Coroner's inquest is underway

SANDPOINT — Bonner County Coroner Robert Beers is conducting an inquest into the death of Mirissa Serrano, a Montana woman whose remains were found in the rugged and remote mountains on the southern end of Lake Pend Oreille last year.

Serrano, 27, went missing in Bonner County in September 2017, although her remains weren’t discovered until the following September due to above-average snowpack in the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. Serrano was last seen in the company of Danny Harold Neep, a Spokane man who was staying in a cabin in the isolated hamlet of Lakeview while working construction jobs, according to testimony heard by a seven-member jury on Monday.

While ground and aerial searches were conducted for Serrano, Neep was arrested in the vicinity of U.S. Forest Service Road No. 278 for unlawfully possessing a 20-guage shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle, an offense to which he pleaded guilty to and is serving a two- to four-year term in state prison. Neep has not been charged in connection with Serrano’s death.

Neep, 62, invoked his right against self-incrimination when he was called to testify on Monday at the Bonner County Courthouse.

“I have answered lots of questions already and I plead the Fifth,” said Neep, who was clad in a jail uniform with belly chains.

Neep’s statements to sheriff’s investigators was consistently inconsistent, although the core of it holds that a drunken Serrano suddenly set off into the woods. Precisely where and which direction, however, has changed over time.

Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Davis bushwhacked from the vicinity of where Serrano was last seen down to her resting place in Chloride Gulch and found the terrain to be a tangle of deadfall trees, wild rose and brush that was difficult to traverse.

“It was very forboding terrain,” Davis testified.

Investigators, however, discovered a bottom-to-top approach to Serrano’s remains using a Forest Service road to the south was a much easier hike that could be done in 10 minutes compared to the 45-minute, top-to-bottom slog from the spur road off Road 278,

Jurors were also shown cellular phone records, which showed a series of phone and text messages exchanged between Neep and Deborah Russell punctuated by a couple of hours-long gaps in communication. Russell testified that she received a call from Neep’s phone which was presumably placed by Serrano, who told Russell never to contact Neep again.

Russell told the jury that she and Neep would check each other’s voicemail messages and advised him he had received a message from Serrano’s father, who allegedly warned Neep that he was in mortal danger if he did not return Serrano to her home in Lolo.

“I was worried,” Russell said.

Russell said she could not recall the contents of her text messages or other voicemail messages, however.

Cell tower date, meanwhile, showed Neep leaving the Lakeview area and going to Rathdrum before returning back to Lakeview.

Sheriff’s Det. Kurt Lehman said Neep and Serrano initially planned to stay in the Lakeview cabin but it was in a mild state of disarray, which caused them to leave and bunk in Neep’s truck on the spur road. However, Lehman said the departure appeared irrational because Neep may have caused the mess himself and he apparently told investigators that Serrano believed the cabin was haunted.

Lehman suspected drug use factored into the events.

“I have to think there were substances involved to make things spin out of control,” Lehman told the jury.

Sheriff’s Det. Barry Reinink testified that he believed Neep was going to make a confession when Neep was interviewed in jail.

“I felt like he was going to tell us something,” Reinink said. “I felt like he was going give us something.”

The coroner’s inquest resumes today.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.