The Meadow With a Boot and No Footprints: Lost at 9,400

The Meadow With a Boot and No Footprints: Lost at 9,400

A single hiking boot stood upright, unlaced and dry inside, in the center of a frozen meadow pool with no tracks in the mud from any direction-yet that boot was the first sign anyone had that Jessica Keller was missing. How did a right boot end up alone on ice while the person who wore it vanished into wind, temperature drops and unexplained scent termini?

In this episode, we follow the four-day search above the Caldera Creek corridor and the odd clues that kept pointing the wrong way, from surveillance of Jessica's Subaru to canine teams that stopped at an empty spot on Rim Flats. What caused two trained tracking dogs to refuse to move past a precise point in an open meadow?

Person: Jessica Keller Date: April 2006 (Wednesday April 5, 2006 - Thursday) Location: Caldera Creek corridor / Rim Flats / Rim Flats Status: Missing Event: Single right hiking boot found upright in frozen meadow pool

- Jessica Keller was 48 years old and employed as a billing coordinator at the Farren orthopedic clinic for 11 years. - She had delivered dinner every Thursday to her mother at Ponderosa Arms for four years without exception. - Surveillance recorded her Subaru entering the Rim Flats trailhead parking lot at 5:22 PM; there was no footage of it returning. - Wind at Rim Flats on Wednesday night reached sustained 19 mph, gusting to 31 mph, and temperature dropped to 28°F by 11:40 PM. - Two dog teams (bloodhound Hooper and Belgian Malinois Petra) independently stopped at the same unmarked point near the center of Rim Flats, logged as a scent terminus, with no physical disturbance.

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