Death of Jaryd Atadero

Jaryd Atadero was a three-year-old American boy who went missing on October 2, 1999, while hiking with a Christian social group on Big South Trail, a part of the Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forest in Colorado.

In October 1999, Allyn was staying with his two children in the Poudre River Resort, a commercial hotel owned by Allyn and his twin brother, Arlyn Atadero.

Jaryd and Josallyn were anxious to go on an excursion to the nearby state fish hatchery with members of the Christian Singles Network group, something that Allyn had initially been reluctant about, but when the group said they would only be going to the hatchery, he consented, trusting the group to keep their word.

At some point during the hatchery trip, the 11 members of the group plus Josallyn and Jaryd decided to take an early afternoon hike up the Big South Trail, 15 miles west of the resort.

It is unclear why this decision was made, although Allyn noted that the beautiful weather may have been a factor, stating that it was "one of those gorgeous fall bluebird days in the mountains of Colorado."

Reports vary widely on the exact events that occurred on the trail leading up to Jaryd's disappearance.

It is generally declared that the group split into faster and slower-paced groups on the trail, and that Jaryd ran ahead of the group he was with.

The boy reportedly stopped to chat with two fishermen, who told investigators that they didn’t think much about Jaryd being alone, since they had seen the Christian Singles Network group about 50 to 80 feet down the trail, unaware that Jaryd was not related to any of them.

The last the fishermen saw of Jaryd, he was walking rapidly up the trail near adjacent campsites.

The members of the Christian Singles Network group, as well as Josallyn, heard a loud scream not long after this.

According to Josallyn, the scream had little context, as it sounded both like "somebody getting attacked or somebody playing with someone... a playful scream, like someone was going up to tag [Jaryd]."

The group members searched for Jaryd for roughly an hour, then returned to the resort to inform Allyn about the disappearance.

Allyn broke down mentally, getting into his vehicle while beating his own chest and screaming repeatedly, "they lost my baby, they lost my baby."

The resort manager called the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, and a Search and Rescue team was deployed, some of whom comforted Josallyn and allowed her to pet one of the search dogs, named "Apache".

Bill Nelson, now a recently retired undersheriff with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office, was in charge of the search for Jaryd.

“Absolutely, I thought we would find him,'” he said.

“Yes, it was a young child, but my thought was we should be able to get in there with our people and do what we do and what we have done hundreds of times: find the person.

It might take a few hours to find the child crying or hiding someplace nearby, but we would be done before midnight.” Nelson went to his vehicle for a quick nap just before midnight and told his staff to wake him when they found the boy.

When he awoke the next morning in the front seat of his pickup truck, he became concerned, realizing that Jaryd still had not been located.

An extensive search for Jaryd Atadero took place, but the search itself was hindered by multiple difficulties, including a building media frenzy.

Furthermore, the helicopter used in the search for Jaryd crashed, severely injuring the team on-board and destroying the helicopter itself.

The Huey UH-1N helicopter from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, had been the chosen copter for the search.

It flew to the Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport to refuel.

When the helicopter returned, it struggled with the fuel load and mountain conditions and stalled out, falling 100 feet and crashing up the Big South Trail.

Aboard were four members of the Air Force and Mark Sheets, a Loveland resident and Larimer County Search and Rescue member.

Sheets wasn’t supposed to be on the flight but had relieved his manager, George Janson, from his shift.

Janson suggested Sheets fly with the crew to help the team make ground search plans.

According to Sheets, "I said on the intercom that we needed altitude now and (remember) the co-pilot saying, ‘I know but I can’t. We are going in,'” he said. “To me that was code for brace for impact.” Sheets was the only crew member not in a seat. He was on the floor with the door open. He saw the rotors hit the tops of trees and pieces of helicopter spray into the forest. He tried to shut the door, but a severed tree limb came through and struck the Air Force doctor on board, fracturing the doctor’s eye socket. Sheets said the helicopter continued to disintegrate, with the fuselage splitting into three pieces, as it crashed across the trail. The jet engines, still operational, continued to run for several hours until the fuel ran out. The Air Force crew was able to get out of the helicopter, but Sheets was trapped. Nearby search and rescue members ran to the downed helicopter, kicked in a window and managed to pull the then-unconscious Sheets out.

Sheets suffered a severe concussion and a 13-inch gash on one leg that left his femur bone exposed.

He also suffered three broken vertebrae in his lower back and a broken shoulder.

His partial remains were found by two businessmen on a hiking trip on May 6, 2003.

Atadero's disappearance and killing remain a cold case and anomaly noted for the fact that the boy's cause of death has never been officially classified.

While often reported as a mountain lion attack, experts on felids have argued that the discovered remains do not meet the typical patterns of a mountain lion attack.

Other experts believed that Atadero had been the victim of an abduction and murder.

Owing in part to the sensationalism surrounding the Colorado case of child glitz pageant contestant JonBenét Ramsey, the media was heavily involved during the search for Atadero.

Jaryd Atadero was the three-year-old son of Allyn Atadero and Stacie Mckissick, and had an older sister, then six-year-old Josallyn Atadero.

Allyn Atadero was a divorcee raising both children, and he had recently joined the Christian Singles Network group, a local religious club.

The club was known to have aided Allyn in daily life as a single father, and the Atadero family became heavily involved with group activities put on by the club.

Allyn himself, a physical education teacher at a local junior high school, found comfort in the religious devotion.

Sheets was emotionally distraught, recalling in a 2017 interview that he had wanted to "do something useful" and help Jaryd.