A Real-Life Tragedy That is Destined for Hollywood

Ellen Chung, Oski, Jon Gerrish, and Miju (Chron)

It's an enigma wrapped inside a tragedy.

The mysterious death of a young couple, their daughter, and their dog on a day-hiking trail on Tuesday has puzzled investigators:

“This is a very unusual, unique situation,” said Kristie Mitchell, a spokesperson for the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office. “There were no signs of trauma, no obvious cause of death. There was no suicide note. They were out in the middle of a national forest on a day hike.”

Ellen Chung and Jonathan Gerrish walked away from their successful professional lives in the City and moved to Mariposa "for this quieter life, focusing on their daughter.”

Gerrish for years had been an engineer for Google, [family friend Steve] Jeffe said, and had only recently begun working at Snapchat after his paternity leave had ended. Chung was a certified yoga instructor and a graduate student studying counseling psychology.

Until recently the couple were mainstays in San Francisco’s social scene, with both Gerrish and Chung known to DJ from time to time, Jeffe said. The pair also mixed with the “burner” crowd, people who visit the famous arts and culture festival known as Burning Man in a Nevada desert.

Gerrish had done well for himself and was extremely generous, Jeffe said, always sharing his good fortune with friends. While the couple took a trip abroad a few years ago, they let Jeffe stay in their San Francisco loft.

While still maintaining a residence in San Francisco, the pair mostly uprooted their life in March of last year, when the pandemic was beginning to take hold. While Chung was still pregnant, the couple relocated to Mariposa, hoping to integrate their daughter to a life in the outdoors.

180 miles east of SF, 50 miles west of Yosemite

The Gerrish family owned multiple properties in California and was independently wealthy. We, who have been reading mysteries since childhood, could not suppress suspicious thoughts. Yet, there are absolutely no signs of foul play.

“You come on scene and everyone is deceased. There’s no bullet holes, no bottle of medicine, not one clue,” Mariposa County Sheriff Jeremy Briese said from his office in town on Friday. “It’s a big mystery.”

The cause of death was likely accidental poisoning, yet there are problems with current theories of toxic gas from old gold mines (they would have had to go deep into a mine with a baby), exposure to toxic algae blooms (all would have to go into the water), and dehydration (they still had water in the container).

On top of everything else the area has a "dark" history:

Three years ago when the Ferguson Fire swept through the valley, burning more than 96,000 acres, a firefighter rolled his dozer down a ravine along the Hites Cove Road stretch of the trail and died. The north side of the trail empties out onto Highway 140 and the Yosemite Cedar Lodge, a notorious landmark.

In 1999, serial killer Cary Stayner was working as a handyman at the motel when he murdered 42-year-old Carole Sund; her daughter, 15-year-old Juli Sund; Juli's friend, 16-year-old Argentine exchange student Silvina Pelosso; and Yosemite Institute employee Joie Ruth Armstrong. Sund and the teens had been staying at the motel.

Let's hope the mystery will be solved soon by the toxicology reports. We can then focus on where the story belongs: the sorrow over the tragic death of a young family who had all the makings of a happy, fulfilling life ahead of them.