Open Letter to the Find Me Group - My Rebuttal

To Find Me (Jerry Kelly Snyder); Your organization helps to find missing people. You are in close contact with families who are on an emotional roller coaster. They are concerned, confused, feel helpless and all they want is to find their missing loved one.

This is a huge responsibility you chose to take on. I commend you. But then again I do not. Why? Because I have recently learned that you claim your algorithm assisted in finding a missing person even though it did not.

I am writing to you to correct the assumptions which are contained in the attached article. First of all, you did not find Randy Bilyeu. Your predictions were way off base. With that being said let's move on to the false claims you are sharing with others.

Someone in your organization supplied information to the author of the recent article that claims that the Find Me Group found Randy...

Now that I have shared your tall tales with my readers I will state the facts. Why am I doing this? Because while Randy Bilyeu was found, unfortunately there will be many more missing people and I refuse to allow families to place trust in an organization that might not be up to par.

You claim you sent your predictions to the Santa Fe PD in late July. Yet, on August 29th you were still asking the name of the lead detective. Common sense would be to send your predictions to Search and Rescue, but they never received them. Neither did the family.

Regardless...Randy was found on July 12th.What purpose did your algorithm serve in late July? That would have been after the fact. This creates reasonable doubt.

You did send your AI predictions of the location in late March. These were received by Santa Fe PD who forwarded them to NM Search and Rescue.

Those predictions were thoroughly examined and the closest of the 13 presumed predictions were more than 1/2 mile downstream. A 1/2 mile may be good for calling in a nuclear strike, but not when the object you are looking for is only 6 feet tall. Especially when there were no clues to pin point any particular location.You might assume that prediction was close, but I beg to differ.

• You were never on my team of searchers. I, Linda Bilyeu, never contacted you. I never spoke to you. I never emailed you. I formed the team of searchers and Jerry "Kelly" Snyder was not on my list of contacts. You did have contact with Randy's sister, but you never had boots on the ground for me.
• I know for a fact that on August 29th you were still pleading for the "find" coordinates. Really? You claimed that your MIST program nailed the location...how would you know that when you didn't have the "find" coordinates?
• The closest coordinates to where Randy's remains were found was 2/10's of a mile on a cliff. This area was only accessible from the east mesa, not from the river. This prediction was not remotely possible.
• The article states: "The area was searched more than once." The actual location was under water, so boots on the ground was not doable. The surrounding areas were searched more than once, but the find area was unsearchable terrain.
• Fact: We got lucky with someone being at the right place at the right time. And that someone had nothing to do with you. That someone was a subcontractor for the Army Corp of Engineers who was there for their once a year visit. These were the people who found Randy. If they had not been in the area and the water level had not been low, it could have been another year before Randy was found. They deserve the recognition that you so blatantly are attempting to achieve.

So, let me set the record straight. I do not care about your success rate. This is not a damn game.

You took on the responsibility of assisting distressed families find their missing loved ones.

Do you really think we care about your statistics unless they are factual?

Do you really think we care about stroking your ego?

It's morally wrong to take advantage of grieving families to prove a point. If you can't handle the fire then step the heck away from the kitchen. I advise against using vulnerable families for your benefit.

I do appreciate the effort you are making in order to help find the missing. I'm sure you have good intentions, just not so sure about your method of operation which may be lacking.

It's extremely traumatic for families to not know the whereabouts of their loved ones. It's heart wrenching agony. The more assistance they have the better outcome they may have. So I do wish you luck with your endeavor. All I ask is that you do not ask for credit unless credit is due.

We advised everyone of our policies procedures and established protocols. As you stated, we provided the authorities locations and circumstances surrounding where Randy might be found. Our information is accurate in most cases within a 1/2 mile to 2 mile radius and in some cases the exact location. In Randy’s case our information was accurate within a 1/2 mile according to your account of a potential of xxx square miles of territory. We were not provided details or clues to suggest that we look north, south, east or west.

Our information provided to the authorities stated that Randy was deceased and in the river caught under or on the surface of the water by debris. With qualified/certified cadaver canine support, a 1/2 mile radius is easy to locate someone if we are that close to the victim. We offered our search and rescue professionals, cadaver canine support and our airplane to the authorities, but they respectfully declined stating they would be capable of handling it on their own.

I am confused as to the additional resources you offered. The family was never made aware of those resources that we definitely could have used, actually those resources were the main reason that you were contacted for assistance. If the authorities were contacted we would have known, yet we never received this information from them either.

Regarding the 1/2 to 2 mile radius...are you basing your find on a scatter-gun approach?

Let's see you provided 13 predictions...
6 of those predictions were out of a 2 mile radius.
6 of those predictions were within a 2 mile radius.
The last prediction was in an unsearchable area.

You had a 50% chance of having a correct prediction. Those odds were definitely in your favor.

But, in a nutshell...Randy was not found based on your algorithm. And, yes, I do have the find coordinates.