AUGUSTA, Maine — More details of a hiker’s death have emerged with the state medical examiner’s autopsy findings.
The details support prior assessments that Geraldine Largay suffered an accidental death.
According to the report obtained by WMTW-TV from the Maine state medical examiner’s office, Geraldine Largay, who had been hiking a portion of the Appalachian Trail in western Maine, was inside her sleeping bag, in her tent, when she was found on Oct. 14.
According to the report, the body of the 66-year-old woman from Brentwood, Tennessee, showed signs of exposure and starvation, but no signs of foul play.
The report backs up prior statements released by the Maine Warden Service that Largay had died a natural death — although the exact circumstances of what led to Largay’s demise are still unclear.
Largay went missing without a trace in July 2013 when she failed to meet her husband at an appointed time and place, giving rise to a number of theories eschewing a simple death by misadventure.
One highly speculative story written in an alternative publication, The Bollard, linked Largay’s disappearance near Redington Township to the presence of a military Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape School, asking what role a “covert Navy torture school” had played in the hiker’s disappearance.
Numerous searches in the area had failed to turn up any evidence of Largay.
Whether the findings of the autopsy report will quell those rumors remains to be seen. The report points out that the tent and sleeping bag in which Largay had died were highly moisture resistant and likely threw off the sniffer dogs employed in the searches.
The body was located about 3,000 yards off the trail in Redington Township, about two to three miles from where she was last seen alive. The medical examiner’s report says the body showed no evidence of trauma, and that Largay’s death was accidental.
