Per this article, the authorities have finally identified Rudy Redd Victor, a 20-year-old Native American man from New Mexico, 43 years after his disappearance. (The article gives his date of disappearance as June 15, 1974; the Charley Project has it as July 21. Shrug. Perhaps July 21 is the date he was reported missing.) Anyway:
A decade after he fled the car during a fight with his girlfriend, who Victor was traveling with on their way back to his family’s home in Colorado, a skull was turned into the Lewis and Clark County coroner.
The skull was actually first found two years prior in the same canyon by a brand inspector, who kept the skull as a souvenir of sorts after locating it while wrangling cattle on the steep hillside in 1982.
Investigators visited the hillside and found more remains, including the lower jaw. They also found a cross with a turquoise center and remnants of a red T-shirt next to a pine tree.
[…]
Air Force investigators traveled to Wolf Creek to see the hillside where Victor’s remains were found. They, alongside the county coroner, a detective in the original case and others, climbed the steep terrain to the tree where it is believed Victor died. During the initial investigation into the case, officials found a wire noose hanging from the tree. Suicide is suspected…
The official death certificate lists the cause of death as undetermined.
All I can say is…never say never.
The Charley Project Blog 