The puzzling disappearance of Gloria McDonald from Queen Wilhelmina State Park
Gloria White Moore McDonald, disappeared January 26, 2001, Lover’s Leap trail, Queen Wilhelmina State Park, Polk County, Arkansas.
Revised July 2024
On Friday, January 26, 2001, 68-year-old Gloria White Moore McDonald from Mena in Arkansas and her husband Daniel, 63, her son from a previous marriage, Sean McDonald, and Sean’s girlfriend, Erin Jemmott, headed out for a hike in Arkansas’s Queen Wilhemina Park. Sean and Erin were visiting Arkansas from Florida. They wanted to visit a hiking spot and a scenic overlook known as “Lover’s Leap”.
Gloria decided the walk wasn’t for her when they encountered some debris from the recent storm on the trail. She decided to head to the gift shop instead and agreed to meet the others later. When Daniel, Sean and Erin arrived at the start of the Trail, Gloria was nowhere to be seen. She had disappeared without a trace.
Who was Gloria McDonald?
Gloria and her husband, Daniel, had recently moved to Mena, Arkansas. Gloria had grown up in New York and then Texarkana, Texas. When she and Daniel married, they moved to the small town of Mena, located in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, just a few miles from the Oklahoma border. Gloria found a job as a news reporter for the local newspaper in the year 2000.
She lived actively, enjoyed aerobics, and attended Beech Street Baptist Church. Although she exercised and kept in shape regularly, she was not outdoorsy.
What is and where is Queen Wilhelmina State Park?
Located on top of Rich Mountain, Arkansas’s second-highest peak, Queen Wilhelmina offers some of the most breathtaking views in the state from the fully renovated lodge. The original lodge was built in the late 1800s as a Victorian resort named Wilhelmina Inn to honor the young Queen of the Netherlands. The park is located 13 miles west of Mena.
The hike along Lovers’ Leap trail was one of the nature trails that borders the lodge property near Rich Mountain. The attraction of this loop trail is an overlook on a high rock bluff with a sweeping view of the surrounding Ouachita National Forest. It is described as moderate difficulty and is 1.3 miles long with a one-hour duration.
The Arkohome Hiker described it as:
“There also are a couple of short trails in the park. My favorite is the Lovers Leap Trail. It’s a cool wooded 1-mile loop trail at the east end of the park. The trail has some climbing, but it is not very difficult with only about a 250-foot net elevation change.
The highlight of the trail is the Lovers Leap overlook. The wooden-platform overlook has an awesome south-facing view of the surrounding area. There also is a great vista area with a similar south-facing view on the south part of the trail
The trail makes almost a complete loop going from just north of the lodge to just south of the lodge at the same spot where the Reservoir Trail starts. The trail length is one mile. It is another .1 mile to complete the loop by walking around the lodge.”
Queen Wilhelmina Lodge
The trip to Queen Wilhelmina State Park
On January 26th, 2001, Daniel’s son from a previous marriage, Sean, and his girlfriend, Erin, were visiting from Florida. The four would head out for some breakfast in Mena, and then they were going to go for a hike at the Queen Wilhelmina Park, about 12 miles to the north of home.
The hike and disappearance on the Lovers’ Leap Trail
The group headed for the Lovers’ Leap Trail in Queen Wilhelmina State Park in Polk County, Arkansas.
The lodge was nearly empty that day. It was a Friday morning, but there was just one overnight guest in the lodge and just a few maintenance workers and lodge employees on site. It was off-season for the park, so that was a typical January day at the lodge.
They arrived at the trailhead at around 12.25 pm, but about 150-250 yards down the trail, the group found several tree limbs and debris blocking it caused by a recent winter storm. Gloria decided she did not wish to walk any further as she wasn’t a “woodsy” person (according to her husband) and returned to the park's gift shop and restaurant whilst the others continued onwards.
Around a half-hour later, when the group returned and went to the lodge, they could not find Gloria; she had disappeared without one clue. Their car was still right where they left it, still locked up, with Gloria’s belongings inside including her purse.
Search and investigation
Southeast facing view from the Lovers Leap overlook, Queen Wilhelmina State Park
Daniel, Sean, and Erin went back to the lodge to continue their search, but there was no sign of Gloria. They started asking employees if anyone had seen her. Most had not, but one maintenance man said he did believe he might have seen a red-headed woman in a yellow jacket, which does describe Gloria and what she was wearing. The family then called the police to file a missing persons report .
Gloria was wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt, a glossy bright yellow hooded jacket, blue jeans, sneakers, rose-tinted sunglasses, a plain gold wedding band, a platinum ring resembling two balls intersecting one another, a three-and-a-half carat sapphire ring, a necklace with a cross pendant and possibly a small-sized gold filigree ring. She weighed about 120 pounds and was 5 feet, 6 inches tall. She also carried a Minolta Riva Zoom 90 camera (serial number 40907425).
The next day, January 27, the Arkansas State Police Special Agents were called in to assist after being contacted by Polk County Sheriff's Deputies at Mena. Search and Rescue dogs were brought in, and helicopters conducted aerial searches. Nothing was discovered. There was no sign of Gloria McDonald anywhere.
The dogs did pick up a possible scent, which followed a paved path from behind the lodge to a road. It was there the dogs lost the scent.
Lovers Leap Trail
What happened to Gloria McDonald?
Gloria McDonald was a court reporter for the Mena Star newspaper, and there was a theory that someone she had written about had abducted her. But some friends reviewed her notes and articles to see if a clue might exist about her disappearance and found nothing. The family had the theory that she may have “walked up on something” involving illegal drug activities and been killed to silence her.
Arkansas State Police senior special agents Lynn Benedict and Hays McWhirter conducted the state police investigation along with the Polk County Sheriff’s Department, the Polk County Sheriff at the time. Mike Oglesby said only one room at the lodge had been rented, and “There were about six guys there who work for the state park, the kitchen help and waitresses. Add to that a few men who were piling brush and cleaning up after the storm, and that’s it.”, "This woman disappeared without a trace in 30 minutes. We have no motive, no evidence of any kind. We've got nothing."
McWhirter said during the same time, bloodhounds searched “all over the mountain”, and no remains were ever found, “The bloodhounds followed a scent which led down to a paved road below the lodge, but they lost the scent at the road. There are no suspects, and we don’t know what happened to her. “
What happened on January 26th, 2001, has baffled authorities, and there are many theories online about kidnapping, murder, and even a Big Foot attack. Some believe she just got lost and fell somewhere; others believe she ran away intentionally, given her husband’s behavior after her disappearance, and was picked up by an accomplice or friend. Police even wondered if she ever was in the park at all.
Daniel said at the time, "I was the No. 1 suspect. I demanded to take a polygraph test.” State police investigator Lynn Benedict confirmed that Daniel passed this. Daniel complained that authorities questioned him too much before bringing out search dogs the next day.
Gloria’s family were sure she was dead at the time, a speculation that disturbed investigators who say they can't link anyone to a crime. "In my mind, she's dead," Daniel said. "I think she saw something she shouldn't have seen ... so they took her. Or maybe she was snatched up by someone and tossed in one of these buildings."
Less than a week after his wife's disappearance, Daniel said he would move back to Florida. "I don't want to be the guy in Mena whose wife was killed on the mountain," he said. The sheriff says he hasn't ruled out Daniel as a suspect, but authorities didn't have any evidence against him. In an interview, Daniel said he couldn't imagine anyone abducting his wife "for her body" because she could not be considered pretty. Gloria was Daniel's second wife, and they married for about a year. His first wife died in her home of natural causes, according to a funeral home in Chiefland, Florida. Sean McDonald said in a telephone interview from Florida that sometimes his father can come across the wrong way: "He's a great man, but he'll say whatever's on his mind, and he doesn't care what anyone thinks." Still, Daniel’s comments and fast departure to Floria were baffling and somewhat suspicious.
Sean said all three family members were interrogated separately the day after Gloria disappeared. Police seized his camera and found pictures taken the day of the hike, but there were no shots of Gloria. "They were so focused on us, but we had nothing to do with this. You see this stuff in the movies and on the news, but this one hit home."
A maintenance worker says he may have spotted a woman in a yellow jacket but can't be sure. Authorities said the worker was the only person who could place Gloria in the park, except for Daniel, Sean and Erin.
The scent trail detected by the sniffer dogs indicated that Gloria may have been taken off in a car intentionally or by force, but no firm evidence supports this theory.
Kerri, Gloria's daughter from a previous marriage, said, "The first thing I think is that, more than likely, she's dead. I know my mom. If someone did get her into a car, she would've mouthed off so much they would've had to kill her." If she was lost on the mountain in a bright yellow jacket and fell, she might have been relatively easy to see from the air since the forest is primarily deciduous and it was January. But no sign was ever found.
The authorities did not find any clues relating to foul play or that Gloria had intentionally disappeared. Where could she be if she was never in the area in the first place? A baffling, strange case from Arkansas.
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Sources
http://charleyproject.org/case/gloria-white-moore-mcdonald
https://www.namus.gov/MissingPersons/Case#/9939
https://www.arkansasstateparks.com/parks/queen-wilhelmina-state-park
https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg62437.html
https://medium.com/the-mystery-box/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-gloria-mcdonald-a08002154e19
https://arkokhiker.org/southwest-arkansas/queen-wilhelmina-sp-lovers-leap-trail/