Long ago, three school boys made a gruesome find. They vowed to keep it quiet.
But 25 years later, when rumours finally reached police, one of them broke his silence.
Now police hope they are closer to solving the 40-year-old mystery of a missing girl, whose plight tugged on the heartstrings of a tight-knit British Columbia community in the Rockies.
The man who broke the pact, now in his late 30s, told police the tale of a childhood expedition through the woods that led to the grisly discovery of a small, intact human skeleton.
The bones may hold the clues needed to solve the case of Brenda Byman, the 12-year-old girl whose disappearance from the southeastern British Columbia town of Wilmer has never been forgotten.
Soon after she went missing in 1961, a massive two-week search ensued with farmers, labourers and businessmen from neighbouring towns leaving work to join in.
Unknown to anyone, sometime in the 1970s, three young boys stumbled upon a set of bones. Through the years, they held firm to their vow of silence.
"It wasn't malicious or anything," said Cranbrook RCMP Constable Dave Dubnyk, the officer in charge of the case. "It was just kids looking out for themselves."
The boys, all around the age of 10, had been given strict orders not to leave their grandmother's property that day.
As with most children, curiosity got the better of them and they wandered deep into the woods.
It was in there, about five kilometres from where Brenda disappeared, that they found what looked like a disturbed grave.
They grabbed a few sticks and started digging, only to find the skeletal remains of a body, the man told Constable Dubnyk.
Police have not identified him.
Scared by their discovery, they immediately covered it up.
At that point, they had two choices before them -- tell their parents and get in trouble for wandering off, or keep it a secret. They opted for the latter. "We're dealing with young kids at the time, and this is how they were thinking," Constable Dubnyk said.
For years, Brenda's missing person's file has been collecting dust. A few tips have led to dead ends.
Today, with the latest discovery, there is a renewed interest in the case.
It was the Byman family, now living in neighbouring town of Invermere, who overheard rumours about the boys' find. They contacted Constable Dubnyk.
The man could give the constable only a general area of the discovery. Police are now waiting to speak to the other two men in order to pinpoint the exact location of the skeleton.
Once the bones are located, police will compare Brenda's dental records with the remains.
"I'm being cautiously optimistic," Constable Dubnyk said. "We get a lot of tips on these major investigations and we have to confirm their validity."
But after all these years of not knowing what happened to the shy, quiet girl, Brenda's family welcomes any news.
Brenda disappeared on the night of her first sleepover at a friend's house in Wilmer. Brenda, of Dry Gulch, B.C., subsequently went on a picnic with her girlfriend and three older boys.
Children at that time often went to the woods for picnics since there weren't many activities in the town itself. This was the first time a child had disappeared.
"We never really forget and we never really let go," Albert Byman, Brenda's youngest brother, said. "We just got to be hopeful about this."
Mr. Byman, one of Brenda's four siblings, was only five at the time of her disappearance. He remembers the searches for his older sister.
He also remembers his father spending the last 20 years of his life searching for his daughter. He died in 1981.
"We just want to know what happened to her," Mr. Byman said. "My mother wants some closure."
There have been many rumours, including one that Brenda just ran off into the woods.
But Winnifred Weir, then-editor of the Invermere newspaper who wrote stories about Brenda's disappearance, wasn't convinced of that scenario.
"All of us had the feeling that somebody wasn't telling the whole story," Ms. Weir, 91, said.
She remembers the search, one of the biggest in the province's history.
A sawmill was shut down for two weeks so that its workers could help look for Brenda.
About 500 men searched the woods and the Columbia River.
"It's the greatest mystery that has ever hit the valley," Ms. Weir said.
"None of us have ever forgotten it," she added."You don't forget a thing like that. It touched the hearts of everybody."
Caroline Alphonso