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ST. GEORGE -- No one may ever know the name of the 15-year-old boy abandoned in a cave 100 years ago wearing denim pants, a pair of Marshall Field's boots and a plaid shirt and wrapped in a patchwork quilt.
But the clues left where three St. George boys found him recently may answer some questions: How did he die? Why was he left in a cave closed in with rocks? Who put him there? Where did he live? And what was his life like?
The research leading to those answers could also piece together an interesting slice of Western history.
"That is so cool how they can figure this stuff out," says Jason Franz, one of the boys who found the skeleton, after hearing new information from a private investigator and a forensics anthropologist. "Do they know who it is yet?"
Early last December, Jason, 14, Cody Adams, 14, and Jesse Adams, 13, were hiking near their Bloomington Hills homes when one of them spotted the sleeve of a shirt.
Just 15 feet from a radio station antenna and 30 feet from a road, the boys came upon a skeleton in a cave on the side of a cliff. They immediately called the St. George police.
The skeleton was about 100 years old, a clothing historian ascertained, because the denim pants had no zipper (they hadn't been invented yet). His military-style boots and factory-sewn shirt placed him in this century. He also had some type of wool jacket.
"He's dressed like a pioneer cowboy," says Kathy Kankainen, Utah Museum of Natural History collections manager. "I'd say it's turn-of-the-century to the early part of the century."
The endearing part of the mystery came with the hand-stitched patchwork quilt in which the boy was wrapped.
Utah State Medical Examiner Todd Grey determined that the skeleton was that of a boy because the bones had not yet fused. But after several bad leads, St. Georce asked for help.
"I live for fascinating mysteries," says Utah private investigator Todd Gabler, who volunteered.
Gabler has interviewed past mayors, historians and townspeople, as well as digging through old copies of St. George newspapers. One aspect enthralls him:
"This boy was entombed, not buried," Gabler says. "The psychology of taking him up on that hillside is different from what the predominant group [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] in St. George would have done with a community member."
They would have buried him in a cemetery.
Gabler believes the boy did not walk up that hill himself.
"There is hardly any wear on the bottom of those boots," he says, pulling up pictures on a big-screen TV. "These boots may have been burial boots."
The boots are model No. 316 from Marshall Field's. Department store spokeswoman Lynn Galia said store workers found a similar pair made in 1918, but not the exact pair. The boy's boots might have been sold in the decades before or after.
Gabler's theory is that the boy was an outsider to St. George -- perhaps a miner looking for gold or a vagabond living in the hills. He thinks that when the boy died, his friends or family dressed him in the best attire they could find, including the boots, wrapped him in the homemade quilt and carefully placed him in the cave.
"There is something special about this cave," Gabler says. "There is a special view -- this place is significant."
The cave looks out over red rocks and hills and now, a booming St. George. In old aerial photos Gabler has found, a path appears leading up the cliff as early as 1932. In a 1958 photo, it looks like a well-traveled trail.
He wondered if the cave had been the boy's favorite place.
In the local papers he spotted stories about the Bloomington Oil Dome and the Apex Mine. Perhaps, he says, the boy worked for one. He theorizes that the boy may have lived during World War I years when men were overseas fighting, leaving jobs open for women and children.
He also discovered that the Mormon church's women's Relief Society made patchwork quilts by the hundreds, passing them out to indigents. By searching the papers, he also found the quilts were often used in trail-side burials.
"They may have been outsiders coming through," he says, "and they just buried him on the side of the road."
He hasn't found any accounts of missing people for that time. But in a March 8, 1917 article, he found one similar story.
A skeleton was found near the Bloomington Canal, which runs through Bloomington Hills. Investigators thought the body was that of a 25-year-old because he had all his teeth, and they believed he had been an outsider. The bones were taken to Dixie College, but Gabler does not know where that skeleton is now.
Gabler is so fascinated by the current mystery that he asked forensics anthropologist Shannon Novak, who works at the University of Utah, for help. After examining the bones and clothing, she developed some theories.
The boy was wearing several layers of clothing -- two shirts, a vest, a jacket and the denim pants. He had three blankets -- one blue wool, the patchwork quilt and a thin cotton woven blanket. From this, she extrapolated that he had lived in the cave and died during the winter.
She hopes an excavation would show whether there was a hearth in the cave.
Novak is sure the clothing will bring more clues. The denim pants have brass buttons with what look like stars, and the outside of a leather tag sewn on like Levi's tags are today. The middle of it is missing. One of the shirts is hand-sewn, the other machine-made.
His burlap vest has been repaired, and his patchwork quilt has a blue sewn patch to repair a hole. It's possible that his boots -- which look like military jump boots with sewn toes -- were resoled.
Her final theory is sadder than Gabler's.
She does not believe the boy was buried because it would have taken much effort to carry him there and because the backs of the boots don't have any drag marks.
Maybe, she says, he was living in the cave and working nearby. From the bones, she can tell his right arm was much more developed than his left, suggesting heavy work: perhaps farming or possibly mining. The condition was normal for the time but unusual in a child.
One night, he might have crawled up into his cave, coughing and uncomfortable from pneumonia that was infecting his lungs. A spongy growth on his rib cage tells Novak the boy had been sick, although it is not clear that he had died from this disease.
The bones had been strewn about the cave, possibly by animals. But sun bleaching tells what might have happened.
The boy tucked himself in a corner, arms curled around his shins and head forward over his knees. His shins are a bright white compared to the yellow of the rest of his skeleton, suggesting they were in the sun.
Then he died.
Eventually, the skeleton's head rolled forward from the body, exposing its base to the sun.
Early on, investigators said a slash across the front of his skull might have been caused by a blunt object, but Novak says the mark is probably from erosion. She sees that the bone break happened years after the death when the bones were dry. Possibly, the skull rested on a sharp rock, and after years of extreme heat and cold, the hole wore through.
From his teeth, she knows he had been between 15.1- and 15.9-years-old.
She still studies the bones -- checking head measurements to determine race -- and will use the skeleton to teach anthropology students at the university.
For his part, Gabler needs volunteers to dig through old papers, and longtime residents to recollect stories.
"This community can solve the mystery," he says.
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