Detectives still ‘mystified’ by 2-year-old’s disappearance, drowning 40 years ago

SPOKANE — Gail Brian collapsed and screamed when she learned her 2-year-old son, Ryan Hoeffliger, was found dead on the shore of Hayden Lake after a nearly all-day search for the missing toddler.

Brian’s siblings, Chuck MacDonald and Claire Ferguson, still remember their sister’s scream four decades later.

“That still haunts me to this day,” Ferguson said.

Forty years later, Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office Det. Jeff Snell is still trying to solve key questions.

How did Ryan, affectionately called “Ry Ry,” get out of the house? How did he end up 1 1/2 miles from the family home on East Dakota Avenue to the lakeshore? How did he drown?

“I hate to say this, but we are as mystified by this case today as investigators were 40 years ago who originally worked on it,” Snell said.

Snell said Ryan’s parents reported him missing the morning of Nov. 11, 1984, after the boy’s 7-year-old sister, who shared the same bed with the toddler that night, noticed he wasn’t in bed when she awoke.

The family searched the home and immediate area and, within 20 minutes, knew something was seriously wrong.

So, they called the sheriff’s office and “one of the most intense investigations” in the history of the sheriff’s office was launched, the agency said in a news release.

Snell, who recently took over the case, said detectives, some who have since retired or died, developed a number of theories and chased several leads over the years, but none bore fruit.

Snell said it’s unclear whether a crime was committed. He said Ryan had no signs of physical and sexual abuse.

He said no tips have come forward recently and he’s reviewing investigative work detectives have done over the years to see if anything can be followed up on.

The little physical evidence in the case is one of the main obstacles in solving it, he said.

“It seems to be a very, very thorough investigation,” Snell said. “So, my only explanation is that somebody probably knows more about what happened that morning than what they’ve explained to us. And if that is true, then we’re hoping that that person or somebody whose talked to that person will come forward and help us understand what happened.”

Snell said it’s unlikely the toddler walked out of the home and to the lake by himself. The toddler’s parents told detectives at the time that Ryan was not capable of opening doors, he said.

Snell said Ryan was found barefoot, and there were no signs of scrapes or other injuries on him that would have likely resulted from a long walk.

Ryan was found wearing a disposable diaper instead of the cloth one the parents commonly put on him at home, according to Snell and family members.

The unanswered questions continue to leave Snell and other detectives scratching their heads.

“We know that in this case something really, exceptionally unusual took place,” Snell said.

Investigators questioned several people and many of them took polygraph tests and passed, he said.

Snell said “theories ran wild” in the small community, and investigators followed up on information and speculation they received.

Snell and Ryan’s family said they hope someone comes forward with information that sheds light on the toddler’s death. If his death was unintentional, all potential crimes associated with the case long passed the statute of limitations.

“People deserve to know what happened and we’re just hoping that somebody will have the courage to come forward and tell us the truth, help us solve this mystery,” Snell said.

Snell said they will always pursue answers to the case.

“We’ll never stop looking,” he said.

A family remembers

Law enforcement and hundreds of community members combed the area that day looking for Ryan. A family friend eventually found him over seven hours after he went missing.

MacDonald, Ryan’s uncle and Brian’s brother, recalled a “very chaotic” scene.

MacDonald, a 20-year-old U.S. Air Force member stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base at the time, said he stopped that morning at the Hayden 7-Eleven store his parents owned and read a note on the door that said a 2-year-old boy was missing. The boy was described as a redhead wearing plaid pajamas. His name was “Ryan.”

An employee at the store told MacDonald the missing boy was his nephew.

He said he got in his car and drove as fast as he could to his sister’s house. Only family and friends were there at the time. Community members would soon flood the neighborhood.

MacDonald said he walked through fields, looking under items like plywood, and felt hopeless as the day dragged on. He knew something wasn’t right.

Brian’s sister, Claire Ferguson, said she received a phone call from her sister, who lived nearby and often babysat her children, that morning asking if she was watching Ryan . Brian told her Ryan was missing.

Ferguson said she couldn’t believe it, got dressed and went to her sister’s house.

After hours of waiting, they received the bad news, which was a shock, Ferguson said.

Brian, who no longer lives in the area, described that morning as “confusing” and “odd.” She said she can’t fill in all the blanks from that day because of the trauma it’s caused.

She said she remembered law enforcement officers taking her and her now ex-husband, Kurt Hoeffliger, to a bedroom inside the home and closing the door. She thought they had good news to report.

Instead, they told her that her son was dead.

She said she and her ex-husband collapsed, and she screamed.

MacDonald said he remembered his sister, Brian, telling her other two young children Ryan was dead. The young children broke down and cried, he said.

“Their lives have just been a mess because of this,” MacDonald said.

He said it’s “incredibly frustrating” not to have answers 40 years later.

“I racked my brain for 40 years and I have nothing,” MacDonald said of what may have happened. “I mean, I just don’t know. That’s what’s so weird about it.”

He said he lives that tragic day over and over again when November comes around.

“It’s like a video in my head,” MacDonald said.

He said he was very close with Ryan and his siblings, and he loved being an uncle.

“He was fun to play with,” MacDonald said. “He cracked me up.”

He said Ryan couldn’t pronounce the beginning of MacDonald’s first name, Chuck, so he called him “Uncle Guck,” MacDonald said.

“All these years later, I still crack up about that,” he said.

Brian said the death drastically affected her and her family.

She said she was very protective of her children after the death, and the family eventually moved because it was “unbearable to live in fear.”

“The whole investigation encompassed my world, my everything for so many years,” Brian said.

She said the most difficult part is not knowing what happened to her child.

“We put him to bed late that night, and the next day he was gone,” Brian said.

She said she thinks about her son and looks at photos of him every day.

Brian described her son, who would be 42 years old, as a “cute little redhead” and a “happy-go-lucky” kid who had a “silly side” and would dance.

She said she would love closure and justice, adding that her son was removed from her house that morning and that someone has answers.

She hopes a fresh pair of eyes on the case will lead to a break in the case.

Ferguson remembered Ryan as always wanting to play with his older siblings.

She said she and other family members would quote the famous “Who ya gonna call?” line from 1984’s “Ghostbusters,” and Ryan would respond, “Ghostbusters.”

“He was just a good, little baby,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson noted this time of year is always tough.

But, Ferguson recalled through tears, her mother told the grandchildren at the time, “If you look up in the sky, and see the brightest star, that’s Ryan.”

Ferguson said she still looks toward the sky for the brightest star when she’s sad.