UNSOLVED: Jimmy Duffy Disappeared Deep In The Forest Of The Cascades

…

Jim Duffy was 30 years old at the time.

He was a strict and stoic military man, having formerly been a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War.

At the time of this incident, he was working as a parts room supervisor for a JC Penney store in Tacoma.

His wife, Carol, was a homemaker who watched over the two young children.

In the second half of October, the Duffy family decided that they were going to do some hunting in the Cascades over the weekend.

They selected a nice deep forest area near Lake Wanache as a prime location.

In addition to bringing themselves, the parents were also taking their two children and two cats.

With a camper trailer attached to the back of their truck, the family was able to store their young kids in a seemingly safe space while they could go out and scour the ridges searching for game.

The family would leave in the evening on Thursday, October 18th, 1973, and make it into the Cascades later that night.

After arriving in the Lake Wan that region, Mr. and Mr.s.

Duffy must have driven around on the darkened forest roads until they found a nice spot to park their truck and camper, which happened to be right on the edge of a clearcut.

This whole area where they camped is known as Little Wache Ridge, which leads down into the Little Wache River.

Some areas are steeper than others, but it is heavily forested despite the occasional burn or clearcut.

The Duffy family spent the night together in their camper and awoke on Friday, October 19th to a beautiful view of snowcapped mountains and the Little Wache River.

There is one photograph of the location where the Duffies parked their camper and it doesn’t reveal much to us except a treeine and some down timber.

In the early afternoon on Friday, the parents decided to let young Jimmy out to stretch his legs a bit.

The mother, Carol, held Natalie in her arms, and together they all walked along a northward trail in the clearcut that had been left by some heavy logging machinery.

They also climbed through some brush in an uphill direction and returned through open woodland back to their camper.

After their walk, the family ate lunch around 100 pm Once they were done, it was roughly 1:30 pm and Mr. Duffy grabbed his rifle and left to go scout around the area while Carol Duffy changed little Natalie’s diaper and laid her down for a nap.

She quickly went to sleep, but Jimmy was a little more restless.

Mr.s.

Duffy made sure that he laid down and either covered him with a blanket or put him in a sleeping bag.

There is a variation here from separate interviews.

Mr.s.

Duffy also left Jimmy with his shoes still on his feet for unknown reasons.

The two cats were still in the camper and both were also laying down for a nap.

Mr.s.

Duffy then grabbed her rifle and left the camper area heading west into the trees at the edge of the clearcut.

The camper remained in her sight this entire time, and she was approximately 150 yards away.

Mr.s.

Duffy remembered looking at the camper and seeing that the door was still shut at 1:55 pm She then saw Mr. Duffy heading back towards the camper.

He had been walking around in a loop to the east of the clearcut when he decided to go back to the camper and check on the children.

He opened the camper door and found Natalie and the cats were still asleep, but Jimmy was still awake.

He told Jimmy to lay down and go to bed.

The time was roughly 2:00 pm and Mr. Duffy closed the camper door and locked it from the outside.

He then followed a cat track to the south again, following along the borderline of the clearcut until he heard a whistle.

It was his wife letting him know where she was.

Jim continued on, eventually turning west and then north along the clear cut until he met up with Carol once again.

The two then continued on together, but only walked about 50 ft.

At this point, it had been roughly 15 minutes since Jim Duffy had last checked on the children, and they heard a noise.

The parents gave multiple interpretations of what this noise was, and I will include all of them.

The sound was variously described by both parents as a screech or a scream, and also like the squeaky hinges of a door closing.

Mr.s.

Duffy also said that it sounded like an animal’s cry.

Mr. Duffy later described the sound as a baby’s cry.

The Duffies were both uncertain as to whether the sound came from their son or something else entirely.

Both parents were immediately alarmed by the strange noise, and they hurried to the road and back to their vehicle.

After rounding the corner, Carol and Jim both looked at the camper and saw that the door was now hanging open.

So, they ran as fast as they could to check on their kids.

When they peered into the camper, they saw their daughter Natalie was still fast asleep along with their two kittens, but Jimmy was missing.

Jim immediately started out on foot to check the cat track while Carol went searching on the road heading downhill to the south.

They both began shouting Jimmy’s name, but they saw no evidence of anything.

After a few minutes of searching, Mr. Duffy met back up with his wife and told her to run down the road where there were three trucks parked lower on the ridge.

These people were most likely hunters and wood cutters.

Mr. Duffy told her to ask these people if they had seen Jimmy run down the hill and perhaps cross the road where they were parked.

When Mr.s.

Duffy made contact with them, none of them had seen Jimmy.

Afterward, the two parents continued to search the immediate area for a while before Mr.s.

Duffy asked if she should get on the radio and try to call for help.

Mr. Duffy told her that she should.

The time was approximately 3:10 pm After going in their camper, Mr.s.

Duffy got on their CB radio and tried to get a hold of anyone who was listening.

Luckily, she was able to make contact with the owner of a nearby store, Headwaters Grocery.

The owner, a Mr. Rod Swanson said that he received a call on channel 9 from a hysterical woman who told her that her 2 and 1/2year-old child disappeared from their camper.

She then gave him directions to their exact location.

Mr. Swanson then relayed this information to the sheriff so that they could begin their search for little Jimmy.

The exact time that a report was generated by the authorities was 3:20 pm So roughly an hour after the disappearance.

A call for volunteers was also immediately put out through local radio stations.

After all the proper authorities were notified, it was estimated that 50 men would arrive on scene by daybreak.

A deputy with the Chalan County Sheriff’s Office made it on location pretty quick around 3:50 pm and was able to make contact with Carol Duffy.

She relayed the story of what happened and said that their son disappeared from their camper between 1:55 and 2:15 pm while she and her husband were only a short distance away.

She said that Jimmy was wearing white training shoes, light blue denim trousers, a dark blue longsleeve turtleneck shirt, yellow kneelength socks, and a white t-shirt underneath the turtleneck.

Mr.s.

Duffy said her husband was still out scouring the ridge looking for Jimmy, and he had been since the incident began.

Around 400 pm, the deputy began looking around for clues.

He checked the ground around the camper where the dirt was soft and wet, but was unable to locate any child footprints in the muddy soil.

Since the time of his arrival, there had been four additional adults that happened to arrive on scene.

Two were wood cutters and two were hunters, but all just happened to be in the area when they were alerted to Jimmy’s disappearance.

The deputy asked the four civilians to go and check the road for footprints and see if the boy went that way.

The group went and checked, but they found nothing of interest.

The two hunters said that their wives had been on the road below the camper during the afternoon and were positive that the boy didn’t go downhill from the road.

A posy of sheriff’s men along with four service employees made it on location around 4:20 pm and were directed to check the perimeter of the clearcut next to the camper.

Around this time, Mr. Duffy finally arrived out of the woods after searching for the last 2 hours or so.

Here, he finally encountered the sheriff’s deputies and searchers who were trickling onto the scene.

Mr. Duffy told them that his search had been fruitless and he found no clues as to Jimmy’s whereabouts.

The deputy states in his report that Mr. Duffy seemed overly concerned and quickly left again, this time in a westerly direction to continue his search.

Mr.s.

Duffy was interviewed by authorities around 4:25 pm and she gave a detailed version of events.

Mr. Duffy was interviewed when he returned to the camper around 5:00 pm and essentially gave the same story as his wife.

At 5:15 pm, one of the three hunters that was camped approximately a quarter mile below the Duffies on the ridge told a deputy that he had only seen one vehicle leave the area the entire time.

It was a green international truck with a dark green camper.

The hunter said that the truck was driven by an elderly male.

At around 6:00 pm, more searchers poured into the area.

Mr. Duffy started cutting firewood and stopped searching.

The deputy reports that neither of the parents appeared to be overly concerned after his initial contact with them.

Searchers continued well after dark, using flashlights to search the thick woodlands.

Around 25 searchers remained on the ridge until 3:00 am None of them found anything relevant to the case.

The following day, October 20th, the search received a large increase in manpower, including volunteers.

They spent all day scouring the ridge for Jimmy.

The sheriff decided to call in even more help, so they notified seven different SAR groups within the state.

Dogs were also called in to see if they could send the child and put a quick end to the operation.

The vast majority of personnel started to arrive on scene by the morning of October 21st.

This day would reach a peak in search personnel of roughly 250 people.

After their arrival, the entire area was searched all over again with a two-mile search radius.

Areas beyond two miles were also searched, but they were selected based on the likelihood that Jimmy would actually go there.

Nobody expected that a young child could have gone very far.

They searched in a grid pattern, tying long lengths of string as they walked to mark the areas that they were searching and assuring that all possible sectors were looked at.

Earlier in the day, detectives went to speak with Mr. Duffy, who was still on scene at the location of the camper.

They asked him about the Green International pickup truck, which was seen leaving the area on the day that Jimmy disappeared.

Mr. Duffy tried to dismiss the detective’s concerns because he said that the man in the green truck stopped and spoke to him, and he didn’t suspect the man was capable of anything at all.

Later on, Mr.s.

Duffy’s sister arrived at the search base camp to help out.

She told investigators that she thought the Duffies were very strict, but not excessively.

She also said that Jimmy was She said that she didn’t know of any family problems the Duffies might have and never suspected that Jimmy’s parents might be abusive.

On the evening of October 21st, all volunteer organization leaders and the sheriff’s department gathered for a meeting.

They looked over maps of the search area and looked for places that they might have missed or other regions that were not covered sufficiently.

These select areas were all researched in the following days.

On the 22nd, searchers checked the tops of the cliffs in the region to rule out the unlikely event that Jimmy went uphill.

There were approximately 150 people searching Little Wan that Ridge by this point.

The search brought so many people into the area that Little Wache Ridge had become like a small town with tents covering every flat spot of land with vehicles, campers, and vans parked on the sides of the road in all directions.

Speaking on the situation, the sheriff said that he could not rule out foul play in the case, meaning that Jimmy could have been kidnapped.

He also said that it was possible that a large animal such as a bear or a cougar stole the child away.

Mr.s.

Duffy was quoted saying, “I think he’s here somewhere.

” But that it also crossed her mind that he had been kidnapped.

On October 23rd, the 92nd Aviation Company brought in a large helicopter that flew over the search area.

They saw nothing of interest, but given the heavy forest covering, I wouldn’t expect them to.

At this point, the search was already getting weary.

No evidence had been found.

Scores of people were on the ground, and the missing child was only 2 years old.

and should not have been able to travel very far.

Their determination was that either Jimmy was deceased at this point or he was never in the area in the first place.

One reporter said that it was as though 2 and 1/2year-old Jimmy stumbled through an opening in space which Duffy closed behind him forever.

On the 24th, the sheriff called the dog searchers back in to search some specific areas of interest, but nothing new was learned.

The sheriff began to get really frustrated at the lack of progress they were making in the case.

The more the search went on, the less he believed what the Duffies were telling him.

Later in the evening on this day, detectives took Mr. Duffy aside and essentially read him his Miranda rights.

They then asked if he was willing to answer any questions, and he said he was.

They told Mr. Duffy straight to his face that they didn’t believe his story, and they thought that Jimmy had never been in the area to begin with.

They told him that they believed the parents killed Jimmy, either accidentally or intentionally, and then disposed of his remains.

The detectives told Mr. Duffy that they thought his lost child story was just a cover up and his way of sending authorities in the wrong direction.

Once hit with all of these accusations, Mr. Duffy simply told them no.

With no discernable emotion on his face, they asked him if his wife had killed Jimmy, and Mr. Duffy replied, “I don’t think so.

” They then asked Mr. Duffy if his wife had a boyfriend with no apparent reason to think that she might.

Mr. Duffy replied, “Not that I know of.

” He also denied having any sort of affair with another woman.

Mr. Duffy told investigators that his marriage had no problems other than normal disagreements from time to time and no friction that would result in a violent reaction against their son.

Mr. Duffy admitted that his handling of the boy might have been too strict, but that it never resulted in any abuse.

Afterward, he said that he could recall only one occasion where his wife struck Jimmy in the face, which left a bruise.

He said his wife also slapped Jimmy’s hand earlier on Friday, the day he disappeared, because he was bothering the cats.

Mr. Duffy admitted that he swatted the boy on the shoulder on the same day, because Jimmy wouldn’t stay with them during their walk around the woods.

Mr. Duffy told investigators that he had a violent temper and that several years prior he tried to kill a man in a fight.

The detectives noted that Mr. Duffy never expressed any emotions during the entire interaction, including when they outright accused him of murder.

Finally, detectives asked Mr. Duffy if he was willing to take a polygraph test.

Mr. Duffy said that that would be fine so long as they scheduled it for a later date.

On October 25th at 6:30 pm, the search was officially called off.

Not a single scrap of evidence was found in the effort to find Jimmy Duffy.

A minimum of 10,337 man-hour were used in the search, with some volunteer hours unaccounted for.

More than 50 m worth of string had been tied up in grid patterns within the relatively small search area.

The sheriff felt that the search could not have been any better.

He said that they had searched so thoroughly that towards the end they were practically just turning over large pieces of tree bark on the ground looking for Jimmy.

He was quoted in newspaper saying, “I’m 99% sure he’s not here.

” The sheriff found the complete lack of leads puzzling.

And though he didn’t exactly express it in the media, the sheriff increasingly believed that the parents were lying and were somehow involved in Jimmy’s disappearance.

Either way, the search ended and as one reporter put it, the forest would not give up its secret.

A light snow began to fall the morning after the search was suspended, setting the stage for the oncoming winter.

On October 28th, despite the search being over, Chellane County deputies continued to drive through the area on regular patrol.

That day, a deputy discovered a green international pickup truck parked where the search base camp used to be.

They identified the owner as 65-year-old Fred Corf of Mary’sville, Washington.

Mr. Corf told the deputies that he had been in the area on October 19th when Jimmy disappeared.

He said that he noticed the Duffy’s camper parked on location on Friday morning as he went up the road around 10:00 am Mr. Corf said that he left the area around 100 pm, an hour before Jimmy went missing, and that he never stopped and never spoke to the Duffies.

He said that as he left, he saw a woman standing outside the camper, but he never saw or interacted with Mr. Duffy or their son, Jimmy.

A contradiction to what Mr. Duffy told the authorities.

Mr. Corf did say that he noticed another car on the road above the Duffies sometime around noon and the time that he left.

He said the vehicle was a red station wagon, either an Oldsmobile or a Pontiac with unknown Oregon plates.

He said the driver was a white male in his 30s with shoulderlength hair and wearing a red hat.

Mr. Corf said there was another person in the car as well, but he was unable to get a description.

He said that the vehicle left the area at a speed that was too fast for road conditions.

In the report, there is also a loose memo that mentions Fred Corf.

It describes him as the last person to see Mr.s.

Duffy prior to the disappearance of Jimmy Duffy.

A Snomish County Sheriff detective describes Corf as a hermit who had lived in the area for 15 years.

They knew nothing about him and he had no criminal record or neighbors.

On October 29th, deputies from Chalan County visited the mobile home park where the Duffies lived in order to interview some of their neighbors.

At the time, the Duffies themselves were not at home and instead were living with Carol’s parents in Seattle.

The owner of the trailer court, a Mr. Jewel was interviewed first and he told authorities that the Duffies had been living there for the last 5 years and that Mr. Duffy had been out of the military for about a year and a half.

He said that Mr. Duffy currently worked at the J C Penney in the Tacoma Mall.

Mr. Jules said that he had never seen young Jimmy playing outside despite making many rounds walking or driving around the trailer court.

The detectives were then able to find one of the Duffy’s neighbors, a Mr.s.

Muscus, who said that she had last seen Jimmy about 3 weeks prior to his disappearance.

She said that the Duffies mostly kept to themselves and were strict parents.

She thought that Jimmy was very well behaved, or much more so than other kids his age.

She said that she babysat for the Duffies a year prior, taking care of both Jimmy and Natalie.

She said that the Duffies never discussed their personal life with anyone and that they were extremely reserved.

Mr.s.

Muscus stated that Mr.s.

Duffy had a close girlfriend, but she didn’t know who she was by name.

Moving on, the deputies came to another trailer and neighbor of the Duffies, a Mr.s.

Durst.

She also had never seen young Jimmy playing outside the Duffy’s mobile home.

Another neighbor, Mr.s.

Prior, said that she had seen Jimmy twice during the summer, but that the Duffies were not very sociable people.

She said a fellow neighbor did watch the Duffies leave on Thursday night, as they said they did.

Mr.s.

prior said that Jimmy’s limbs were also very emaciated and small and she didn’t think he’d be able to walk very far from the camper in that kind of condition.

The general consensus of all the neighbors was that Jimmy Duffy was rarely seen outside his mobile home and that the parents rarely if ever socialized with their neighbors.

The next day on October 30th, the Chalan County under sheriff visited the public safety building in Seattle, Washington to observe the Duffy parents as they underwent a polygraph test.

Both Carol and Jim were to be tested simultaneously in different rooms by different experts.

Mr.s.

Duffy came into the office appearing very nervous and tense, while her husband was more relaxed and even talkative.

After they were given the tests, notes and graphs were reviewed by numerous professionals, and they were satisfied that both Mr. and Mr.s.

Duffy gave similar testimony in which they both indicated that they were together in the clearcut when they heard a scream, and they rushed back to the camper to find the door open and Jimmy missing.

They then searched for roughly 45 minutes before notifying authorities.

The lead expert, Mr. Matsky told the under sheriff that it was evident to him and his associates that neither the husband nor the wife had anything to do with their child’s strange disappearance.

It’s noted in the report that the parents appeared to show little if any emotions after the testing was completed.

They state that neither shed a single tear or showed grief or even a desire to stay close to one another.

Both parents kept themselves separated with Carol sitting in a chair while Jim stood off by himself in another area.

With the Duffies both passing their polygraph test, the Chalan County Sheriff had lost their only lead in the case.

They told the Duffies that they would continue searching, but no further operations of any scale were conducted in the region, and no new clues ever presented themselves.

The case went cold and was forgotten.

I’ve been out to the Lake Wan that region before for the Hildigard Hendrickson case.

The Duffy case is in a whole other area to the west of the lake.

I was really curious to head back into the Cascades and have a look at the location where this child disappeared and this large search took place.

The exact location of the Duffy’s vehicle is unknown, at least to me.

The reason for that is that the sheriff’s report gives conflicting information about where they were.

One page indicates that they were on Peine Creek.

Another page indicates that they were on Line Creek.

Those creeks are not close to each other.

Some of the maps they supply are quite messy and also seem to conflict with markings on other maps in the case file.

Using one map, I could deduce that they were parked up here on the ridge, but this spot is not near Line Creek or Peine Creek.

It also seems to contradict another map of their location and some of the testimony given by the parents.

Yes, it is amazing to me that the sheriff’s office could spend so much time and effort searching for Jimmy Duffy and still somehow not have an accurate description of the point where he was last seen within their own records.

The only thing I know for certain is that the family was somewhere along this ridge, which is Little Wache Ridge, and they were on a road that may or may not even still exist.

Ultimately, the only thing that really matters is that we know the general region where this all occurred.

If little Jimmy is still out there, then this is where he would be.

It’s always good to be back in the Cascades, a truly beautiful mountain range.

Even in early summer, the temperatures were perfect and the nearby peaks were still snowcapped.

The road that heads out in the direction of Little Wache Ridge is actually quite nice, which is a relative rarity when I go on these outings.

Since we don’t have a pinpoint location or goal to get to, my plan was to just walk around the area and get a feel for the place.

Often times, understanding the ground and terrain itself can help with formulating a theory.

Today, it is quite easy to get to the ridge itself, but getting to all of the forest roads that wind across the ridge is a whole other matter, as sometimes the Forest Service keeps them closed for unknown reasons.

All [Applause] right.

So, before we go down the road and and check out the search area and whatnot, let’s just get a little refresher on what the sheriff said happened.

This is a very abbreviated version.

According to them, Mr. and Mr.s.

James Duffy from Tacoma parked their camper in the corner of a small clear cut at roughly 3600 ft.

I don’t think that is accurate.

Planning to do some hunting.

Sometime earlier in the day, they took their son Jimmy for a short walk down a cat track on the north side of the clearcut, then climbed through brush uphill and returned through open woodland to the camper.

So, they took their son for a walk.

That was the only thing they did with him in this area.

In the early afternoon, Carol Duffy put the two children down for their naps, Jimmy and the 11-month-old Natalie, his sister.

Then Carol and Jim took their guns and walked down the road on the west side of the clearcut.

Near the southwest corner of the clearcut, Jim left Carol and returned to the camper to check on the children.

Both children were asleep, so they were going back periodically to make sure the kids were still there.

Jim then took the cat track to the east, then skirted the edge of the clearcut and rejoined Carol.

At this time, estimated to be 15 minutes from the time Jim left the camper, they heard a noise.

And I think the estimated time is around 2:15 pm This was variously interpreted to be either a screech or perhaps the noise made by the squeaky hinges of the camper door as it closed.

Carol and Jim both looked at the camper, noticed that the door was now open, and returned as fast as they could to find Jimmy gone.

Natalie and two kittens were still asleep.

While there had been some minimal traffic on the road, neither Carol nor Jim could remember any traffic during this time span.

So the people that they had seen in the area, they didn’t prior the hermit guy, all this other stuff seemed to be gone.

Even the hermit guy said he was gone an hour prior to this event happening.

So they didn’t see anybody in the area or they had passed, you know, they were all gone.

And yet somebody was able to come and take their child.

Let’s uh move up the road a bit.

So uh I’m right about at the confluence where Peine Creek meets the Little Wache River.

The road going further up is closed.

Walking up it a bit.

Uh, not that I expect to see much anything different, but figured I might as well just get as close as I can to where we’re trying to be, though.

The purpose is to kind of just check out the terrain here, obviously, and to see what could have happened.

And obviously, 50 years have passed, so things are looking a little different.

A lot of the clear cuts that were here back in the day are no longer here.

a lot of the burns.

Everything’s grown up.

You know, 50 years, there’s a lot of time.

These trees, 50 years old, they’re going to be pretty tall.

It’s going to look a lot different already.

I can tell that this whole area is really steep.

So, can’t even imagine what the searchers had to go through.

But apparently, they did such a good job.

They said at the end that they were just turning over pieces of bark looking for this kid.

So, I’m going to go further up a bit and uh see if anything looks different.

You know, I’ve been walking these roads for some time now past the road closure sign and uh a little surprised that the this road is closed.

I mean, it’s quite nice.

It feels like they just wanted to make me walk.

This road is just as good as the other roads we were on.

I guess I don’t understand the Forest Service, so I’m just complaining at this point, so forgive me.

But who knows, maybe there was recent Bigfoot attacks up here.

I don’t know.

All right, so I made it to Peine Creek.

a little lackluster, not gonna lie, but um it is a creek, so at least I can say I came to the spot here.

We’re definitely in the search area, nothing has really changed in terms of my opinion or anything, but you can see why people come hunting here.

It’s really remote.

You get a sense there’s wild wildlife in the area and uh yeah, a lot of open forest.

Let’s get up in there a little bit and uh see what it looks like.

Well, the forest air is different in different areas.

Obviously, some areas have a lot more undergrowth and some where the trees are a lot larger, there’s no brush you really have to deal with.

You just have to deal with a cloud of mosquitoes which are currently attacking me.

It seems like someone probably could run down this.

Some areas are less steep.

This incline really is not bad where I’m at.

And in fact, we’re closer to where someone would have run down this hillside if they had taken Jimmy.

Now, the other point is that if they came down How would they get past the hunters at the bottom? And it’s possible that they some guy could have done that and nobody nobody saw.

Fully possible.

Maybe he had a truck.

Maybe he threw the child in it and bailed out of there real quick.

The hunters were not interviewed by the cops.

You know, there was just like a little blurb in the report basically saying, “I talked to the hunters.

They said they didn’t see anything.

” I would have liked to have seen a little bit more.

I know it’s 1973, so I shouldn’t expect much and we’re lucky to even gotten anything.

The question is why, who, how, but these are answers we’re never going to get.

I spent a lot of time walking around in the woods on this ridge.

I won’t bore you with a solid hour of it.

The level of steepness can vary dramatically depending on where you are located.

This could without question be a factor in whether or not someone could steal a child and carry them downhill through the woods towards a truck that is waiting on the road below.

Some regions of the woodland are only moderately inclined.

Others are quite precarious indeed.

The bottom line is that it is possible for someone to move around this ridge with speed.

It just depends on where they are on the ridge.

Okay.

So, as I’m walking here, and again, I apologize if the wind is affecting this, but behind me, we’re looking at the road that the hunter vehicles would have been parked on.

So, back then, it was hunting season around that time.

Right now, it’s not hunting season, so maybe that’s why there’s not many people here.

Could be.

Back then there was plenty of other hunters in the area and a rather large group of them was sitting at the bottom of this hill on this road behind me and none of them saw anybody come down.

And you would think that they would have seen that.

They couldn’t all have been in on it.

I mean, you to be out in the middle of nowhere and then to have someone encounter a child and then have the gall to go into a trailer and steal that child.

That’s a strange thing to run into.

I’m not saying it can’t be done or it couldn’t happen, but obviously a person would have to know the child is there.

So, they would have had to have been watching as the family took little Jimmy for a walk cuz that was the only time he was outside of the trailer.

They arrived and they took him for a little walk around the edges of the clear cut.

And after that, they just laid him down for a nap and then 15 minutes after they last were at the trailer, he was gone.

And we can talk about the screech that was heard.

I don’t think it was the door.

Even in the report, it says it might have been from the door closing, but the door was open when the parents came there.

Could have been from the door opening, but there’s been a lot of different descriptions about what that screech was.

Some people said it was a baby’s cry.

Sometimes they said it was like an animal’s cry or squeaky hinge, you know.

But I get the feeling that if it was the cry of a child, you might have heard it again at some point.

Unless whoever the abductor was put their hand over the child’s mouth, I suppose.

Either way, we don’t really know what that’s about.

Obviously, some people would put that sound in the Bigfoot camp yet again.

Again, I can’t argue against it, but I I h I’m unconvinced that Bigfoot was involved here.

Who knows? If I see him today, I will change my mind.

Anyway, let’s keep moving.

You know, this area really is so steep and full of trees and brush that it’s hard to imagine someone grabbing a child and running away with it, you know.

And the sheriff from the beginning had this thought that it was the parents and that they were involved the whole time.

And you know, the dad seemed like a very stoic guy.

He was military and he didn’t show any emotion throughout this whole ordeal.

And that I think is what really kind of tipped the sheriff off that something might be wrong.

There was also some hints that they were very reclusive family.

They didn’t let their kids out a lot, you know, but that could just be from this strict military upbringing that Jimmy was having.

You know, the parents could be bad parents and not have murdered their child is what I’m saying.

You know, they did pass a polygraph, both of them, for what that’s worth.

Um, the mom appeared nervous at that.

Still passed.

Dad still stoic.

Nothing bothered him.

He passed.

After that polygraph though, this case drops dead.

Cold case.

They had no other leads.

They figured it had to be the parents or nothing.

So, you can’t rule the parents out, but gosh, things are kind of pointing in another direction.

So, but if someone did abduct the child, they picked a wild place to do it in You know, as I’m walking by the hillside here, you can kind of uh develop a lot of sympathy for the search party in this area.

It must have been real tough.

The whole thing is on a hillside, pretty steep.

I mean, at least you’re on an incline almost the entire time some sort.

And then some areas are just littered with brush.

But they felt like they did a really good job.

They were certain that wherever Jimmy was, he was no longer in this area.

So, I mean, they seem confident about it.

Should we trust him? Maybe.

I don’t see there’s no way Jimmy could have gotten out on his own.

And I think that’s probably the only way I would expect him to still be in this area is if the child was able to get out a trailer by himself, but it was locked from the outside.

Someone got in and got to him.

And if that’s the case, I can’t imagine he’d be anywhere near here anymore.

I just couldn’t see it.

One interesting thing I’ve noted about this case, though, probably has nothing to do with really anything about what happened.

I’m surprised that they still have these files.

Apparently, Chalan County had to uh dig them out and uh make fresh copies of them.

They had them on microfich or something.

You know, these files were buried for a long time.

And then before Chalan would give them to me, they told me that they had to contact the surviving members of the Duffy family and see if they wanted to take me to court to stop me from getting access to these records.

When I saw that, I was kind of like, well, what’s in here? I’ I’ve never encountered that before.

They didn’t go ahead and do anything, so I got the records anyway, obviously.

But I thought that was very interesting.

I was expecting there to be, I don’t know, something very damaging about the Duffy family in there or something.

And I don’t know that there really is.

I mean, there’s some evidence that the Duffy family, or at least the parents, maybe they weren’t great parents.

I don’t know.

It was a military family in 1973.

I I don’t know that I’m so surprised that they uh, you know, swacked the kid a couple times.

I’m not saying that’s good.

I’m just I don’t know if I’m surprised.

The dad seemed like a very emotionless man.

I don’t know him.

I can’t say anything for certain, but you know, they passed the polygraph.

When I saw that there was going to be a polygraph in there, I would I was expecting them to have failed it, and that’s why they didn’t want the records released, but no, that’s not what happened.

So, I found that kind of interesting.

First time I’ve ever encountered that.

Um, but we got them anyway, and there was a lot to be learned in there.

a lot more stuff than you would have found in newspapers.

So, it’s uh it’s good we we got that.

One other location that I wanted to visit was the Little Wache River.

It’s not mentioned much in the search reports, but it still merits some consideration when we theorize about what might have happened to Jimmy Duffy.

Fastmoving water can be deadly to almost anyone, but especially children.

Reaching the Little Wache River can be easy if you’re in the right area.

At some points, you can only get to it if you decide to fall a few hundred feet.

In other areas, all you need to do is take a short stroll down a trail.

So, right now I’m down at the Little Wanachi River, and I apologize for the wind if it’s affecting this.

I got to think it is.

And if it’s not, then this microphone is very good.

But I came here because I know some people probably are going to suggest maybe Jimmy somehow made it down to the river here and got swept away.

Given his age, he could easily get swept away in this river.

It’s a pretty big river.

But the only way I think Jimmy could have been in that scenario is if there was no foul play, there was no kidnapper, you know, that he just got down here on his own and got swept away, you know, and there’s no way he could have gotten out of the trailer on his own because the outside door was locked as I’ve previously stated.

Now the only other possibility on that same line of thinking would be with the involvement of the parents.

Yet again, the scenario would have to be something like while they were on their walk, they brought the kids down here, Jimmy got swept away in the water is playing too close to the river and the parents decided to cover that up by coming up with this story about him getting abducted from the camper trailer.

in the list of possibilities in this case that is a possibility you know but it’s one amongst a 100 thousand probably what we’re trying to look at is the most likely possibilities I don’t know if it’s the most likely possibility but it’s still on the list um I didn’t know the parents obviously this was a long time they passed the polygraphs I get the sense they probably didn’t have anything to do with it.

That’s just the sense I get and that’s just me.

Um, you know, again, you don’t bad parents aren’t necessarily parents that kill or do this kind of thing.

At the same time, I suppose you could say if they were neglectful parents, uh, they could have let something like this happen where their child gets swept away.

I don’t necessarily know why they would invent the story of him being kidnapped if that was the case.

Why not just tell the sheriff our son, he got away from us and he got swept away.

It’s one of those things, you know, who knows what happened in the end.

None of the story really makes sense because it’s hard to really make a theory fit.

I mean, abduction, why would somebody in the area be here looking to abduct a child? If they did, how do they get away with it? And you know, and then the parents, were they involved? It seems not.

They passed the polygraph.

There’s no evidence to suggest they were.

I don’t know.

There’s a lot of different theories you could come up with at this case, and this is just one among many.

All right, folks.

I think we’ve kind of seen what there is to see here.

And the ultimate conclusion is who knows what happened in this case.

uh I can’t really come to a solid idea, you know, and that’s unfortunate because I know that’s why uh why Bigfoot is like the number one culprit in this case for a lot of people because it’s hard to imagine a kidnapping.

For me, it would be easier to imagine the parents involved in some sort of, you know, neglected child incident or something and they wanted to cover it up.

But they did pass those polygraphs and I’m stuck on that point a little bit.

Again, I know they’re not, you know, the end all beall of gauging someone’s trustworthiness or truthfulness, but it does count for a little something cuz it was both of them, the dad and the mom.

And if the mom was already feeling nervous about the test, I would have expected her to to fail or something.

Anyway, we’ll start heading back now and we’ll finish up this video.

Visiting this region has helped to confirm what I already suspected, that there are multiple possibilities when looking at this case.

It’s easy to imagine someone, especially a small child, getting lost in this area.

But then again, you would hope such a large search would turn up something.

There is just no evidence to suggest that Jimmy himself got lost.

Once you consider that, you have to move on to stuff like foul play.

You might think that a deep woods ridge would be an odd place to encounter such a thing.

Except anywhere there are people, there are possibilities, and there were quite a few people in this place when Jimmy Duffy vanished.

So, I think much of this case boils down to one question.

How much can we trust the parents? There are some discrepancies in Jim and Carol’s narrative.

Usually, these are small discrepancies amongst the three or four different interviews given between the two of them.

When I say small, I mean that sometimes it will say that Jim went east at a specific point in one report and in another report it will say he went west.

One report says that Jimmy was covered by a blanket.

Another one says that he was put in a sleeping bag.

after Jimmy vanished.

One report says that Jim Duffy went to search the clearcut while his wife went to search the road.

Another report has it the opposite way where Jim searched the road and his wife searched the clearcut.

These are discrepancies, but it’s hard to know where they come from.

They might not even be because the parents changed or messed up their story.

It could very well be that the deputy they were talking to wrote it down incorrectly.

You have to remember these guys are in the field probably taking notes on a notepad or maybe even trying to capture these statements by memory and then later they have to go and sit down in front of a typewriter and recreate what they heard to the best of their ability.

So the discrepancies could all be coming from that process.

In my opinion, there is only one large discrepancy in Jim and Carol’s narrative and that relates to the so-called hermit Fred Corf.

You have Mr. Duffy, who says that Mr. Corf stopped and talked to them.

And Mr. Duffy even tells authorities that he seemed like a good guy and he didn’t have anything to do with it.

Well, Mr. Corf himself says that not only did he never talk to Mr. Duffy, he never even saw Mr. Duffy in the area.

He says he only saw the wife near the camper as he was leaving the area.

So, what’s going on here? Either one of these people is lying or someone is mistaken or something.

The problem is that the authorities never did anything to reconcile this strange discrepancy.

They never followed up with Mr. Duffy and asked him about this a second time.

The thing is, it kind of seems like one of these two men is lying.

But why would they do that? Maybe because they had something to do with it.

If that is the case, I don’t see why Mr. Duffy would need to lie.

In fact, if Mr. Duffy was involved in his son’s disappearance.

You would think that he would be trying to divert attention to anywhere else he could.

Saying that a hermit might have been responsible would have been a good way to do that.

But Mr. Duffy did the opposite.

He said that the hermit seemed like a good guy.

You probably don’t have to worry about him.

So, it doesn’t really make much sense for Mr. Duffy to be lying here.

On the other hand, you have the hermit, Mr. Corf.

Why would he be lying in this instance? Well, the obvious answer would be that he had something to do with Jimmy’s disappearance.

If Mr. Corf was responsible, he would probably try to separate himself from the Duffies as much as possible.

Admitting that he even talked to the Duffies would place him much too close and potentially make him a suspect.

So, it kind of seems like the only one who might have real motive to lie in this instance would be Mr. Corf, which would put him on the suspects list.

And since we’re talking about suspects, I think there really are only two possibilities in this case.

One, that the parents are lying and that they had something to do with Jimmy’s death.

Or two, somebody actually stole Jimmy Duffy from the trailer in the forest.

When it comes to the parents, I know that they passed a polygraph, but in my opinion, that doesn’t completely exonerate them, especially a 1973 version of a polygraph test.

The parents seem like some strange people, and I hate to hold that against them, but something just seems off based on the little we know about them.

They also didn’t seem to treat little Jimmy very well.

They admitted to striking him in the past, and he was rarely, if ever, seen playing outside.

In determining whether or not their story is true, there are a few things that stood out to me.

One is that the first deputy on scene looked for tracks outside the camper and he said he couldn’t identify any child’s footprints in the muddy ground.

I feel like he should have seen some.

Jimmy had been in the area for half a day and during that time he was led out to go on a walk.

So why were there no footprints? This could indicate that Jimmy was never in the area in the first place.

Another odd part of their story is that they say that they heard this incredibly loud cry or scream coming from the camper.

At the time, they were presumably pretty far away.

We don’t have an exact distance, but there are some estimates.

They were somewhere between 150 to about 400 yd away.

So, they were able to hear this loud noise from at least 150 yards away.

It must have been pretty loud.

But when they got to the camper, their baby Natalie was still asleep.

That seems a bit strange to me.

I mean, maybe the baby was just a heavy sleeper, but I’d usually assume that a sound that was loud at a distance of 150 yards would be very loud at only a couple feet, loud enough to wake a baby, at least, but it didn’t.

Does this indicate that the parents are lying? No, not necessarily.

It’s just one of those things that kind of raises an eyebrow.

Regardless, there’s enough oddities here that the parents should still be considered suspects in this case.

The other option is that they were telling the truth and somehow someone was able to steal Jimmy away from the camper.

I don’t think there was any scenario where Jimmy himself was able to escape the camper and run off.

I mean, a newspaper did state that Jimmy had recently learned to open the camper door from the inside, but the father clearly stated that he locked the door from the outside.

Also, if Jimmy ran off, it wouldn’t explain the scream and the fact that no child footprints were found in the mud outside the camper.

So, if he was taken, then someone would have had to have been watching the family for some time.

They would have had to have known that the child was alone in the camper and felt safe in going in there with the parents kind of nearby.

And they would have had to have felt confident enough to steal the child and get away with it despite numerous other cars and hunters in the area.

This is why a lot of people have proposed that Sasquatch was behind all this.

The deep woods location where this happened, the secluded area, the difficulty in getting away.

It’s hard to imagine a man being responsible for someone to have opened the camper, stolen the child, and run off into the forest quick enough to get away.

They must have been pretty quick and also pretty strong.

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