Lost and Found: The Moth Radio Hour
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What stories of loss and discovery are shared in this episode?
This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Sarah Austin Janess. In this episode, lost and found stories. Heirlooms lost, old ways of life gone, and what is found in their stead. Our curatorial producer, Suzanne Rust, found out about our first storyteller, Ross Jessup, through an article in a local Missoula, Montana newspaper, and she reached out. Ross later told us, I thought it was a scam, and so did my lieutenant. I told my wife about it, and she said, the moth? It's not a scam. Call them. I listen all the time. So we begin this episode lost in the woods of Lolo National Forest in Missoula, Montana, with Ross Jessup, a cop, 10 years into the police force. He came to New York to tell his story outside in Greenwood Cemetery, so you may hear the occasional airplane.
We partner with the Greenwood Historic Fund. And just a note, this story involves a crime, and there is some intensity. Here's Ross Jessup, live at the Moth.
It's July 7th, scorching hot, 95 degrees. I'm in a Dodge Durango driving on a dusty road. I'm a cop. I responded to a call where there was a man acting disorderly who was last seen running through a forest. This man had possibly crashed a blue car and he was caring for a baby. I'm at the end of the road. I'm depressed. I'm struggling. My marriage is falling apart. And in front of me, there's nothing but large bushes and pine trees that had overgrown the road that I was on. Another dead end. I turned my patrol car around to continue the search. The area that I'm searching is Lolo National Forest. It's 2.1 million square miles. That's a little bit larger than Delaware, folks.
I continue searching for hours. At approximately 10.30, my patrol radio breaks silent since my partner. He says to me, Ross, we know who the suspect is. He's a man, felon, wanted out of Oregon. He's a known drug user and he's violent. He has guns and he's made threats towards law enforcement. I'm 20 miles away, so I go. I meet other officers, knowing that we have about a half a mile walk into the campsite that where he's staying at. I put on my night vision. I take out my long rifle, strap it over my chest. My heart's pounding. I'm nervous. I'm focused and I'm full of adrenaline. I'm ready for combat. Silently walking in to the pitch black forest. It's about 40 degrees now. And I see his tent. But it's empty.
How does Ross Jessup navigate a search for a missing baby?
My partner finds a stash of guns that had been set out to ambush the cops when we got there. There's no people in the campsite.
I open up the tent and I look around and I see diapers and dirty clothes and dirty dishes and baby toys. My heart sinks. and I'm crushed. It wasn't until that time we were just speculating, but now I knew that we're looking for a five month old baby boy named Nobody knows where he's at. As I'm scrambling my brain to try to figure out what I'm gonna do next, My portable radio breaks squelch and it's my dispatch center and it's a broken transmission. The suspect has been arrested. So I run back to my patrol car and I drive as fast as I can to where he's at. I see a man that Is dirty his hair is a mess. He doesn't have any pants on. He's screaming wildly at everybody. And just making no sense. He's more concerned about his telephone than anything else.
All that pent up adrenaline that I just had. Kind of went to the wayside and I just became pissed. I tried interrogating him to no avail. I wanted to just strangle the truth out of this guy, but I didn't. I yelled at him, begging and pleading him to tell us where we could find . And he says to me, is dead. I buried him alive. I crashed off of a cliff. You won't find him. I don't know where he's at. Enraged. I'm asking him for more information. And he tells me about, he tells me about a bush that he had drove over and started to ramble on and on and on. And the bush in my head just kept echoing and echoing. I knew where I had to go. I got the help from the Forest Service with their four-wheeler and I went up with a Forest Service officer back up to the same road that I'd already been up earlier that night.
And when we get to the bush, we drive around it and we continue driving for less than a quarter mile before
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