Clay Rubano

In 2007 there was a man, by the name of Clay Rubano, who went missing in Fremont County while he was hiking in the Wind River Mountains. Clay was an employee for NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) and knew a lot about the outdoors. In the Fall of 2007 he went hiking one weekend and didn't return home. When he missed a meeting at work the following Monday NOLS employees got worried and sent out search teams to look for him. The team was not able to find Clay before the winter storms came in November. The winter months passed and in the Spring of 2008, when the weather got nice, a man hiking in the area ran across some human remains. The man took law enforcement individuals back to the site and the coroner’s office was called in to do an excavation. Around the remains they found personal effects that had belonged to Clay, but to be sure that these bones were Clay's the coroner's office sent the bones to a lab to compare DNA from the bones to that of Clay Rubano.

A little about the site that these remains were recovered from. The remains were found in a cave that had coyote scat. It is believed that Clay fell off a steep cliff above the cave and suffered fractures to both of his legs. He must have survived the fall as it appears he dragged himself into the cave for protection. It is unknown if he died due to the trauma of the fall or of hypothermia, but the manner of death was ruled an accident. The bones showed signs of larger animals having chewed on them, which explains why the bones were spread out around the cave and why other bones were never found.

The lab the Coroner's office sent the bones to for DNA comparison was located in Texas. This lab had received grant money to compare DNA of missing persons to those of found human remains. Ed told me that he sent the bones there but after 6 months of not hearing back from the clinic he called them and learned that they hadn’t even looked at the bones yet. So he had them send the remains back to him, and he paid another lab in Salt Lake City, called Sorenson Forensics, to do the analysis. This second clinic was very prompt and got him the information Monday, the 10th of June 2009. The remains were indeed those of Clay Rubano. The office was very happy because finally the family would get closure and another missing person case could be taken off the list. The family was informed this week, although it took a while as the wife was in a remote area that was hard to get the information to her. The local newspapers are running the story as a success story for the Coroner’s office.