Remains merely deepen the mystery of lost wanderer

DENVER — The saga of Everett Ruess, an idealistic wanderer whose disappearance in 1934 sparked one of the most enduring mysteries of the modern West, is not over yet.

Ruess' family said last week that because of questions raised by Utah's state archaeologist, they would seek independent retesting of remains found last year on the Navajo Indian Reservation in southern Utah. Scientists at the University of Colorado — in a joint announcement in April with National Geographic Adventure magazine, which wrote about the discovery — said the remains, based on forensic analysis and DNA testing, were almost certainly those of Ruess.

But Utah's state archaeologist, Kevin Jones, said he thought the remains were more likely those of an American Indian because of the distinctive shape of the teeth and their pattern of wear, and because Ruess' dental records from the 1930s do not appear to match. Jones emphasized that he had not been able to examine the remains physically and that his critique, written with a physical anthropologist also at the Utah Division of State History, is based on published photographs.

A spokesman for the family, Brian Ruess, Everett Ruess' nephew, said the family was shocked.

"We didn't expect someone as respected and respectable as the state archaeologist to raise a dissent, which is why we're taking it so seriously," he said.

At the University of Colorado, Dennis Van Gerven, a professor of anthropology who led the team in examining the remains, said that although Ruess' dental records were unclear, they did not definitively indicate what — if any — work was performed. He added that 41 percent of the skeleton's teeth were missing, so a debate about teeth was beside the point.

The combined DNA and forensic evidence, he said, was "incontrovertible." The body, found stuffed in a rock crevice about 60 miles from Escalante, belonged at the very least to a close relative of living Ruess family members, he said, a male who was 19 to 22 years old when he died. Using 600,000 still-readable DNA fragments, tests found a 25 percent genetic match with Everett Ruess' nephews and nieces, he said, which is the exact percentage expected if the remains were those of an uncle. He said a peer-reviewed article about the case is being prepared.

Everett Ruess, 20 when he disappeared, confounded expectations in life, too. From the time he was 16, he traveled the deserts of the West alone but for a burro or two. He painted and wrote poetry, befriended older wanderers such as Ansel Adams and frequently lived with the Navajo.

It was because of a story handed down in a Navajo family — about the slaying of a young white man witnessed in the 1930s from afar and kept secret for decades — that the remains were recovered by a grandson of a man who said he had seen the killing.

But the physical anthropologist with the state, Derinna Kopp, said the photographs of the remains strongly suggest to her that the skeleton was most likely that of an American Indian. The distinctive shape of the incisors — with an extra ridge of enamel along each side on the back, giving the tooth a shovel shape — is found in about 90 percent of American Indians and Asians and in only about 8 percent of Caucasians, she said. Whoever was buried in the crevice had shovel-shaped incisors.

"Also, two of the lower left teeth, the second molar and first molar, should have fillings, according to Everett's dental records — we can see those clearly in the pictures — and they have no dental work on them at all," she said. "That puts a lot of doubt in my mind."