Remains identified as those belonging to 2008 fugitive and girlfriend

Yachats, OR -- “It’s good closure for us, good closure for the families, good closure for everybody” -- Game Trooper Scott Salisbury with Oregon State Police in Florence. Salisbury was the one that initially received the call about possible human remains in the Cape Perpetua Recreation Area earlier this month. He didn’t immediately realize that the remains might be those of Nathan Miles Dix and Annie Jo Welch. The two 31-year old Eugene residents were last seen Christmas Eve, 2008. Dix was a wanted man, dropping out of sight after arrest following a shoot-out with Lane County Sheriff’s Deputies in September that year. Welch called 911 to report her suicidal boyfriend, Dix, was armed with a shotgun. When police confronted him, he reportedly aimed the weapon at them and fired. He was injured in the return and hospitalized. Dix was released by the hospital, then re-arrested after his recovery. He made bail just before Christmas 2008. That’s when he and Welch disappeared. Authorities impounded Welch’s car shortly after that. It had been found abandoned in a parking lot at one end of the trail where their remains were found. Officials didn’t have any clues to go on, and after a cursory search of the area at the time, assumed the pair had ‘gone underground’. Salisbury said he remembers feeling that they may have come to a self-inflicted end at the time, but after a few months the case “fell off the radar” for him. It came back on the radar when he took the call from the hiker April 9th.

Actually, it wasn’t until he arrived on the scene and found ID for Dix that it all came back. The medical examiner determined that Dix died by a self inflicted gun shot to the head. Welch also died of a gunshot to the head, but the manner of her death will remain undetermined.