Missing Red Lake boys found in lake

A tragic discovery: Two young boys who went missing on the Red Lake Reservation just before Thanksgiving were found Sunday morning in a lake near their home

 

By Terry Collins/Chuck Haga
Star Tribune Staff Writers

 

More than four months after they disappeared on a chilly day just before Thanksgiving, two boys were found dead Sunday in a lake near their home on the Red Lake Indian Reservation.

Tristan White, 4, and Avery Stately, 2, were reported missing Nov. 22 after they went out to play.

Searchers from the reservation, located in far northern Minnesota, were joined by volunteers from across the state.

But their efforts were futile until Sunday morning, when a volunteer rescue squad from St. Louis County, which included a half-dozen searchers and three dogs found the bodies encased in ice in First Thunder's Lake, about a half-mile from the boys' home, said FBI special agent-in-charge Ralph Boelter.

"Today, our worst fears were confirmed," Boelter said at a news conference in Minneapolis on Sunday night.

He also said that there has been no determination yet whether foul play was involved. Autopsies are pending.

"We're deeply saddened and heartbroken," said Tribal Chairman Floyd (Buck) Jourdain, Jr.

"So many people were hoping for a safe return back to their family," Jourdain continued late Sunday. "Unfortunately, we didn't get the result we were hoping for. It is a sad day."

The lake was initially searched by divers in November as part of an intense search just days after they vanished.

The official search was called off after five days, but some continued looking in and around the area including roadsides, farmland and cabins.

On Sunday, dogs picked up a scent on the southern part of the lake and the boys were found partially floating in the northern part of the lake near a beaver dam, Boetler said.

The boys' identification was confirmed based on the clothes found on the bodies.

Jourdain said that a series of small lakes near the boys' home were frozen and couldn't be searched thoroughly last fall but had begun to thaw and were a priority area for searchers.

'Just playing outside'

Tristan and Avery had been playing outside their family's house Nov. 22 in the woodsy Walking Shield neighborhood when they disappeared between 9:30 and 9:50 a.m.

"They were just playing outside," their mother, Alicia White, said plaintively at a news conference Nov. 25, pleading for the public's help. "That's the last I saw them."

Searchers combed area

Within hours, hundreds of volunteers were combing the rough, bramble-filled woods surrounding the family's home.

Aircraft with heat-sensing equipment and unmanned aerial vehicles were also used.

At the time, Jourdain said there was "nothing to indicate the children have been abducted -- no evidence that someone pushed them into a car or something," but neither tribal nor federal authorities were ruling out any explanation.

"They're so young, so small, you wouldn't think they'd get very far on their own," he said. "We've looked high and low, but we can't find them."

He recalled on Sunday how divers looked in the water repeatedly for the boys.

"There's a lot of mud and weeds down there," Jourdain said. "So, it's not unimaginable that they would sink, get entangled or stuck in the mud."

In her tearful meeting with reporters on Nov. 24, Alicia White described Tristan as an adventuresome boy who loved water and sometimes wandered off when the family lived in Redby, another community on the reservation.

"But we always found him," she said then. "This is the first time we didn't find him.

Avery, she said "just follows his brother. [He is] the sweetest little boy, just lovey-dovey."

As the search continued that weekend nighttime temperatures fell below freezing.

Some reservation residents, still shaken by the Red Lake High School shootings of March 2005, reported they were having trouble sleeping.

Parents suspected abduction

Tribal elders offered prayers to guide the searchers, who waved smoke from a wood fire over themselves as the started out. Psychics and shamans also weighed in, Jourdain said.

When a month had passed with no sign of the boys, their mother admitted fearing the worst.

"I think somebody picked them up," she said in a Star Tribune interview Dec. 22. "I think all the people looking would have found something. And the bloodhounds didn't pick up any scent" leading into the woods. "The dogs stopped at the road and that was it."

Still, she held onto enough hope to buy Christmas presents for the boys.

"Toy cars, their favorite," she said.

Jeff Stately, Avery's father, also said in December that he believed the boys were abducted.

"Those are pretty rough woods, and they couldn't get too far. Avery, he was good at walking, but not in woods like that."

A reward was offered

Some Red Lake members were angry that no Amber Alert was issued.

Authorities said the disappearance didn't meet the criteria -- no eyewitnesses and no evidence that they were actually abducted.

The FBI sent dozens of agents to the reservation and offered a $20,000 reward, and the Red Lake Nation later added $10,000.

Recently, billboards with the boys' faces went up in the Twin Cities.

In the first month, the FBI checked more than 300 leads, including some "presumed sightings." None panned out.

But by Sunday, word had spread across the reservation that the boys had been found dead.

"We're going to have to draw on each other to get through this," Interim Red Lake schools Superintendent Brent Gish said.

For Jourdain and others who helped search, there is now some closure.

"Our prayers go out to the boys' family for their painful and heartbreaking loss," he said.