Gone but not lost

He was gone for six days and reported missing by his wife. Law enforcement agencies were on the lookout for him and fruitlessly flew search aircraft over the Fort Peck Lake area. But Jason Gleason says he just went out to go clear his head. Later he was scared to call his wife and he was surprised to hear everyone was looking for him.

The saga started on a Friday afternoon, Nov. 13, when 30-year-old Gleason told his wife, Misty, that he was going to go fishing at Fort Peck. A family friend said he told his wife he would be back by 5. He told the Courier that they didn't have an argument, he was just experiencing a stressful home life. The couple were married in September and moved to Glasgow immediately afterward. They are staying in a trailer court with his wife's mother.

"I drove around to find some peace of mind," Gleason said.

He didn't go fishing, he got back on U.S. 2 and headed east into North Dakota. Late that night he broke down and ran out of gas near Stanley, which is halfway between Williston and Minot. He said his cell phone was not in service so he slept in his Ford Explorer overnight and in the morning he knocked on a couple of doors, looking for help. One person was distant and turned him away and one couple was busy with their own fight. Finally he got a ride, got some gas, hitched back to his vehicle and resumed driving. 

He drove back to Montana to a town he preferred not to name and stayed with a friend.

"I was scared to call my wife," Gleason said. "God knows what she was thinking. I didn't know what to say."

What she was thinking was that he was lost. According to the dispatch center log, she called on Saturday afternoon at about 4:30 p.m., asking to have an officer check on her husband. She reported that he left to go exploring in the area of Fort Peck Tower Hill the day before at approximately 1:30 p.m. She had not heard from him and she said he did not have a cell phone with him.

Because his presumed disappearance was in McCone County, Deputy Paul Skyberg of the McCone County Sheriff's Office began coordinating search efforts. He went up in a plane Saturday and flew Fort Peck Lake and the Missouri River from Fourchette Bay, due south of Malta, all the way to Wolf Point. The Charles M. Russell Wildlife Refuge was crawling with hunters, but none of them had seen Gleason or his vehicle. Deputies from Valley County looked in the Tower Hill area after dark on Saturday. The search effort expanded over the weekend and eventually involved officers from the BLM, the Border Patrol, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Montana Highway Patrol and Circle Aviation. On Sunday, McCone County issued a BOLO (be on the lookout) on Gleason. On Tuesday Valley County Sheriff Glen Meier flew the northern side of the CMR closely, looking for three overdue Minnesota hunters, whom he found, but he didn't see anything of Gleason.

Meanwhile, Misty Gleason went on the Tradio program on KLTZ on Tuesday, asking everyone to look for her husband because the sheriff was not doing anything.

Meier said that law enforcement takes many factors into account when notified of a missing person. They consider the age and medical condition of the subject, whether the weather constitutes a danger, what the terrain is and what knowledge of it the subject has, what supplies the subject has with him. A toddler in the woods is a different story from a teenager with a history of running away to a friend's house or an experienced outdoorsman caught overnight in the snow.

Gleason was a newcomer to Glasgow and therefore possibly lost, but he was a young man in good health with an SUV, extra clothing and a small tent in the back and a fair amount of cash.

"Search and Rescue is not to be taken lightly," said Sheriff Meier. "This puts people's lives in danger. Search and Rescue is ready to go, but we have to weigh what to do."

With no results from their search of the target area and no further information to act on, officers had no option but to issue a public alert and await developments.

"A lot of things actually work out by themselves if we just stay out of it for a while," Meier said. "People can leave their wife and go hide for a few days. There's nothing illegal about that."

Skyberg issued a missing person press release to the media Tuesday with a physical description of Gleason and his SUV and his photo. Anyone with information was asked to call the McCone County or Valley County sheriff's office.

At about 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning, dispatch received a call from a man who said he had run into Gleason about two or three days before. He said Gleason was over by Minot. His truck had broken down so the man gave him a ride. The man said Gleason told him that he had a squabble with his new wife, so there may be a missing persons report out for him.

At 8:43 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18, Deputy Skyberg notified Valley County dispatch that Misty Gleason had heard from her husband and he would be home that day. An acquaintance had told Gleason about seeing his picture in the missing person alert. The alert was cancelled, just as it was appearing on the front page of the Courier, the Wolf Point Herald-News and other area newspapers.

On the following Monday, Misty called Tradio again to thank the all the people who helped search for her husband.

She did the right thing by reporting her husband missing, Skyberg said.

"I don't fault her for the call. I think she did probably the right thing. She initially thought he left in a huff. She was genuinely worried about him."

As for the discrepancy with what the man reported about the marital squabble, Skyberg doesn't know what to make of it. He thinks Gleason probably said things weren't right at home.

Gleason said he wasn't aware of the fact that she had reported him missing and was astonished to hear about it, although he thought it was the right thing to do.

"I'm embarrassed by the whole situation," Gleason. "I'm getting a bunch of heat from the townfolk. I didn't think it would go to the extent that it did."

He expressed his thanks to all the people who helped try to find him.

"I appreciate the efforts by the Border Patrol, the air search, hunters and everyone. It was great."

Skyberg said no charges would be issued in this case, but Gleason will be billed for upwards of $600 for the cost of the search aircraft.

"I don't think the citizens of McCone County should have to pay the bill for someone who took off on his own, and was not missing," Skyberg said. "The moral of the story is - he took off. Instead of being responsible and owning up to what he did, he chose not to be responsible. Now he's going to be responsible to us for his actions."

"The people that need Search and Rescue, please call. We do this all the time," said Meier. "But these incidents make it a little hard."