Murder on the Range PT 1

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson.

I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them.

Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

Some are solved, and some are cold.

Very cold.

This is Buried Bones.

Hey, Kate, how are you doing?

I'm doing great, Paul.

I wonder if there's anything different about me that you're noticing.

Well, your hair is different.

Very good.

Very good.

What's different about it, do you think?

Well, you've got it brushed back.

Okay, hold on.

I'll make it clear.

Is it shorter?

Is it curly?

Curly.

Yes.

I am a girl with curls, and I straighten my hair on special occasions, i.e.

berry bones and some book events.

But I am definitely naturally curly like one of my kids is.

So I would like to say, officially, I wanted to try something new,

different look, just see, you know, spice things up.

Unofficially, I didn't feel like straightening my hair.

Okay.

So this is you just natural Kate today, right?

I mean, well, I mean, I did some stuff, but

normally I have a, you know, I mean, I've got my glasses on normally.

I mean, I have a ponytail going.

So this is a little different.

So we'll have to see.

I don't want to take a poll or anything, but I might go back and forth unless there's like a mass objection trend that happens, which I don't think it will.

You look great.

Thank you.

And I also want my kid to know the one who has the real, gosh, she has gorgeous long.

curly hair.

I want her to know that, you know, I don't always, when I go fancy, sometimes the curls are the way to go, you know?

Yeah, I like it.

Is this the same haircut you've always had?

High school, everything.

And don't joke about your thinning hair.

Your thing is fine.

I know men are sensitive, but I mean, have you ever changed up your look very much?

No, you know, it's definitely different than when I was in high school.

You know, back in the 80s, kind of the feathered back.

hairstyle for, you know, the guys was in.

And so I had to part it down the middle and feathered back.

And I also had a mustache in high school throughout high school, which when when I look back at my yearbook photos, I was like, what the hell were you thinking, Paul?

But, you know, it is what it is.

Basically, when I went to the police academy in 1994, you know, I was working in law enforcement.

And though I could have worn my hair differently, pretty much it was always just short.

You talk about the thinning hair.

You know, at one point when I noticed

my hair was thinning, I decided, you know, I'll just do the shave it, bro.

And I did a really close buzz cut.

And I remember coming home and my wife and my oldest daughter, they both looked at me.

They saw my haircut and in essence, they both started to dry heave because I looked horrible.

I'm not one of those guys that can be bald and look good, unfortunately.

They started to dry heave.

Yeah, but right now my hair is probably the longest it's been in a quarter century, to be frank.

Really?

I'm growing it out a little bit.

And that way I can, next time I get it cut, you know, I'll give the, you know, the barber some options.

Maybe I'll change my lookup.

Maybe I'll shave it off.

You know, stay tuned.

You should talk to your wife and your daughter before you do anything, clearly.

To avoid any trauma.

Alexis, our producer, is a tiny bit evil, and she thinks we both need to give her our high school photos for social media.

Like a senior yearbook photo or feather back.

Where are you?

Feathered back.

Yes.

The Miami vice, I think is probably what it is.

I've got my yearbooks right up, right across the room from me.

I can, you know, scan something and get it to Alexis if that's what she's asking for.

And I don't have a problem with that.

We pretty much always do what Alexis asks us to do.

So I think we're going to have to do that.

Oh, yeah.

Listen, I was.

I was not always at my best in high school either.

And I can't remember.

I have a bunch of my friends.

I have a group of seven girlfriends who are my best friends from a couple of them, Tina and Angie, starting from middle school so for a gazillion years and uh we always look at high school yearbook stuff and make fun of ourselves so i'm not always at my best in high school but the whole point is that in high school i would i wore my hair down i never wore it as a ponytail and i don't know when i started probably the mom thing when i was just like i'm either going to tear my hair out or i have to put it in a ponytail so keep it easy right yeah so we'll see how this goes i mean don't don't be surprised if i go back to my normal straightened hair because i do wear it curly so often.

But, you know, I like to, I like to change stuff up and, you know, all of that.

So there you go.

Well,

I'll stay on top of you.

How's that?

That's the, that's the, I think, the key ingredient to any relationship is you're always kind of throwing curveballs at your person, you know, kind of like, well, what do you think about this?

So there we go.

Keep it exciting, right?

Well, I think we'll say right now, talking about keeping it exciting, that's where we're going.

This is the furthest back we've been.

I would have to say in quite a while, we're in Civil War era.

When we talk about this story, which as it unfolds, real history geeks might recognize, you know, where we're going with this.

So we will see what you think.

That sounds good.

Okay, let's hit the scene.

Get ready for a history lesson, Mr.

Paul Holz.

I'm game.

And we are actually going to be in your state.

We're going to Colorado.

Oh.

So it's actually not even Colorado the state yet.

It's Colorado territory.

Do you know much about Colorado history just as far as establishing borders and all of that kind of stuff?

Who was there before?

No.

You know, I don't think I know anything.

I actually know Texas better because I had to,

I did seventh grade in Texas.

And at least at the time I went to school, seventh grade, you had to have go through Texas history.

Woo.

And what a history.

Okay.

Let's start with we're going to Colorado.

And we are in March of 1863, smack in the middle of the Civil War.

The Civil War doesn't have anything to do with it, but you know, you have to think about how much the country is expanding at this point.

You know, there's the war is happening.

There are people divided in not only states and cities and families, really,

over, you know, who they should side with.

So in Colorado territory, officially it's union, but very, very, very divided.

And I think part of that has to do with the history.

So I try to really streamline this.

Allie did a great job.

One of our researchers, Allie did a great job giving me a ton of history.

And I wanted to streamline it because I just thought you were just going to jump off a bridge or something.

It's like three pages of history, which I adore.

So, okay, we are in now Colorado territory.

We're in the southernmost portion, which is called the San Luis Valley.

Are you familiar with that area at all?

I don't know Colorado very well as far as geography goes.

Yeah, I'm fairly sure that probably on my way out to Telleride, I went down south and then went west to get out to Telleride.

And San Luis Valley sounds familiar.

It's either that or I had consulted with Wichita, Texas authorities and had driven back from Wichita Falls.

Okay.

came up through New Mexico and then the southern part of southeast part of Colorado.

And so maybe that's also where what I'm thinking of.

My experience with Colorado, honestly, is pretty much confined to Denver, a little bit of skiing.

And then I went to Colorado City, I think, is where I went to.

So the people who live in the Colorado Territory, this area used to be Mexican citizens because it was with Mexico 20 years earlier, then it became New Mexico.

So when the property ownership happened with Mexico, you have all of these people who have, you know, different plots of land.

That's the ownership.

These plots of land go back for generations.

When the area becomes New Mexico, then you know, there's no deeds or paperwork really to back it up.

And it doesn't seem to matter because culturally, New Mexico was really aligned with the people of Mexico.

So there were no problems.

You see where I'm heading here?

There's a lot of discontent when we have a new population come in.

So before this new population comes in, the residents mostly live in what's called plazas.

These are small adobe villages that house a couple of different families.

When this part of the area, the southern part of the area of what is now Colorado, becomes a part of the territory.

So, you know, New Mexico gives it up or it's taken from New Mexico and it's made into this new boundary, this happens in 1860.

So there had been a gold rush, which I probably know.

I always think about the California gold rush, but this is the Colorado gold rush.

Do you know much about that?

Well, I wouldn't say I know a lot about the history of the gold rush, but one of the areas that I go with my Jeep, you know, because I live on the side of Cheyenne Mountain, and within 10 minutes, I can be on the backside of that mountain.

And there is a road, old stage road, that snakes its way through the mountains out to Cripple Creek, which is where there's this huge mine.

And this road used to be railroad.

And I believe it was for the, you know, the metals that were being mined out of that mine.

And some of that, I believe, was gold, or at least there was, you know, one of the

one of the roads out there is a gold camp road.

So I'm sure gold was being mined out just on the other side of the mountain from where I live.

Yeah.

And I, like I said, did not know that there was a big gold rush in Colorado.

There was.

There are an awful lot of white settlers flooding the area.

Now we're going to have problems in that part of the territory.

You have people who were Mexican residents who are now residents of Colorado, and you have white settlers coming in taking away land.

And so there's one of the conflicts.

And, you know, the other thing is then they're saying these people who were in this territory, they have not moved.

It's the boundary that's moved.

When they were in New Mexico, everybody left them alone.

When they became a part of the Colorado territory, it was much more inclined culturally towards the white settlers.

And so this is where they're not getting any protection.

And this is where we're having some issues.

And all of this is, you know, part of this story.

So are you following me?

I'm following you.

Yeah.

You know, I'm, I'm just, you know, I'm starting to key in on, you know, motives for crime.

Now, what is this?

This is, for me, I would call this historical context, right?

But as an investigator, it's not victimology.

What would this be called where you need to know, is this a high crime area?

Or there was a riot here, you know, two years ago and it might be pertinent.

What is there a phrase for that?

Well,

there is a discipline that's environmental criminology.

And this is how the environment and possibly even the socioeconomic aspects within that environment influence criminality.

And so now when you start talking about Colorado Territory, you're having

different

people coming in and the occupants that have been there had a certain lifestyle.

And now that lifestyle is being influenced and there's going to be conflict that is developing.

And some of that conflict is developing over the environment and what's within the environment, what's within the geography in the area.

Now, this is on a much, with what you're talking about, is on a much bigger scale.

Typically, when I'm going into a town or a city and I'm looking at a case, I'm wanting to know about, okay, what is this neighborhood like?

Especially if it was 40 years ago on a cold case What was it like then and so that's where I'm starting to take a look at what the environment was in which the crime occurred

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Okay, so we know the environment.

It's tension-filled.

And there are an awful lot of former Mexican citizens who are saying our land is being taken by white settlers and they're not getting kind of any backup from anybody who's in leadership with the Colorado Territory.

So here's where we begin.

We'll talk about several things and you're going to ask details and I probably am not going to have the details, but you know, we'll see kind of how this unfolds.

Just be very understanding if I can't answer some of your questions.

And no, we're definitely going in a.

particular direction, okay?

Okay.

Could I be any more cryptic?

Do you want me to be more cryptic than that?

That's pretty cryptic, Kate.

I'm so used to it now, Kate.

I just roll with the punches.

But this is going to happen, but it might not happen, but we'll see.

I'll let you know in 30 minutes that it's going to happen.

That would drive me crazy.

Okay.

So this is March 18th, 1863.

And there's a guy named Franklin William Bruce.

And he has a house that is near Canyon City.

And he owns a sawmill.

Okay.

It sounds like Canyon City in the 1860s.

Of course, like much of the territory would have been farmland, and now we have these sawmills.

So Franklin is leaving Canyon City to go to the sawmill that he owns, which is about 12 miles away.

So he gets on a horse-drawn wagon.

We're in that era.

Franklin had moved to Colorado from Wisconsin about three years earlier when a lot of other people came for the gold rush.

He was a prospector and now he's pivoted to farming and selling lumber from his sawmill.

He's in his 50s and he has a wife named named Ruth and four children.

And there are a couple of kids who are old enough to work in the sawmill, I will say, boy, that could be almost any age.

If they could hold a piece of wood, that would have been a kid who could work in a sawmill.

So, child labor laws and everything else, we don't have a great idea of the range of the ages of these kids, but it doesn't come too much into play, okay?

Franklin's log cabin is 12 miles away.

He gets on the horse and wagon and goes.

Sometime later that day, the horses come back to the house pulling an empty wagon.

I know that this is a kind of a question, sort of out of left feel, but how do they know?

I mean, how do they know not to stay?

Are they looking for food?

What is happening?

12 miles?

That's a long way.

Well, I think some of our listeners probably have expertise with, you know, horses.

This is, I think it's always amazing, you know, these types of stories like family dog goes missing and then, you know, they move.

And, you know, years later, the dog all of a sudden shows up at the new location.

How do these animals do that?

You know, so I just, yeah, I think, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting with the horses.

Obviously, it's like, well, where's Franklin Bruce?

You know, what happened?

Why, you know, why aren't these horses tied up at the sawmill?

Sounds like something bad happened to Franklin en route to the sawmill.

But again, the horses coming back,

that's fascinating.

I mean, I don't, I can't explain it.

It's just, it's, it's really cool.

Yeah, it is.

But alarming to Franklin's family, of course.

So the newspapers of the time say that his youngest son decided to go up, I'm assuming on the horse and cart, to go figure out what happened to his dad.

He's referred to in the 1860s, early 1900s in these articles as a young boy,

which to me could be pretty young because they probably would not have said a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old working on a farm in a sawmill is a young boy.

That would have been a young man.

So he could have been an eight-year-old.

I don't know why he went.

I don't know where the older kids were, but he went and he came back and said, dad looks dead.

So he had been shot through the heart.

He was carrying a handgun.

I don't know what kind, but it's still in its holster.

There's conflicting accounts about whether he was found inside the sawmill or if he had been outside the sawmill near where his horse had been grazing.

What's certain is that he had been shot once.

There is an account in several of the newspapers that a cross had been carved into his chest.

I don't know if that falls into a ritualistic or what that means just yet.

Do we know anything more about the cross?

Is this like a Christian cross?

Is this

something different than what I'm envisioning?

Do you have any details on that?

I think it is your standard cross.

Just a cross.

Okay.

Yep.

Which obviously there might be religious connotations related to the cross that the offender is conveying.

There also potentially could just be, you know, how crosses, I'm thinking about Arlington National Cemetery, you know, how crosses are used to basically mark the location of the deceased.

And was that just, you know, where the offender is coming up and is just, you know, in essence, I've killed this guy and here he is.

So right now, I couldn't really draw any conclusions as to what the offender is thinking about the significance of the cross.

However, the offender is sending a message.

Franklin Bruce is dead.

He's not doing this to send a message to Franklin Bruce.

He's sending a message to somebody who's going to either find the body or to some other entity, you know, group of people, you know, in which now it's like, you know, what's going on with Franklin Bruce?

You know, is this,

is he being specifically targeted or is this more of he just happened to be a victim of opportunity and the offender or offenders killed him and it's like you send anybody else down this direction, you're going to, you know, suffer the same fate or something to that, that effect.

Yeah.

And I had wondered if it was to benefit Franklin somehow.

I don't know what that would mean, putting a cross on him that makes him go to heaven.

Like maybe like a like, yeah, a spiritual thing, just...

Something.

I mean, that seems not very kind, but I mean, of course, they couldn't really tell, or I don't have notes that say whether this happened before or after he was shot.

I imagine after, of course.

I wouldn't argue against that thought.

You know, this is where the offender may be killing Franklin in this world in order to deal with whatever's going on in this world aspect, but is conscious of Franklin's spirit and wants to ensure that the spirit is moving on in whatever the religious philosophy the offender had.

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One of the things that I want to, I know this is going to be disconcerting, but we have to move on from this story because this will be a series of things.

And so this is not something where we need to examine Franklin's inner circle, I promise.

So this will be, we've got to go next to another group of people.

Is that okay?

Or does that make you fairly uncomfortable?

Again,

I'll just roll with it, Kate.

Sorry.

I wish everybody said that to me.

Okay, Kate, we'll do what you say, but let's just, we'll roll with it.

The next night, so March 19th, 1863, this is near Colorado City, Colorado.

There are a couple of men who are building a new sawmill, and there's a, you know, there's a little cabin nearby that they're sleeping in, you know, so that they can get the sawmill done.

They notice that the cabin is dark.

So this is just a temporary home for them until they're done.

The reason they're alarmed that it's dark is because

one of the cabin mates, one of the workers, who's a guy named Henry Harkins, is supposed to be making them dinner.

And every night when it's gotten dark and two of the men are still working on the sawmill, they could see through the cracks of the logs, the lamplight.

And so this night, there's no lights through the cracks of the logs.

So I guess they're facing a non-window.

I mean, they might not have a window at all in here, but isn't it?

I thought that was really interesting.

I mean, we've talked about laundry hanging up, you know, as a sign that, oh, this woman would never have done this because it rained last night.

All of these signals of alarm.

And these guys were alarmed because the light was out when Henry was supposed to be cooking dinner for everyone.

Yeah.

So now they must go explore this, right?

What's, you know, where's Henry?

What's up with Henry?

Because they're hungry.

They want their food, right?

They're hungry and irritated.

Maybe he fell asleep.

As they approach the darkened cabin, they realize that Henry has been attacked.

It's not certain whether he's inside or outside the cabin, but what we do know is that he's been shot in the forehead.

The men think with a revolver, but I don't know whether they retrieved a bullet or not.

And then they said that he was also attacked with an axe.

So there's a pertinent piece of information, and then there's what the men say Henry's body was in a state of the pertinent part of information is that this is a group of men who came with Franklin and his family to be prospectors.

So they knew each other, but they're quite a bit apart.

They live kind of in the same little region, but they are miles and miles and miles apart where they might not ever see each other.

Right.

No, I had to look up where Colorado City is because here in Colorado Springs, there's old Colorado City.

And I was like, is this, you know, in the springs?

But I believe where you're talking about, this is, it looks like it's about 30, 30 miles south of Pueblo, which is about, again, about 30 miles south of Colorado Springs.

And then I can see it's really south of Canyon City by about a good 30 miles, maybe.

So I could, you know, back in the day, that would be a pretty significant distance to have to cover for these groups that know each other to see each other.

Right, right.

And I mean, there's horseback and carts and everything, but you're right.

Okay, let me tell you about Henry and what happens.

I told you that he had been shot through the forehead.

So Franklin had been shot through the heart.

There is a large gash in Henry's head from an axe, they presume.

From his, this is graphic, y'all.

I mean, if you know you're squeamish at all, it's a gash that goes from his forehead to his mouth.

There are two wounds on his chest.

They are each four inches long and about three inches apart on the left side of his chest.

It looks like he's been hit on the sides of his head with the blunt side of an axe.

And the men find two pieces of skull and some of Henry's brain on top of his head.

And the cabin has been ransacked.

I don't see where Franklin had been robbed, but this is major damage.

I don't know how close these guys are, close enough to see light peeking through, you know, logs.

So I don't know how this happened without these men knowing it.

My initial questions, which you probably can't answer, was there any evidence of distance that the firearm was from this shooting?

Is this something that the offender's up close, you know, and then so we would see firearms discharge evidence on Henry's forehead?

Yeah.

Or was this from a distance?

And in essence, you know, the offender was able to incapacitate and likely kill Henry, but then did he use the axe on Henry afterwards?

Or was there a physical altercation prior to the shooting in which an axe was used?

And then in essence, Henry was finished off with a gunshot.

I don't know the answer to that.

I am so confused about how that could happen.

A gunshot, axe, it sounds like probably Henry was, maybe he was fighting back.

I'm not really sure versus Franklin, who it sounds like just took one, it was one shot through his heart and that was it.

These men are close enough to be able to see light coming through the cabin.

And then I was thinking, How is that possible?

Maybe these guys are involved.

But with saws and everything else that they're doing, maybe a gunshot was something that was covered up.

I don't know.

But I don't know if he was axed first and then shot or the other way around.

And I didn't read anything about is it stippling?

Is that what it would be?

Any kind of burns or anything like if it was close contact?

Right.

You know, the stippling of the gunpowder from the discharge.

You know, and that we are talking in the 1860s, so probably a black powder weapon i don't think they had the smokeless powder you know single shot type of handgun is what i'm envisioning my perspective in terms of asking some of these questions

am i dealing with everything happening to henry within the cabin or do i have an offender shooting henry and the offender is actually outside the cabin we know the use of the axe on henry is is occurring when the two are the the the offender and the victim are close together

are there any symbols carved into Henry?

Not that I know of, but the way that they are describing those marks, and I can read them to you again, it might have been a cross, and they just misread them.

They said that there are two wounds on his chest.

They are four inches long and about three inches apart on the left side of his left side of his chest.

But I don't see whether what direction they're in or if they could have been a cross.

I think if it was a clear cross, it would have shown up in the newspaper articles.

I don't know, but something is in it.

Somebody's carving stuff in these people's chests.

Are these two, these sound like possibly two blows from maybe the sharp edge of the axe that are four inches apart?

They're not crossing over like a cross.

Yep.

You know, and this, is this just part of an offender, you know, during maybe combat with the victim?

Or is this, you know, after the victim has been shot, he's down.

And now either it's the same, you know, the shooter is the one who's picking up an axe and deciding to use an axe for whatever reason.

You know, but it's interesting.

You know, does two weapons being used suggest that two offenders were possibly present?

Let me show you something that I think you'll think is interesting.

I didn't think I was going to mention this.

The men who responded to Franklin, the first victim, the men said that they thought there was

a certain kind of gun that had been used.

I just thought, it's a revolver, and it doesn't really particularly come into play.

But now that you're talking about single shot, let me show you what they thought it was.

Yeah, so this, see how it says this warning, black powder firearms cannot be shipped, et cetera, et cetera.

So this sounds like

how modern guns have ammunition in which there's a cartridge case that has the gunpowder in it and a primer that the firing pin strikes.

And then, of course, the round, the bullet, is seated in this cartridge case.

So that's where you have a single round of ammunition.

And so it's all contained together.

Whereas with black powder rifles, black powder revolvers, what you're now seeing, and I am no expert on this at all,

because we didn't deal with black powder guns and modern crime.

But the little bit of exposure I've had with it, what I'm envisioning is that the shooter has to load each chamber in the revolver with the black powder with the round you know and kind of tamp it down uh so it's a it's it's a very slow process to reload a gun like this but this

as opposed to a single shot handgun the revolver once he's taken the time to put this black powder ammunition into the revolver he could shoot however many shots this revolver would hold you know typically modern revolvers are usually six, but they can vary.

So once he's loaded it, he's now got the capability to be able to shoot multiple times with that old black powder revolver.

When we were talking about single shot, I was reminded of a show that I used to watch all the time.

I'm slightly obsessed with Sleepy Hollow.

I worked at a university in Sleepy Hollow in New York, in North Terrytown, and I would take the train up there and everything.

And it was part of Fordham University, and I taught there.

And so I'm a huge Washington Irving fan.

And this TV show came out.

about Ichabod Crane, you know, the star of Sleepy Hollow.

And he is sort of comes back to life and he's very handsome and he's interacting with the modern police and it's very confusing.

He has kind of a woman who is working with him trying to solve cases, but he feels like it's the 1700s.

And so there's a scene when they're sort of fighting the headless horseman and she runs ahead and she says, unload your gun.

And he goes, okay.

And there's one shot.

And she said, I thought you unloaded your gun.

And he said, I did.

And so I always think about that, you know, when

I do think about like, how many bullets do we have to work with here?

So anyway, that was a long aside to say that I still wonder why they thought it was the specific one, Colt Navy revolver.

But I mean, maybe it was a bullet or something.

I don't know.

But the people who responded to Franklin's body said, this is what it looks like to us.

Okay, so you're saying that in Franklin's case, they think it was this 44 black powder revolver.

They just called it the Colt Navy revolver.

And that's what I looked up.

And all of these popped up, and they look exactly the same.

If it was a handgun like this, and these handguns were not tremendously accurate.

In fact, I think this is possibly,

it's not a rifled barrel.

You know, the rifling in the barrel puts puts a twist on the projectile that gives it stability.

I'm guessing this is not a rifled barrel based on this era.

And again, I am no expert, but now in essence, you've got a round coming out of this very inaccurate weapon and striking Franklin in the heart.

So I'm surmising that the shooter was reasonably close to Franklin versus Franklin is driving the horses and he's on the stagecoach and he gets sniped from a distance from a rifle.

So it almost sounds like Franklin and the shooter probably were in relatively close proximity before Franklin was shot.

That's my guess based off of this type of weapon.

And I wondered about the damage that was done to his forehead, gashes.

I mean, this sounds like a total mess of a scene.

So, right, probably they still would have seen the black on him, on his forehead, but still it's such a mess, you know.

Yes.

So with Henry, if he's being hit with the blunt end of an axe, you know, this is a very devastating weapon.

It's in essence, you know, that's like being hit in the head with a sledgehammer.

And so the skull is going to be compromised.

And yes, you know, you talked about the description of blood and brain matter being present outside of his skull.

Absolutely.

Now, that could also be a result of the gunshot.

So it just depends on what they're seeing and what the sequence of Henry's injuries were.

Okay.

Well, let's move forward.

So now we're talking about tracking, and I know very little about tracking.

But what happens is there's a sheriff.

So I always like to figure out who law enforcement is.

What are we calling them?

The local sheriff and the deputy are tracking Henry's attackers.

It sounds like using the horse tracks.

And they follow this trail.

This doesn't even seem possible, Paul, from Colorado City to the Ute Pass, which is about 90 miles to the north.

And then Canyon City, where the first murder took place, is kind of in between these points.

So 90 miles, how do you, how would they, I know you probably don't know this, but how do you, how would you even differentiate which horseprints or which horse hoofs we're going with here?

I don't, I'm not a tracker.

So now we have to call another expert.

So we need,

okay, listeners and watchers, we need a gun expert and we need a tracker.

Well, but I think, you know, I've followed, you know, shoe impressions, you know, which,

let's say an offender running away from a scene and

he steps in a garden bed.

And so now you have shoe impressions.

And then he's running over grass.

And then you see him cross over an area where there's dirt.

And you see the same tread pattern.

You know, so I've done that type of thing.

That's just typical CSI style, you know, tracking, if you will.

To track this distance with something that is so nondescript as horse shoes, it almost tells me that whatever path that they're following is not a well-traveled path.

And they're probably taking a look at the what they're interpreting as being the fresh impressions that they can see.

And then so they're connecting the dots because I can guarantee over 90 miles, there's probably long lengths of this trail in which they don't have anything that they can see.

And they just kind of keep on the same direction that the previous

track showed.

And all of a sudden they're picking up the track again.

So that's my guess.

It's just that how accurate is it?

Could they have been misled?

Well, let's continue on.

Now we are about 13 days after Franklin, 12 days after Henry.

This is March 31st.

And now we're in an area called Wilkerson Pass.

This is between Colorado City and another gold camp, which is about 50 miles away.

And this is a man working at a way station.

This is a rest stop, kind of like a trucker rest stop in a way.

Okay.

So people stop for rest and they get supplies.

There is a guy named John Adelman who runs a way station.

And this is, again, these places are in the middle of nowhere, literally in the middle of nowhere in Wilkerson Pass.

And there's a mail carrier who stops at this, you know, way station.

When he arrives to Adelman's way station, the mail carrier finds the house to be disordered is what he says.

Quickly, he rides away.

It looks like it's been trashed.

He doesn't find anything.

He just sees that maybe they've been robbed.

He finds the sheriff and the deputy who have been tracking Henry and Franklin's attackers.

They're connecting these because it doesn't sound like these kind of attacks are common.

And it's at two sawmills, Franklin's sawmill and Henry with the cabin.

So you've got the sheriff and the deputy covering God knows how many miles, at least 90.

And this mail carrier, gosh, what a hard job that must have been in the Colorado Territory being a mail carrier.

This mail carrier tracks them down and he says, this way station is normally very orderly.

I don't know where John is.

It's been trashed.

Can you, you know, come and help?

They get to Adelmans and they find his body on the property, not inside the way station.

So some reports say that he had been shot through the head.

Others say that he was shot twice through the heart.

And we don't know about the type of gun.

And we don't have a clear connection to the other two men.

So to summarize, we've got three victims, all men, connected to, you know, this part of the territory, not tremendously far apart.

And two victims know each other, mostly just in passing.

They kind of came in at the same time.

It looks like there's been a robbery in this one, too.

So these are happening close.

I mean, this is the 18th of March, the 19th of March, and then the 31st of March.

And before you ask, I do not see that he has been hit with an axe, John.

And I do not see that there has been anything carved in his chest.

You know, even though, you know, Franklin and Henry had some sort of connection to each other,

whereas

Adelman, there's no known connection to the two previous victims.

So I'm wondering at this point, if the, you know, Henry and Franklin becoming victims, if even though they knew each other, that that relationship was just coincidental, they're not being targeted because they knew each other.

So if I'm right about that, so now you have

with Henry and John Adelman, you now have this, what sounds like the tossing of the inside of the places where, you know, they had control over.

Henry's killed inside this cabin, whereas Adelman's body is outside.

But the offender took the time to go inside and toss the place.

Part of the assessment is, well, are they looking for something?

You know, what are they looking for?

Are they looking for something that has monetary value?

Are they looking for land deeds?

You know, so that's if I'm assessing this crime scene, I'm want to know, okay, is there something about the locations within these structures that the offender seems to be focused in on?

And what would would normally be kept at these locations?

Is there overlap between these two crime scenes, which indicates these offenders are going around looking for something specific?

Or are they just, I mean, sometimes, you know, I've processed many burglaries early on in my career, and you just have, you know, some of these guys are very focused on what they're going after and target certain areas within a house.

Other guys will just start throwing things everywhere, just hoping to run across something.

You know, so that's what I'm trying to discern here.

Am I dealing with just somebody who's looking for something random, not knowing what's in the structure?

Or is this a targeted type of ransacking within these structures?

Yeah.

And I don't have an impression that this was anything but just tossing and trying to grab anything of value.

I do know that this part of Colorado, the Colorado territory, is remote, all of it.

But there are semblances of cities, right?

I mean, we talked about the plazas where all of these adobe houses are set up and everything.

But where the killer is hitting are these remote spots and spots that are not particularly well traveled.

I mean, I know this is a way station, but John might not have seen people for days and days and days, depending on how many people are going through this area.

So you've got Franklin who is by himself.

You've got John at the way station who is by himself.

But then you have Henry, who has two or three people not far from him at all there.

And so I wonder what the motive is if it's just simply killing people.

That just seems risky to me because these are the people at the middle murder, Henry's murder, these were all relatively young men who could have overpowered whomever ends up being the one who did this.

Aaron Ross Powell, you

saying that there's no information to indicate that the ransacking that's being done has any targeted item that the offender is looking for.

And so if the offender is just going into these structures and is taking whatever he or they run across for financial value, you know, that suggests to me that this is possibly somebody that does not have, let's say, a lot of monetary means, you know, and is having to subsist off of whatever he finds during the ransacking.

The homicides, you know, I think right now it's kind of hard to say.

You know, the cross being put into Franklin, you know, if that was to send a message to others, then that would seem to think that there's a mission that this offender is on.

But if, like your thought, if this was just the offender for religious purposes, you know, carving the cross into Franklin's body, you know, then now, in essence, you may be dealing with somebody who is just marauding around the countryside, you know, trying to find things of monetary value to be able to continue to subsist and is willing to kill.

Right now, I can't say that there's anything that suggests there's like a predatory aspect, but it could be, you know,

that's where if we have more victims, then maybe it becomes more apparent that you are dealing with offender that is...

purposely going out to trying to find victims because he wants to kill.

He gets some sort of satisfaction.

It may be retaliation against perceived wrongs that these people do.

And if you have somebody that's been displaced because of the white settlers, now you could see where there could be what I would consider an anger retaliation type of offender, where he's now angry based on his lifestyle being impacted.

And even though these aren't the people that who necessarily displaced him from an in-person type of aspect, they're representative of somebody of a group, the white settlers that are impacting his life.

And now he's, he, you know, he's taking it out on

these random white settlers.

Okay.

Well, unfortunately, we do have more victims to talk about.

I had a feeling it was going that way.

Yeah.

The sheriff and the deputy who find John's body ride back down south to Canyon City to report this additional murder.

So now they're up to three.

But it looks like the killer or killers went north because there are more bodies.

So this is near Fairplay.

We were 25 miles from Colorado City, so this is far north.

This is a lot.

I mean, we're not talking about geographic profiling at this point.

They're going at least 90 miles, maybe hundreds of miles on horseback, likely.

Yeah.

Well, just, you know, taking a car to go from Colorado Springs up to Breckenridge along roughly this route, probably where Fairplay is located at.

That's going to be about a two-hour drive.

You know, and it's, I mean, it's freeway speeds, but it's, you know, these are windy roads and stuff through the,

you know, sometimes it's, it's mountainous, sometimes it's open plains.

So on horseback, you know, this is a pretty significant distance to go, let's say, from the Canyon City area all the way up to Fairplay.

What does that tell you about the offender or offenders?

They're obviously comfortable on horseback and going long distances.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, I would say, you know, like my experience, of course, is dealing with offenders that are utilizing modern transportation to move around.

And, you know, some of this is due to the offender's work, let's say truckers.

Other times, offenders, possibly Golden State Killer D'Angelo, purposely moved around just to commit crimes and try to prevent law enforcement from linking crimes together.

So, you know, there may be an aspect to either one of those scenarios with this offender who's purposely traveling around.

Maybe it's work-related.

Maybe it is purposefully just trying to move around and kind of stay hidden from sight, if you will, by moving to such

disparate locations to commit crimes.

Right now, I would just say it seems like there's no question that the offender is comfortable moving around, as you mentioned.

It's just why is he moving around?

And right now, there's not enough information to try to discern that.

And from a geographic profile standpoint, I think what I would be looking at is these paths that the offender is having to take to go from one location to another.

Are they what we would consider primary arterial

roads, if you will?

And is the offender just following a known path and is offending along a certain route as he's proceeding north?

Or

are there anchor points for the offender?

Does he have a connection to these locations?

Maybe for work, maybe because he's lived there or he's got family there.

And while he's visiting

that particular location, he's deciding to go out and offend because he needs more money.

Well, let's find out.

We are now on the road to Denver.

We are, as I said, Fair Play, Colorado, about 50 miles north of where all this other stuff had been happening.

And this is a campground.

So people find two bodies, both men.

One is a 23-year-old named Jacob Binkley.

The other is a 29-year-old named Abram Shoup.

Shoup becomes important because his brother is a prominent lieutenant and he will ultimately go on to be the first governor of the state of Idaho and one of its first senators.

And so this happened with the Bloody Benders, which we've never talked about.

That story I've interviewed a lot of people people about, you know, which was a family, I think, in Kansas, who murdered a lot of people as they would come by and try to stay at their inn.

They were getting away with it until there is a person who they murder who's related to a very prominent person.

And that all hell breaks loose when that happens.

So you've got these two men.

So you've got Jacob and Abram.

The bodies are found by an innkeeper who saw their oxen grazing unaccompanied and recognized them because the men had stayed with him him the previous trips.

And so, you know, they had been regulars at this inn.

The weather had been nice the previous night.

So it looks like instead of staying at the inn, these guys decided to go ahead and camp.

And they are both found at their campground, which is right by a river.

Jacob had been shot once through the back with the bullet becoming lodged at the front of the chest.

and is found lying face down on the riverbank right at that campsite.

They don't know know what kind of gun is used.

Doesn't sound like a shotgun.

Does that sound like a revolver?

Or, I mean, I guess we don't, can a rifle do that?

I guess.

Right now, there's no information to indicate

what type of weapon was used.

Now, the

bullet, the projectile, you know, penetrated through the victim's body from the back and lodged at the chest.

Now, there is a phenomenon that happens where you can have a bullet, you know, because as bullets pass through bodies, they lose energy.

And sometimes you can have something as simple as a t-shirt.

When the bullet comes out and exits out of the body, the fabric of the t-shirt is strong enough to just kind of contain the bullet and keep the bullet sort of at the exit wound.

And this is what we called a shored exit.

Now, with him being face down on the riverbank, you know, one of the questions that I have is, was he shot upright and he collapsed?

Or did the offender, after this guy is made to lay prone, you came up and shot him in the back?

And now you got the ground, in essence, preventing the bullet from exiting out the chest.

And it's also possible that the bullet just lost enough energy as it passed through the upper torso of this victim and never even had the energy to be able to exit out in the first place.

And that would tend to suggest that that's a less powerful weapon.

So it all depends.

Right now, I can't draw any conclusions as to what kind of weapon was used.

My guess would be that he was standing up.

And the only reason why is the way that the other murderer plays out, which is Abram Shoup.

He's found at the bottom of a gulch about 400 yards away.

He had been stabbed three times in the chest, and his head had been mutilated.

I don't know the specifics, not with a cross, I'm pretty sure carved into it, but it had been mutilated.

It appears that he ran before collapsing at the bottom of the gulch, and they had both been robbed.

So I don't know if this was a everybody lay down and then they're shot, but Abram's the first one to not be shot, I think.

He was stabbed.

So what does this sound like?

And definitely think about the number of offenders at this point.

What does this all sound like to you so far?

Well, obviously, with Abram being stabbed three times in the chest,

that's indicating that the offender is very close.

I mean, you are dealing with face-to-face interactions between the offender and

Abram.

The fact that he's able to run before collapsing,

which is something that you see with stabbings.

Even if it's a fatal stab wound that's inflicted, it takes time for

the bleeding to cause the person to, in essence, lose consciousness, right?

And so sometimes you do see stabbing victims, they've received fatal stab wounds, but then they're able to run a distance and then they collapse a distance further down.

The head being mutilated, I'm just kind of wondering, you know, and this is where sequencing would come in.

It's just, is this just possibly in some ways

the

offender is trying to stab the victim, and now you have incisive injuries and stab wounds to Abram's head as he's warding off the knife attack.

And then, of course, there's some stabs to the chest, and Abram is able to get away before he collapses.

So, I'm not, you know, I don't know what to make about the head mutilation.

If the offender is purposely coming up and trying to do something like that, then that sounds like there's a personal aspect to that, you know, between the offender and Abram.

Again, you have the use of two different weapons.

You have

Jacob being shot and Abram being stabbed, and they were both robbed.

How do you control two men?

With the gun, absolutely.

You know, give me your money.

And then you get into basically

close quarters with Abram with a knife and now you have Jacob you know running away and you're able you know once you've you know stabbed uh Abram now you pull out your gun and and you shoot uh Jacob in the back I mean that's a possibility um or you control these two men with two offenders yeah one's armed with a knife and one's armed with with a gun okay I forgot to tell you that these two murders happened 50 miles away from the other ones about eight days after the last ones, after John at the way station.

So these are happening to me so quickly, especially with the distances that the offender is traveling.

So it's clear they've been able to get away with this so far.

Right.

You know, and the interesting thing about this is obviously you have a series, it appears, you know, even though back in the day, they don't have DNA to say it's the same person, but there's enough MO characteristics that you say, yeah, you have somebody that's going around killing men and robbing them.

You know, it's financially motivated.

So by definition, for some people, you could say this is a serial killer.

You know, now this is a very different type of psychology than the fantasy motivated killer at this point in time based on what you've told me.

Now, there may be aspects where this is an offender that really gets off on killing men, but it appears that he's doing this for financial purposes at this point in time.

And I'm not convinced it's a single offender at this stage.

So it's fascinating from that perspective.

And so I'm really curious to see what other cases

are part of this series.

And ultimately, who is the person responsible?

Well, about three weeks later, we have another murder, but we have a survivor also.

Oh, we have a witness.

We will talk about all of that next week because I did not know until about five minutes ago that this would need to be

harder because I just told Alexis, I didn't know you were going to like this case so much.

And that's great.

I would rather, you know, have to expand it.

But we, we have a lot, lot, lot, lot more to talk about.

Nope.

You know, and right now, this is very akin to where you have a series of robberies, you know, maybe not necessarily resulting in homicide, but you do have one offender that's going around around and robbing people for financial purposes.

And so I would say it's very similar to a modern version of this type of crime.

Well, we will talk about this type of crime next week.

All right.

I'm looking forward to it again.

This has been an Exactly Right Production.

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com/slash buried bones sources.

Our senior producer is Alexis Emerosi.

Research by Allison Trouble and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel.

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer.

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Deco the Criminal Mind, is available now.

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