The remains of a Virginia woman who has been missing for almost a year at Amboy Crater have been found. Search and rescue personnel from the Sheriff’s Department found the remains of Susan Schmierer, 65, in the desert wilderness area east of the Amboy Crater National Landmark Sunday morning. Schmierer and her husband, William Schmierer, 64, were reported missing on June 13, 2018, when a BLM ranger found their car abandoned in the Amboy Crater trailhead parking lot.
William Schmierer’s remains were found three days later, but despite thousands of hours in which deputies, rangers, and volunteers searched 36 square miles using helicopters, K9 teams, volunteer searchers and dog teams, Susan Schmierer’s body was not found until more than 10 months later. The Schmierer family even hired a professional drone company to search for her body. An autopsy of William Schmierer found he died of heat exposure, and while the results of an autopsy of Susan Schmierer are still pending, her cause of death appears to be consistent with heat exposure.
The Sheriff’s Department says summertime search efforts were hampered by high daytime temperatures which allowed for only brief windows of time in the mornings to conduct searches. In addition to the harsh terrain filled with sharp lava rock, no available shade meant that by 10 a.m. most days, the ground temperatures in the lava fields exceeded 160 degrees.
Susan and William Schmeirer went missing at the Amboy Crater in June 2018. William Schmeirer was found after three days. Remains identified as Susan Schmeirer were found April 16, 2019.
