By Greg Jordan, Bluefield Daily Telegraph
RAVENCLIFF – Early Friday morning, a caravan including specially-trained dogs, law enforcement, West Virginia National Guard excavator, firefighters and other volunteers came Wyoming County and searched for soldier who disappeared 63 years ago while taking Christmas presents to his family.
And after several hours of searching at two sites, a possible lead found by the dogs was sent away for laboratory tests, said Chief Investigator Jeffrey Shumate with the Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. It could be a clue leading to Sgt. James Lee Haynes of the U.S. Army.
Brenda Haynes-Lester and her sister, Linda Haynes, have for worked for years to find their father, Sgt. James Lee Haynes , who was reported missing on Dec. 7, 1963 and declared dead on Dec. 8, 1964. The sisters, who were only a year and a half old when their father disappeared, were at a site called Little Bolt that Friday morning as the search got underway.
James Lee Haynes joined the Army when he was 17, the sisters said. During the Korean War, he was shot in the chest and was later presented the Purple Heart. He was only 18 when he was wounded. After being treated in Japan and California for over a year, he stayed in the Army another 10 years.
In 1963, Sgt. Haynes was being transferred from West Germany to Fort Knox, Ky, so he went on leave. He was in the Baltimore, Md. area while his wife and four of their children were there for a funeral. He had purchased a van in West Germany, but a labor strike overseas delayed its delivery. He decided to hitchhike to West Virginia and managed to get a ride to Oak Hill in Fayette County, then kept walking to his parents’ home in Saulsville, a Wyoming County community.
“We’re not sure if dad walked or if he got a ride or both from Oak Hill to Bolt Mountain,” Brenda said.
Brenda and Linda said their father stopped at a Bolt-area tavern to get some hot chocolate or coffee. One man who said he was there when their father arrived and that three other patrons made fun of him when he didn’t order a beer.
“And dad stopped in to drink hot chocolate because he was on his way to his parents’ house and he was in his dress green,” Brenda said. “ They made fun of him for not having a beer and not having a beer with them and everything. So they knew who his parents were and that he had been gone.”
Both Brenda and Linda said their father wouldn’t drink alcohol before going to his parents’ home.
“His father was a minister. He wouldn’t go into his parents house drunk or with the smell of a drink on him because he respected his parents, you know what I mean?” Brenda said. “Dad was carrying Christmas presents in his suitcase for his mom and his sister and his brothers, I believe. Me and Linda were really small at birth. We were a year and a half old.”
Picking up his suitcase and duffle bag, Sgt. James Lee Haynes left the tavern. The three men followed him.
And soon afterward, their father was murdered, the sisters said.
In 1971, relatives of one suspect’s family said he told them how he and his companions beat up the soldier, ran over him with their vehicle and then backed over him before putting him in the trunk. A fourth man who had left the tavern saw the three men alongside the road with the their trunk open. When he slowed and asked if they needed help, he was told to “keep moving.”
Sgt. James Lee Haynes was then buried somewhere on Little Bolt Mountain, his daughters said.
Two of the men were never charged. One was arrested in 1971, but was ruled incompetent to stand trial and hospitalized. The case dismissed after he was ruled competent.
Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney Tom Truman was unable to join Friday’s search due to a scheduling conflict, but he spoke with The Register-Herald last Tuesday about the case.
“We were contacted some months ago by the Army and they reached out to us saying they had a missing soldier in 1963 and his daughters had contacted them,” Truman said. “And they were trying to put together or recreate it as best they could; so there were police reports that were generated in 1963 and some beyond that as to what happened to the soldier.”
All three suspects are now deceased, he said.
“The one who was charged was deemed incompetent and he was sent to Sharp Hospital,” Truman said. “When he regained his competency, the case was dismissed and there’s no information as to how that happened, why that happened; but it was Tom Canterbury who was the prosecutor at the time. He was a rock-solid prosecutor so he must have had a good reason. I’m confident he had a good reason. I don’t know what it is, but from dealing with him as a judge, as a prosecutor, he was in this office for a very long time. Had a stellar reputation.”
Two specially-trained dogs, a German Shepherd named Theo and a female border collie named Charlee from K9 Search & Rescue Services of West Virginia, Inc. were brought in for the search.
“We’re bringing in cadaver dogs. They have quite a resume,” Truman said. “They have found Civil War remains, so I’m sorry I’m going to personally miss this opportunity to see this.”
Shumate said the dogs did not point out anything at the Little Bolt site, but they did hit on a spot outside a nearby home which once belonged to a suspect in Sgt. Hayne’s murder.
The spot was sprayed with a chemical that reacts to blood. The chemical indicted blood’s presence, so swabs were taken and sent for testing, “presumably by the FBI,” for testing, he said. No digging will be done until the tests results are available.
Finding possible evidence was the culmination of an extensive effort. Shumate briefed participants before the search started Friday morning. Members of Upper Laurel Fire and Rescue came to help along with other local residents, plus an excavator and operator from the West Virginia National Guard was standing by along with Department of Defense representatives.
“We’re all here today for a very good reason,” Shumate told the Haynes family and volunteers. “Look around and you can see that southern West Virginians take care of their own. What we’re doing today is we’re going to go about three-quarters of a mile up towards the end of this hollow and manner this is going to happen is we have two K9 handlers. They will go in front. There will be four people who will be behind them and if they find something, they will report back and we’ll take them what they need to use if they find something.”
There were two search areas. The one at Little Bolt covered a heavily-wooded quarter acre and another, private property in Ravencliff, was smaller. Other volunteers were asked to stay where everyone was parked so the search dogs wouldn’t be distracted.
Grant Joynes of Beckley, a student at the WVU College of Law who was a summer intern with the Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney, worked to narrow down the search areas, Truman said.
“He is the son of a retired Raleigh County Sheriff’s detective. He was a summer intern here. Grant Joynes put a bunch of mental energy into this,” the prosecuting attorney said. “He went out and got interviews, releases from landowners. He has been able to talk to people who knew the area, who knew the legend of what had happened and he was able to pin down the area from about 5 miles to less than half a mile just because he was able to triangulate where a house’s ruins is, and those said people from there you can see this, and he able to go to another location and say, ‘well, this was the front porch’ and those things haven’t changed since 1963.”
Joynes wanted to schedule the search around three things.
“First, he wanted the snakes to be dormant and now it’s cold enough for that to be true,” Truman said. “He didn’t want to be in the woods during deer season and be shot at, and third Grant is available on Friday because of his class schedule.”
Joynes participated in Friday’s search.
“I came to do a summer internship at the prosecuting attorney’s office and I had known Jeff Shumate, our investigator, for some time,” Joynes recalled. “He asked me to come help out with this case and I got involved with it and kind of took it up as one of those works of passion that you’re just interested in. It’s a fascinating case so we pushed the ball further and further throughout the summer. They’ve been working on it some time prior to me and I helped out where I could. By the time I left, we were able to coordinate a search.”
Sisters Brenda and Linda said they had previously searched the basement of a suspect’s home after its current owner gave them permission. They dug in the basement and knocked down small wall without finding anything. The second, smaller search area was behind this house. The dogs indicted a possible spot for blood near this home.
The family had plans for the funeral of Sgt. James Lee Haynes if he is found. They hoped that Friday’s search would be the last one.
“We’re hopeful,” Linda Haynes said. “Our uncles and our grandfather and our family have been through this so many times through our life, and we’re hoping this the last. We have one of his uniforms and my mom saved everything. It was in his Army trunk. When we find him, we’ll be putting his uniform with him and he’s going to be buried at Arlington because he has a Purple Heart. He qualifies.”
Assistant Prosecutor Ashley Acord with the Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said any human remains that search revealed would have to undergo DNA testing to determine whether they belonged to the missing soldier.
“Even if there is zero outcome in terms of finding anything, this process has been a success because you did all you could do,” Truman said.
If Sgt. James Lee Haynes is located, the Army can close its case and say that a soldier who was lost has been found, he said.
“The family will finally get, it’s such a trite phrase to say closure, but that’s probably about as close as you can get,” Truman said.
Image: Courtesy of The Bluefield Daily Telegraph
