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StrangeOutdoors.com 4/9/24 StrangeOutdoors.com 4/9/24

The Baffling Death Of Jordan Grider in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

Jordan Grider, Disappeared October 9, 2018, Remains Found April 2019, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota.

Revised June 2024

In October 2018, 29-year-old Jordan Grider ventured into the untamed expanse of northern Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, seeking solitude for the winter as part of his off-grid lifestyle. Fresh from spending several months with his parents and five brothers in New Mexico, including celebrating his birthday in late September 2018, Jordan vanished into the wild with little more than his resolve and survival skills.

Not long after, a white truck laden with black bags was located parked in front of a private gate off the Sioux Hustler Trail. Its presence was an enigma, prompting authorities to investigate and remove the vehicle. The truck was identified as belonging to Jordan, but he was nowhere to be found.

Six months later, in April 2019, conservation officer Sean Williams from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources in Ely stumbled upon a chilling discovery in the Boundary Waters. A blood-stained hammock and sleeping bag hinted at something disturbing in an abandoned camp. Nearby, scattered bones were found, later confirmed to be Jordan’s, closing the case in the eyes of the authorities.

Yet, the circumstances surrounding Jordan’s death are still shrouded in mystery. Was he the victim of a wolf pack's savage attack? Did a seemingly mundane act like shaving lead to a fatal accident? Or did something far more sinister, like an encounter with a Wendigo or Sasquatch, claim his life? While authorities have ruled out foul play and suicide, doubt lingers amongst internet detectives and family members.

The sheriff’s office may have closed the case, but the haunting questions remain. With its puzzling fragments and eerie setting, Jordan's story continues to provoke speculation and unease. What truly happened to Jordan Grider in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness? The wilderness holds its secrets close, leaving us to wonder about the fate of a man who ventured into its embrace and never returned.

Jordan Grider Truck — Jordan Grider’s Truck

Who was Jordan Grider?

Jordan Grier was from Moriarty, New Mexico and was the third eldest among six boys. He had a non-conventional lifestyle and had spent the previous decade or so living in the woods of Kentucky and upper New York. He would tell people that he was not homeless but had a home that happened to be outdoors.

Grider would live out in the woods for weeks at a time. It was a way of life he had come to know and love growing up. He used up little space with modern thinking. He often wondered why people were so mean to each other.

Due to his dyslexia, he struggled with learning and reading and was home-schooled. Where his brothers followed their parents into small businesses and other conventional lifestyles, Grider went the other way, living mostly off the grid by the end of his life.

He picked up musical instruments quickly and regretted not taking his musicianship to more professional levels.

Despite his outdoor lifestyle, he always worked and liked to be clean and shaven. Once, he worked building furniture with Mennonites for over a year in exchange for an acre of privacy. Other times, he worked at a salsa processing plant, Walmart, and a whiskey barrel manufacturer.

His mother, Rebecca Grider, said, “Jordan has this incredibly unusual way of meeting up with people — we called them his ‘divine appointments’.”

When he fell in love with a woman for several years in Kentucky, he became a father figure for the woman’s three young children. They looked forward to his homemade birthday cakes, and he taught the kids how to use both a sickle and a lasso.

Jordan could grow grains and make his bread or a peppermint patch to harvest for tea.

Rebecca said, “It was challenging, his independence, I wish I had embraced it a lot more as a mom. Interestingly, with him, he was super-cautious, and he would be super-daring, too, but only if he had mastered what he was going to be daring with.”

Jordan Grider’s trip to Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

In early October 2018, Grider had set up his campsite overlooking a seasonal beaver slough in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Jordan had cellphone reception in the area, and on October 8, he sent his family a picture of a beaver pond near his campsite. This was the last message anyone received from him.

Jordan left the area at least once to drive to the nearest store and purchase goods, based on a receipt found in his vehicle dated October 9. After that, nothing more was heard or seen from Jordan.

Discovery of Jordan Grider’s camp

After Jordan’s truck was discovered in October 2018, police learned from his family that he was living in the area and sought to find him.

Sean Williams scoured south-facing slopes using snowmobiles because he knew Grider would seek protection from the north wind during winter camping. “What really stood out to me, sort of looking around at it, was how insufficient that would have been for a Minnesota winter. I understand his intent was he wanted to be challenged, but it kind of shows that can turn on you."

Six months later, in April 2019, Williams located Grider’s camp off the Sioux Hustler Trail, with the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office report describing “a large amount of blood inside the hammock and sleeping bag.”

Willaims said, “It’s in a super-remote place. If you were looking for a spot to avoid contact with people, he really did find it. We were kind of just taking it in, myself and the agent, a visual inventory. We noticed a large amount of blood everywhere.”

A hammock was slung under a green tarp that hung over a guy wire. A 9-millimeter Beretta pistol was in the hammock with two loaded magazines. There was blood spatter on the walls of the tarp.

There were also indications of wolves at the campsite, with footprints and scat.

However, after the initial search of the campsite, there was no sign of Grider, but it was hampered as it was under two to four feet of snow. Williams and his team decided to let the snow melt and return later.

Further investigations of the campsite

On returning to the site some days later, remains were finally uncovered beneath the snow. Ten bones were found, including vertebrae, a possible femur and a possible forearm. A shredded jacket and other torn bits of clothing were also at the campsite. Two more bones were later discovered further off-site by cadaver dogs.

Rebecca Grider said, “They didn’t find his skull. They took teams of 20 and 30 people out and did the one-by-one grid walk; they went up with cadaver dogs to try to find more. They still didn’t.”

There was no evidence of foul play, and suicide was ruled out because the gun hadn’t been used, and Grider’s cell phone located at the scene didn’t include anything that indicated he was suffering from depression or contemplating self-harm.

Whatever happened to Jordan occurred soon after he arrived in the area in October 2018. Rebecca Grider and family members flew in to visit the campsite in May 2019.

The family believed Grider had just spent one night at his final camping site, as he loved to whittle wood, and there was no sign of wood shavings. Rebecca said, “It was tough. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. It looked like he had burned one fire and made one meal there. There was no wood that had been whittled.”

Analysis of cellphone

Emails, images, text messages and videos on the Samsung phone recovered at the campsite were analysed.

The last messages sent and received were on October 9, 2018. A group text message to the family stated how much grain and beans he had bought and that he was prepared for a long winter. The last image was the same image he had sent to his family on October 8, showing the surrounding nature of his campsite. There was nothing on the phone that could help explain how Grider had died.

Remains confirmed

On May 31, 2019, Sergeant Stephen Borchers met Rebecca Grider and her family at Virginia Sherrif’s office. They returned Jordan’s cell phone and took voluntary DNA samples from her son, James Manoah Grider.

On August 21, 2020, the University of North Texas Health Science Center for Human Identification stated that the bones found at the camp were consistent with originating from a biological sibling of Jordan’s brother, James Grider and a biological child of Rebecca Grider. The remains were 621.4 billion times more likely to be related to Rebecca and her son than to an unrelated individual.

The St. Louis County Sheriff's Office confirmed, “The exact cause of death could not be determined, but based on all the evidence recovered at the scene and the family statements, foul play was not suspected. Unless additional evidence related to this investigation is uncovered, this investigation is now officially closed. “

What or who killed Jordan Grider?

Animal attack

Jordan’s family believe that a wolf attack may be responsible. Rebecca Grider said, “I’m pretty convinced they got him in his sleep that first night; the police don’t think it was an animal attack because there’s no destruction to property other than clothing. I suspect he was caught the first night. They said, ‘Lunch!’”

However, the evidence at the campsite does not corroborate this theory; nevertheless, wolf prints and scat were found. The key piece of evidence is that most of the blood was found inside the hammock. In addition, the tarp and hammock were largely intact, and there were no signs of a struggle with a wolf, never mind a pack of wolves.

According to Thomas Gable, a University of Minnesota researcher who has been intensively studying wolves since 2015 as lead on the Voyageurs Wolf Project, an attack by wolves would have been “infinitesimally rare.”

Gable said that in the last 20 years, there have been two wolf attacks in North America, causing the deaths of 22-year-old Kenton Carnegie in Saskatchewan in 2005 and Candice Berner in Alaska in 2010.

There are no recorded non-captive wolf killings of humans in Minnesota dating back to the 1800s. However, there is one case of a non-fatal attack in which a starving wolf with a deformed jaw attacked 16-year-old Noah Graham. The deformed jaw would have prevented it from adequately scavenging for food, so in desperation, it attacked the boy.

Gable said that wolves tend to avoid humans, “They have a built-in, innate fear of humans, probably through a long relationship with people and learning that people mean trouble and bad news. They avoid people and human settlements.”

Since there were no rips or tears in the hammock or tarp, he thought it was unlikely a pack of wolves attacked Grider while he was in the hammock. Gable would have expected a wolf kill to feature greater signs of a struggle and the resulting mess to have been even more pronounced, “They’re not neat predators. If they make a kill, the scene where the blood and remains are is a huge scene of disturbance. The blood smears across a large area.”

The other question is, why didn’t Jordan get to the Beretta gun in his hammock if wolves attacked?

If a wolf attack was involved, it was more likely post-mortem: “That is totally possible. Wolves and any other animal are going to do what they need to do to survive. They don’t make a huge differentiation between dead, rotting bodies—whether it’s a person or a bear. We see wolves scavenging all sorts of dead animals.”

But if wolves had removed the body post-mortem from the hammock, why wasn’t it damaged? Were there bite marks on the bones? This wasn’t reported.

Shaving or whittling cut

Did Jordan have a fatal nick or slip of a blade whilst whittling wood or shaving?

During the investigation, Rebecca showed a video that had been put on an inactive YouTube channel showing Grider using a military-style folding knife to shave his beard. She said that Jordan kept his knives very sharp and believed that this could be a possible explanation as he may have accidentally severed an artery whilst shaving. This would explain all the blood at the campsite, and the authorities found several knives and blades.

The sheriff’s office said, “Rebecca told me that Jordan keeps his knives very sharp. She believes this could be a possible explanation that he may have accidentally severed an artery while shaving.”

Williams said, “Honestly, I’m sure we’ll never know exactly what happened. I sort of lean toward he had some accident and cut himself or stabbed himself, something like that. We found some things that looked like they could have potentially been used as bandages outside the front of the tent. But we couldn’t tell for sure.”

But family members were skeptical. Rebecca said there were no blades found with blood, “They were all in their sheaths.” If you had accidentally cut yourself, would you really re-sheaf the knife? None of the “bandages” appeared to have blood on them, and if you were using a piece of clothing in such a fashion, it would be saturated with blood.

Most of the blood was found in the hammock - would Jordan be shaving in his hammock or, once cut, return to it? If he had died in his hammock and animals had removed it, there would have been damage to the hammock itself, and it was intact.

Foul play

The sheriff’s office quickly dismissed foul play, but is it feasible that an unknown individual attacked Jordan whilst he slept? Could this person have cut Jordan’s throat or severed another major artery rather than the injury happening whilst shaving?

Sasquatch or Wendigo attack

Online sleuths have theorized that Jordan’s death was caused by a sasquatch or wendigo attack because:

It looked like he had been attacked in his hammock unawares, as his boots had been removed, and his gun was still unused. If wolves had attacked him, the area under the tarp would have shown considerable struggle.
The tarp and hammock did not look like they had been subject to an animal attack.
If Jordan was whittling wood, where were the wood shavings? If he had died from a shaving cut, why would he be in his hammock? Wouldn’t it be more likely that he would be shaving near water? But it did look like there were some cut strips of material.
His shredded jacket had been recovered, indicating some attack, but was the damage post-mortem?
Despite a considerable search of the area, many of Jordan’s bones remain missing, including his skull, indicating that parts of his body were removed.

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