Derek Leuking last seen in Cherokee Co., NC

[sugarfree irony]

http://www.thesmokymountaintimes.com/articles/2012/03/19/news/3.15.12.news01.txt


Derek Joseph Leuking, 24, of Louisville, was reported missing by co-workers and family members March 15. Leuking was reportedly last seen at 4 a.m. Saturday at the Microtel Hotel in Cherokee.

The subject's white Ford Escape was located Saturday morning at the Newfound Gap parking area in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Since that time, rangers have searched more than 40 miles of the Appalachian Trail and other connecting trails radiating out from Newfound Gap.

Searchers have not found any conclusive signs of Leuking. Rangers have also interviewed hikers they encountered to see if anybody had met him, but without success.

Search managers now believe that, if he is in the park, he is off-trail. Three search dog teams are combing the woods along the Appalachian Trail and along an old, abandoned section of U.S. 441 that leaves the parking lot heading southbound. A Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter is assigned to cover the area from the air.


Plenty of black bears in that area .

[AngelFire]

Yup bears. We had a story a while back of a 19 year old and her step dad that were attacked by bears. Eaten alive. The girl managed to call her mom and it was so scariest most saddest shit I have read. Well the scariest involving an animal....

Found it

http://www.dreamindemon.com/forums/showthread.php?48613-The-Bear-Is-Eating-Me!-Teen-Calls-Mom-As-Bear-Attacks&highlight=eaten+alive

[VXIII]

I remember that story as well, one of the most horrifying stories I ever read on here.

[AngelFire]

I remember that story as well, one of the most horrifying stories I ever read on here.

You know I wonder how her mother is doing. Poor lady, imagine that last call....

[sugarfree irony]

update . Now its sounding like it might more than just getting lost .

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/mar/22/mystery-surrounds-mans-disappearance-in-smokies/


GATLINBURG, Tenn. (AP) — A handwritten note asking that no one search for him was left in the car of a Blount County man who disappeared in the Smokies, but officials have not yet determined whether Derek Lueking wrote it.

The Knoxville News Sentinel reports (http://bit.ly/GMPH7m) Lueking had bought a sleeping bag and tent but did not take them with him when he apparently left his vehicle at Newfound Gap, one of the highest points in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

[blacksheep]

Aww. Very sad :(

[sugarfree irony]

I hope this is an elaborate scheme to disappear , and he is in Vegas , or somewhere . Suicide by lost in the woods starving , eaten by bears would not be a pleasant way to go .

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Family members of an East Tennessee man missing in Great Smoky Mountains National Park for more than a week said Sunday they are reluctantly giving up actively searching the rugged wilderness for him, but they still hold out hope he is alive and will make it out on his own.

Dozens of family members and friends of 24-year-old Derek Lueking searched trails in the Newfound Gap area Saturday and Sunday. Park rangers had halted their searches on Friday after finding no sign of him. Rangers had scoured the mountains since March 17.

“I think most of us really believe he’s still in the park,” Lueking’s sister, Kim Jackson, said Sunday afternoon. “It’s a very hard thing to leave.”
[...]

Searchers believe Lueking, of Blount County, is off-trail somewhere, Jackson said, and family members have come to accept that finding him in the vast, thickly-wooded wilderness is unlikely. The terrain is jungle-like in many places, with dense laurel thickets making meaningful searches impossible.

“Unfortunately, this territory out here is pretty serious,” Jackson said. “Getting off the trail, it’s hard to look everywhere. Sometimes it’s so thick you can barely see 10 feet in front of you.”

Jackson said she and her father, Tim Lueking, will stay another few days in hopes of turning up a lead before heading home to Manassas, Va., where Derek Lueking grew up. But most of the volunteers were heading home Sunday.

“There have been a lot of hikes,” Jackson said. “The park rangers have done so much. We’re hoping he’ll find his way back on the trail and find a way out.”
http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20120326/NEWS/303260025/Missing-hiker-s-family-gives-up-search

[Dakota Valkyrie]

Motives of disappeared man remains a mystery

Lueking, a 24-year-old from Louisville, Tenn., isn’t your typical lost hiker. Most search and rescue missions are launched after a hiker fails to come home after a day in the woods or doesn’t show up at the appointed hour after a camping trip.

But, Lueking went missing before he ever set foot in the park. His family grew worried when he didn’t show up for work and stopped returning their phone calls.

“They had been trying to find him. He had not been acting in a normal way,” said Molly Schroer, a spokeswoman for the park.

Two days passed before his parents discovered he was staying at a hotel in Cherokee. Concerned, they set out for Cherokee in hopes of finding him, but they arrived too late.

He had checked out at 4 a.m. the morning of Saturday, March 17. He was last seen on the hotel surveillance cameras with a daypack.

On the drive back toward Tennessee, his family spied his white Ford Escape in the Newfound Gap parking lot and convinced rangers to launch a search immediately.
[...]

The most “disturbing” thing about Lueking’s disappearance is that no one they talked to Saturday had seen him, said Bob Miller, a spokesman for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

“There was a ton of people in the park that day. It was a nice day,” Miller said. “Does it mean he got off the trail right away? Maybe.”

Had he been on the trails, someone, somewhere would have seen him. But, off-trail is another story. Once off-trail, only the most experienced outdoorsmen can successfully navigate the Smokies’ half-million acres of wilderness, steep terrain and dense forests. Lueking, by all accounts, was not in this category.

Going off-trail not only increased Lueking’s chance of getting lost or injured but decreased his chance of being found.
[...]

What the park does know is what Lueking did not have on him — a tent, sleeping bag, his wallet, cash and other newly purchased backcountry gear found in his vehicle at in the parking lot at Newfound Gap.

Lueking would sometimes go on day hikes but rarely went out for several days at a time and was not adequately prepared for such an endeavor when he left the Newfound Gap parking lot Saturday morning.

“We would have felt better if he had bought all this gear and brought it with him,” Miller said. “In this case, he made preparations, but he didn’t follow through.”

If that weren’t puzzling enough, Lueking also left a message in his car that read: Don’t try to follow me. The ambiguous note still left park leaders wondering what Lueking was thinking when he wandered into the forest.

“He could have been going just to clear his mind. He could have been going with an intention to harm himself,” Schroer said.

The family told park rangers that the date of his disappearance fell around the one-year anniversary mark of the death of his grandfather whom he had been very close to — and one possible reason why he went missing.

Lueking was also a fan of ‘Man v. Wild.’ In each show, host Bear Gryllis is dropped into the wilderness with limited resources and forced to survive on the land while finding his way back to civilization. It has been postulated that Lueking may have been in search of a similar experience.

“It opens up one more scenario,” Miller said. “If somebody’s trying to avoid you, they could do it.”
[...]http://www.smokymountainnews.com/component/k2/item/6618-motives-of-disappeared-man-remains-a-mystery

[sugarfree irony]

http://www.facebook.com/FindDerekLueking
Someone ( his family I think ) has a facebook page set up for him .

[sugarfree irony]

They have found some remains that might be Michael Giovanni Cocchini who disappeared in the park the same weekend as Derek Lueking .


Officials at Great Smoky Mountains National Park said Tuesday there are new developments in the case of a Nashville man who went missing in March.

Michael Giovanni Cocchini, 23, went missing in the park on the weekend of March 17-18. The park service searched for him, but came up empty and suspended the effort on March 25.

Park employees found items on Friday that are thought to belong to Cocchini. They were near the area where his vehicle was found parked in March along Newfound Gap Road.

On Saturday and Sunday, searchers combed the area where clothing and other items consistent with those last seen on Cocchini were found.

They found human remains in the area on Monday that have not yet been positively identified. The remains were sent to a medical examiner for analysis and possible identification.

The park service said Cocchini's family has been notified of the new developments.

Derek Lueking, 24, of Louisville, who disappeared in the park on the same weekend as Cocchini, is still the subject of an open investigation. The park service say it has no new information on Lueking.

http://www.wate.com/story/19332932/officials-remains-found-in-smokies-could-be-missing-nashville-man?clienttype=printable

Unrelated , maybe but who knows .

[Dakota Valkyrie]

http://www.facebook.com/FindDerekLueking
Someone ( his family I think ) has a facebook page set up for him .
Posting this week on the Find Derek Lueking FB page:

Find Derek Lueking
Thursday
Derek's fb mobile icon has been on now for about 2 months.....We can't seem to get any answers about it.....has his iPod touch (that he took with him) been found, has someone hacked into his account.......or is it him....................?https://www.facebook.com/FindDerekLueking

[jenny7795]

According to articles I found, the body is that of Michael Cocchini and it appears his death was a suicide.

September 6,2012


Human remains found in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have been identified as those of a missing Nashville man.

Park officials announced Thursday that medical investigators have positively identified the remains as belonging to 23-year-old Michael Giovanni Cocchini. He had been staying in Gatlinburg and was last seen by friends at a Sevierville Wal-Mart on March 18.

The National Park Service worked with the Regional Forensic Center in Knoxville, the Sevier County Medical Examiner's Office and the Knox County Sheriff's Office Forensic Unit. Official identification came through comparison of dental records. No foul play is suspected.


http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/sep/06/remains-found-in-smokies-were-from-nashville-man/


There's no way to determine exactly how Cocchini died, but evidence indicates that Cocchini may have taken his own life. Foul play is not suspected

http://www.wbir.com/news/article/231267/2/Officials-confirm-remains-found-in-Smokies-were-missing-man