Mountains.....Part III

Despair and darkness know no bounds, but they seem to have found a welcome home deep within the walls of Middle Park, Grand County, Colorado.

The driver of the van, this seeker of seclusion that came upon a place in the mountains that would possibly forever hide him and his tribulations, was a 62-year old resident of the beautiful city of Denver, some 90 miles ESE of his chosen final resting place. It is possible that the individual believed that a massive snowfall was just around the corner, and not necessarily a bold gamble as December 9th was the day that he came to Grand County and the Trough Road, and the resultant drifts of expected snow and a dozen other subsequent winter snowfalls would make his road off limits until springtime, some 5 - 6 months away – even to a diligent BLM officer.

But his gamble turned out not to pay off, as unusually dry conditions made for a relatively snow free December in Grand County, and his plan for a temporary asylum for his crime, like the winter snow, never materialized.

In the white Chevy Van lay the bodies of a 62-year old father and his 9-year old autistic son, the son murdered by a single gunshot wound to the head, wrapped in a blanket, laying in peaceful repose in the back of the van on the floor. The father sat in the front seat, slumped over sideways with his head in the passenger seat; a head that also contained a single, fatal gunshot wound. Both bodies were frozen solid, and well preserved.

Was it a money issue? Was the father in a state of despair over his son’s disability? Could it have been a custody issue? Two articles appeared in the Denver Post, neither of which made mention of anything other than the fact that a murder-suicide had occurred, as if this sort of thing, much like a traffic fatality, happens with regularity.

What sort of tragedy drives a person to this? Can you possibly imagine any situation that would be so dire, so without hope or resolution, that driving to a desolate place in the mountains and committing such an act would play out as your best possible alternative?

As the initial shock of this find began to wear off of the BLM officer – remember, these individuals are trained to deal with the occasional poacher or unlicensed angler – he realized that much more was at play than the murder-suicide. There was a wallet on the driver’ side floor of the van, open and empty of money, credit cards and all of whatever else it had previously contained. The glove box lay open, the contents of which had obviously been gone through to the point of looking as if a small tornado had found its way into the car. But the BLM officer’s final glance at the crime scene revealed an act of violence that at first was beyond his reason or comprehension.

The shooter’s left arm was hanging limp over the edge of the passenger seat, the left hand frozen in space a few inches above the floor of the van. The thumb and index finger had been severed from the hand, cleanly; the hacksaw that had been used for the operation resting askew on the floor against the passenger door. The missing thumb and finger were not in obvious view, nor was the gun that those digits had held so dearly.

It didn’t take the experts long to piece together a scenario of what they believed had occurred. Sometime between the 9th of December, the day the father and son drove to the mountains from Denver, and December 17th, the day that the bodies were discovered by the BLM officer, someone had come across the van and the bodies and stolen whatever valuables had been in the van, including the murder weapon, which had been intertwined in the hand of the shooter, particularly his thumb and his forefinger; the fingers frozen to the point that a hacksaw was necessary to free the gun from this natural encumbrance.

It also didn’t take the experts long before they had a track on the perpetrators of this heinously unnatural act, which is understandable, as anyone who would be desperate enough to saw a gun from a frozen hand, let alone steal money from a corpse, having taken desperation to a heretofore unseen level, would be certain to quickly make use of their ill-gotten gains. A male and female, both known meth-heads from Craig, CO, were tracked through their use of the deceased’s credit cards to a hotel in Snoqualmie, WA, approximately 25 miles ESE of Seattle - more mountains and wilderness in which they could seek shelter from normalcy - and 1220 miles from the scene of their crime.

The first question one begs to ask is what were two people from Craig, CO, a good 100 hard miles to the northeast of Kremmling, doing in a remote area of the wilderness in the winter where they would have had, apparently for them, the good fortune to stumble across this meth head’s gold mine of a find – a corpse with credit cards and a gun? A litany of questions further ensue, but the next most obvious is what drove these people to commit this unthinkable act – their dire need for money for their dire need for drugs? Imagine their desperation, a force so profound that it was able to overwhelm any sort of basic emotion towards the obvious human tragedy that they had uncovered, emotions that would have the coldest of hearts closing the door, stepping back to mournfully ponder the misfortune of this man and boy and then calling the authorities.

Many might consider my parallel between this desperate act of violence and mountain living to be intellectually lazy and based upon no quantifiable facts or cogent reasoning; that would be a fair charge, as my parallel is based upon personal bias and little more than limited observations and a gut feeling. However, I’ll offer the supposition that perhaps not all Coloradans cherish the mountains; rather, there are many more of my ilk who cower under the constant threat and intimidation of these peaks that eternally hulk over their every move.

A little known fact… but, Denver, as beautiful a city as you will find because of the snow-capped Rockies that hold this city in their hands, leads the United States in alcoholism; Colorado Springs, another city with its back up against the Rockies, is third. How can this disease, whose most prominent root cause is generally argued to be depression and despair, be running rampant in a city typically known for its beauty, healthy living and as a gateway to fun and frolic? I’ll argue that those mountains have more of a negative effect on the human psyche than one might imagine – and I know, because I’ve lived it, and they whammed me good.

After the couples capture and extradition to Grand County, they await trial on the charges of identity theft, theft, criminal trespass, possession of burglary tools, tampering with physical evidence, criminal possession of a financial device, violation of bail bonds, criminal mischief, abuse of a corpse, and telecommunication crime; they’re now sitting uncomfortably sober 500 yards south of The Riverside Hotel in the Grand County Jail, nestled at the base of Mt. Bross, he hulking over them and the rest of Hot Sulphur Springs, brooding, sullen…..but clearly in charge of their moods, if not also their deeds.


To be continued……..