Coconino County Sheriff’s Office tries to identify found human remains

The Coconino County Sheriff’s Office announced on Facebook on Oct. 25, “that deputies have recovered partial human remains of an unidentified individual after receiving numerous inquiries regarding recent law enforcement activity in the Secret Mountain area,” the remains were discovered the previous weekend, according to CCSO spokesman Jon Paxton.

“At this time, the gender of the deceased has not been determined,” the announcement reads. “Recovery opera­tions have concluded. There is no known threat to public safety. The remains will be submitted for DNA analysis, and [CCSO] will await the results to assist in the identifi­cation process. There is no further information available at this time.”

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System that is administered by the federal government lists three unsolved missing person cases in Sedona:

▪ U.S. Forest Service employee David Miller last seen on May 19, 1998, whose abandoned vehicle was found at the Vultee Arch Trail

▪ Eli Wallach Bugler who, was dropped off in the area of Soldier Pass on March 12, 2021, to explore a cave

▪ and most recently, Safeway employee Yolan Miller, who was last seen on June 19, 2022.

Yolan Miller

“On Sunday, June 19, 2022, Yolan Miller was last seen at about 4 p.m. after telling a friend that she was going to Jerome,” her NamUs profile reads. “Miller’s roommate saw her leaving in a hurry from their Sedona residence, wearing a bright teal shirt — possibly with flowers — grey shorts, grey tennis shoes — possibly Nike — gold hairband with white pearls and black sunglasses. Miller left in her dark grey Ford Escape, which was found abandoned near the Honanki Heritage Site on Forest Service Road 525 on June 24, 2022. Miller has since missed work and a scheduled doctor’s appointment.”

Yolan Miller lived in Sedona for 12 years. Miller who is autistic, earned a fine arts degree from Northern Arizona University where she put her artistic talents to work in the Floral Department of Safeway where she worked for 10 years.

Miller and her mother Dolores “were born two days apart in December,” Miller’s aunt Kay Royball said. “Every year, they would take a week off work, and they would go on vacation together with her stepfather, and they would be [like] friends, going on vacation. … It’s just a really sweet, lovely, relationship that they had.”

Yolan Miller’s family does not believe she would have hiked far on her own because of health issues.

Eli Wallach Bugler

Bugler was 26 years old at the time of his disappear­ance on March 12, 2021, and is a 6’1, Caucasian man weighing about 150 pounds, with a chipped front left tooth and has “a birth­mark above his belly button that is a cluster of moles,” his NamUs profile reads and has an “illegible tattoo on his left forearm of an unknown name.”

David Miller

Miller, who had been working at the Sedona Beaver Creek Ranger Station since the winter of 1997, did not show up for work on Friday, May 22, 1998, and USFS began looking for him that day, with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office sending a mounted search team to attempt to locate him later in the day. Complicating matters, he did not inform others where he was planning on camping.

The remains could also belong to other people who have disappeared but were not reported or not known to be in the Sedona area when they disappeared.

“We are still, obviously still waiting for some DNA results just kind of to give us a little more insight as to gender and possibly an identification,” Paxton said and later added “it could be anywhere from 30 to 90 days before we see any results on that.”

If you have any information about these cases, call the Sedona Police Department at (928) 282-3100.