Officials To Hunt For Missing Man

Tue., Oct. 14, 1997

From Staff And Wire Reports

Montana and Idaho authorities plan to search their respective sides of a Forest Service road in western Montana, looking for a man missing since Sept. 7.

Stanley Clayton Swindoll, 40, was last seen on Little Joe Road in the Bitterroot Mountains near the Montana-Idaho border, Mineral County Sheriff Mickey O’Brien said Monday.

Allen Keller said he and Swindoll had camped in three different spots on the North Fork of the St. Regis River in Montana and in Idaho in early September. The two men traveled to Seeley Lake to do some banking on Sept. 3 and then went to Missoula to buy supplies.

Four days later, the missing man apparently was following Keller’s motor home on Little Joe Road when he disappeared. Keller reported Swindoll and his 1980 Datsun pickup missing on Sept. 10.

“He has no idea where he went,” O’Brien said. “We’ve made an attempt to locate him and the vehicle since that time, but nothing yet.

“We’re going to do a foot search from the top of Little Joe Road on our side, and Shoshone County’s going to do the same thing on their side to see if he went over the bank somewhere,” O’Brien said.

Relatives in Washington state also have not heard from Swindoll. There has been no activity in his bank account.

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