PORT HADLOCK — The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office has cleared a cold case regarding a missing person who was last seen alive 47 years ago.
“This is satisfying. We’ve been rattling around with this for a long time,” said Sheriff’s Detective Bob Gebo, who began working on the case in 2002 as a member of the state attorney general’s homicide investigation team, which was charged with the investigation of cold cases.
The missing person was David C. Corak, 21, of Tacoma, Gebo said.
His surviving brothers were notified of the identification in late 2015, 47 years after he disappeared.
“His family had written him off a long time ago,” Gebo said.
“It would have meant more if his parents were still alive.”
In June 1968, Corak had stopped at the Hamma Hamma Ranger Station north of Hoodsport in Mason County and reported that he was going to go camping in the Boulder Creek area, according to a narrative released by the Sheriff’s Office on Thursday.
Corak appeared to have appropriate camping equipment, and other hikers in the area reported seeing him at the Boulder Creek trail head heading into the national forest.
A few days later, an automobile registered to Corak was found at the Boulder Creek trail head by Forest Service personnel, with his wallet and other personal items found inside.
A ranger contacted Corak’s family in Tacoma and learned that he had not returned from his camping trip and was missing, the Sheriff’s Office said.
An extensive search in the area was conducted with no success.
Skeletal remains
In October 1975, a group of hikers came across human skeletal remains in an off-trail area above Cliff Creek in the Duckabush River drainage in the Brothers Wilderness Area in Jefferson County, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The skull bore evidence of a single gunshot wound consistent with a .22 caliber bullet compatible with a rifle that was found near the bones, Gebo said.
The arrangement of the rifle, supported by a stick with a string that could be used to pull the trigger, strongly suggested the manner of death to be suicide, he said.
A pathologist estimated the probable date of death to have been six to nine months prior to discovery, an assessment that Gebo said turned out to be incorrect.
“The pathologist was wrong,” Gebo said.
“Estimates based on skeletal remains are often guesswork.”
Efforts over the years
Dental charts were circulated to the Washington State Dental Association and the American Dental Association for a possible identification — without success.
The bones were taken to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office evidence room, then located in the county courthouse, and at an undetermined time loaned to an anthropology teacher at Peninsula College.
When the teacher retired, he took the bones home, Gebo said.
Gebo then shipped the remains to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office to complete an exam of the remains, calling in a forensic artist to prepare artistic sketches based upon the skull.
Bulletin leads to call
Her two sketches were incorporated into a bulletin that was circulated among law enforcement agencies, which led to a call from an Alaska woman, a member of Corak’s extended family, who suggested Corak could be the victim.
Gebo, who could not find a missing person’s report for Corak, located three surviving brothers living in the Tacoma area to acquire DNA samples, which proved inconclusive.
“The remains weren’t in great shape, and this was further complicated by the fact that the boys didn’t all have the same father,” Gebo said.
A positive identification was made when Gebo learned that Corak had served in the U.S. Navy in the mid-1960s, so his dental records were stored in the National Archives office in St. Louis.
The records matched, leading to verification that the remains belonged to Corak.
Open cases
Gebo said he has detailed knowledge of about six open missing person cases.
If he hears of a detail corresponding to one of the cases, he is able to put the pieces together.
“The nature of cold case investigations is that you have very few successes,” he said.
“Most of the time, you hope that you come up with something that can be used by a law enforcement agency in the future.”
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.