David Shier Part 1: A Walk into the Unknown
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They used drones and all types of stuff and just nothing, no sign. And I think in the end that instead of even kind of answering questions, in many ways it kind of raised more questions. Why didn't they find anything? It's kind of hard to believe that they would just find nothing at all. It's just like the more you peel off of this thing, the more tendrils it just seems to go out in different directions and you have to bring it back in. And okay, but is that related to Dave going missing? Well, we can't rule it out.

I definitely have criticism at times of how things were handled and have truly felt at times that they essentially decided on a narrative and what happened and just never really entertained any other ideas about it. The dominant narrative that was pursued was that he went out for whatever reason and

David Shire disappeared from his home in Trinidad, Colorado on February 11, 2022.

That morning, his wife, Rosemarie, saw Dave around 11 a.m., before she left home to run some errands. When she returned later that day, Dave was gone. She tried calling her husband, but he didn't answer. She also reached out to family and friends, but no one had seen or heard from him. As the hours passed and Dave failed to return home, she decided it was time to report him missing.

Dave's truck was still parked at the house, so the assumption was that he may have left on foot, possibly heading to his workshop in the neighboring town of Starkville. Deputies went to the shop and gave it a quick look over, but Dave wasn't there. They combed the path between his home and the workshop, but they found no sign of him.

Later, it was discovered that a neighbor's trail camera had captured Dave walking away from his property on the day he vanished. But it wasn't enough to tell where he was going or what may have happened next. Despite extensive searches of the surrounding area, not a single trace of David Shire has ever been found. For a while, it seemed like the case had gone cold. But about a year later, something completely unexpected happened. Something that brought Dave's name right back into the spotlight.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation was called in to investigate the county coroner after he was accused of improper secret burials, misuse of funds, and disturbing misconduct. At first, it sounded like a completely unrelated scandal. But something shocking happened that prompted the investigation. While in the process of exhuming the body of a man, a second body was found buried in the same grave, a body that wasn't supposed to be there.

This left Dave Shire's family wondering if the other body could be his, and that possibility was chilling. The mystery surrounding Dave's disappearance only deepened, leaving his loved ones with a whole new list of questions, while the answers have continued to remain out of reach. I'm Marissa, and from Wondery, this is episode 489 of The Vanished, part one of David Shire's story, A Walk Into The Unknown.

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We were first contacted about covering David's story back in April of 2024, when his nephew Mark sent in our case submission form. Mark's message immediately stood out. He wrote, My uncle went missing from his home in February of 2022. There's a lot I could say about this story, but suffice to say it's full of strange coincidences, local corruption, and a lot of lingering unanswered questions. I've been supporting my first cousin Morgan, his daughter, a lot during the investigation.

and it's with her permission I'm reaching out. My Uncle Dave had five kids, and acted as a father figure to my half-sister as well. Anyway, there's a lot we've uncovered as we've looked for him. Naturally, that got our attention, so we scheduled a call with Mark. At the time of his disappearance, Dave Shire was 81 years old. Given his age, there was immediate concern that he might have gotten disoriented.

suffered a medical emergency or gotten lost after walking away from his home on February 11, 2022. Mark, who lives on the East Coast, told us he was able to support the search efforts remotely, thanks to his background and professional experience. In those early days, the hope was simple, that David would be found quickly and that he would be brought home safely. We asked Mark to walk us through the timeline of his uncle's disappearance.

So he was last seen February 11th around 11 a.m. I don't think anyone realized he was missing until maybe two or three o'clock that afternoon, his wife. I think she came home and then she couldn't find him and didn't know where he was and then started asking around, calling her daughters who both live in Trinidad. And I mean, they would see him every day. They were all pretty tight knit. He wasn't the kind of guy that would just disappear or be off. He was very much a family man and he

He was always around his family and his daughters and his wife. So it was very much out of character to just disappear. When they went and they tried to kind of backtrack what might have happened, they realized it looked like his pickup truck. It was parked in a weird way that he wouldn't normally have parked it. He had gotten to a point, his brain was fine, but he was having what you might call aphasia issues. He was having trouble with his speech. So he

did not like talking over the phone very much. So he preferred to go talk to someone in person. Maybe his pickup truck wasn't starting. And so they think that he was heading towards somewhere, maybe one of his younger daughter's houses very close by. Maybe he was going to try and get help from someone and he was maybe going to walk along the railroad tracks towards his workshop. He could walk south and then get onto the railroad tracks and pretty much

He could walk down and his workshop is right there. I don't know. But then they can just speculate because they don't really know. I believe they put up a silver alert and I do a lot of GIS type work. I work with geographic information. And so I did a lot of what would be thought of as ease of movement analysis starting from his house. And I looked into where would it be easy to walk to, right?

based on vertical elevation and things like that. And I created a lot of search and sweeping patterns for the local sheriff's office to look. And I created kind of grids and stuff for them to use as a guide to look for him. Now, in that area, it was harder to do so. And in general out there, it's hard because it's just so rugged. You can look at stuff like that from the air, and it seems like it's just a bunch of rocks and trees. And then you get down there and you realize, oh, it's rocks and trees. This rock is 20 feet tall, and that tree is

two feet tall and it's going to take me 20 minutes to go 200 yards. You just don't see that necessarily when you're looking at something from satellite imagery. But we went, we had people look and they searched that area. They came up with nothing and they used drones and all types of stuff and just nothing, no sign. And I think in the end of that, instead of even kind of answering questions, in many ways, it kind of raised more questions as to like, well, why

Why didn't they find anything? It's kind of hard to believe that they would just find nothing at all. David had his iPhone with him when he went missing, but Mark explained that the phone's location data turned out to be far less helpful than anyone had hoped. The area surrounding Trinidad is remote, making it nearly impossible to pinpoint David's location.

They got pings, but out there, the towers are so far apart that it only came, I think, from one tower. Obviously, you need at least three to get a good triangulation. And so it really was just kind of like, all right, it could be anywhere within 10 miles of Trinidad. So I mean, it was really unhelpful.

While the search efforts for Dave turned up nothing, some family members couldn't help but think back to another tragedy, one that happened decades earlier but was never forgotten. In fact, it was something that had haunted Dave for the rest of his life. Back in 1979, Mark and his older sister were visiting Dave and his family when his sister set out on a hike with cousins. During their trek, a freak storm rolled in, and she was swept away in the sudden flash flooding.

She died not far from Dave's home, and it was Dave who found her lifeless body caught in a tree. The memory of that day and finding his niece like that had etched itself into Dave's mind. It was a wound that never fully healed. And as the family grappled with Dave's disappearance, one painful question began to emerge. What if Dave, in a moment of confusion or medical distress, had a memory from that day come rushing back, and somehow it pulled him toward that place?

The same spot where all those years ago, he had experienced such profound and personal loss. Mark told us that he and his cousins specifically requested the area where his sister passed away to be thoroughly searched, in order to help ease that lingering worry in their minds.

One of the things you probably don't see in the news is the fact that in the summer of 79, I and my older sister, I had an older sister. She was about seven, eight years older than me. And by all accounts, she was more like a mom to me, really, because our parents had split up. And we were actually had been kind of dropped off with him, my sister and I, to stay with him for about a month that summer. You could almost say we were just kind of pawned off to him.

And back in those days, it was very free range. One day in July of '79, my two female cousins, Dave's older two daughters and my sister went hiking on a nearby mountain called Fisher's Peak. There was a terrible thunderstorm. It caused flash flooding and the three of them were swept away. My two cousins ended up surviving. They were able to get out of the water. I remember answering the door. My older cousin came back.

She was covered in sand, but she was all wet. And it was my uncle Dave who went out hours later. He found my sister in a tree. When he went missing, where he went missing was, I mean, within a stone's throw. It's close enough that he could have walked, but it isn't the kind of place that he would have normally gone. He would have had to cross under or over Interstate 25.

But it's close enough from his house and from pretty much any point in Trinidad you can see Fisher's Peak. It was private land back then, but now it's a park. None of us could get the idea out of our mind, what if he just went there, right? We wondered what if he had a little stroke and thought he was back in that moment because it was such a traumatic thing for him, I mean, for all of us. In a situation like this, the fact that he went missing and it was so close that that had happened just a couple miles away, it was hard for...

At least for those of us that were the older cousins, it was really hard for us to separate those two things in our minds. And so we thought it's not out of the realm of possibility that maybe he was having some kind of mental situation that made him think he was back in that moment and just started walking towards it like a moth to a light kind of thing. But we mostly agreed, okay, we're all thinking about it. So let's check the box that we did our due diligence so that we don't have to keep thinking about that.

Mark recalls that it wasn't until a couple of weeks into the search that they got their first real lead, trail cam footage capturing Dave on the day he disappeared.

I think several weeks went by before a neighbor, a next door neighbor got in contact with one of my cousins and said, hey, I was checking my trail cam. And the trail cam actually picked up the last known pictures of my uncle. And he was walking in between the houses. And so based on that, I then did another search pattern grid type thing. But that's the last known sighting of him was on this trail camera. At that time, there's a little bit of snow and the temperatures were pretty warm that day. But then

I know within that week, it got down pretty cold at night. Very little chance that he would have survived.

Despite extensive searches across the rugged terrain, there was no sign of Dave, no tracks, no belongings, no witnesses who saw him after the trail cam footage. It was as if he had simply vanished into thin air. And as the days turned into weeks, the case quickly went cold. Where could an 81-year-old man have gone, on foot, without leaving a single clue? But then, just when it seemed like there were no answers left to be found, things took a strange and unexpected turn.

The sheriff's office has been, seems like not very helpful. I know they've done their searches and done the grids and done this and done that. But once this stuff started turning up about these bodies in the corner, it just added a whole completely different dimension to things that I don't think any of us saw coming.

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go to goodrx.com slash vanished. That's goodrx.com slash vanished. Before we get into the shocking controversy that unfolded a year after Dave disappeared, a twist we'll return to later, we want to take a step back and focus on Dave himself. Who he was, the life he lived, and the circumstances leading up to the day that he mysteriously vanished. Mark shared more about the family and the man he knew as Uncle Dave.

the Shire family. So there was four siblings. It was him and then he had three sisters. There were about 14 children. And of those, he had five. Out of the 14 grandkids, let's kind of put this perspective, there's just two boys, me and his oldest, my cousin Brad. He has three older children, two girls and a boy who are all born in the 60s. I always refer to this as different administrations. So he has two

two daughters that were from his current wife. My uncle Dave, he grew up on a farm in Kansas that has been in our family for multiple generations. So he was very much a farm boy at heart. Growing up on a farm, he was real into fixing tractors and fixing trucks and really into the outdoors. And I mean, he liked camping and hiking and loved working on old cars and old pickup trucks and tractors and things. Not far from his house in Trinidad, Colorado, he had a

kind of like a workshop area. He had a large garage. I would say that he probably had about an acre of land associated with that garage where he just parked all kinds of old tractors and trucks. I would live at the farm over the summers when I was growing up. He came to visit one summer in 85, and he was driving an old Ford Bronco. It was an original one. And I just fell in love with the look of that thing. And I always wanted one. And so for years, he would send me pictures of ones that were for sale. Eventually, I did buy one.

But he was a real interesting guy and definitely my favorite uncle, like one of my people I really adored. We also spoke with Dave's wife, Rose Marie. She told us that she met Dave after his first marriage ended. Their relationship grew over time, and eventually they decided to build a life together in the small town of Trinidad, Colorado.

He was born in a little area called Kipp, Kansas. It was probably 10 miles outside of Salina, Kansas. He went to K-State and then after graduation moved west to Colorado. I moved to Trinidad from Pueblo, which is about 80 miles north of Trinidad. A year after college, I got a job teaching art at the middle school. And I met Dave just toward the end of that school year and my contract had not been renewed. It was just a one-year position.

Because of a really fun party we had gone to together, I decided to stay in Trinidad since 1979. So we have known each other for a really long time. I married him in 1987. It wasn't a perfect marriage, but it was a pretty good marriage. We had two wonderful, beautiful grown daughters, three exceptional stepchildren, grandkids. There's a lot of them. They are

They all have a lot of attributes today. He was a very easygoing, very smart person. Like the outdoors, he could walk or hike long, long distances, even in his late 70s. He was a banker. When he moved here with his first wife, that was right after they had gotten out of college. He stayed and moved to become president of the Trinidad National Bank. Probably

Probably about the time I met him, maybe just a little bit before, he and his partner opened up a real estate business and were very successful doing that. He never really stopped doing real estate. I mean, he wasn't nearly as active in his 70s. He knew this county inside and out. We have vast plains, high mountains, and I think he knew every square foot of it. He sold a little bit residential, but his true love was selling mountain property and farms and ranches. He never, ever lost me.

Being a farmer, that was his true love. Had a great respect for the earth as an environmentalist. And just silly. I mean, he had such a good sense of humor. People liked him. People respected him in the community.

Dave's niece Sarah, who is also Mark's younger sister, spoke with us as well. Sarah described her uncle as a devoted family man who stepped in as a father figure when she needed it most. She cherished the time she spent with Dave, Rosemarie, and their children in Trinidad, a time in her life that she remembers being filled with love and support.

So when I was three, I went to live with my uncle Dave and his wife Rosemary for a year. I would go out there basically every summer when I was a kid. And then in fifth grade, I lived with them for a year as well. And they were just always really supportive. He's like my uncle, but also a father figure. Those times were like hugely formative, critical for me. I think especially when I was three, I don't

I don't really remember it, but I think my mom was having a really difficult time. And it was my grandpa that called Dave and Rosemary and was like, hey, can you come get Sarah? They were in the car within a couple of hours and came out. I am just so appreciative of Dave. I remember a lot of memories. I think being a father was a huge thing. I did a bunch of 4-H projects and he would always take us out and about to do different things for our 4-H projects. Really

really involved in our school activities, the biggest heart in the world, and just really cared. Realtor by trade, but he was also very entrepreneurial. He had a number of rental properties, plots of land. He kind of had an eye for the future of the community and for our family, really a pillar of strength in the community. Him and his wife, Rosemary, they were always involved in different activities. There was this food bank. It was

He was helping organize. He was a really smart business mind that didn't really define him. What I think defined him was his love for his family, his desire to help shape the fabric of his community. All of those were so important and like so integral to who he was as a person.

Morgan is Dave and Rosemary's older daughter, and she shared with us that her father was a familiar and respected figure in Trinidad. Before he disappeared, and especially after, many locals came forward to Morgan with their own heartfelt stories about the man they all knew.

Everywhere we went, people recognized him. I'm a family medicine physician in town, and many of my patients had interacted with him over the years. And I can't tell you how many times people would say, oh, yeah, I'm really sorry about your dad. He was one of the first people I met when I came to town because he sold me our property in the mountains or had some kind of story to share. But

But they always spoke very highly of him. And of course, I don't expect that to be universal. But anybody who actually approached me about it always had really nice things to say about him.

Trinidad, Colorado lies just north of the New Mexico border, nestled in the foothills of the surrounding mountains. It's a small historic town with a population around 8,000. The landscape around Trinidad is vast and varied, from dry plains and rocky hills to dense patches of forest. It's exactly the kind of place where someone could easily disappear, especially on foot, making it a very difficult place to live.

making any search through the terrain incredibly difficult. Rosemarie shared more about the town of Trinidad itself, the place she and Dave chose to call home and raise their family together. For being a small southern Colorado town, we're really diverse. So we have niche medical practice here that was very, very famous. Prior to this doctor's death, he even ended up on a South Park episode. The scenery is breathtaking. We have the whole front range is ours to look at every day. It's really

It's a beautiful community and it's got its quirks like any other community. We have all the same problems that you're going to find in a metro area on a much smaller scale. But what I don't think you find in a big metro area is how this community comes together when there's crisis. And I've seen that over and over again.

Earlier, Mark mentioned that in the time leading up to his disappearance, Dave had been experiencing some struggles with aphasia. But because Rosemarie was with him daily, we wanted to hear from her what that looked like and how it impacted his day-to-day life.

He had had a couple of small strokes that kind of impaired his expressive speech capacity. That was really hard on him because he was a talker. He was a salesperson. It makes it difficult to get words out. Sometimes they're slurred. Sometimes they're mispronounced. Sometimes he would use a different word for what he was trying to use. And it was very, very frustrating for him. I never felt he had a problem with receptive communication. He knew

He knew what was going on around him, current events, family, friends, that type of stuff. It was rough. He had 79 good years of communicating. Then it's gone. Other than the medical condition, he had the best temperament ever. But he was starting to get a little short, and that wasn't him. So it was progressing a little bit. He was becoming a little more impatient, a few things like that.

Sarah told us about the final visit she had with her uncle before he disappeared. He had made the trip out to Sarah's home for a visit, and she could see the frustration on his face when he wanted to communicate, but was unable to do so effectively.

He was a little bit quieter than usual. It was basically the fall before that. He came to the house. It's my childhood home that I'd remodeled and they were in town, so they stopped by to visit. And there was something that was wrong with the plumbing. And I asked him if he could help figure it out. He was going down there and he was tinkering and he was very obviously problem solving things. He figured it out. What I could sense is that he could tell what was wrong with it, but he didn't have the immediate supplies, tools there available to fix it. I

Yeah.

That would only be because of his difficulties verbalizing, but 100% lucid. I feel like there is this classic story of somebody that has Alzheimer's or dementia and goes missing as a result of their cognitive challenges. And in Dave's case, that was absolutely nothing related to it, unless there was some sort of sudden switch and he just kind of lost his faculties and then just went out wandering with no idea what's happening. I don't know at the moment when this occurred.

if that was the case. But from what I can tell, this isn't one of those stories. Since Morgan is a doctor, we were interested in her perspective on the medical challenges her father had faced. She explained that she's reviewed his medical records, then combined that information with her own observations to better understand what he was going through.

At one point, I finally got the courage to look at his medical records, and he had suffered a series of strokes. The timeline on that stuff isn't always exactly clear on imaging, but I actually realized that I had a bunch of voicemails from him that dated back as far as maybe 2017 or something like that. And

What I could tell just from his voicemails was that something happened in 2018. He was communicating fairly well up until that point. And then his voicemails kind of got shorter and not necessarily garbled, but just, you

I could tell he was having a little bit of word finding difficulty. And then they kind of just slowly stopped. And he was kind of old fashioned in that sense. He wasn't necessarily going to send me a text message, but he'd always leave a voicemail. I think what happened is in 2018, he suffered a series of small strokes that affected his ability to communicate. And so he suffered from something called expressive aphasia. Now to somebody who...

maybe did not know him well or interact with him on a daily basis, they might see him and say, oh, hey, Dave. And he always gave the nod and a wave. But I don't think he could always say, oh, hey, John. He couldn't necessarily communicate quickly like that anymore, if that makes sense. And it wasn't because he didn't remember, though. And this is really interesting to me, just being a medical provider, because

because anybody else we would say that person has dementia. But if you asked him very pointed questions, for example, he was a car guy and he had tons and tons of cars. He had the junkyard, which comes into play a lot in the story. And he had this entire wall of keys. You said, hey, where's the key to this car? He would go get you that key. He could tell you exactly when and where he got that car. Might take him a little bit of time to communicate that.

And then he knew the back roads of Los Angeles County like the back of his hand just because of how much work he did in mountain properties. For example, there's this old Datsun truck that he used to drive a long time ago. And we were talking about it and he just drove us right to it where it was parked out in an old field. And that was very recent. He had...

a lot in there and not just old stuff, new stuff, but it was just extremely challenging for him to communicate that. And it would have been really hard for him when he was missing to communicate to somebody, hey, I am lost or hey, can you give me a ride? So if he had come up onto some unsavory folks when he went out that day, there'd be no way that he would have really been able to communicate effectively with them at that time.

Despite the communication challenges Dave faced after suffering small strokes, Rosemarie said that he stayed busy and active.

He physically was still strong. I mean, he still walked every day a lot, picked up trash up along the frontage road. We live about a mile west of the highway, not even that far. We also have a Walmart that's very close that doesn't pick up their trash. And Dave took care of that for years. He was still doing that, but he really wasn't actively working. He and his partner still had a few deals going that he'd work on a little bit. But no, he was really retired. He loved antique tractors.

And he knew them so well, he could name parts. And he loved classic cars. And so, yes, he had this old junkyard. Toward the end there, my daughter sells cars. He'd go see her every day and have coffee with her.

Morgan noted that her father remained very independent and was often spontaneous with his plans. If something caught his interest, he'd just go for it. He didn't always tell people what he was up to, but everyone knew that Dave would be back soon. So when he disappeared in February 2022, that's exactly what everyone expected, that he was off doing something and would return shortly.

He could still drive places. He didn't go too far. He was always down for anything. That's a lifelong trait of his. And so my sister, who sells cars, would say, hey, dad, do you want to go drop off this truck with me or something like that? He wouldn't hesitate to jump in and go. He was fairly spontaneous, and that's also a lifelong trait. So it was not uncommon for him to just get up and go and do something. We wouldn't necessarily...

always know where he was. He was pretty good about answering his cell phone. If we called him, he'd say where he was or something. But yeah, it was not uncommon for him to just get up and go do something kind of spontaneously. There's some outdoor chores, some daily maintenance kind of stuff. And so he did a lot of that.

Rosemarie recalls that on the morning of February 11, 2022, Dave was frustrated with her. He wanted her to drive him somewhere to meet someone, though she didn't know who or what the meeting was about. Looking back with the knowledge she has today, she wishes she had asked him more questions. But that morning, Rosemarie had plans to run errands to help one of their daughters. By the time she returned home, Dave was already gone.

The morning that he left, he was angry with me. He wanted me to drive him to a little mountain community called Bon Carbo because somebody had called him about a piece of property up there. I don't know any more particulars about it than that. But I get a call earlier that morning from my daughter. I needed to run some errands for her and I didn't get back in time. You

He left by that time. He wasn't home when I returned home. But he was angry at me because he wanted me to stop what I was doing and take him there right then and there. And that's really hard to live with. One bad decision or one different decision on my part, we probably wouldn't be talking right now.

When Rosemarie returned from her errands, she didn't immediately realize that Dave was gone. His truck was still parked in the driveway, but something felt off about the way it was left there. As she came to realize that Dave was not inside the house or outside working, it became clear to her that he must have left on foot or someone else had given him a ride. She tried calling Dave,

but there was no answer. Rosemary called her daughters, but they hadn't heard from Dave. She contacted his close friends. They hadn't seen him either. That's when she decided to report her husband missing.

I got home. I thought he was here because his truck was in the driveway and it was parked weird, not like he typically parks his truck. So I really didn't think anything. I just figured he was in the back bedroom, maybe napping or something. And I didn't realize he was gone for like a couple hours. Then I started calling him just nonstop and no pickup. And then by six o'clock, we called the sheriff. And, you know, I mean, this was not like him. And

Another change in behavior was Dave and I both had professional careers and we worked a lot. So I didn't cook a lot. But when the pandemic came and everybody's working at home by that point, and I'm really semi-retired by that point myself, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he'd sit at the table and wait for me to serve it. And when he didn't come home for lunch is when I really started worrying because that was out of character by that time in his life. It had actually started snowing. We had probably our first really big snowstorm of the year that night.

Morgan recalls being at work that day, when her mother phoned her to ask if she had heard from her father. Whether it was a gut feeling or intuition, Morgan had been carrying a bad feeling for weeks. She couldn't put her finger on why, but she worried that something might happen to her father, and that phone call only confirmed her worst fears.

I was at work and it was February, so it's getting dark kind of early. And I just remember my mom calling me, haven't heard from your dad. Have you heard from him today? And my answer to that was no. At one point she had said she had called his two friends to see if they had seen him. And of course I'd called my husband and nobody had seen him at that point. And so at some point in the afternoon, she had already actually asked those two to go look for him. It was the end of my workday. It was starting to get dark. And the fact that

None of us had heard from him. I knew in that moment something was wrong. The weeks leading up to it, I just remember hugging him so tight the last time I saw him, having this thought that every time I see him from now on, like I gotta hug him tight because it might be the last time or something like that. And just remember having that thought. But...

When my mom called and just said, still haven't heard from him and asked me to come home. I was only home a very short amount of time before we all decided together, we need to call law enforcement now because it's getting dark and it was starting to snow. At first, Rosemarie thought Dave had simply walked to his shop or maybe to visit one of their daughters who lived close by. She was convinced that there was a logical explanation and expected that Dave would turn up in one of the usual places.

Since we couldn't find him, I just assumed he walked south to the junkyard. It was not uncommon for him to do that. And Starkville, I don't know what it clocks out, but it's about two miles or a mile and a half from our home. Not that great a distance, but he did it cross country. So it's probably been a little less than that. But I never knew if he made it to Starkville or not.

I just made that assumption. I realized most recently I never knew if he made it there. His image was captured on a game camera. My youngest daughter, she lives next door to the person whose game camera he saw. And again, it wasn't uncommon for him to go check her house or do a little handyman thing there for her and stuff. So none of that seemed uncommon. But since we couldn't find him, I just assumed he walked south.

Mark and Sarah both live on the East Coast, and when Sarah got the call that her uncle was missing, she couldn't believe it. At first, like so many others, she thought that it must be a misunderstanding or miscommunication. Dave had probably gone off without saying anything and would turn up soon. The idea that he could actually be missing didn't seem possible.

Part of that is denial. Do you want to believe? And I was kind of like, oh, well, that's kind of weird. Like, I'm sure he'll turn up. We're going to find him. I mean, he's very smart, has the ability to take care of himself. Oh, well, I'm sure he's at his shop. And he wasn't right because my cousins that were there on the ground, I think, had already chased down every single immediate place he could be. Time goes on. You're like, OK, what the hell? Seriously, it was a shock.

Rosemary last saw Dave around 11 a.m. that morning, just before she left to run errands. She mentioned that one of her friends thought they spotted him later that day at a Walmart near their home.

To the north of us, there's a big Walmart. A friend of mine actually was behind him in the checkout line. The city police weren't involved in the investigation. It was all the sheriff's office. Never even pulled that footage from what I understand, or if they did, they didn't share it with me. Then they never interviewed my friend Margie, but she could verify that he was in front of her at about 1220 that day buying something at Walmart. And she

And she said, we didn't have a basket. It was just a little thing. We had to pick up a certain screw to fix something at my daughter's house. Who knows? I never felt that was investigated well.

Earlier, Mark shared that the trail cam captured Dave on video that day, and after that, his trail goes cold. No one knows where he went or what happened next. Rosemarie believes that there were many aspects of the case that deserved more attention, but she acknowledges that the search efforts for her husband were thorough. One part of the investigation she feels was handled well.

They did at least four different searches initially. The community here all came and searched. There was probably hundreds of people in front of my house that night in the snow walking around the immediate area. Another theory

theory is that there's a lot of mine shafts up there and it's hilly. It's mining country in the Starkville area. Maybe he tried to seek shelter in one of those shafts. But you know, whether anybody looked in there in any of those, they couldn't have that night. I mean, it was lightning snow that night.

But afterwards, I don't know if there was any follow-up on that or not. I was a wreck for... I'm still a wreck. But I think the search and rescue, I mean, they had started out with the dogs that do live searching. But then they came back for cadaver dogs. They came back two or three times. And that was the Colorado Search and Rescue team.

I think it was pretty well scoured. But the weird part, and not one, but about 20 people have told me that they would have found a crumb. And that's, I guess, a language that searchers use for a clue, like a key ring or a shoe or something like that.

Morgan agreed that the search efforts for her father were thorough. The community cared. They showed up, ready to help. While the weather forced the initial search to pause the first night, it soon resumed and covered a wide area. But what continues to haunt the family is that they haven't found a single clue. Not even the smallest trace of Dave has ever been found.

Right away that evening, they had law enforcement out there looking. I think maybe the next day they had heat-seeking drones out there. I mean, they had people coming from all over. They had people on horseback from Bent County. I will say 100% that right away they made...

some pretty dramatic search efforts, and I will always be so grateful for that. Because it was snowing, it was a little bit more challenging logistically, but the search dogs, we didn't have one locally, so they had to be deployed from somewhere else. Because of all the people that had been searching, it really hindered the dog's ability to do their job. I always wonder if he was out there and we'd had the dog sooner, maybe we would have found him in time.

And I'm not resentful of that fact at all. I just think, oh man, we really learned as a community, hey, maybe we should have our own search dog or maybe our search efforts should be with that in mind. And I just think, you know, of course, people were really worried about him and I'm so grateful for that. And it's what we had to work with at the time. So people just went out and just looked. And again, just extreme gratitude for all of that. At some point within the first few days, they had found a

shirt or a pair of shoes, perhaps. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but I mean, I knew looking at them, those weren't my dad's, but I believe those were submitted. And then to my knowledge, no other clothing or anything was ever found and submitted. I really tried to stay as objective as I could during this time and follow all the things. And those are the kind of details that ultimately I get like a little bit of information on and then there'd be something new to follow.

And so I wasn't following up those things. Okay, so what was the outcome of that? Did you find whose shoes and socks those were? And in hindsight, those are the kind of details I really wish I had followed more carefully.

Though the searches were extensive, Morgan explained that the time of year posed a constant challenge. On the day her father disappeared, a storm rolled in, forcing the search efforts to stop. The weather was unpredictable, and the conditions during that season made it difficult to maintain a consistent search effort. It was touch and go the entire time. February is a very historically cold time.

I think it's probably the coldest time here. It wasn't like it dumped on us. It was more of a dusting, but there were significant drifts and snow banks and things like that in the following days, especially on the north side of the trees. So there'd be areas that were completely dry and then areas that still had inches that sort of blew up against the tree. And so that did hinder them those first couple of days for sure.

And then a handful of times when they had other searches planned, they had to be canceled because it snowed again or it was really muddy. So the weather really played a role in our ability to consistently search for him over the few months.

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In 2024, we submitted a record request to the Los Animas County Sheriff's Office, and it was granted. Along with that, we asked if someone from the department would be willing to speak with us, either in an interview or through a written statement. We wanted to hear from them directly about Dave's disappearance and their agency's efforts to find him. Their response was brief. Your request was received. We provided you a copy of our investigative report. No statement-slash-interview will be provided.

The records we received documented much of what David's family had already shared about the day he disappeared. After he was reported missing, officers began checking the most likely places, starting at Dave's workshop, which they returned to multiple times. They also checked a nearby rest stop and conducted a general canvas of the city of Trinidad. Given Dave's age and the fact that a winter storm was approaching, authorities quickly decided to escalate their response. The county search and rescue team was activated.

and the Fishers Peak Fire Department was called in to assist with ground searches. The Sheriff's Office posted on their Facebook page, alerting the community that Dave was missing. That evening, a reverse 911 call was issued to residents in Trinidad, Starkville, and surrounding areas, asking them to be on the lookout. Later that evening, worsening weather forced them to call off the search for the night. Reports described high winds and snowfall that made visibility difficult and conditions dangerous.

Plans were made to resume search efforts the following morning around 8 a.m. A command center was set up in the Walmart parking lot, not far from Dave's home. K-9 teams were brought in and ground crews searched a half-mile radius around the property. Officers also followed up with a nearby dispensary to see if their security cameras had captured anything useful. One of their exterior cameras faced the road and was able to record both foot and vehicle traffic coming in and out of the neighborhood where Dave lived.

At one point, they saw someone walking toward Walmart, but after reviewing the footage more closely, they determined it wasn't Dave. Investigators created an inventory of all the vehicles that entered or exited the neighborhood around the time Dave disappeared. In total, they cataloged 27 vehicles. Of those 27, 23 were confirmed to belong to people who lived there or had a reason to be working in the area. They also noted someone on a bicycle who appeared in the footage, entering the neighborhood, then exiting, and then leaving.

and re-entering again, between the hours of noon and 5 p.m. One report indicates that a possible ping location for Dave's phone was established. It was near a bar called Sam's Place. Authorities searched the area but found no sign of Dave or the phone, and the bar was closed at the time. Nearby residents were contacted, but none of them reported that they had seen him. Notably, while Sam's Place has a Trinidad address, it

It's located well outside of the city limits, approximately a 15-mile drive from Dave's home. Another report details how investigators reached out to AT&T and requested that Dave's phone be pinged every 15 minutes. At 8.46 p.m., they received coordinates indicating the phone's location, with an estimated accuracy radius of 15.5 miles or better. AT&T

AT&T advised law enforcement to use a tool to plot the GPS marker. This tool is used by law enforcement to map and analyze cell phone location data.

That ping is what placed the phone in front of Sam's place, which we know was closed at the time. The report also notes that the cell tower is located on a small mountain just west of the location, which could have affected the accuracy or placement of the ping. On the afternoon of February 12th, officers were still receiving information indicating that Dave's phone battery was active and functioning. The report also mentioned that

that investigators received information suggesting Dave may have been interested in looking at property in the Bon Carbo or Black Hills areas. Additionally, a neighbor reported seeing a white Ford or Chevy truck parked in Dave's driveway around 1.30 p.m. on the day he disappeared.

While speaking with Rosemarie that day, she shared her concerns about the white truck the neighbor had reported. She didn't know who it could have been, but she mentioned to officers that she had reached out to several realtors because she believed Dave may have been planning to list some properties for sale. Rosemarie went on to say that she believed Dave had driven the black truck to their home, parked it, and then possibly got into the white truck the neighbor mentioned. According to the neighbor, Dave was seen talking to someone who was inside the white truck.

She also pointed out something unusual. Dave's truck was parked differently than he normally would. He took pride in backing it into the driveway just so, but that day it wasn't parked that way, which struck her as odd. There are discrepancies in the reports about whether Dave was looking to buy or sell property. Rosemarie believed he was considering listing a couple of properties, while another report mentioned two parcels he was interested in purchasing. Dave was known to be very independent when it came to his business affairs, which

which likely explains why those close to him had only bits and pieces of information about his real estate activities, details he may have mentioned only in passing. The family provided investigators with information regarding the properties they believed Dave was interested in. There was a newspaper clipping that listed owed taxes on two parcels. These properties had been looked at on the night Dave vanished, because the family had mentioned them to law enforcement at the time. They

There was confusion initially about whether Dave owned those properties and wanted to sell them, or if he intended to buy them. The consensus later leaned toward him being interested in purchasing them. There was also a mention of him possibly foreclosing on some properties. But Rosemarie explained to officers that she didn't have any more information, and that she planned to contact Dave's attorney for more clarity. Meanwhile, officers requested an official list of properties that Dave owned within the county.

Investigators returned to the neighbor who reported seeing the white truck. He said that he recalled it being around 4.30 p.m. when he crossed the street to get his mail and noticed a 1987 or 1988 Ford King cab truck

parked on the Shire property. It was pulled into the driveway next to the porch. He mentioned hearing voices, but couldn't confirm if it was Dave or who the other person may have been. When asked about cameras, the neighbor said that his were turned off at the time. The report also noted that a white truck was seen on the Walmart camera footage, leaving the area between 1.30 and 2 p.m.

Interestingly, the neighbor initially reported seeing the truck around 1.30 p.m., but details can sometimes be unclear over time. Investigators also spoke to Dave's son Brad, who shared that he had spoken to his father the day before he went missing. Dave told Brad that he needed to call a friend of his, a friend who Dave often allowed to work with him at his shop. Dave said this friend had something Brad might be interested in. Dave even texted Brad the friend's phone number.

But that was the last contact Brad had with his father. He never contacted the friend directly and didn't have any more details.

Morgan later contacted investigators to let them know that the same friend Brad mentioned had told the family that there were people selling firewood out of a truck that matched the description of the white truck seen near Dave's home. An officer followed up and spoke with this friend, who said he got that information from a girl he knew. He had asked around about a truck matching that description, but didn't have much else to add. He provided the officer with the woman's first name, but said he didn't know her last name.

On February 13th, investigators reviewed footage from Walmart, several local hotels, and a nearby gas station, but there was no sign of Dave on any of the videos. Around this time, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation stepped in to assist with the case. On February 15th, they returned to the Walmart once again to request additional footage and also reached out to several other local businesses, asking for 24 hours of surveillance video from any cameras they had.

They spoke with another friend of Dave's, who said he had last seen Dave the day before he disappeared, when he dropped him off at his house. This friend recalled that after Dave went missing, he noticed that Dave's truck was parked oddly, something that immediately stood out because he had never seen Dave park it that way before. He always lined his vehicles up one behind the other. In the days that followed, search teams repeatedly combed the area around the Shire residence. They followed the path Dave was known to take to his nearby shop, Carribean's.

carefully checking the trees, grass, creek, and buildings along the way. Despite thorough searches of the shop itself and the surrounding area, they found no clues. They even brought in drones to help search wider areas, but again, those efforts came up empty.

Morgan shared with investigators a tip that she had gotten from a local woman, who thought she had seen Dave near TLC Realty between 4.45 and 5.30 p.m. on the day he went missing. The woman said that a car salesman had also seen Dave there as well. However, after speaking with the salesman, investigators determined that they had actually seen Dave several days prior, not on the day he vanished. They requested footage from the city of Trinidad's cameras, low

located at nearby intersections. On February 17th, the footage arrived, and there was no sign of Dave near TLC Realty. Search efforts continued on February 19th and the 21st. The searches included teams and K-9 units combing the areas surrounding the home and along the route to the shop in Starkville.

During one search, they found a pair of jeans and boots. But after further examination, they concluded the items were too weathered to have been Dave's. It wasn't until February 26th that the crucial footage of Dave on a neighbor's game camera was discovered. Although the footage had actually been turned over very early on, law enforcement lacked the proper equipment to view the compact flashcard. The neighbor took matters into his own hands, reviewing the footage himself, and when he saw Dave on the camera,

He immediately told Morgan. She took that information straight to law enforcement. But by then, Precious' time had already been lost. According to the report, the footage shows Dave wearing tan boots or shoes, light-colored jeans, a black jacket, and a ball cap. The report notes that the video is timestamped at 1 p.m. on February 11, 2022. But investigators later learned that the timestamp was off by one hour, meaning the actual time was noon.

This moment became the last confirmed sighting of David Shire. The report states that he doesn't appear to be in any distress or under duress. On February 27th, the Colorado Public Safety Aircraft Division also conducted aerial searches, focusing in on the area where David was last seen on the game camera. Additional ground searches took place on March 1st and 3rd, also zeroing in on that same area.

On March 11th, they requested detailed well and mine maps from the Colorado Department of Natural Resources for the area surrounding where Dave went missing. The maps were received on the 15th, and they confirmed there were no open mine shafts or wells nearby. Dave's truck, which was parked unusually, as noted by several witnesses, was processed on March 17th. There are notes about a rock that was found nearby that appeared to have blood on it. The rock was sent off to the CBI lab.

which confirmed that it was blood, just not human blood. Search efforts continued well into April, focusing repeatedly on the area where Dave was last seen on camera. Ultimately, investigators concluded he likely was not in that immediate vicinity. In July, a canine search was conducted near Fisher's Peak, which is where David's niece had tragically passed away decades earlier, but nothing was found. Regarding Dave's phone…

The records later show that AT&T was asked to ping it every half hour. And at 2.35 p.m. on February 12th, the day after Dave vanished, no location data could be obtained, possibly because the phone was powered off or in an area without signal. At the end of the reports we received, the investigative findings concluded that Dave walked away from his home sometime before noon on the day he disappeared, headed

headed southwest toward his daughter Darby's residence. He was then seen walking through a neighbor's property toward a fenced area, where he was captured on the neighbor's game camera. He was alone and showing no signs of distress. Sometime after 1 p.m., Rosemarie realized that Dave was missing and reached out to family members and friends, who all said that they hadn't seen him. After some initial family searching,

Law enforcement was contacted at 7.24 p.m. Despite extensive search efforts and assistance from the CBI, no clues were found as to Dave's whereabouts or what happened to him. Based on all the facts and circumstances, investigators found no indication of foul play, but the case would remain open and active. Additional supplemental narratives document further searching into November and December of 2022, and then again in May of 2023.

And that's where the reports end. The biggest clue in Dave's disappearance remains that trail cam footage that captured him on the day he vanished. Mark has watched that clip countless times, analyzing every frame, trying to spot something, anything he may have missed before. Mark shared his thoughts about his uncle's body language in that video and what he believes Dave may have been doing at that moment.

But the amount of searching they did, I mean, he was very capable. He could walk really far, but he wasn't really the kind of guy that was going to go trapping off into a forest. He might do some cut-throughs on some trails or like when the trail came that caught him, he was probably kind of cutting through, but not going off into the wilderness. I would expect that he would have been found by now. He is kind of walking with purpose. I inherited the same body and everything, so I actually kind of look like him from behind.

And it reminds me of like how I walk. I can tell that he's walking with purpose. He's kind of got something on his mind because he's walking with his hands in his pockets. And I know him. He probably went through and around that fence. There was probably a gate or a place where he was able to go through. And because he kind of disappears off the camera, I think he's just walking around that fence. But it just makes no sense trying to figure out where he would have gone and what would have happened. It's been...

really hard to kind of determine.

Morgan expressed frustration over how the trail cam footage was handled. Even though it was made available to law enforcement almost immediately, it sat untouched because they didn't have the equipment to view it. It wasn't until weeks later when the neighbor took the initiative to review the footage himself that Dave's image was discovered. But even with this confirmed sighting, Morgan doesn't feel the footage offers much clarity. It tells him when David was last seen, but not why he was walking in that direction or where he went next.

That footage was actually available that evening or the next day. Law enforcement was basically just like, oh, this is a format we can't read and disregarded it. And at that point, we didn't know that there was a picture of him on it. But the person with the trail cam had tried to submit that to law enforcement. About two weeks later, the neighbor who had the trail cam footage was going through the footage and realized that, oh, my God, there's a picture of Dave on here.

called me right away. I came over to their house and looked at the footage. You know, when I saw it, my immediate thought was, oh, he looks well. He looks healthy. I wasn't immediately like, oh, he must have been going to his shop. And I think for two reasons, that footage actually really set us back because all it did was prove that he was at that place at that moment. It didn't prove that he really went anywhere. It

We don't have footage of him coming back. He could have easily sort of double backed through a different neighbors avoiding the camera. I think when law enforcement saw that footage, they just said, oh, well, Dave went south and he must have been going towards his shop. And so right then it just felt like the story had been set and we were all out to prove that's what happened. And we didn't keep an open mind to other possibilities.

If Dave wasn't actually walking toward his shop when he was captured on camera, where else may he have been headed? That's a question Morgan has wrestled with over and over. She told us that she's considered several possibilities, including one area in that direction that he would visit often, but that was typically during warmer months. He just did a lot of day-to-day kind of maintenance things outside, and they had some animals he

He wasn't really going too far, to our knowledge. One of the things I don't know that gets included in the story a lot, he did a lot of random things to maintain his home in the neighborhood. And one of those is that there's an old sewer lagoon. It's just right behind my sister's house. Very, very close. And one of the things he would do in the summer is go get these permethrin cakes, pellets, something like that from the health department and throw those in that sewer lagoon so that we wouldn't have so many mosquitoes in the summer.

So I know he had sort of a well-beaten path to that area, and that was one area that they dredged. But why would he have walked back there? Well, he went back there a lot because he did that in the summer, and who knows how often he was out there otherwise. The sheriff's office did document the discovery of a rock with what appeared to be blood on it, but the reports didn't offer much context. Morgan filled in some of the gaps for us, explaining where the rock was found in relation to the last known sighting of her father.

somewhere near the sewer lagoon, some blood had been found. And that was found by the neighbor who also had the cam footage. And so he called me and let me know. And CBI came down and tested the blood and said it was animal blood. Well, my neighbor has said,

He walks that land a lot and it's not uncommon to see mountain lion kills or other animal carcasses and lots of blood spilled from those kind of things. So I never went to see that spot myself, but the CBI agent went and collected samples and a few weeks later we were notified that it was animal blood.

Several people noticed that Dave's truck was parked unusually at his home on the day he disappeared, something that stood out right away. It was unlike him not to back it in neatly, the way he always did. That small but strange detail led to a bigger question. Was it even Dave who parked the truck there that day? Morgan told us that her family had serious concerns about the vehicle.

and they asked law enforcement to conduct a forensic examination. But according to Morgan, the request was met with resistance, and that led to a confrontation between the family and investigators.

My mom, the position of the truck really bothered her. She was with him every day and she knew his habits like the back of her hand. And she knew that was one of the first details she pointed out is that this is not normal. What happened? Why is this truck parked like this? And so I think from the beginning, she proposed right away that this isn't normal. Something happened.

There was a point we were having a family meeting with law enforcement and I just said, when are we going to start treating this like a crime scene? I will remain professional here, but I'll just say that that was a really heated moment between law enforcement and myself. And right away they said, OK, well, we'll go take his truck right now. And literally that moment kind of left the house and started the process of bringing the truck in for a debriefing.

a detailed look. And then I think they interviewed a few people that we might have had some suspicions of, but it really didn't go much further than that. After the truck was returned to the family, Morgan noticed something that she believes could explain why it was parked the way it was. The truck that he was driving had some electrical issues. He was constantly trying to figure that out. My husband and I went to get it from the sheriff's office after they were done investigating.

investigating it, we noticed that it had the electrical issues. And so I think that's possibly one of the things that happened that day and why his truck was parked unusually is that he had tried to go somewhere and then he couldn't because his truck failed him. That part to me, I don't know that it got much attention and or if it's even relevant, but just why he might have been on foot instead of in his truck.

And then there was this matter of a white truck that a neighbor believed they had seen over at Dave's house around the time he disappeared. That was discussed extensively in the records. Considering what Morgan just mentioned about Dave's truck having some sort of electrical issue, could he have called someone else for a ride? Morgan feels that this aspect has never been fully investigated to her satisfaction.

So, actually, the house that we live in now, there were some neighbors living there at the time who had lived here the whole time. My parents had lived here, and they think that they saw or heard him talking to somebody who drove a white truck.

I believe that the type of truck might have changed. The story might have changed somewhat over time from that same person and not saying like this person had any malintent, but just when they recalled the story a second time, there was something kind of fundamentally different about it. And so we were never able to confirm that happened. We did try really hard.

I essentially was begging at some point to get the Walmart video camera footage so that I could try to see if any of the trucks matching that description had entered our neighborhood at that time. And we were stonewalled over and over again from getting that footage. We had a little bit of footage to work with from the

cannabis store that was behind there. So we were able to see kind of from one direction cars coming and going, but we weren't able to see from all directions. We never were able to confirm that.

After he went missing, Dave's loved ones were left with a perplexing mystery on their hands. They had a lot of questions and very little clues to go on. But then, in September of 2023, something happened that sent shockwaves through the town of Trinidad in Los Animas County. Back in 2021, a woman in Texas reported her father missing to the Lubbock Police Department. She also contacted the police in Trinidad and the Los Animas County Sheriff's Office about her father.

because that was a place he was known to travel and stay for long periods of time. When she spoke to law enforcement in Colorado, she was told that they were aware of her father being a part of the local homeless community. She later learned that her father had died in Los Animas County back in 2019, and the coroner sent a femur off for DNA testing. She contacted the coroner to find out more information about where her father had been buried, and according to a recent lawsuit, she was met with pushback.

Eventually, she was able to have her father's body exhumed from the Starkville Cemetery. During the exhumation, a funeral director was down inside of the grave when he found that the man's body had been buried inside of a body bag. And just below the bag, he found a second one. There were two people buried in this grave. Colorado law dictates that you can't bury two people together without family consent. Mark told us more.

That came to light, as I understand it, because... So there was a family whose father, older gentleman, like a Vietnam veteran, who actually liked to spend his summers in Trinidad. I guess he was homeless or he lived in a trailer or something, kind of like intermittently homeless kind of guy. But he had a lot of friends there. And I don't know the whole story. All I know is that he liked to live in Trinidad during the summer. Anyway, he apparently passed away

And the family didn't really keep tabs on him that much. And they hadn't heard from him. And then they went and they started looking into it. And it took them a year or two. And they eventually were able to determine that they found his body. They, I guess, eventually got some kind of a permit or some kind of permission to go dig up a grave where they said that they had put him. When that was happening, a local mortician was on site.

when they were opening that grave, they didn't find one body but two. And that the local mortician guy had known about the fact that Dave was missing. So they open up this grave and then they find two bodies and they're like, "What's going on? You got two bodies in here." He said, "There was one." They were in body bags. My understanding is that by law, even by Colorado's not very stringent laws, you're not supposed to put two bodies in the same hole. And the guy's like, "Oh, I don't know."

And then they start realizing that there's a whole lot of other things going on with this in regards to this coroner. At that point, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation starts kind of getting interested a little bit. And my cousin Morgan starts talking to them. It still has not been determined definitively who that second body was. So the cemetery is a private cemetery and the owners were not really concerned.

aware of what was going on. They weren't active participants in understanding the big picture here. They were just trying to do a good thing by saying, yes, you can use our land as a potter's field. And as much as what constitutes a sound or acceptable burial, I wouldn't really know. But to me, I wouldn't expect in a kind of a civilized society, we would be doing that under any circumstance. From what I understand, at least in Colorado, you're not

supposed to put two bodies in the same hole and that the coroner had, by their own accounts, said that they had not done that. So it seems that there's something going on. And then it's just like the more you peel off of this thing, the more tendrils, it just seems to go out in different directions. And you have to kind of like rein it back in and be like, okay, but is that related to Dave going missing? Well, we can't rule it out.

Colorado has a burial assistance program that provides $1,500 to help cover final expenses for low-income individuals.

When a person is unidentified or unclaimed, that program typically covers the cost, and the standard protocol is a burial in a simple pine box. The county coroner was accused of cutting corners. Instead of following the standard protocol, he allegedly buried these two individuals in a single grave, zipped into body bags, which many believe is an inhumane practice that was designed to cut costs and pocket the remaining burial assistance funds.

We'll dig into the investigation surrounding those accusations in part two. The coroner claimed that the two bodies discovered inside the single grave were both from 2019. But the funeral director who performed the exhumation told reporters that he wasn't convinced of that. He said that he had conducted up to 20 exhumations a year for over two decades.

And based on his experience, he believed it was possible that the second body hadn't been underground for four years and could possibly be Dave. He stated to local reporters, quote, Without opening the bag, I can't be 100% sure. But from what I could feel, what I could touch, that body is recent.

And one more thing, Mark pointed out that the cemetery is very close to Dave's shop in Starkville, the place that many believed was the most likely destination that Dave would have been walking toward on the day he vanished.

It was pretty close, not far at all. I created the yellow area on the map to show where he would have potentially gone if you were just to kind of keep walking downhill in the easiest route. And I was hoping that that would kind of turn something up. But heading in that direction, if you keep going in that direction that he's facing, it literally, if you were to draw a line, a straight line down that direction he's going, he's heading straight to that cemetery.

That would be as the crow flies, right? And in between where the cemetery is and where he was walking along one of the county roads down there, you actually have his workshop where he would go and work on vehicles and stuff. And it wasn't out of the ordinary for him to go out and go on long walks and kind of head down that direction. So it would probably be something that he had done before, but maybe not something that he would ordinarily do on a regular basis. It's called Starkville Cemetery.

And that's the cemetery where you see that footage of them, where they were doing the exhumation. So there's something going on. Certainly more is going to come out of this regardless as to the question how much of it is going to involve my dear Uncle Dave getting found. I don't have a whole lot of hope, but it's concerning, right? What's the most likely scenario? Okay, he has a heart attack and he died on one of these back roads somewhere. And then they found him later. But even as corrupt as that,

official sounds, I still find it hard to believe that someone would put themselves in that much of a compromising position knowing that they've found someone who's missing, that the county has spent probably tens of thousands of dollars trying to find, and that you're going to just throw them in a hole and pretend they were never found. I even find that kind of hard to believe. But then again, there's been so much in Trinidad that I found hard to believe that came true

For most of us, hearing this, we would assume that once the second body was found inside of that grave, everything would stop. That area would be marked off as a potential crime scene. That investigators would immediately begin working to identify the second person and determine whether anything criminal had occurred. But Mark explained that that was not what happened next. Instead, because of bureaucratic red tape and procedural delays, they had to leave the body right where it was. Even with this shocking discovery, the

The investigation didn't move forward the way anyone expected. They only had permission to remove the one. But still, to me, why has there not been any? Because my cousin and I both, she said to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, like, why can't they get that body identified? What's going on? I don't know what it takes to do something like that. It just, it's confusing. It's this day and age.

And this is where we'll pick up next week in part two of David Shire's story. Today, we trace the timeline of Dave's disappearance, what we know, what remains uncertain, and what his family has worked tirelessly to uncover. We heard from his wife, daughter, and extended family members, who all painted a portrait of a man deeply loved and missed. We learned about the extensive searches, the frustrations with missed opportunities, like

like the trail cam footage that wasn't viewed for weeks, and the unexpected appearance of a white truck on the day that Dave vanished. We also learned about the real estate questions. Was Dave going to meet someone about a property? Then there's the strange positioning of Dave's vehicle, which may not have been that strange after all. Then, the trail seems to stop cold after he was captured on camera. There wasn't a single trace or confirmed sighting after that time. But then came the twist. That

that grave with two bodies inside. One was supposed to be there, the other a question mark. Next week, we'll dig into the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's review of the county coroner's handling of burial procedures, the allegations of misconduct, and what their findings may mean for Dave's case.

Could this shocking discovery bring investigators closer to answers? Or is it just another dead end in a story full of them? We'll explore all of that and much more in part two. If you have any information regarding the disappearance of David Shire, please contact the Los Animas County Sheriff's Office at 719-846-2211.

Trinidad is between 8,000 and 10,000 people, depending on the industry that's present at the time. He was well known in our community. And so I do believe that his disappearance has made a pretty big impact on our community. Ultimately, I feel like one of the ways in which my family has sort of integrated the experience is we've all taken different approaches to bringing light, you know, certain situations or experiences.

just really sort of healing in the public eye. There's a lot of positive things I think that has come from it.

So I get this letter. And so, of course, the first thing that I do is, Paul Eroy, do you know about this? He says, I don't know nothing about it. He lied. And he's lied to me three times. But I am not going to cover anybody on something like this because this whole thing is immoral, unethical. And in my opinion, it's straight evil what happened here. I called the coroner. So I said, I've got a letter here from a lady. She's claiming that you buried this body up there and won't help her get access to visit the gravesite. He goes off on this tangent about

what a piece of shit this lady is. She has made the living nightmare of my life for the last couple of years. And he says, she's wanting to go into your property. He made it sound like he was trying to protect my rights as a property owner. And I said, well, what do you mean? He says, well, she's threatened to sue me. I'm afraid she'll probably go into your property and slip a fall or some language like that to have a reason to turn around and sue you. And I'm like, what do you mean? We have people that drive up. But I'm listening. And he says, and she's just, she's just really a piece of work. And

I've already told her that she can't go on your property. And if she tries to go on your property, I'm going to have her arrested. I think to myself, this is not your property. So it's not adding up. And I said, well, you know what? Should I just come down and talk to you? He says, yeah. And in the meantime, I call her to get her side of the story. And I said, well, what's happening? And then she runs the story down.

She says, my father is a Vietnam vet. He's been missing for I don't know how many years. I've been trying to find him for years. She found him evidently by some missing persons organization. I don't know which one. Was able to find out that he was in Trinidad. And then how she found out he was dead, I'm not clarifying.

She says, well, I finally found him. The identity of I am by DNA. And I found out that he's in your property behind a locket and I can't get in there. She said, I want to visit him and I would like to have a funeral with military honors and hold him because he was a veteran. None of this sounds unreasonable.

And then she says, and I'm thinking of maybe exhuming him and bringing him back home, but I don't know that I can afford that. I said, okay, what is the problem? Well, he's just stonewalling me every step. And I said, well, what do you mean? She says, he will not allow me to go on the property. I had to go to the county assessor to find out who the owner of the property is. Well, they won't give you a phone number. They'll give you an address and then you can write to them. Hence the letter. She says, but all I want to do is go in there and maybe have a funeral, maybe discuss exhuming him later or whatever.

And I says, man, what is the problem? He's stoned along. He's telling me that I can't go on that property. He's not going to get shot by somebody. You've been known to shoot at people on your property. I think to myself, where is this coming from? I don't even know him.

That brings us to the end of episode 489. I'd like to thank everyone who spoke with us for this story. If you have a missing loved one that you'd like to have featured on the show, there's a case submission form at thevanishedpodcast.com. If you'd like to join in on the discussion, there's a page and discussion group on Facebook. You can also find us on Instagram. If you like our show, please give us a five-star rating and review. You can also support the show by contributing on Patreon, where you can get early and ad-free episodes.

Be sure to tune in next week for part two of Dave's story. Thanks for listening.

At the turn of the 20th century, rapid industrialization, urbanization, and political corruption were ravaging America. But soon, President Theodore Roosevelt and a diverse group of reformers known as progressives would fight back. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans. How

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