Missing Hiker’s Body Found by Friend; Death Is Called Accidental

In a bizarre end to a three-day search for a missing hiker in the rugged Los Padres National Forest back country, a family friend found the man’s naked body Thursday with tree branches around his neck--apparently the victim of an accidental self-inflicted death.

John Duke Allen, 52, of Montecito, apparently choked himself to death with a tree branch accidentally while engaging in an act of autoeroticism, said Sgt. Bill Byrne of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.

“This definitely was not a crime, it was not an intentional suicide, it was an accident,” Byrne said. “We see this quite often. The general public doesn’t see it often, because it’s done in a hotel or the privacy of a home.”

The self-employed gardener’s body was found about 8 a.m. on the ground near a tree 1,000 feet off a fire road. It was in a steep, rocky area covered with thick chaparral below the peak of the 6,003-foot Monte Arido just over the Ventura County line.

Byrne said authorities believe Allen died of what is known as autoerotic asphyxiation Sunday, the same day his family reported him missing. Searchers found that Allen had signed a climbers’ log Sunday at the top of the mountain.

“He had no intention of hiking off and not coming back,” Byrne said.

An experienced hiker, Allen had parked his vehicle at a locked gate at the Matilija Canyon Road trail head about 12 miles from where his body was discovered. He had set off on a trek that family members told searchers he had made many times before wearing only shorts, a T-shirt, hat and fanny pack.

Allen’s disappearance before the series of storms that brought heavy rain, hail and sleet to the area this week triggered a large-scale search by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies.

Three helicopters, including one with a heat-sensing camera, and three dozen searchers on horseback, motorcycles and foot scoured muddy trails in search of Allen. The weather had kept the helicopters grounded since the early phase of the search Monday. The storms that cut visibility to as little as 10 feet during the last three days hampered search efforts, said Capt. Mark Ball of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

“The friend of the family who found him said they literally stumbled upon him,” Ball said. “It was just luck they were able to find him.”