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August 7, 2024 16 mins

On July 10, 1971, eight year old Douglas Legg would go missing from his family's summer retreat in the Adirondack Mountain region of Newcomb, New York. His disappearance would lead to the largest search for a missing person in New York State. What happened to Douglas remains a mystery to this day, despite all the effort to search for him he's never been found and with occasional leads as recently as 2020... In this episode we'll discuss the history of Great Camp Santanoni and the disappearance of Douglas Legg. Camp Santanoni is now owned by New York State and is the only Great Camp that is open to the public, offering hiking, fishing, boating, skiing and tours of the massive beautiful buildings.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Every parent's worst nightmare ensued for the Melvin family on
July 5th, 1971 when 8 year old Douglas disappeared without a
trace from the family summer retreat.
His disappearance would lead to one of the largest searches in
New York State history as hundreds of volunteers, members
of state and military branches and search teams from as far

(00:24):
away from California descended upon the Adirondack Mountain
region, combing through the nearly 13,000 acre property
trying to find some trace of him.
I'm Amanda Morgan, and this is New York's dark side.

(01:06):
In the 1890s, a wealthy banker and businessman named Robert
Prine and his wife, Anna, purchased nearly 1300 acres in
Newcomb, NY, in the Adirondacks to build a great camp.
This was a popular practice for the wealthy in New York to
purchase summer properties to enjoy the beautiful landscapes,
cooler temperatures, and fresh mountain air in style.

(01:29):
The estate that the Prines bought was named Santanone and
their great camp was different from many of the others because
his wife Anna was an avid outdoor enthusiast and Robert
himself had a great interest in modern architecture.
So not only was their camp a family retreat, there was also a
large working farm on the property.

(01:50):
The main lodge on the estate hasinfluences of Japanese
architecture, which was very rare for the area because Robert
had spent many of his younger years in Japan with his father.
His father was Abraham Lincoln'sminister to Japan.
The family had a lot of connections to prominent figures
and Robert himself had been deeply involved in politics and

(02:13):
was a close friend to Theodore Roosevelt who was a regular
visitor to the estate and it even come for a hunting trip
after President McKinley was shot in 19 O1 at the Pan
American Expo. Though Roosevelt did have to cut
his trip short and leave to takeover the presidency when
Mckinley's condition worsened. The estate is huge, like I said

(02:34):
it's 13,000 acres with the main lodge being about 4.7 miles from
the gatehouse where you gain entrance to it.
The gatehouse consisted of eightstaffed bedrooms, a home for the
caretaker, along with barns, wagon sheds and other buildings.
Just right there when you first come in.
A mile into the property from the gatehouse is the farm, which

(02:57):
includes several barns, 4 farmhouses and workers cottages,
a Creamery, a workshop, chicken houses, kennels, a smokehouse
and other buildings. When the Prines lived there, the
farm raised cattle, poultry, sheep, pigs and goats.
The main lodge truly consisted of six separate buildings, and

(03:19):
all of them are connected with acommon roof and porch system.
It's it's just massive. The Prime started using the
estate in 1893 and their family would enjoy the property until
1953 when they sold the estate to the prominent Syracuse Melvin
family. This extended Melvin family
would spend their summers in theestate, enjoying nature in the

(03:42):
Adirondacks and just having a great time.
Douglas Legg, affectionately called Doug or Dougie, was the
son of William Legg, a supervisor of science education
in Liverpool School District, and May Melvin Legg, who studied
education at the State University of New York in
Cortland, where she earned her master's degree.

(04:04):
They lived in Baldwinsville, NY May was the daughter of Myron
Melvin who had purchased the Santanone estate with his
brother Crandall. Myron and Crandall had started
the Melvin and Melvin Law firm in Syracuse that still exists
today. The Melvin family had earned a
fortune in banking and real estate.
July of 1971, the Melvin family gathered at Camp Santanone for

(04:28):
one last family vacation as theywere preparing to sell the
estate. Dougie was an avid outdoorsman,
an avid hiker. He was a month away from his 9th
birthday, standing 4 foot ten that summer with blonde hair and
blue eyes. He was in his element that
summer with many adventures ahead of him.
Saturday, July 10th started out like another beautiful summer

(04:51):
day. Ducky and his Uncle Myron had
plans to go for a hike and they started out on their adventure.
But Ducky's Uncle Myron noted that there was a large amount of
Poison Ivy that had grown onto the trails.
They hadn't made it too far fromthe main lodge, which was still
visible about 1/2 mile away, so Dougie's uncle sent him back to

(05:12):
the lodge by himself to change from shorts in the pants.
Dougie had been to the estate many times before, having grown
up spending his summers here, sohe was well familiar with the
area. Myron Melvin would later say
that they did argue a bit about Dougie needing to change and
Dougie did appear to be upset about being sent back to the

(05:33):
lodge. But he did do as he was told and
on his way back he would pass his older brother and one of his
cousins. This was about 50 to 60 yards
from the main lodge at around 3:30 PM.
Dougie unfortunately failed to return to his Uncle Myron and at
first the family thought that hehad just decided not to go on

(05:54):
the hike after all because he was upset and then had become
distracted with another activity.
But as it got later in the day and the temperature started to
drop, the family became worried as there was no sign of Dougie.
The temperatures in the Adirondacks can drop low in the
summer, dipping into the 30s Fahrenheit.
Dougie had last been seen in a white polo shirt with blue

(06:16):
horizontal stripes, blue shorts and black high top sneakers, so
he was not at all dressed for a night out in the woods.
The family reported Douglas missing that evening to state
police, and by that night, the largest search for a missing
person in New York State would begin.
Initially, the search started out with just family members,

(06:36):
members of the state police, andlocals from the town of Newcomb.
As the days went on with no definitive sign of Dougie, the
team would expand to include searchers ranging from college
students to tourists, members ofthe state agencies, and the
military. There was some brief hope that
they had a sign of Dougie when they found some footprints that

(06:58):
they believed to have belonged to him, and one of the search
dogs found a small trail but quickly lost the scent and there
was no other trace of him to be found in that area.
In the days following his disappearance, the New York
State Conservation Department used helicopters and the United
States Air Force, based out of Plattsburgh, sent planes

(07:18):
equipped with new heat detectiontechnology to join in the
search. They expanded the search out
from the main lodge at Santanonewhere Dougie had last been seen,
seeking some trace of him from the air.
The only thing that they were able to really detect with this
technology though, was a bear's den.
No trace of Dougie. There was again some brief hope

(07:39):
when one of the bloodhounds picked up a scent that led to a
pond. The pond was drained, but Dougie
wasn't there. Later that night, a summer
rainstorm would roll in and dumped 2 inches of rain in the
area. This made the search conditions
the following day extremely difficult and several searchers
had to be rescued from the muddy, boggy sinkholes that had

(08:00):
developed. On July 17th, 32 members of this
Sierra Madre Mountain Search andRescue group out of California
arrived to join in the search for Dougie.
The Melvin family had commissioned them to join the
search, paying for their travel expenses to fly them in.
One source said that the search for the volunteer members from

(08:21):
the Sierra Madre team was difficult due to the different
environment of the Adirondack Mountains compared to the Sierra
Madres with its swamps, bogs anddense foliage.
The Sierra Madre Mountain RescueTeam is still around today and
requires volunteer members to gothrough a one year probationary
training period before becoming full-fledged members.

(08:42):
Because it is, I'm sure, incredibly intense to be trying
to search for people in the mountain ranges carrying heavy
packs. And just I can't, I can't
imagine hiking is hard and I can't imagine trying to, like
locate somebody. By July 22nd, 12 days after
Dougie had disappeared, the US Marines and the US Army had also

(09:04):
sent up reserve troops to help search the area.
By this point, it was believed that around 100 square miles had
been searched. A mobile dispatch post had been
established with conservation officers trying to help keep the
search as organized as possible by giving the search group
spools of twine to try to stringbetween trees and help keep

(09:27):
track of areas that they had already searched.
So it was not easy. One search volunteer, Bill
Allen, was interviewed as he prepared to go on his fifth day
of searching for Dougie. He would state in his interview
quote, I just wish they wouldn'tkeep telling us.
Now, remember, you're searching for a body.
It drains everyone's enthusiasm.Bill was a caretaker for a camp

(09:51):
at Lake Placid and had been hunting in the area for over 20
years. He would go on to say that he
felt that Dougie was still in the area and that they had just
missed him. One interesting note I found in
my research was that in the samearticle the journalist made the
observation about the volunteersin that there was a stark
contrast between the younger volunteers that had flocked up

(10:14):
from Syracuse University to helpwith their quote.
Long hair, bell bottoms and occasional beards compared to
the quote, crew cuts and red jackets of the local men, many
whom carried knives on their belts.
The article went on to say that everyone, despite their
differences, got along and were accepting of each other as they

(10:34):
work towards the common cause oftrying to find Dougie.
The volunteer force that joined the search was estimated to have
been about 1000 people strong according to the media and it
was one of the largest in New York State history.
The large scale search would be called off on August 2nd, 1971,
with State police planning to keep what was described in a

(10:55):
source as a skeleton force of Rangers and troopers involved in
the search efforts. From that point on.
One man, Bart Bartholomew of Fulton, NY, had been closely
following the search proceedingsand would be inspired to help
start a search and rescue group.In August of 1971, the Oswego
County Pioneer Search and RescueTeam was formed and is still

(11:18):
active today. Another man, Jim Farfaglia,
wrote a book on the history of the team called Pioneers, The
Story of Oswego County Search and Rescue Team.
Jim would comment that quote. There were no organized search
teams when Douglas went missing.It was really disorganized and
frustrating. The tragedy of Douglas's loss

(11:38):
somehow gave birth to this really great thing that came out
of it and we're better for that.The Pioneer Search and Rescue
Team from Oswego County is a nonprofit volunteer organization
that has helped find hundreds ofpeople who have gone missing for
various circumstances and medical conditions such as
Alzheimer's, mental health disorders or autism.
They have a contract with Project Lifesaver International,

(12:01):
which is a search and rescue organization focused on those at
risk medical conditions that canlead to individuals wandering
off and putting their lives in danger.
Over the years, there were few leads that were quickly rolled
out, but in 1993 there was some lead that were potentially more
promising and spurred New Hope for answers.

(12:21):
The first came from a woman who came forward claiming that
Dougie had been abducted and murdered by a relative of hers
who had disposed of his body in a Lewis County lake.
This sparked a search of the lake bed, but investigators
would later discover that the woman suffered from false memory
syndrome and was being treated for that psychiatric disorder.

(12:42):
The renewed news coverage from this lead, however, sparked
another potential lead in the case.
A man from Montana came forward stating that he had been hunting
on the Santanone Preserve in 1973 and had come across human
remains that he believed consisted of a child's skull and
partial skeleton. He delayed coming forward with
this information for a few reasons, one being that he was

(13:05):
in the military and while he wason leave at the time, he wasn't
where he was supposed to be. He also wasn't aware that
Douglas Leg was missing. Investigators launched a
detailed search of the area the man had described, but they
found no trace of the remains that the man reported seeing.
In 2012, a tourist who was free diving in the area in front of

(13:25):
the Santanone building known as the Artist Cabin with fine bones
in Newcomb Lake. The remains they found were in
shallow water about 3 feet from the shoreline, and actually New
York State Police, Forest Rangers, and a New Jersey Search
and rescue canine unit had also come across some small bones
close to this area about a monthprior.

(13:46):
These bones were sent for forensic testing and determined
to be animal bones. In May of 2020, another
potential lead came in from the area where Dougie was last seen.
Members of the New York State Police Underwater Recover Team
found a suspected skull fragmentwhile conducting a routine dive
training exercise in front of Santanone.

(14:07):
This was also sent for forensic testing and believed to be non
human, and unfortunately this iswhere the case stands today.
The truth of what happened to 8 year old Douglas Leg that summer
in 1971 remains a mystery, likely hidden within the vast
Santanone Preserve. The Melvin family was already in
the process of selling the estate, which would be bought by

(14:28):
New York State. Douglas's uncle Myron was the
last person to definitively see him alive and was subjected to a
polygraph as part of the investigation and ruled out as
having any involvement. According to the current
investigator on the case, Camp Santanone is the only great camp
that is open to the public and offers skiing, hiking, fishing,

(14:49):
and tours of the beautiful buildings.
Be sure to check out the web page for this episode, which is
LinkedIn the show notes, For more information about the camp.
I've also posted some pictures of the prines and links to some
YouTube videos from the New YorkState Department of
Environmental Conservation, as well as some more information
about the search and rescue teams that we discussed in this

(15:10):
episode if you are interested infinding out more about them or
donating to their efforts. On that note, I do want to
announce that I am going to be taking a couple week break from
posting new episodes. Life has just been getting a
little crazy at work and the last thing I want to do is
compromise integrity with this show.
Trying to push out episodes thatI don't feel I've given enough

(15:30):
time and effort in researching just to put something out in the
background. I've got some episode topics
planned out and I've already started researching them, so I
want to spend the next couple weeks just getting them put
together. And I'm planning for a
mid-september relaunch, so to speak, just to give myself some
breathing room. But in the meantime, I hope

(15:53):
you'll check out some past episodes and join me on social
media if you haven't already to follow the show for updates.
I'm most active on our Facebook page, but we also have a
presence on Instagram X and Tiktok.
And I also want to give a shout out to a newer podcast that I
checked out recently. It's called Lesbian Detectives

(16:13):
and they did an episode just recently based on a case out of
New York on the disappearance ofJalik Rainwalker.
So if you are looking for a new podcast to check out while we
are on break, check out these lovely ladies.
I hope everyone has a great weekahead and I hope you stay
curious.
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