The strange hiking death of Jason Chase in New Zealand's Tamaki Reserve
Jason Chase, Disappeared December 13, 2002, Tamaki Reserve, near Dannevirke, Ruahine Ranges, New Zealand. Body found January 3, 2003.
Revised April 2024
25-year-old, Jason Chase went missing on December 13, 2002. He was a 25-year-old sheep shearer who had been staying in the Gisborne region of New Zealand, on the east coast of the North Island. His body was found several weeks later but the cause of his premature death baffled the authorities for nearly two decades.
Recently an unusual cause of death has been postulated and a reminder that plants can be as deadly as weather, terrain, and animals in the great outdoors.
The Jason Chase disappearance and death in New Zealand
On December 13, 2002, Jason Chase left Gisborne and was headed back home to Dannevirke to his family for Christmas. But, he never arrived. He was fit and healthy with no known illnesses.
He was wearing a short-sleeved, multi-colored rugby shirt with a bright-red back displayed to the sky. His pale shorts were either cream-colored or were a very faded khaki.
At first, Jason’s disappearance went unnoticed by friends and family, as there wasn't a specific date for his arrival. Then an abandoned car was reported in the Tamaki Reserve, just out of Dannevirke, at the base of the Ruahine Range. It was confirmed to be Jason’s car.
It was reported that he knew the area fairly well, but it was out of character for him to go missing or go for an extended overnight camp. He had been somewhat depressed but there was nothing to suggest he was suicidal.
The Ruahine Range area was beautiful but a wild place to hike. If you get lost, it's a very hard place in which to be found with punishing terrain of very steep mountainsides clad in dense native bush with intervening, rock-strewn gullies. These gullies carry torrents of water in the wet season, but they are dry and hard and irregular in December time. Periodically, slips scar the steep sides of the ranges, disgorging yet more rocks into the gullies, and even in summer, there is some snow.
The Palmerston North rescue helicopter flew several missions to try and locate Jason, but all efforts were in vain and the search was officially suspended just before Christmas. Hundreds of volunteers rallied and continued their private search after the official search was terminated.
Ruahine Ranges
There was no sign that Jason had entered the area. Without his car, there would have been no reason to suppose he was there.
Around the middle of the afternoon on Friday, January 3, Jason’s remains were found. He was lying on his left side with his legs stretched out and his feet bare - no shoes or socks. If he hadn't been on a rocky river bed, you'd have thought he'd just laid down there for a comfortable snooze. There were no signs of his footwear in the vicinity of the body. It was as if he had settled down here for the last time, making himself as comfortable as he could, and then died. There was no sign of injury, blood, or bones fractured.
Police quickly decided there were no signs of foul play as there were no signs of a struggle or animal attack. His death baffled authorities as the body lacked any serious injury or malnourishment, and the cause of death was eventually determined to be of 'obscure natural causes'. Jason appeared to be well-hydrated and fed. He even had food in his stomach and urine in his bladder.
But where had Jason been all that time since mid-December? He didn't look as though he had been lost and stumbling around, trying to find his way out. His clothes were tidy and not weather-beaten. He must have been under shelter most of the time. His feet were bare, but they were totally uninjured, so he must have been wearing shoes. Where were they?
The autopsy
Pathologist Cynric Temple-Camp
However, the autopsy report undertaken by Pathologist Cynric Temple-Camp showed there were two shallow “stress” ulcers in his duodenum that hadn't been there long, maybe a few hours. These ulcers develop very quickly and they point to a time of significant stress just before death, but they don't tell you what the stress was. So what was that final stress caused by? Was it just simple exposure? Heatstroke? Seeing something that terrified him? Encountering someone or something that scared him to death?
The toxicology report showed that blood, urine, and stomach contents were all negative for all drugs, medications, and a range of common poisons.
The time of death was somewhere around four to six days prior to when Jason was found, around December 30. That was long after the official search had been called off, and it meant he had been alive during the search-and-rescue operation which had failed to find him
Temple-Camp told Jason's story to a retired surgical colleague and friend John Coutts. "In the Ruahines, you say? In the foothills? That rings a bell." John went to his attic, stuffed full of surgical notes, papers and memorabilia collected from a lifetime of medicine in the Manawatu. John said "It happened back in 1961. It was over Dannevirke way in the Ruahines, pretty much where your chap was found. That's what reminded me. Two young men, 18 and 21 years old, went up there shooting. It was the same time of year, too — Boxing Day, in fact, and pretty warm, so they were lightly clad. They left coming down until quite late and it was early evening when they did. They couldn't see quite clearly where they were going as it was getting dark and they pushed through quite dense bush. They ran into a bank of tree nettles called Urtica Ferox, which means Fierce Itch. It's a native found on the fringes of the bush. They grow to two meters and their leaves are covered with rigid stinging hairs, each about 6mm long.
Urtica Ferox
There are patches of them clumped in small localities over several parts of the ranges. Anyway, these blokes were wearing shorts, just like your man Jason. They said they had run into a lot of stinging nettles and it felt like a million needle pricks. Less than an hour later, one of the lads developed a guts ache and couldn't go on. He just lay down and soon became paralyzed. He said he had trouble breathing, and shortly afterwards, he became blind, too. His friend managed to get help and they got him out and to the hospital. He died five hours later. His mate developed similar symptoms but not quite as severe and he eventually recovered.
They're known to kill animals, too. Horses are particularly prone and can die quite quickly. They usually have fits and become paralyzed. It does something to the nervous system. There was a group of trampers back then who got stung and they had serious incoordination for three days.”
Urtica Ferox, commonly known as tree nettle, or ongaonga in Māori, is a nettle that is endemic to New Zealand. It is sometimes known as "Taraonga", "Taraongaonga" or "Okaoka".
It is a large woody shrub and has woody stems and unusually large stinging spines that can result in a painful sting that lasts several days. The shrub can grow to a height of 3 m (9.8 ft) with the base of the stem reaching 12 cm (4.7 in) in thickness. The pale green leaves are very thin, like a membrane, and the surface of the leaf, stems, and stalks are covered in stiff, stinging hairs that can grow up to 6 mm (0.24 in) long. This nettle is winter deciduous in cold climates, evergreen in mild climates, and can lose its leaves in drought conditions if it is growing in shallow soils.
It may well leave no sign on the skin, and its poison, triffydin, is exotic and not well known. It is named after the Triffids, moving plants that stung people to death and then ate them, from John Wyndham's famous sci-fi book “The Day of the Triffids”. The tox report wouldn't have found triffydin because they didn't know to test for it, and death can be very rapid.
What really happened to Jason Chase?
Was it a tree nettle that killed Jason? His body was found in a Nettle-covered gully and difficult to get through. Cynric Temple-Camp certainly seems to think he succumbed to triffydin poisoning.
But there are some puzzling aspects.
Jason was found on January 3 and went missing on December 13. What happened in that 3-week period? He had food in his stomach and was well-nourished. There were no signs of torn clothing or that he had been sleeping rough. Did he leave and re-enter the area where he was found?
Where are Jason’s boots and why were his feet showing no signs of damage
Why did the Search and Rescue crews miss him when he was in an area clearly visible from the air?
Respect the plants around you for sure when it comes to hiking in New Zealand!
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Sources
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12343942
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8513909/Jason-Chase-mystery-death-Ruahine-Ranges-New-Zealand-solved.html
Cynric Temple-Camp “The quick and the dead”
https://alchetron.com/Urtica-ferox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtica_ferox
