‘The worst death imaginable’: Harrowing story of the explorer who got trapped upside down in a cave – and his body is STILL there

Just days before Thanksgiving 2009 medical student John Edward Jones was at home in Utah visiting family with his wife, Emily, and their newly born daughter. 

An avid caver, John along with his brother and nine other friends sought to rekindle their love of spelunking with a trip to the Nutty Putty cave. 

Unbeknownst to the father in just over 24 hours the cave would become his tomb. 

The Nutty Putty cave system they set out to explore was widely regarded as a good ‘beginner cave’ for wannabe explorers with its different sections labelled according to difficulty.

Despite its popularity with novices, many spelunkers still got stuck in the Nutty Putty’s many narrow, winding passages.

Between 1999 and 2004 six people became stuck in the cave and had to be rescued leading to the closure of the caves in 2006 for three years due to fears from local police that one day an incident could be fatal. 

But for John and his friends fears of getting stuck was not something seasoned explorers had to worry about. 

John, accompanied by his brother Josh decided to venture deeper into the depths of the cave to explore a section known as ‘The Birth Canal’ – an extremely challenging route that involved squeezing through a long, narrow passageway which eventually opened up into a large, cavernous area.

The pair eventually came across an extremely tight opening in the walls and John leading the way started to wriggle deeper into passage. 

Unbeknownst to the 26-year-old, he was crawling to his death.

The pair had taken a wrong turn at the entrance to the Birth Canal and were now inside an unmapped part of the cave. 

But John kept going forward, still thinking he was in the Birth Canal. 

Eventually he came across a fissure in the rock which dropped down nearly straight down in front of him, which he thought opened up into a cavern which would give him a chance to turn around. 

John sucked in his chest to investigate the fissure, sliding his torso over a lip of rock and down into the 10-inch-wide side of the crevice. 

He was at a dead end and when his chest expanded, the six foot tall, 200Ibs adult found himself stuck.

While attempting to free himself he slid deeper into the hole where he was now trapped upside-down in a space which measured just 10 by 18 inches- smaller than the entrance to a front-loading washing machine. 

When Josh came across his brother he was shocked to find just his feet sticking out with his body head first down a narrow crevice.

Speaking to local media at the time, Josh described how John had been ‘swallowed’ by the rock.

‘It was really serious,’ he added. 

After trying in vain to free his brother, Josh headed back to the surface to find help and soon drew a large group of volunteers and professionals. 

The first person to arrive on the scene was local rescue volunteer Susie. 

After inching her way down the tunnel with ropes tied to her feet, she finally encountered his trapped body, nearly three hours after he first got stuck. 

Despite reassuring John she would have him out of the hole ‘lickety split’ Susie soon discovered that due to the tightness of the angle, and the narrowness of the cave, there was no way to manoeuvre his body out of the crevice he had become stuck in.

What transpired over the next hours was a brainstorming session from all members of the rescue party, which now included emergency services, to try and free John from his subterranean prison. 

This included lubing the walls and drilling away chunks of rock but the hard material and the awkward position made the drilling slow and painful work.

Eventually, the team alighted upon a plan to pull John to safety using a complex system of ropes and pulleys, which they would attach around his feet. 

This however took hours to install which was not helped by the fact the narrowness of the cave meant only one person could directly access John at a time.

By now John was starting to struggle. Having been stuck upside down for hours the blood in his body that normally flowed to his feet and had instead rushed to his head. 

He was starting to have trouble breathing and his heart was beating twice as fast in order to counteract the gravity to push the continuous flow of blood out of his brain. 

However, at this point his chances of escaping his predicament seemed high.

Slowly but surely John found himself getting lifted out of his subterranean prison. He was able to communicate with his wife via a two-way radio which had been brought in to him.

 At one point he had even been lifted high enough to make eye contact with the rescuer closest to him who asked him: ‘How are you?’

To which John responded: ‘It sucks. I’m upside down. I can’t believe I’m upside down.’

‘My legs are killing me,’ he added.

With John nearly out of the hole, the group decided to take a quick break but when they grabbed hold of the rope for the final time disaster struck.

One of the pulley’s attached to the wall came loose – briefly knocking out one of the rescuers – sending John plunging even deeper into the crevice.

All hope was lost at this point, after attempts to tie a fresh rope around John’s leg caused a rescuer to almost get stuck as well.

After 27 hours in the hole, John had now become unresponsive.

One rescuer managed to crawl close enough to John to check his vitals he remarked that his body was close to the temperature of the rocky walls of the cave. 

He reported his findings to a paramedic who was able to get down to John only to tragically confirm that he had passed away.

John’s cause of death was put down as cardiac arrest and suffocation. 

Emily refused to leave the Nutty Putty while her husband’s body was still trapped down there and the local Sheriff assured her they would recover it.

However, it was soon decided that it was too dangerous to attempt to recover his body. To prevent a future accident the entrance to the passage was collapsed with controlled explosives and filled in with concrete.

‘Once John had been declared dead, there were discussions about “How do we get him out?” There were some rather distasteful discussions as well, things that nobody really wanted to do,’ Sgt Spencer Cannon said at the time.

‘Ultimately the decision was made that it was too much risk for the rescuers to remain there in an effort to get him out and the decision was made to leave him in place.’

Some spelunkers opposed the closing of the Nutty Putty and a petition was started to save the cave but failed.

In 2016, the tragedy was dramatised for the big screen in a film titled The Last Descent. 

Once it became clear the remains could not be recovered the entrance to the cave became a makeshift memorial for the family with a plaque also installed in memory of John. 

John left behind his wife Emily and their baby daughter Lizzie. 

Emily was also expecting their second child at the time of the accident. A baby boy was born the following year who she named after his father.