Officers Want To Question Stepson In Man’s Death Saunders Disappeared During Fall Hunting Trip; Body Was Found Saturday

The Shoshone County Sheriff’s Department is looking for Mike Brown - the stepson of George Saunders, a Pinehurst, Idaho, man whose body was found Saturday in the woods north of Enaville, Idaho.

Saunders, 54, had been missing since Nov. 14. He and Brown were on a hunting trip in the Coeur d’Alene River drainage when their truck rolled down an embankment, Brown had told police. Then Saunders supposedly left the truck to look for help.

Brown said that when Saunders never returned, he left, too, winding up at the Enaville Resort the day after the wreck.

But now that there’s a body, officials want Brown to come in for questioning, Sheriff Dan Schierman said.

Schierman isn’t calling Brown a suspect, but there is talk of calling in the prosecutor. Also being kept secret are the autopsy findings as well as the spot where the body was found.

“We need to sit down with (Brown) and go over the day’s events,” Schierman said.

“I don’t know where he resides,” the sheriff said, adding that Brown is a truck driver working for a company based in Indiana. Brown was last known to have been in Florida last week.

The prosecutor may get involved based on the results of Monday’s autopsy, Schierman said. Those results won’t be released to the public for days, possibly weeks.

While the sheriff won’t say exactly where Saunders’ body was found, Nick Hogamier of Shoshone County Search and Rescue said it “was not too far from the vehicle.”

Up to 45 searchers had combed the woods near the wrecked pickup in November, Hogamier said, but found no sign of Saunders because of deep snow. The search started up again in May.

Saunders was known as a competent outdoorsman who knew that area of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests well. That’s why some find it difficult to believe the man, who also had hip and back problems, would strike out on his own - especially with the younger Brown, 35, also there. In freezing, snowy weather, Saunders was last seen wearing just a T-shirt, jeans, rubber boots and a plaid coat.

“I’m not a judge or investigator, but there are a lot of inconsistencies to the naked eye,” said Steve Matthews, a guide who drove searchers around in his rapid-response track vehicle.

Matthews said Saunders’ truck rolled about 100 feet down an embankment after taking a sudden hard turn. He said that section of the road would be tough to negotiate “only if you were sleeping.”

“You follow their tracks for four or five miles, and they’re right-on,” Matthews said. “They weren’t drunk or anything. And then suddenly, they took a right.”

The truck appeared to have rolled several times, Matthews said. “It definitely would have been a nasty ride, that’s for sure.”

The place Saunders’ body was found isn’t consistent with Brown’s story, said Terry Smith, a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer. And that section of forest is steep and tangled and would be extremely tough to navigate in the winter. “I don’t know if a guy could walk through there today,” Smith said.

Many who live nearby have been suspicious for months but won’t say much on the record. But Joe Peak, owner of the Enaville Resort, did say Brown’s emergence from the woods that Friday afternoon was strange.

Employees were listening to a police scanner for news of Saunders.

“A guy had come in and was standing by the fire, using the (pay) phone, and about that time we got a call on our phone,” Peak remembered. The call was for Mike Brown, who had just used the pay phone to call for a ride.

“It was like ‘Aren’t you lost?’ He wasn’t excited at all, didn’t identify himself, never said anything to anybody,” Peak said. “We just could not believe that Mike had just walked out.”

, DataTimes MEMO: IDAHO HEADLINE: Deputies look for stepson