The bizarre disappearance and death of Corey Fay in the Badger Creek Wilderness

October 27, 2017 StrangeOutdoors

Corey Fay disappeared November 23, 1991, West of Tygh Valley, Badger Creek Wilderness, Oregon. Remains found September 1992.

Revised September 2024

17-year-old Corey Fay was a student at the Jesuit High School in Beaverton, Oregon. On 23 November 1991, he agreed to go elk hunting with a friend of his Dad’s, Mark Maupin and probably Mark’s son, in the region west of the Tygh Valley, on the fringe of the Badger Creek Wilderness in Oregon. Corey’s father, the owner of the Northwest investment cars showroom, decided not to accompany them on the trip that day.

That day, he vanished, and his remains were discovered over a year later, 10 miles away from their vehicle and up a steep slope in an area with waist-deep snow at the time of the disappearance. What happened to Corey in the Badger Creek Wilderness?

The hunting trip to Badger Greek Wilderness

Corey was a relatively experienced hunter trained in outdoor survival techniques, so he knew what to do in an emergency in the wild. On this particular trip, he was also well equipped with a compass, emergency solar blanket, food, rifle and ammunition, and a backpack.

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The three men arrived at the Wilderness, split up at around 6.30 pm, and agreed to meet back at the car after an hour. There was CCTV footage of the group going through a McDonald’s drive-thru around 6 am in the nearby city of Hood River, so they were together. But was the 6 pm time misreported, and was it 6.30 am? Sunset at that time of the year was around 4.40 pm, so it was unusual to be hunting late after dark. In many states, it can be illegal to hunt after dark.

The disappearance of Corey Fay

Badger Creek Wilderness, Oregon

The weather was cold, and the hunting didn't go well. Mark Maupin later told investigators that the area was well known for the presence of elk, yet inexplicably, they didn't see any that day. When they arrived back at their vehicle, Corey wasn't there. They searched the area for signs of Corey, but when they found nothing, the group called the Wasco County Sheriff's Office to report him missing.

The search

The search and rescue effort was comprehensive, with around 250 searchers, including helicopters, horse riders, hikers, and seven of the best-trained search dogs in the world from the Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue based in Salt Lake City. They focused on twelve square miles for ten days and found no trace of Fay.

The official search ended on December 1, 1991, but many volunteers kept searching for several weeks. The sheriff's office was baffled, so the FBI was called in to help. It is highly unusual for the FBI to be called in for a case of disappearance, so foul play was likely suspected.

Discovery of remains

Then, nearly a year later, in September 1992, two hunters shockingly discovered Corey's backpack and rifle around 10 miles from where he left the others in the group to go hunting.

After a more thorough search of the surrounding area, Corey's jacket was discovered a mile away from these other items on the same ridge at 6,500 feet. A quarter-mile from his backpack, searchers found small bone fragments and just one tooth.

Most surprisingly, no pants, boots, or socks were found. Thirty people doing grid searches of the ridgeline across a one-quarter-mile area failed to find any large bones normally associated with finding a skeleton, e.g., the rib cage.

The sheriff said that Corey would have been in snow up to his waist for more than five miles when the discovery was made. An article in the Eugene Register on September 18, 1992, reported, "Authorities know the snow was deep there because a helicopter had spotted tracks during an intensive search for Fay last November. The tracks turned out to be animals, but the snow was almost waist deep, and that was a good three miles from where the items were discovered yesterday." The article later states that searchers didn't believe Fay could have gone as far as he did, and it was strange that he was going uphill when he would have been trained to get to lower ground.

The Sheriff confirmed that in November 1991, his helicopter crews did see tracks on the ridgeline near where Corey's remains were found, at a point three thousand feet higher and ten miles from the point he should have been hunting with waist-deep snow on most of the journey.

If the group was hunting in this area, neither the group nor the searchers saw an elk because the terrain was too rough and it was not a common elk hunting ground.

What happened to Corey Fay?

This is such an unusual case because of the strange circumstances and evidence.

Foul Play or Accidental shooting - The press had the theory that another hunter may have accidentally shot him or someone in the group, and they had buried Cory in the area. Alternatively, someone shot him, dragged him off, and then came back and dropped off the backpack and items explaining why the body or what was left of the body, the tooth, backpack, and gun were 10 miles from the vehicle. Some accounts state that a lie detector test was to be administered to the youngest of the hunting group. But this line of inquiry was dropped when the backpack, gun, and tooth were found.
Perhaps he was shot before the hunting trip? There are reports that there was a surveillance film that showed another man driving Corey’s pickup truck with what looks like a corpse or animal in the back. The timing of McDonald’s CCTV footage suggests this probably wasn’t the case, but authorities never looked into this lead in detail.
Corey was adopted, and a wild theory is that his dad set him up on the hunting trip, and he had something to do with it.
Hypothermia - Did Cory survive for a prolonged period? One searcher thought they may have found a campsite with an old fire, but this was never confirmed. With such an extensive search effort, it seems unlikely he lived long after initially disappearing. Cory may have succumbed to the cold or fell unconscious in the snow. But why so far away from the car's location, through heavy snow? Kim Fary, Corey's mother, said the family believes he died of hypothermia after becoming disoriented and walking uphill into a snowy area.
Suicide - A school friend, Steve Lopez, said Corey had a lousy week in school. After he had attended a party, some of the older, cool kids didn’t like him and were mad at him. As a result, he was a little down and discussed feeling down before the hunting trip. Maybe he just wanted to go missing or commit suicide? Steve said, "But we searched from there, we searched for days, we had hundreds of people searching. We had helicopters with night vision. There was no way that if Corey was alive that he was not going to be found, we would have found him. He would have fought to stay alive.”
A mountain lion attack - It doesn’t seem plausible that something attacked, killed, and dragged a 17-year-old with his rifle, backpack, and other gear any distance that would equate to him being 10 miles and 3000 feet of elevation away from where he originally was. An animal attack would leave shreds of clothing, tissue, and blood which were never discovered at the time of the disappearance.