Relief, regret after bodies discovered

By Chuck Haga
Star Tribune

Even at just 4 years old, Tristan White was a bold and adventurous boy who loved to explore the thick woods of pine and poplar surrounding his home on the Red Lake Indian Reservation.

Avery Lee Stately, 2, loved nothing more than tagging along with his older brother.

Their last journey together apparently took them down the dirt driveway from their modest home, across the paved cul-de-sac that stitches their Walking Shield neighborhood and then fatefully through 50, maybe 75 yards of thick, brambled woods to the shore of Thunder's First Lake.

On Nov. 22, ice covered most of the small lake, ice thick enough where they started out to support the weight of two small boys at play.

Tristan and Avery apparently made their way across much of the lake toward a beaver lodge near the far shore, far enough that they probably didn't hear their mother calling for them.

Sometime shortly after they left their yard that morning more than four months ago, they went through the thinning ice by the beaver lodge and were lost.

Their ice-encased bodies were found Sunday morning in 6 to 10 feet of water by a St. Louis County volunteer search squad.

Autopsies on the boys' bodies were performed Monday by the Ramsey County medical examiner's office, FBI special agent Paul McCabe said.

"As we've said all along, ... there's nothing to indicate foul play in the disappearance of the boys," he said, but "we won't draw any conclusions until the autopsies and the investigation are completed."

While the boys' deaths appear to have been accidental, "we're not ruling anything out," said Tribal Chairman Floyd Jourdain Jr. Tribal police were monitoring the area Monday, treating it as an active investigation scene.

"The autopsies will help clear up how they died and whether there was any foul play," Jourdain said.

News is crushing to many

Alicia White, the boys' mother, and other family members were in seclusion Monday.

"They're having a very hard time," Jourdain said. "They were crushed by the news."

Life went on at the reservation Monday -- steady traffic at the convenience store, the U.S. post office and other gathering spots -- but people could only lower and shake their heads when asked about the discovery of the bodies.

"Oh, there was hope" until Sunday, Bryan Lussier said. "There was always hope. But it's a somber place now."

Added Jody Beaulieu, the tribal secretary: "Somber and very sad."

Tribal police discouraged reporters from wandering and talking with reservation residents and referred questions to the chairman.

There is a "sense of relief in the community -- we know now where they are," Jourdain said. "But there is great disappointment that in the end we don't have a better result."

Jourdain said he "had a feeling" last fall as he joined hundreds of volunteer searchers that the boys could be in the water, especially after their mother told him that Tristan was fascinated by lakes, ponds and streams.

"I hoped to heck they didn't walk across that lake and fall in," Jourdain said.

A thin, sloping trail leads from the road down to the lake, but the shoreline is thick with weeds and tall rushes and it would have been a challenge, especially for 2-year-old Avery, to get through to the ice.

Why no signs earlier?

Search dogs, divers and sonar equipment turned up no sign of the boys in the fall, and there was no snow on the ice where tracks could have been left and detected.

"It was really puzzling to us why the bloodhounds and German shepherds were unable to track the boys to the water," Jourdain said.

"We did everything humanly possible" to find them in the first hours after their mother reported them missing shortly before 10 a.m. on Nov. 22, he said. "We did everything short of busting the ice and dragging" several small ponds in the heavily wood area.

"Right away, there were 300 community members out on foot," he said. "The next day, we had hundreds more searchers from around the state, and we had every imaginable technology -- thermal from the air, sonar into the lakes, people on ATVs and horseback."

The boys were found in 6 to 10 feet of water. "We suspect they went to the bottom and settled there, in the mud and weeds. That's why the divers were unable to see them," Jourdain said.

"We're not unfamiliar with drownings here," he said. "We've lost a couple of fishermen, and in 2005 a young man went missing. We found him in the springtime."

No lead wasn't pursued

Jourdain said authorities dealt with a rash of rumors, including suggestions that the children were victims of an "interfamily dispute" or "were sold on the black market."

They also "fielded calls from all over the country, from psychics, shamans and people who said they had had a dream and saw the boys in a small brick structure near a lake," he said.

"We pursued them all, including the dreams," but the leads yielded nothing.

Some at Red Lake have criticized authorities for not issuing an Amber Alert after the boys disappeared, but Jourdain again said he understood the situation did not meet alert criteria, such as eyewitnesses or other hard evidence of an abduction. Also, he said, news coverage of the disappearance was extensive anyway.

"Maybe the criteria should be revised," he said. "Maybe there should be an alert when children just straight-up vanish."

Tribal police continued searching throughout the winter, as did loggers, fishermen, hunters and farmers on private lands adjoining the reservation.

Jourdain said the loss of two more children has aggravated the pain that people still feel over the shooting deaths of several students at Red Lake High School and others in March 2005.

"We've lost several young people in this community tragically," he said. "Even before March 2005, we lost several young people to suicide. The community for quite some time has struggled to find meaning in all this, to understand what contributed to it.

"At this time of year, for many years to come, there will be families struggling here."