CHESTERFIELD — State forest rangers last Monday rappelled into a 100 foot deep chasm to recover the corpse of a murder victim and to collect any evidence leading to the arrest of two suspects.
Rangers were called at 9:45 a.m. March 20 near the Ausable Chasm Bridge, which traverses over a steep and narrow dramatic gorge sometimes known as the Grand Canyon of the Adirondacks.
The rangers were asked to rappel, or descend via a mountaineering rope system, to the bottom of the chasm where they found the body of a homicide victim who had been thrown down the gorge.
After packaging the body of 37-year-old Kenneth Darrah from Keeseville into a haul system, rangers lifted him out of the chasm using a system of ropes.
The rangers then spent the next several hours scouring the chasm and the cliff above it for evidence.
It wasn’t immediately clear what they found.
But police the next day arrested two men, Michael J. Rougeau and Michael A. Nastasia, both from Plattsburgh, for the homicide. They are charged with second degree murder, according to police reports.
The investigation of his death revealed an altercation occurred on the bridge that ended with the victim being stabbed and thrown from the bridge, State Police said.
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