In the box was the initial coroner’s report into the investigation of Jasmine Gulati’s disappearance twenty-four years ago. Also in the box was the Port Ferris police report complete with witness interviews and a SAR manager’s report on the search for Jasmine’s body.
Angie set these reports to one side and took out a pile of photos. She sorted through them, spreading them out on the table. Several were close-ups of Jasmine Gulati, clearly a striking young woman. With a surname like Gulati, Angie surmised that Jasmine’s father—the judge’s son-in-law—had been of South Asian heritage.
Among the photos were several group shots of the nine women on the river. One had been taken outside a wood-sided building, where the women stood laughing beneath a sign that readHOOK ANDGAFFEPUB. One the back of this photo was an inscription that read:Day One. Port Ferris. The Gathering.
The trip participants were listed asRachel Hart, Eden Hart, Trish Shattuck, Willow McDonnell, Jasmine Gulati, Irene Mallard, Donna Gill, Kathi Daly, Hannah Vogel.
Angie flipped the photo around again and studied the faces, wondering if the teenager pictured with the group was Eden Hart and if Eden was Rachel Hart’s daughter. A few more photos included the male guides, Garrison Tollet and Jessie Carmanagh.
The last photo in the bunch showed Jasmine with two women of similar age. This one had not been taken on the river trip. It had been shot on a sunny beach, and all wore bikinis. The two young women with Jasmine were not among those pictured on the Nahamish River trip, either. Angie flipped the photo over. On the back was written:The three amigas—Jasmine Gulati, Mia Smith, Sophie Sinovich—Hornby Island, Summer 1993.
Angie glanced at her watch, surprised at the time. And relieved. This case was providing a desperately needed distraction for her. She was pleasantly famished. She set the photos down and went into her kitchen, where she put some Italian leftovers from Mario’s in the microwave.
While her food warmed, she opened a bottle of merlot that Maddocks had left in her apartment. She turned up the gas fire, and when her food was ready, she took her meal and wine along with the SAR and coroner’s reports and settled on her sofa. She read the reports as she forked pasta into her mouth and sipped the wine. Wind whistled around her balcony balustrade outside, and foghorns sounded out at sea, but inside she finally felt warm.
According to statements made to the Port Ferris RCMP, the group of nine women and their two guides had brought their boats ashore near a campsite above Plunge Falls on what was to be their second-to-last night on the river. It was the same camp where she and Maddocks had overnighted before portaging around the falls to fish downstream in the Nahamish Flats, where Budge Hargreaves had called them from the bank.
According to the statements, Jasmine Gulati had told the group she’d seen a hatch and fish rising in the eddy of a small bay just downriver from the camp. She said she was going to try a few last casts before nightfall. Jasmine then left the campsite with her fishing gear. Tollet and Carmanagh built a fire. The other women settled in with drinks, and the two guides then left to gather more firewood for the night.
A short while later, Garrison Tollet had been collecting wood above a talus scree when he saw a woman he believed was Jasmine thrashing about in the river and then going over the falls.
Jessie Carmanagh had been lower down on the slope. His view of the river obscured by trees, he’d had no visual of the falls. Garrison Tollet had screamed for Jessie Carmanagh to radio for help. Jessie Carmanagh ran back to camp for his radio while Garrison Tollet clambered down the scree and descended a treacherous cliff alongside the falls to see if he could find Gulati at the bottom of the waterfall.
Carmanagh radioed for help from the camp. By the time RCMP and search and rescue volunteers had arrived, it was dark. A night search using hunting spotlights was conducted along the banks below the falls. The search intensified at first light. SAR dog teams were brought in to assist. Gulati’s fishing vest and a small silver box containing her flies were found downstream of the plunge pools at the base of the falls. But nothing else.
Eventually what had been a search and rescue mission shifted into a search and recovery effort. Nothing more of Gulati was ever found.
When the winter had come and gone, and the snows had finally melted and the river was low again the following year, another recovery mission was attempted. It yielded nothing. Efforts were called off. The coroner’s service ruled that Jasmine Gulati was likely deceased from accidental drowning.
The coroner’s report noted that over a period of fifteen years prior to Jasmine Gulati’s accident, there had been five deaths at Plunge Falls. Two were classified as accidents, three as possible suicides. It appeared Plunge Falls had been something of a go-to for killing oneself. In three of those cases, the bodies were never found. The water pressure below the falls was described as intense, and there were underwater caverns at the base of the falls that divers were unable to safely access.
Jasmine Gulati’s fly rod had been located on an extremely slippery section of the rocky bank where she said she’d been going to fish. There were marks in the slimy moss near the water’s edge where her wading boots appeared to have slipped.
Angie reached for her glass of wine and sipped. This was clearly believed to have been a simple but unfortunate accident where Gulati had fallen into the river. She’d been wearing waders, which would have quickly filled with water. The river was also extremely cold—fed by the glacial waters of Carmanagh Lake—and the currents swift in sections. Even a good swimmer would have been dragged over the falls in those circumstances.
Jasmine’s body had probably been trapped by water pressure deep below the falls or hooked and held beneath rocks in icy temperatures for years. So why had she popped out and ended up buried beneath a shallow layer of soil almost two hundred meters away from the riverbank?
Angie set down her wine and reached for the current pathologist findings on the remains from the shallow grave.
Everything from the grave site had been first carefully documented in situ, and then the remains had been excavated and taken to a morgue. The body was skeletonized, so the autopsy was more of an anthropological exam with both the pathologist and anthropologist present.
Clothing and other items found with the remains had been documented, including the ring and the cuff bracelet, which had been photographed before being cleaned up and photographed again afterward.
The ring was described as white gold with a princess-cut diamond set among a halo of smaller diamonds. Angie peered more closely at the image of the cleaned ring. The design was definitely that of a classic engagement piece, although it might have been nothing of the sort. It had, however, been found on the left ring finger of the skeleton. Angie reflexively fingered her own engagement ring on the chain around her neck.
The silver cuff bore an Egyptian insignia, which fitted with Jilly Monaghan’s claim she’d bought the bracelet for her granddaughter in Egypt.
The only clothing found on the body that had not biodegraded in what appeared to be highly acidic soil was a pair of chest-high booted neoprene waders. The brand was Kinabulu. It was noted in the report that Kinabulu was a sponsor of the trip and that the outdoor clothing company had provided all the participants and guides with complimentary gear, including wool hats, waders, fleece vests, and jackets.
Angie turned the page and read further. According to the report, the waders were made of neoprene—or polychloroprene—a synthetic rubber produced through the polymerization of chloroprene. The material exhibited good chemical stability and maintained flexibility over a wide temperature range. The waders were five millimeters in thickness, and the attached boots were a composition of rubber and Gore-Tex. The report noted that both neoprene and Gore-Tex were nonbiodegradable.
Angie studied the image of the rubber boot soles. Good, deep tread. But they had not stopped Jasmine from slipping off the slick rocks along the water’s edge.
She turned to the image of the skeleton laid out on the examination table in an anatomical position. All bones were accounted for. Nonhuman bones that had been found with the body, including those of small rodents, had been segregated. Skeletal abnormalities listed included a spiral fracture of the left arm, typical of wrenching force. There was no sign of healing, which indicated the fracture had occurred perimortem—at or around the time of death. This could have happened when Jasmine Gulati went over the falls.
Radiographs also showed shallow depressions on the dorsal surface of the pubic bones near the symphyseal border. Angie leaned forward with interest as she read the anthropologist’s description:
While the presence of these dorsal pits is strongly suggestive of a full-term pregnancy, the number and size of pits is only weakly correlated with pregnancies. Current research has shown these pits do occur in males and in females known to have never given birth.
