit in the nearby mountains, hauling equipment and supplies.

The company records were sparse, but one foreman recalled Briggs quitting suddenly in the summer of 2021 after an argument about bringing the same teenage boy to the work site.

The foreman remembered the boy seemed strong for his age and kept his head down, avoiding conversation.

Detectives pressed for any detail about where Briggs might have gone, but the foreman claimed he never said.

Instead, Briggs had loaded his truck and driven north toward the Canadian border.

This information reframed the investigation entirely.

If Briggs had crossed into Canada, the search would require international coordination.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were briefed and agreed to check for any border records or sightings.

The results were inconclusive.

There was no formal record of Briggs or anyone matching Mason’s description crossing legally.

But in that rugged region, many unofficial trails and remote passes could be used to avoid checkpoints.

By winter, the task force was split on how to proceed.

Some believed Mason had been taken across the border and absorbed into another isolated community.

Others argued he could still be in the Pacific Northwest, living under an assumed identity or hidden in one of the survivalist enclaves scattered through the mountains.

Hannah was briefed on both possibilities and found herself torn between hope and despair.

The idea that her son might still be alive somewhere was the only thing that kept her moving.

But the thought of him being unreachable across an international border filled her with a sense of loss as heavy as the day he disappeared.

With no solid lead, the team began working with missing persons networks and Canadian agencies, quietly distributing the age progression images of Mason to hospital shelters and community aid programs.

It was a long shot, but the case had already shown that persistence could turn a cold fragment into a breakthrough.

The wooden disc, the cloth fragment, the helmet, all were reminders that the trail, however faint, still existed.

The question was whether they could follow it before it vanished completely into the shifting wilderness of time and distance.

By early 2024, the search had entered a phase where every potential lead required delicate handling.

The Canadian authorities had agreed to quietly keep Mason’s possible profile in circulation, but without an official missing person entry.

From their side, their ability to act was limited.

Detectives in the Mercer task force shifted focus back to the US side, hoping to find anyone who might have assisted Briggs in reaching the border.

Undocumented crossings in the Okanoan region were often facilitated by locals familiar with the terrain, and there was one name that kept surfacing inside conversations.

A trapper named Neil Dorsy Dorsy was known to run supply runs for off-grid camps and was rumored to occasionally ferry people and goods across the border away from official points of entry.

He had no criminal record but had been questioned in unrelated smuggling cases.

In the past, detectives tracked him to a small cabin near the edge of the Highlands.

He was cooperative enough to invite them in, but denied knowing Briggs.

When they pressed about 2019 to 2021, he hesitated, then said he remembered a man who could have been Briggs passing through in the summer of 2021 with a teenage boy.

Dorsy claimed he had been paid in cash to guide them along a high pass into Canada, but insisted he never asked names and didn’t want to know more.

He described the boy as quiet with dark hair and a watchful expression and mentioned that he carried a small carved piece of wood in his pocket which he often rubbed between his fingers.

This detail froze the room for the investigators as it echoed the wooden disc found in the Bitterroot cabin.

Dorsey’s account suggested that Mason could have made it across the border alive and in possession of that disc.

He said the pair had been headed toward a remote valley in British Columbia where a network of cabins was shared among trappers hunters and seasonal workers.

Dorsy had not been there in years and claimed not to know who occupied it now, but he drew a rough map from memory.

The map was turned over to the RCMP who confirmed that the valley existed and contained at least four cabins accessible only by trail or helicopter.

The Canadian side sent a small team in early spring to survey the area.

Three cabins were empty, but the fourth showed signs of recent occupation.

Food stores were fresh and there were footprints in the lingering snow leading to a nearby stream.

No one was there when the RCMP arrived and no identifying items were left behind.

However, one of the officers found a small scrap of cloth wedged in the corner of a wooden bunk.

It was plain material, but the stitching matched the style of a shirt brand Mason had worn in photographs.

While it was not definitive proof, it was enough for both agencies to agree that the trail was still active.

Hannah was told of the find with careful wording.

It was the closest they had come to confirming her son might still be alive and moving, but it also underscored the transient and fragile nature of his path.

Every time investigators closed in, the people connected to him seemed to vanish into the next remote stretch of wilderness.

The case had now spanned six years and multiple jurisdictions, but the task force remained committed, knowing that the next season of movement in the mountains could bring the break they needed or allow the trail to disappear entirely.

The final push began in late summer 2024 when the RCMP informed the Mercer task force that one of their wildlife patrol helicopters had spotted movement near the same British Columbia valley Neil Dorsy had described.

From the air, the patrol saw a man and a younger male walking along a rgeline before disappearing into heavy timber.

The man appeared older, stocky with a beard streak gray and a dark jacket.

The boy was taller than Mason had been in 2018, but the patrol noted his posture slightly hunched as if wary of being seen.

The crew could not land due to weather, but relayed coordinates to a joint Canadian and US investigative team.

Within 48 hours, a ground team moved into the valley, working in near silence to avoid alerting anyone.

They reached the cabins at dawn, finding two of them abandoned, and the third showing signs of recent use.

Smoke residue in the stove, fresh bootprints near the door, and a bed roll still warm, suggested the occupants had left only hours earlier.

The tracks led north toward a high pass, but deteriorated quickly over rocky ground.

In the corner of the cabin, investigators found a small bundle wrapped in oil cloth.

Inside was a carved wooden disc worn smooth from handling its design, matched exactly the one recovered from the Bitterroot cabin 6 years earlier.

For the task force, this was the closest they had come to holding a continuous link between Mason’s last confirmed possessions and his present trail.

The RCMP set up discrete monitoring in the area using trail cameras hidden along choke points in the surrounding passes.

Weeks later, one of those cameras captured two blurred figures passing through at night.

The taller figure’s gate and frame could plausibly match a young man in his late teens or early 20s.

The smaller, stocky figure fit descriptions of Owen Briggs, but the image quality left room for doubt.

Despite the progress, officials faced a hard decision.

The remoteness of the terrain and the evasive habits of the pair made a direct interdiction risky.

If the younger male was Mason, any aggressive approach could drive them deeper into isolation or cause Briggs to move him again.

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