In a shocking and heartbreaking incident a 66-year-old woman disappeared off the Appalachian trail in the US and survived in the wilderness for 26 days before tragically dying.
Geraldine Largay, known fondly to loved ones as Gerry, was from Brentwood, Tennessee, and disappeared on July 22, 2013, after she left the Appalachian Trail in the Eastern United States to relieve herself and got lost between West Virginia and Mount Katahdin in Maine.
The only clear clue left behind? A picture of Gerry taken early morning on the day she went missing near a log lean-to which had three walls covered by a corrugated tin roof and a fire pit seen nearby.
A retired air force nurse, Gerry was missing for over two years before her remains were discovered by Lieutenant Kevin Adam, a forester working for the US navy, on October 16, 2015. In a cruel twist of fate, it later became known that at least three K9 units came within 100 yards of her campsite, but failed to locate Gerry.
View 4 ImagesGeraldine ‘Gerry’ Largay’s (L) heartbreaking messages to her family were discovered two years after she died(Image: Facebook)
Gerry’s own husband, George Largay, wasn’t too far off on the morning she disappeared, having driven to the Route 27 Crossing which was roughly a 22-mile hike from the shelter Gerry had last been seen at.
According to reports first released by the Boston Globe — which conducted a 1,500 page study into Gerry’s disappearance and death — Lieutenant Adam found a “possible body” in October 2015 and remembered thinking: “The possibilities were: it was a human body; it was animal bones, or if it was a human body, was it Gerry Largay?”
Wardens were finally able to piece together a picture of Gerry’s final days — all thanks to detailed journal entries she kept of her days surviving in the wilderness, and text messages she sent to her husband which he never received due to poor signal.
In a heartbreaking journal entry — and one of her final messages to her family — from August 6, 2013, two weeks after she got lost, Gerry wrote: “When you find my body, please call my husband George and my daughter Kerry.
“It will be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me – no matter how many years from now.
“Please find it in your heart to mail the contents of this bag to one of them.”
View 4 ImagesGerry (R) got lost while hiking the Appalachian Trail in the summer of 2013(Image: Facebook)
The documents also showed Gerry had tried texting her husband after she got lost, sending George a message at around 11am on the day of her disappearance that read: “In somm trouble. Got off trail to go to br. Now lost. Can u call AMC to c if a trail maintainer can help me. Somewhere north of woods road. XOX.”
Due to poor or nonexistent cell service, the text message was never delivered to George. Over the course of the next hour and a half, Gerry attempted to text her husband 10 more times, asking for help, before eventually camping down for the night.
The next day, she sent another undelivered text to her husband at 4.18pm which read: “Lost since yesterday. Off trail 3 or 4 miles. Call police for what to do pls. XOX.”
When Gerry’s remains were finally found at the makeshift campsite she had built, her notebook was discovered too — covered in moss and titled “George Please Read XOXO”.
Her entries detailed how Gerry had spent two days wandering around after taking a wrong turn across a stream.
Other items found at the campsite were maps, a space blanket, string, a flashlight that still worked, a rain jacket, dental floss, a blue baseball cap, and a homemade necklace made of white stone wrapped in string.
View 4 ImagesThe 66-year-old hiker was last seen in pictures near a log lean-to early morning of the day she disappeared(Image: Supplied )
Gerry had already travelled more than 1,000 miles of the 2,168-mile Appalachian Trail when she got lost, and her husband told the Brentwood Home Page in 2013: “Hiking the Appalachian trail and sleeping in tents and wearing the same stuff for three and four days in the rain – not on my bucket list.
“But she needed to be supported on the hike, because she had limits on what she could carry, so I simply had to say, ‘OK, suck it up. What’s six months in the grand scheme of things?’ So I did it.”
Gerry’s friend, Jane Lee, who had hiked a large chunk of the Appalachian Trail with Gerry before being pulled away by a personal emergency, had told wardens at the time her friend would sometimes struggle to keep up, and didn’t have the strongest skills with a compass.
After her remains were found, diary entries, and text messages were finally discovered — at last giving her family much-needed closure.
Her loved ones said in a statement: “After all of the communication and information from everyone involved including the Medical Examiner’s Office, Navy, and the Maine Attorney General’s Office, these findings are conclusive in that no foul play was involved and that Gerry simply made a wrong turn shortly after crossing Orbeton Stream.
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“We wish to thank all of those who gave their time and prayers while searching for our wife, sister, mother, and grandmother. We especially would like to thank the entire Maine Warden Service for their dedication to this case.
“It became apparent from day one that this was personal to them and they would not rest until Gerry was found.
“Now that we know her death was an accident, we again ask all media for the respect of our privacy as we continue our grieving process with this new chapter of closure.”