Murder Near a Geocache

[Cape Cod Cacher]

I suppose it's a reasonable (but remote) concern.

 

I mean, geocachers can't be the only ones that visit a place and think to themselves, "Gee, this would be an AWESOME place to hide something!"

 

Someone had a tagline similar to "Geocachers know where to hide bodies" forgot who...

[+eagletrek]

• MAJOR fear of being abducted by a band of beautiful hottie wild Amazon women who would then keep me in their wilderness camp and force me to provide services for them to help keep them happy. Good golly gosh, I would REALLY hate that! Really!
  

"Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I... I do deny them my essence"

Dr. Zhivago! General Jack Ripper is one of my favorites!

"Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water....?"

 

 

 

I believe it's "Dr Strangelove."

[+Clothahump]

A while back, I went caching with a buddy in George Bush Park in Houston. We snagged about 8 caches that day. On the radio, I heard that the cops were looking in the park for a missing college student. Later, we heard that they found his body and that he had committed suicide.

 

From what I gathered about where he was found, he was about 250 yards away from one of the caches that we snagged. I don't know if he was sitting out there dead when we logged the cache or if he came along afterwards and killed himself.

[geo'joe]

Lucky you. Double jeopardy.

[+gof1]

I archived a cache when a murder occurred near by. It was the last of a series of rapes and murders committed by one creep over decades. When I heard that it had happened along the same bike path I disabled the cache. When I found out it was within stone throwing range of the cache I archived it. Two reasons for closing the cache. I didn't want to have a cacher inadvertently interfering with the investigation and I didn't want a cacher to have to explain why they were playing a game at a recent crime scene.

 

On the plus side they finally got the (expletive deleted) scum bag. His reign of terror has ended.

[+simpjkee]

It's good to know that these victims are being found whether it be by a cacher or not

[+geomann1]

I agree 110% with what you have written above. My ONLY fears when geocaching, regarding what I might encounter near the cache, are as follows, and are very realistic:

• fear of being abducted by space aliens, particularly the alien grays from Zeta Reticuli, and then being subjected to their medical experiments and those annoying brain implants in the surgery room of the alien mothership hovering in geosynchronous orbit over Groundspeak headquarters.
  
• fear of being abducted by Dr. Phil McGraw, whom, I fear, will confront me as part of an attempted publicity ambush/stunt and announce to me that he is gonna perform a forced "intervention" on me (much as he tried to do with with my buddy Britney two weeks ago in her hotel room, till she threw him out) because he has decided that I am addicted to geocaching and that it is getting out of control.
  
• MAJOR fear of being abducted by a band of beautiful hottie wild Amazon women who would then keep me in their wilderness camp and force me to provide services for them to help keep them happy. Good golly gosh, I would REALLY hate that! Really!
  

I have some similar fears:

 

* Top of the list - coming upon a an albino playing the banjo and bunch a hillbillies in the woods - The movie "Deliverance" gives me the creeps. There are some things I won't do for a smilie.

 

* Fear of looking for a cache in a shopping center and finding myself between Oprah and the lunch buffet.

 

* A Florida favorite, being captured by a senior tourist from up north in a big car traveling 40 MPH in the passing lane, who bores me to death with stories about the good old days, how they do things better in (Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.), his/her recent operation, and why the governments owes him/her.

[+ChiefWings]

the criminals probably don't log on to geocaching.com to scout out their new body hiding spots...

 

In the book "Cache of Corpses," the "cachers" are doing some of the stuff being discussed in this thread.

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=180257

 

[+PlantAKiss]

There is a large park here with about 50 caches. Awhile back, some cachers discovered a camp within the park. They reported it since camping isn't allowed. The police investigated the camp and found personal belongings they identified as belonging to a young man from the west coast. Upon trying to locate the man, they found out he had been murdered in Paris around Thanksgiving. No one knows why he had been camping in the park, why he left his personal belongings, why he went to Paris and how he ended up dead. It was quite the mystery and still is. I don't believe the murder was ever solved. And geocachers started the mystery rolling by finding and reporting the camp.

[+Campcreekers]

I actually comitted a murder on the way to a cache once. When I hit him he had the dear in the headlight look, but then again, he had every right tio look that way. He WAS a deer.

[+Thistle Dew]

"We went on to find the cache and returned as quickly as possible to meet with the law enforcement authorities who were arriving at the scene." Yikes! That's bold. I think I might have called that one and just waited in my car for the cops.

People are sometimes bad. Kids have learned to be aware of their surroundings by watching for muggles. Watch for muggles and bad guys too.

[Geo-Joe-N-Josh]

I highly suggest you:

1) Move to a better neighborhood

2) Keep caching with your police friend

3) Wear a bullet proof vest

 

People shouldn't fear for their life's while caching!!!

Edited February 6, 2008 by Geo-Joe-N-Josh

[+Sparrowhawk]

From the "dark humor" department, looks like this cache is practically begging to be mentioned at least once in this thread. What the heck.

Edited February 7, 2008 by Sparrowhawk

[+infiniteMPG]

Here in Florida just south of Tampa Bay we had Susan Fast missing and then body parts were found and identified as her behind a shopping plaza NEWS STORY. At the time this was going on someone reported a problem with a cache of mine so I jumped on my bike and rode to the spot. Everything was police tapped off and news crews everywhere. My cache is a camo job in some woods hidden inside an old cow bone I found. I figured not a good time to come walking out of the woods from behind police tape at a murder scene with a bone in my hand

 

I disabled the cache for a while until everything calmed and it was okay. But we had another similar thing happen in North Port, just south of us. And a cache owner there went thru a similar thing. This stuff happens, we just need to do what we can to keep ourselves and other cachers out of harms way.

[+bigcall]

I had to look around a while, but I found the old thread about a murder in DC that someone wanted to place a cache at. See This thread about Chandra Levy

 

Fortunately the cache was never placed.

[+Juicepig]

It's not so bad. You find the body, call it in. Police question you for a few hours..

 

With my body they were like: "Why are you under a bridge at 4am in a city that is 2 hours from where you live?"

 

This was my pre-paperless caching days. They confiscated my coord sheets

 

Oh well. I get to tell the story! Makes for a good DNF log: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...e2-82646c24c88e

[+GSVNoFixedAbode]

A friend's recent log. A body but not murder, just sad circumstances.

[fishybiz]

Maybe Geocachers will eventually find Steve Fossett. Isn't that a mystery?

 

Also, anyone that wants to read a caching book, check out: www.CerebralCodex.com, GCVJXQ.

Edited February 9, 2008 by fishybiz

[+eagsc7]

I actually had to go after another cache about 4 months ago, cause there was a sheriff that had blocked off the area. A few hours later, I found out that there was a murder there. Luckly, the tape was down when I went back for the cache. Of course.. I didn't bring enough equipment with me for the cache.

 

The Steaks

[+fairyhoney]

While out finding this cache: Loony-Toonerville GCJ87T (letterbox/combo), the other I was with stated the were we parked was across the road from where a body was found - apparently drug related.

[+HaricotVert_52]

I often have an apprehensive feeling that I’m going to come across a dead person or crime scene while out geocaching.

 

Well, it ALMOST happened. I happened to be caching in Texas with a Del Rio police officer. I dropped a TB and coin in a cache located on a dirt road. It wasn’t way out of town and certainly not an isolated area but the cacher who picked them up on January 26th stumbled across a badly beaten man on the dirt road. He was a murder victim. Little did I know when my friend mentioned investigating a murder scene this weekend that it would be right near the cache we had found a few days earlier! News story

 

In addition, another (very cool) cache I found just over the border in Mexico had also been the sight of a murder scene. Apparently, the murder victim was laid right at the base of the Tlaloc monument. I wouldn’t have known any of this if my friend wasn't a police officer. Makes me think there might be a lot more crimes near geocaches that we just don’t know about.

 

We live in a very safe neighborhood, and the other day while geocaching nearby I came across a makeshift memorial for a man murdered in 2003. The body had been found right next to a popular playing field, and within in sight of an elementary school and neighborhood hiking trail.

http://www.gazette.net/gazette_archive/200...s/170204-1.html

 

There are often stories in the news about hikers finding crime scenes. It doesn't stop me from geocaching, but I'm aware that this could happen. So if it's not in a very public area, I just don't cache alone.

 

On the other hand, geocaching can come to the rescue and be an aid to people in trouble .... as posted on geocaching.com

http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_...J.253cb5a0.html

[+HaricotVert_52]

I often have an apprehensive feeling that I’m going to come across a dead person or crime scene while out geocaching.

 

Well, it ALMOST happened. I happened to be caching in Texas with a Del Rio police officer. I dropped a TB and coin in a cache located on a dirt road. It wasn’t way out of town and certainly not an isolated area but the cacher who picked them up on January 26th stumbled across a badly beaten man on the dirt road. He was a murder victim. Little did I know when my friend mentioned investigating a murder scene this weekend that it would be right near the cache we had found a few days earlier! News story

 

In addition, another (very cool) cache I found just over the border in Mexico had also been the sight of a murder scene. Apparently, the murder victim was laid right at the base of the Tlaloc monument. I wouldn’t have known any of this if my friend wasn't a police officer. Makes me think there might be a lot more crimes near geocaches that we just don’t know about.

 

We live in a very safe neighborhood, and the other day while geocaching nearby I came across a makeshift memorial for a man murdered in 2003. The body had been found right next to a popular playing field, and within in sight of an elementary school and neighborhood hiking trail.

http://www.gazette.net/gazette_archive/200...s/170204-1.html

 

There are often stories in the news about hikers finding crime scenes. It doesn't stop me from geocaching, but I'm aware that this could happen. So if it's not in a very public area, I just don't cache alone.

 

On the other hand, geocaching can come to the rescue and be an aid to people in trouble .... as posted on geocaching.com

http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_...J.253cb5a0.html