Man missing from Thompson River campsite

It has been over a week since a Bonner, Montana, man went missing while out on a camping trip with his common-law wife and her niece along Thompson River Road. On May 25, 51-year-old James Whitmarsh disappeared after his RV had a flat tire. Whitmarsh, along with his partner Bobbi Hurley and her niece, 18-year-old Autumn Morse, stopped at the corner of Montana Highway 200 and Thompson River Road. There Whitmarsh left the vehicle to check the tire and did not return.

According to Bobbi, Whitmarsh recently got a text message from his probation officer claiming that he had a warrant out for his arrest. According to Bobbi, the officer had a history of being difficult and misrepresenting the truth. When the family had gone out for the weekend trip there was no warrant, and currently there is no warrant out for Whitmarsh. Bobbi said that Whitmarsh then threw his phone in anger. Bobbi said she believes it is possible Whitmarsh believed the probation officer and that he saw an officer or game warden drive by and may have ran.

Bobbi called some of her family, who drove from Washington to help her search. They arrived last Wednesday. According to Bobbi they had a family dog that loved Whitmarsh and led her to a pair of sunglasses that Whitmarsh was carrying the morning he disappeared. The glasses were found near the river.

Bobbi claimed that Whitmarsh had planned to drive to his brother's in Trout Creek to repair the damaged tire, as it was Memorial Day, and nothing was open. Bobbi said that Whitmarsh is an RV technician in Bonner, where the two of them reside.

The family has had several locals come out and help with the search as well as some flyovers by a friend in an airplane. The family also got some drone footage of the area and called True North Search Dogs, out of Helena, for help. Bobbi's cousin, Tania Kenner said, "We realize there is speculation, but there is all the time in the world for that. We only have a limited time to search for him now."

The search dogs and their handlers began searching Friday morning. According to the handlers, their dogs do quite a few water searches, and they also claimed that their search-find rate is usually quite high. However, they admitted that there were several factors acting against them. Some of these included the wind being low, limited access to the river and the fact that there had been a lot of people highly active through the search site around the week of his disappearance.

The group searched the previous night's campground, the location where the family pulled over, where Whitmarsh disappeared and much of the river. The search dogs searched upriver, on both sides of Thompson River as well as downstream and along the Clark Fork. Another factor working against the search dogs was that the group normally works out of boats on the water, however, with the high water from spring runoff on the Clark Fork, the teams did not feel it was safe for them to be out in the search boats.

True North Search Dogs is a non-profit organization, one of several in the state, who train regularly in order to provide another level of search capability to families and law enforcement in missing person cases. They have done searches all over the state. True North brought with them six dogs, five of them were certified and one was in training.

The group said that they have a high success rate, depending on the terrain. "We can only cover ground that we can stand on," said one of the handlers, Sam Heigh. She went on to talk about other issues that the team was facing in their search for Whitmarsh. The group also admitted that the lack of river access combined with the terrain and dense foliage along the banks of the Thompson had hindered their search. However, they also mentioned that they had found zero trace, which is somewhat unusual, but can happen due to the number of limiting factors the team was facing.

The family wants to express their thanks to the residents of Sanders County who have helped with the search, as well as to the Sanders County Sheriff for allowing the search dog team to help. The family also asks locals to keep their eyes on the river, just in case.