HELENA — Lewis and Clark County sheriff’s deputies have retrieved a bullet from an area of the Bob Marshall Wilderness where the body of a 30-year-old Marine was recovered last summer.
Sheriff Leo Dutton says a member of the search team who helped recover Noah Pippin’s body hiked back to the area and spotted the bullet, but left it in place believing it was evidence.
Last week, Dutton and other investigators went to the site and recovered some bone fragments. The new evidence was sent to the state crime lab.
Pippin disappeared in the Montana wilderness in September 2010 after telling his family in Michigan he was driving to California.
Initial evidence indicated he died of exposure, but the discovery of the bullet raised the question of whether he had been shot.
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