by Roman Dial
Peggy was nervous with the driving conditions. At one point, a stick jammed in the undercarriage. The driver stopped and Peggy jumped out to remove it. The SUV was perched at the edge of a steep cliff with a few trees near its top and an erosion ditch that cut into the jeep track. After Peggy hopped in, the driver pulled forward. The ditch grabbed the front wheel, pulled the vehicle off the road, and rolled us down the hill.
In the roll, Peggy, who hadn’t had time to buckle her seat belt, was thrown forward from the back seat behind the driver to the front seat’s passenger-side window. When the SUV came to rest, held in place by trees on the brink of a precipice, she peered, terrified, down the cliff below her. Unhurt but shaken, we climbed out the windows and scrambled back to the road. Squeezing in with Jorge, we tried not to look out the window at the roadside cliffs for the rest of the drive.
We slept on Roy Arias’s hardwood floors, leaving at dawn for the Madrigal. Following a thin trail along a canyon rim, Peggy was stung by a six-inch caterpillar with long poisonous hairs. Later, bushwhacking a route we suspected the Guichos used to access the Madrigal River inside the park, we nearly stepped on a coiled fer-de-lance. Slowed by steep climbs, slippery descents, and sketchy traverses, we didn’t make it to the main branch of the Madrigal until dusk.
Among the seven of us, we carried only two flashlights. Walking down the Madrigal in the dark, Jorge instructed us to walk through the creek’s waters “to avoid stepping on snakes attracted to the stream by frogs.” The warning seemed silly and walking in the creek was difficult, so Peggy and I climbed up to walk on a gravel bar. Not ten feet later, she stepped on the rubbery cordage of a snake. We didn’t look down to see what kind it was or what it did. We just rushed for the creek and splashed along with the Ticos.
We reached Carate near midnight, finding nothing but bad luck and near misses between Dos Brazos and the Madrigal on the Pata Lora trail.
Chapter 47
Discovery
El Doctor Creek, Corcovado National Park, May 21, 2016.
Courtesy of the author
By the first week of May 2016, it was clear that the series Missing Dial had been produced for the National Geographic Channel as reality TV. The trailers were ghastly. Their reenactments of the Pata Lora story focused on blood dripping from a machete. The machete was held by a man in board shorts and knee-high rubber boots standing over a body facedown in a creek. The show’s executive producer, Aengus, even cautioned Peggy and me not to watch. He said he didn’t want these re-creations, “but the network asked for them.” He had produced them to create “buzz.”
At the time I believed him, and I believed Pata Lora, and I accepted that the overdramatizations—which included a young man who looked remarkably like Roman in the photo from Bhutan but running from miners with machetes—would keep the investigation alive. After Aengus’s warning, we watched the six episodes of Missing Dial that TIJAT had so far produced. I emailed him:
Peggy and I watched all the episodes.
It documents the investigation well.
It’s not overproduced in general although as you warned the machete scenes are a bit overused. My mother and sister would be disturbed by those. Probably Jazz too.
It doesn’t make the Embassy look bad at all, so if you gave them the episodes then they’d have little incentive to do any more than they’ve been doing—which has been very little really.
I like the idea of using this show to leverage some action from the Embassy and OIJ.
As promotion for the show, a TV camera followed Peggy, Ken, and me as we headed to the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., where Ken had arranged a meeting. It was Thursday, May 19, and the next day we were scheduled to fly to New York for another promotional spot. The first episode would air on Sunday.
We left our cell phones at security. Two friendly FBI agents in dark suits led us to a small conference room on the seventh floor. The room quickly filled with seven or eight more agents, including the deputy director. I told the story I had come to believe, the one carved from Pata Lora’s schizophrenic psyche, embellished with the Guichos and a new guy named Poquito, who seemed to be the Guichos’ boss. I also told the agents how I had tracked down Roman’s backpack purchase to the North Face store in San José.
“That’s real investigative work,” an agent said about the pack. “It’s the kind of thing that we do. But what do you guys want?”
I answered his question literally because I’d learned over the years that the FBI couldn’t really do much in Costa Rica. “For a long time, I just wanted to know what happened. Now we know. Now I want justice.”
“A body,” Peggy blurted. “We want a body. We want to bring him home.”
A body would answer a lot of questions. It was also necessary for any murder convictions.
The rest of the meeting was like so many others over the years: assurances and explanations about the limits of American law enforcement in foreign lands. “These things take time,” said the agent who had flattered me. “It could be years.” They also commented on how Carson’s activities had damaged relations between the U.S. and Costa Rica on this case.
AFTER THE MEETING, we collected our phones. Mine had a message from a number in Costa Rica. It was the consul general from the U.S. Embassy. He said to give him a call, no matter the time. My phone was almost dead. “It’s Ravi. He wants me to call,” I told Peggy. We walked the few blocks to the hotel to charge my phone. I called Ravi and put him on speaker.
“Roman,” Ravi said over the phone, “I’m not sure there’s any other way to say this but directly: human remains were found today near Dos Brazos. With camping equipment.”
I sat down. Over the years, Toby, Lauren, and the embassy had contacted us about news of other bodies in the jungle. But this felt different. This felt like Roman.
Ravi continued. “What we understand is that a miner had been in the mountains today and found bones in a streambed. Then, moving upstream, he found camping equipment. He immediately called 911 from there in the jungle. We wanted to let you know as soon as we could. It seems this might be your son.”
My feelings swirled between pain and relief. Relief, because it seemed the ordeal of searching without knowing might be over. Pain, because it would mean, once and for all, that our son was dead.
We needed to return to Costa Rica immediately. I had to see the scene, to judge for myself if it had been crime or accident.
Two years before, I had described in detail Roman’s equipment to Ravi. The blue Patagonia Puffball. The Jetboil. Green Salomon shoes. A yellow and gray Z-rest foam pad that folded rather than rolled. Peggy and I had made a poster of these and others items, hanging copies from Cerro de Oro to Carate. But I hadn’t listed all the things I knew Roman carried. I kept some to myself, for later, for proof. For a moment like now.
“Where did they find him, Ravi?”
“Up the Rio Tigre from Dos Brazos. Inside the park, in Corcovado. MINAE rangers are going up there in the morning to confirm.”
The next morning, Friday, Peggy and I went to my mom’s, taking the train to northern Virginia where we waited for her to pick us up at a bus stop. While we waited, a writer from People magazine called to interview me for an article about Missing Dial.
In the middle of her questioning, my phone lit up with a Costa Rican number. I told the reporter I had to take it. It was Kara, from the embassy. She was brief. She said she’d send me photos from the site where the remains had been found. She asked that I confirm if I recognized any equipment.
The photos arrived on my phone and I hurried through them. I needed to know if this was him. The first showed a bright green Salomon shoe pushed against a fallen tree limb, toe down, half buried in sand and debris. It looked as fresh as if it had come right off Roman’s foot that day. “His shoe doesn’t look old enough to have been in the jungle for two years!” Peggy exclaimed.
The next photo showed a pack, bottom up and partially beneath a rotten log. It, too, was mostly bu
ried in dirty sand and gravel among sticks and brown leaves that had obviously been washed down as flood debris. A cookpot was partially exposed next to the pack. Another photo showed the pack free from the log and debris. It looked greenish gray. I quickly pulled up the catalog photo from the San José North Face store and found myself catching my breath. It was the same model and color.
The shoe and the pack were convincing enough to answer Kara’s question. But as more photos arrived, there could be no doubt. They were all Roman’s things. The yellow and gray colored folding sleeping pad was crumpled and partially shoved beneath a log. A compass with a black lanyard. A blue Petzl headlamp that I’d handed him in Alaska. This was all essential tropical camping equipment from our family stash back home.
There was also an unfamiliar silver cookpot and something green and metal. I couldn’t judge its size. It rested in a streambed where shallow water ran over it. I didn’t recognize this object at all. The last picture was sobering. It felt callous that they had even sent it. It was unmistakable: a human skull with the upper jaw visible, half buried in sticks and debris and backed up against a termite mound. Everything looked to me naturally deposited by flowing water in a creek, not haphazardly buried by a criminal hiding evidence.
My battery was nearly spent. The reporter from People called back. I sputtered something about the discovery, but her interview seemed superfluous, and I said I had to go. Peggy and I studied the images, teary-eyed and nostalgic. We reminisced about Roman, held each other and cried on the bus stop bench. We pored over every image again and again, checking and rechecking that these were indeed his shoes, his pad, his pack, his headlamp, his compass. There was no doubt.
After the miner had dialed 911 from one of Thai’s “little jungle phone booths,” the news traveled fast. Texts and emails poured in from Lauren and Toby soon after those from the embassy. The Cleavers knew the ranger who had gone with the miner to the site that morning. He marked the find on his GPS. The ranger’s wife emailed me two topo maps showing the discovery site. It was a half-mile past Zeledón, upstream of Negritos in a canyon. I’d walked its rim many times.
How could I have missed him?
Chapter 48
Sleeping in the Forest
Above El Doctor, May 21, 2016.
Courtesy of the author
We would head to Costa Rica as soon as we could get on a flight. I left Virginia while Peggy waited for Jazz to send her passport by air express. Somehow, my flight escaped a volcanic ash-fall that shut down all other flights into San José. I made it to Puerto Jiménez the same day.
Ken and a Tico named Gerhardt met me at the Fiscal’s office in Puerto Jiménez at five the next morning. Gerhardt is a lean and gentle multisport athlete who worked as a local fixer for Missing Dial. He could handle the jungle better than anyone who’d worked on the show and we had become good friends during filming.
Gerhardt translated, explaining that the discovery site was on a small creek called El Doctor. This was the uppermost tributary of the Negritos canyon that Steve and I had descended on rope. The creek was named for a doctor killed there many years ago in an airplane crash. Miners know it for its strange, focused winds that knock down trees remarkably often, like the one that nearly landed on the LTR crew above the Zeledón.
It was the day that Missing Dial would air its first episode. Aengus had returned to the Osa for the unexpected turn of events. The timing seemed suspicious to him. He hurried to Dos Brazos to capture what he could of the action. In Dos Brazos, production shoved cameras into people’s lives, probing without asking, only checking that a release had been signed to excuse their intrusions. There’s no poetry in reality TV, no doing more with less.
I was embarrassed to be part of it now, especially in Dos Brazos, where residents who’d seen the trailers were horrified by the portrayal of their village and had encouraged the miner to go into the jungle. The miner explored the one corner that no one had searched and nearest to where Jenkins met Roman. It was the dry season, when the uppermost little tributaries like El Doctor are traditionally accessed.
Ken, Gerhardt, and I arrived in Dos Brazos at dawn. Pancho, the patient ranger who had taken Thai and me into the Conte years before, led us to El Doctor. I wanted to meet the OIJ forensics team while it was still on site. The four of us raced along park trails through the forest to Zeledón. Struggling to keep up with my younger, healthier companions, I felt fat, old, hot, thirsty, and tired. The last two years had taken their toll on my health. But our mission was urgent and I pushed myself.
By eight we reached the campsite where Ole and Steve, Brad and Todd had all camped with me. Twenty minutes later, we were at the forensic team’s camp on the ridge above El Doctor. The Fuerza prevented Ken and Gerhardt—employed by TIJAT—from visiting the site. I went down with Pancho.
Ken had heartily drunk Carson’s Kool-Aid. “I’ll only believe it wasn’t foul play if there’s money and his passport with his pack. Otherwise, someone put all this here—or killed him—either Joe or the Guichos.”
Pancho and I met the team carrying Roman’s remains and camping equipment up a steep muddy trail. The group was big, over a dozen people. Among them was the director of the OIJ and the two detectives who’d worked the case from the beginning. The OIJ dog handlers and Jorge from the embassy greeted me. Jorge introduced me to the OIJ forensic anthropologist, a polite young woman named Georgina who spoke excellent English.
Returning with the team to their camp on the ridge, I sat with Georgina. The rangers put down their packs. Some were loaded with clear plastic bags filled with recognizable items: the yellow sleeping pad and an orange lash strap I had given Roman. The strap was one of many we had at our house and used to strap gear to packs and packrafts. Seeing these things and a clear bag of his bones, I broke down in tears and I sobbed. Georgina comforted me as I turned away from the crowd. This was really him.
I composed myself. Georgina told me that they’d found many bones. She said that the equipment and bones had been washed downstream and trapped behind logs. The OIJ found his pelvis in his shorts, a femur under the log, his skull near his pack. A ranger found a live fer-de-lance in the creek bottom and speculated that snakebite had killed Roman. The green Salomon shoes that had looked so fresh in the photos were actually falling apart. One contained foot bones, Georgina said, but the other did not; he had at least one shoe on when he had died.
Importantly, none of the bones showed any trauma. Nobody had hit him over the head. Nobody had hacked him with a machete. There were no signs of bullets striking bone.
AS THE REST of the team ate lunch and prepared to head back to Dos Brazos, Pancho led me and Gerhardt down a steep muddy trail to El Doctor. Only inches deep and two feet wide, the creek twisted through black bedrock with tropical plants arching overhead. It was good walking and we made our way quickly to the discovery site downstream.
Pancho, who’d been one of the first rangers at the site the Friday before, stopped and pointed out where the stove and fuel canister had been found near a pile of grapefruit-sized rocks that looked like a good camp kitchen. A few yards farther, he said, was where Roman’s machete had rested on the pea-sized gravel of the streambank.
I looked around. The canyon was somewhat wider here, where the gravel bed offered the only place wide and flat enough to camp. The canyon walls, while still steep, slippery, and eroding, pitched back to less than forty-five degrees. It was easy to see this as a place where Roman might decide to camp. There was water and a soft gravel bar to stretch out his yellow pad.
Downstream was a mass of logs and forest debris, sticks of all sizes, leaves and twigs caught up in a choke point between rocks and the broken crown of a forty-foot hardwood tree trunk. It had fallen, rolled into the creek, and left its buttress perched at the top of a small waterfall with its crown upstream.
Time, decay, and the action of floodwaters had left the crown a logjam of eight-inch-diameter limbs. Yellow crime scene tape boxed in the tangle of branches
and sticks. Roman’s bones, clothes, and camp were found partly buried in this debris washed downstream by six hundred rainstorms.
So, this is where my son died.
Taking in the chaos of greenery, I thought about our young atheist at the end of his biological being. Roman would have considered his absorption and acceptance by the rainforest a fitting disposition. He was part of the jungle now.
It was little wonder that I had been drawn to the area again and again. It was so near to where Roman had met Jenkins. I had walked the ridgeline above El Doctor—only two hundred yards away—more than a half-dozen times. I had smelled the foulness of death on the first trip with Vargas and Thai when I found a dead tamandua, just short of where the rangers now set their packs holding Roman’s bones and gear. A quarter mile downstream of the logjam, below a series of waterfalls, was a drop that Steve and I had scrambled past after our exploration of Negritos’s slot canyon. We had turned back there to explore Jenkins’s tunnels rather than proceed farther upstream.
Young spindly trees grew in the red dirt above the fallen log in the creek bed. “This all looks like new vegetation,” I told Gerhardt, waving my arms toward the saplings.
“The miner who found him thought maybe a tree fell down on his camp,” Gerhardt said. “He thought that the blast from the falling tree blew the stove upstream.”
After taking pictures of the scene, I signaled to Pancho and we returned up the hill. We all hiked as a big group to Dos Brazos, where Aengus waited with cameras rolling. Elmer, who owned the cantina at the end of the road and worried about tourism, came up to me and suggested that, because we had now found Roman, we should cancel the show.
I agreed with him. But it wasn’t my show to cancel.
Chapter 49
