Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One.

Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast One.

An A&E original podcast.

Green River Wyoming is a bucolic mountainous area. Nearby is a popular hiking spot known as Lost Dog Trail.

It leads through a range of mountains and drops off into the flaming gorge canyon.

At the end of the trail is a cliff known as the point. It's a little rocky but flat enough to walk around on.

That is until the sudden 100-foot drop off. That's about 30 meters. However you measure it, that's a long way down.

On August 10th, 1996, Bob Duke called 911 at around 3pm. He said his wife and child had fallen off of a cliff.

He told the police that his family had planned a picnic. His son was running around chasing lizards, having a fun time.

But then it all went wrong. Duke says he went back to the car to get a drink. And when he returned to the cliff, his family was missing.

They'd fallen over the edge and he didn't know how to help them.

From A&E, this is Cold Case Files.

I've never been to flaming gorge, but like any respectable armchair detective, I use the map of my phone to zoom in really close.

It looks high to me, but I live where it's flat, so my perspective is a little biased. The cliff was less intimidating to Lieutenant Doug Stewart, a rescuer who was experienced with the terrain. This is Lieutenant Stewart.

We went about 30-40 yards north, walked down the hill to the victims. It wasn't real easy. It was a pretty steep terrain, very rocky, a lot of loose rock. But it wasn't that difficult. We've dealt with worse.

Leana and Eric Duke, wife and son, were dead when the rescuers got to them. Lieutenant Stewart radioed up and told the fire department he needed a Stokes basket. When I googled to find out what that particular item was used for, I discovered it's also called a basket stretcher or a Stokes litter. Basically, it's a human sized basket used in search and rescue. And in this case, to secure the bodies as they were raised from the gorge.

This is Lieutenant Stewart again.

I recall when we placed him in the Stokes, we put the mother in first, then we put the baby in. We took Mama's arm and put it over the baby. Somebody patted a little fell on the head and said, sorry little buddy, it's not right.

This team of firefighters basically made a living from rescuing people from the flaming gorge. They reported that this particular rescue made them feel uneasy. This is Lieutenant Robert Clevenger from the Green River Fire Department.

It just didn't seem right. The whole deal, the whole situation was not right in my mind.

That opinion doesn't really qualify as evidence. It's a feeling. Sometimes we describe it as our gut. Sometimes our gut feelings are right, but other times they're not. They're not reliable. And therefore shouldn't be admissible in court.

A person's gut feeling can be so strong sometimes that it creates what's called confirmation bias, which is a tendency to interpret new evidence as supporting what you already believe. It seems, however, like the entire crew was bothered by the situation. The clips you hear next are from unidentified members of the rescue team.

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