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He and a friend were in a canoe and the weather caused the canoe to overturn. David Ward was 21 at the time of his drowning in 1996. We then returned to Fallen Leaf Lake on our mission to locate Cynthia Ellis’s son, David Ward, on October 26, 2017. Our third trip this year was with the success of bringing Randy Box of Fresno CA. She had been missing for 16 years! This search was before our Randy Box recovery from our blog, but we were unable to release these details until now. The body was later to be confirmed that of Cynthia Ellis, the mother previously noted in this story, from 2001. We were cut short because of the Labor Day holiday weekend and headed back to WI. After the recovery, we continued our search that day, on a quest to locate her son. John and Daniella, accompanied us, as volunteers from Search and Rescue, for El Dorado County. The next day, Wednesday, we recovered the rest of her remains for the Sheriff’s Department. At the request of the Sheriff’s Department, we recovered a portion the remains for possible proper identification. We confirmed what appeared to be a female body. We located a good target with our sonar and then proceeded to use our ROV. Officer Frisby and another Detective, Jake, accompanied us. The following day we had access to the Police Report information and began to run Klein 3900 sonar. We did some ROV work checking the bottom and the depth, as there are no underwater depth/topo maps for that particular lake.
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Our first day, the search started in the late afternoon. The lake and its surrounding area was beautiful with steep mountain sides, large cedars and beautiful shoreline. The access road was about 4 miles long, a one lane narrow road. Beth and I, and the 2 officers, wasted no time and went there directly- only minutes away. The case was regarding a drowning victim as a result of a canoe accident from 1996 AND a possible suicide in the same lake by this victim’s mother, in 2001. Frisby and Almos had a cold case, only a mile away, on Fallen Leaf Lake. At that point, we had a couple of days before another search. Almos, both of El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department. On Monday, August 28, 2017, after our Dan Pham recovery in Lake Tahoe, we had lunch and discussion with Detective D.