Ep. 17: Premonitions of the Missions

Hello and welcome to Crime on the Clarkfork, the true crime podcast that covers cases that happened in areas with populations of 15,000 or less. This month, Mackenzie tells you the case of Gene Prange that went missing in the Mission Mountains of Montana in the 1960s. 

Transcript

Hi and welcome back to Crime on the Clarkfork, the true crime podcast where I tell you about big crimes that happen in small places with each case having occurred in areas with populations of 15,000 or less. My name is Mackenzie Spence and I am your host. If you listen on Spotify, can you do me a huge favor and turn on automatic downloads? This will help the algorithm recommend the show to others! If you want to be notified every time an episode goes live, you are also able to click the little bell button on the shows page and it will send you a notification! 

The sources for this episode are: Find a Grave.com, The Spokesman Review, The Missoulian, The Billings Gazette, National Park Service The Flathead Story, Seeley Swan Pathfinder, National Center for Cold Water Safety, Missing 411: Montana, and a huge thank you to Adam for requesting the case and sending so many sources!

Seeley Lake, Montana. 1958. Population: 258.

On September 10th, 1958, Lawrence Eugene Prange and his German Shepherd, Queen, went to Crystal Lake in Montana, near Seeley Lake, and was never seen again. 

Gene Prange was a 20 year old wildlife technology student at Montana State University in Missoula, Montana at the time of his disappearance. For those that think I got this wrong, the now, University of Montana, was once Montana State University before the name was used for the now, Montana State University in Bozeman, MT. For the remainder of the podcast, I will be using the current name of the institution, the University of Montana, or UM, to avoid confusion. He was born to Hervert A Prange and Marian Prange and had moved to Montana to go to school at the University of Montana, where he was a sophomore at the time of his disappearance. On campus, he worked as a lifeguard at the UM swimming pool and his last shift was just days before he went missing. He was also a part of the Air Force ROTC program and was named the outstanding all-around AFROTC cadet in the nation and was awarded a silver medallion from the Chicago Tribune Newspaper before he even entered his sophomore year of college. Before college, he was a boy scout and a country boy, graduating from Antioch High School in the rural town of Lake County, IL. Gene was no stranger to the wilderness and had spent time in areas similar to Crystal Lake before, which made those that knew him give no pause when he said he was going to go out for a few days and would return soon.

Prange took off to the Mission Mountains, near Crystal Lake, to search for and study wildlife, specifically mountain goats as he was writing a term paper about the animal. He had also planned to do this hike to scout the area so he would be able to do a more intensive hike later on. He told his friends that he would be back on Saturday or Sunday and if not back by then, he would be back by Monday at the very latest. He brought food, camping gear, two rifles, a .22 and a .44, and a saddle pack for the dog. He loaded up his dog, Queen, into his vehicle that he had purchased the month prior, and made his way to a road turnoff near Lindbergh Lake, on Beaver Creek. Now, most of his movements from the time he left Missoula are simply speculation and none of it is able to be proven without Gene, but many assume that Gene had stayed the first night in his car with Queen before heading to the Crystal Lake trailhead the following morning. 

Gene was supposed to return on the 14th or 15th of September, but never did. He had told his girlfriend, Sue and his parents that he would call as soon as he returned to Missoula and he told Sue that if she didn’t hear from him by Monday, then something was wrong and she should assume he was in trouble and she should contact the police. When Sue and his parents hadn’t heard from him, they immediately contacted authorities who then contacted Forest Service officials. The search began and more than 30 men were painstakingly searching the areas of Crystal Lake and Grey Wolf Lake. All men were either on horseback or were searching by foot.The search team included two deputies, Rex Kofford and Lee Nelson, 12 other policemen from the Missoula Police Department, as well as smokejumpers that were employed by the forest service. Some of the people who knew Gene was going into the Montana wilderness began to wonder if Gene had enough warm clothing with him to withstand the nights that had begun to dip into the freezing temperatures, especially if he wasn’t able to build a fire. They also said that Gene didn’t bring that much food, but his mom believes that he had planned to live off of the land a bit while he was out there, which wasn’t unusual for him to do. 

During the first two days of the search, those searching were able to report back by walkie talkie to the Condon ranger station, which was located north of Seeley Lake. During those two days, there was no trace of Gene that was able to be found. The search was made difficult due to the amount of felled trees that were causing the trail to be blocked in some places, but that didn’t deter the search team. The team also consisted of three police k9s that the search team hoped would be able to at least pick up a scent on Gene’s german shepherd, Queen. The search team also employed the use of a forest service plane out of Kalispell that was equipped with a megaphone to attempt to get a message to Gene for him to create a large, smokey fire to make it easier to find him. Unfortunately, there were no flames or smoke seen after they repeated the message as they flew over the area Gene was anticipated to be.

Gene’s parents didn’t know he was missing until the early morning of September 18th. They had received a call from someone from the Chicago Tribune who had read something about Gene’s disappearance and wanted more information from his parents. He was the first to tell them that he never returned from his hiking trip. Marian told the reporter that she knew her son was in trouble, but didn’t know he was missing. When the reporter asked how she knew that, she said that she didn’t know, but she did know that he was seriously injured and that he couldn’t get out on his own and needed help immediately, but she knew he was alive. His parents headed to Montana as soon as they got the news that Gene was missing and were in Missoula within hours of the phone call. They then immediately went to search for Gene in the Mission Mountains with the other search team members. On September 19th, Gene’s car was found on the road on Beaver Creek and some searchers heard a dog howling on the north side of Crystal Lake, but it seemed to be coming from the steep cliffs that were high above the lake itself. 

The search continued, but service for reporting back was spotty, at best, and much of the area that was being searched was impossible for horses to traverse and were at altitudes higher than 7,000 feet above sea level. The searchers would keep an eye out for any birds that looked like they were spiraling as this could indicate that they were near a body that they could eventually consume. Even if Gene had been severely hurt, birds may still spiral, waiting for him to die. Even so, no birds were seen doing this by any of the search parties. A base camp for the operation was set up at Crystal Lake and the search parties and operations were being sent out from there. Unfortunately for the search party, the weather had been overcast for some time, which made it hard for helicopters or airplanes to be utilized in the search. On September, 20th, the undersheriff, George Bukovatz told the media that as soon as the overcast would lift, helicopters and airplanes would be called in to start searching as well. 

Also on September 20th, a search and rescue team that was riding on horseback on the northwest side of Lindbergh Lake saw what they thought was Queen running wildly through the brush. They attempted to get Queen to come to them, but the dog was super nervous and jumpy whenever they attempted to get near her, assumingly fearful of the horses. Luckily, Gene’s girlfriend, Sue, was at base camp, so the SAR team went to go and ask her if she would be able to try and get Queen to come to her. Sue agreed and was the only person that Queen seemed to let get near her. Eventually the dog was calmed down enough that Sue was able to catch her on the west side of Lindbergh Lake and she was brought back to base camp. Queen was found more than three miles from the primary search location and was also in one of the roughest areas in the Mission Mountains when it came to vegetation and overgrowth. She seemed to have no wounds or injuries that indicated that she had been in a fight with any other animals and she was also missing her pack that she often carried when her and Gene went into the woods. She would often carry extra supplies to make Gene’s pack a tad lighter, but Sue and Gene’s parents were perplexed as to how the pack could have been removed unless Gene or another human did it. 

After a day of calming Queen down and giving her food to eat, the search team brought her to the crystal lake area as well as the peak where they thought Gene had been looking for mountain goats. It struck them as odd that the dog seemed to be fearful and wanted absolutely nothing to do with the mountain and continually attempted to get out of the area, especially since Gene and Queen often hiked and hunted together in the wilderness of Montana. It is also common for dogs to sit near their owners until they are found, so Queen’s fear of the mountain coupled with not being in the area that searchers thought Gene would have camped makes this an interesting tidbit of information and unfortunately, Queen was unable to lead them to where Gene was or had been. Since Queen was not wearing her pack, SAR and authorities assume that Gene was carrying all of the supplies with him and when whatever happened happened, he must have been wearing the backpack as they were unable to locate any of his or Queen’s things during their search mission.

In the end, the search was funded by both the Missoula police department and the Pranges and their friends and families back in Illinois. The search teams covered around 20 square miles of the Mission Mountains, but were unable to locate any sign of Gene or his things. By September 24th, the search for Gene was over and his parents returned to Illinois with Queen and Sue returned to her studies at UM. Gene’s parents had also retrieved all of his belongings from his home that he was staying at in Missoula and brought them home with them. In the summers of 1959 and 1960, there were more searches for Gene, but nothing came of them. The areas they were searching included mountaintops in the Mission Mountains that had no tree coverage, but simply barren landscapes thousands of feet above sea level. In the 1960s, two people were out hunting in the Mission Mountains and they found a wood and canvas frame for a backpack which may have belonged to Gene, but it is impossible to say for sure that it is his pack, so nothing else came from this discovery. Gene’s father died of cancer in 1962 and Marian continued to search and hold out hope to find her son. In 1971, she returned to Missoula and went into the Mission Mountains again to look for her son, accompanied by members of the original search party. During this search, they found a pair of grey wool socks that were nearly engulfed in the crook of a tree, a flattened tin can under a rock, and a small fire pit near Eagle Lake. The socks had a tag in them that had a name, “Kip Weeks” written on them, but a Kip Weeks was never found, so authorities are unsure if these items were something related to Gene or simply a case of littering. Not giving up, Marian had even taken out an ad in the Missoulian newspaper in 1981 offering a $2,000 reward for information on where Gene could be, but there was no response to her call for information.

It wasn’t until the fall of 1990 when Bill Fisher, who was a forester for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was working at the North Fork of the Jocko River Drainage and found part of a rusted pack frame and WWII Binoculars. When he brought them to authorities in March of 1991, the county sheriff’s deputy that was in charge of SAR began to speculate that these items could have belonged to Gene Prange. In June of 1991, the area where the items were found was searched and there were a lot of camping items discovered, including the zipper of a sleeping bag and tattered remains of a blanket. The officer reached out to Gene’s mom and she immediately flew to Missoula to identify the items. She was able to positively identify the remains of the blanket as one that she had made and given to Gene as a gift. This area on the Jocko River drainage was 8 miles from where Gene’s car was found at the trailhead near Lindbergh Lake. 

After this discovery, authorities began to focus on the Jocko Valley, searching on the east side of the Saint Mary’s peaks and south of Goat mountain, which was what was searched back in 1958 for Gene. 

There are a few theories that people have cooked up over the years. Apparently, where Gene’s keys were found there were cliffs that were tilted. If the cliffs were wet, they could be very slippery and it would be easy for a hiker to simply slide into the lake, which is very cold and very deep. Gene could have slipped into the lake and experienced cold water shock, which causes muscles to lock up and creates a temporary paralysis. The cold water can also make it much more difficult to hold your breath, in fact, an average person is only able to hold their breath for ⅓ as long in cold water as they would be able to in warm water, so even though Gene was a lifeguard, and seemingly was able to swim well, the cold water may have created an environment where he wasn’t able to hold his breath, swim, or save himself. It is also common for people who fall into really cold water to gasp when they hit it. If you gasp when you are underwater, your lungs will fill with water and you immediately drown. It can also lead to hyperventilation, which makes it nearly impossible to swim, even a short distance to get yourself out of the water, which then results in drowning. It can also lead to hypocapnia, which can create dizziness, faintness, or even loss of consciousness. 

A couple of other theories is that Gene was caught in a windstorm, which caused him to become disoriented or fall and hurt himself, or that a bear killed him as there are many in the area where he disappeared. The bear theory seems to be popular because when someone from the search team went into the area again with his son, Queen, and one of Gene’s friends, they encountered a grizzly bear who reacted violently towards Queen. They had to shoot to grizzly to keep themselves safe and even brought in someone to examine the bear’s stomach for any trace of Gene, but nothing was found. 

The last theory is that he wanted to disappear and started a new life elsewhere.

And that is the end of this case. As always, please give me 5-stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well as a review on Apple Podcasts. I am always looking for cases to cover, so if you have a case suggestion, please visit the link in the show’s instagram page, @CrimeontheClarkfork. I also post pictures from the cases I cover on my instagram page, so go give that a quick follow and let me know what your thoughts are on the case in the comments on instagram. Do you think Matej had more victims that we don’t know about? I hope you enjoyed this episode and I will catch you next time with more big crime in small places.