Forty-nine years ago last week, Mark Carlson’s family saw him for the last time.
The 17-year-old left his home to go hunting for the first time in Huckleberry Flats, Idaho on October 20, 1974 and never returned. He was found two days later with a rifle shot to the stomach and an indentation on the back of his head.
Mark was the fifth of nine siblings. His sister, Connie Sheldon, also 17 years old at the time, was the fourth. Connie told Dateline that Mark was a sweet, shy boy. She shared a memory from when they were both about five or six. “I remember me being afraid of earthworms. And after a big rainstorm hit, there were these worms all over the street,” she said. “And I was crying, so Mark put me on his back and he carried me home.”
Connie also told Dateline about the last time she saw Mark.
She recalled sitting on the couch with a few of her friends around 1 a.m. on October 20th when Mark came into the room. “[He] asked us to be quiet because he was trying to sleep,” she said. “He was gonna get up early and hunt.”
Connie told Dateline that when she asked her brother where he was going, Mark held up a map that was all marked up. She said that she remembers him pointing to the area where he had planned to go hunting: Huckleberry Flats. “None of us had ever heard of Huckleberry Flats,” she said.
Mark asked the group if any of them wanted to go hunting with him later that morning, but no one accepted the invitation. Connie said that she remembers telling her brother that he shouldn’t go hunting alone. “He says, ‘I’m not going alone. I’m going with someone,’” she told Dateline. “I asked him who and he would not tell me.”
Connie suspected that her brother may have been lying about going with somebody, and she is still unsure if he went alone or not. “I said [to Mark], ‘If nobody’s going with you, you wake me — I’ll come with you, even if I have to sleep in the car,’” she said. “But he didn’t wake me.”
Before leaving that morning, Mark did wake up their younger brother, Chris, who was 12 years old at the time. Connie said that Mark asked Chris to go hunting with him, but Chris was too tired to go.
The Carlson family expected Mark to be home by around 5 p.m. that night. But he never returned.
Connie told Dateline that they began to worry and contacted the police soon after it got dark. “We were all sitting on the couch waiting for him to come home,” she said. “We knew something was wrong. We just knew it.”
The next day, police sent out search and rescue teams to look for Mark, but were unable to locate him.
Two days after Mark disappeared, on October 22, 1974, the Carlson family received the news they were dreading.
Connie said the family had the TV on with no volume because they wanted to make sure they could hear the phone ring in case the police called them with news about Mark.
“We kind of glanced at the TV and saw an ambulance with a -- loading up somebody on a gurney in a black bag,” she told Dateline. “[We] said, ‘Well, that can’t be Mark because --.’ Well, we didn’t think about it because nobody called us.”
It was Mark. The family received a call shortly after seeing the scene on TV. “Search and Rescue [was] used to finding people alive,” Connie said. “At that time, it was just hard on everybody involved to call the family.”
Connie told Dateline that Mark was found by a creek, lying on his side with his face in the water. According to local NBC affiliate KTVB, his body was in Huckleberry Flats about 100 yards away from where his ‘65 Mustang was parked. He had been shot in the stomach.
Connie told Dateline she still wonders how the killer/s reacted after killing her brother. “I’d like to know how they treated him after they shot him,” Connie told Dateline. “Did they have remorse? Were they kind to him? Were they -- or were they just looking out for themselves? I guess that’s the big question.”
Mark’s rifle, hunting jacket, and the bullet he was shot with were all missing from the scene, according to KTVB.
The rifle was found about a year later, according to authorities, about a mile from where Mark’s body had been discovered. The bullet and the hunting jacket, however, were never found. “It was a brand-new jacket he had just gotten on his birthday,” Connie told Dateline. “His birthday was September 19th, and he was killed on the 20th [of October.] He hadn’t even -- this was his first day wearing it.”
Connie and Mark’s mother and stepfather both died in the late ‘80s not knowing who murdered their son.
According to KTVB, the Idaho State Police have two leading theories about Mark’s death. The first is that Mark was murdered intentionally, and the second is that somebody shot him accidentally and then panicked.
In an email to Dateline, Idaho State Police Communications Director Aaron Snell confirmed that “foul play is suspected” in Mark’s death and that “suicide was ruled out because no weapon was located at the initial crime scene.” Snell also told Dateline that, in 2014, Connie Sheldon asked the Idaho State Police to look at the case again. While the department declined to do an interview with Dateline on the case, Snell did note that “Detective [Vickie] Gooch is actively working on the case” and that the Idaho State Police will “remain in contact with the family.”
Connie told Dateline that she has employed the help of two private investigators and a psychic to help get justice for her brother. She also manages the Facebook group called “In Memory of Mark Carlson 1957-1974, Beloved Son and Brother,” where she posts about her brother’s case.
Through her independent investigation, Connie told Dateline she believes she knows the person responsible for Mark’s death. She told Dateline that part of the reason she continues to push for movement in the case is not only to get justice for Mark — but also to make his perpetrator miserable. “My goal is to keep him wondering. Keep him nervous,” she said. “I want the rest of his life to be hell, wondering if he’s going to get caught. So I’m gonna make it uncomfortable for him.”
Anyone with information about Mark’s case is asked to contact Det. Gooch directly at vickie.gooch@isp.idaho.gov or call the Idaho State Police at 208-884-7200.