The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Updated June 16, 2015

STARBUCK – Authorities located the body of missing 88-year-old Oregon man Shirley Benjamin "Ben" Gano in a steep ravine not far from his vehicle just north of Starbuck off Fletcher Road on Monday.

Family members and law enforcement across the state had been searching southeastern Washington for Gano after he failed to return home to Rainier, Ore., from a trip to Colville at the end of May. During the next two weeks, Columbia County officials followed up on tips that Gano might be in the area.

"All we had to go on was that his cell phone registered on the cell tower in Starbuck," Columbia County Undersheriff Richard Loyd said Monday afternoon. Deputies searched the roads by car and responded to possible vehicle sightings, he said.

"The area was flown by a local pilot with a deputy as a spotter," Loyd said. "It was flown two more times, once by a Washington Department of Transportation air-search unit and a third time by a plane hired by the family."

Colville police believed that Gano had been in the Walla Walla and Columbia County areas since leaving Colville on Saturday, May 30, although family members said he never made it to visit with them in Walla Walla.

Gano's vehicle, a blue BMW X5, was finally located in the ravine late Sunday night after a tip led searchers to the isolated power-line access road about three miles up Fletcher Road.

"You wouldn't have been able to see the vehicle from any road, and it would have been difficult to see from the air," Loyd said.

Columbia County Coroner Rea Culwell, who was called to the site on Monday, said the car was wedged nose down in the steep gully and covered with dust.

"You really almost had to be right on top of it to see it," she said. Dead tumbleweeds in the ravine also helped to hide the vehicle from view.

Columbia County deputies, volunteers and a search team with a dog from Walla Walla worked until nearly 2 a.m. on Monday and then began again in daylight Monday morning until they located Gano about 300 feet from his vehicle.

Search teams had a difficult time locating the body because it was dark, Culwell said. They called off the search to start again in the morning and finally located Gano deeper in the gully headed down slope, she said.

An autopsy has been scheduled for Monday, but Culwell said it was clear that Gano had been deceased for at least a week. "His death didn't appear to be related to an auto collision, and there wasn't any sign of foul play," she said. The vehicle had no apparent damage, and its airbags had not deployed, she said.