Trouble at the 7-11 Ranch

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Speaker 5 Tonight on Dapeline.

Speaker 6 Jake had disappeared. They didn't know what had happened to him.
Friends described him as someone who was very disciplined, who cared about his martial arts.

Speaker 7 His dad stated that he's been known in the past to kick off.

Speaker 8 When was the last time you heard from him?

Speaker 9 Way back in May?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 10 This needs to be reported to the police.

Speaker 11 Everybody's kept it a big dark secret.

Speaker 3 It was always pretty tense at the ranch.

Speaker 12 If the wrong thing was said or was done, there was fire in her eyes.

Speaker 6 We're all scratching our heads asking why, how, but still no arrests.

Speaker 2 The river that runs through all of this is screened with money.

Speaker 5 Very much so.

Speaker 13 A twisted trail of betrayal and greed. Where would it lead?

Speaker 12 I just kind of froze and I said, Is that what I think it is? She just looked at me and said,

Speaker 12 You know, you can't ever leave now, right?

Speaker 5 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 13 Here's Josh Mankiewicz with Trouble at the 7-Eleven Ranch.

Speaker 2 Home on the range.

Speaker 2 Sometimes here in Western Colorado, it's so quiet that all you can hear is the wind.

Speaker 6 Beautiful hay meadows that wave in the breeze, and it's just a lovely part of the valley.

Speaker 2 It is beautiful, no doubt. At the the same time, that lovely, lonely valley can be an unforgiving place to live.
It can drive some people to extremes.

Speaker 2 No one understood that better than rancher Jake Millison.

Speaker 3 He would always spend the majority of daylight out at the ranch just working.

Speaker 2 And a rancher's work is never done. There's always a fence somewhere that needs mending.
Jake Millison seemed cut out for that life.

Speaker 2 At least until one day at age 29, Jake apparently gave up that life and disappeared. Nobody ever got a call.
No one ever got a text. No one got a Facebook message.

Speaker 14 Nothing. Nothing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he evaporated. No one heard from him for two years.

Speaker 2 It was weird. The ranch had been Jake's life for most of his life.

Speaker 2 The spread was the 7-Eleven. hundreds of acres outside the town of Gunnison, under a canopy of Colorado sky.

Speaker 2 Jake lived there with his older sister Stephanie ever since they were kids. Jake's parents had divorced, and his mom, Deb Rudebaugh, found another husband, a guy who owned the 7-Eleven.

Speaker 2 They homeschooled Jake so he could help out more on the ranch. I mean, he was out there all day, every day, almost every day, you know.

Speaker 2 Another Jake, Jake Pettigrew, and Rebecca Diana used to help out at the 7-Eleven. What was the vibe at the ranch?

Speaker 2 It's really quiet.

Speaker 14 You know, maybe a couple times a year they would have like a

Speaker 14 family reunion, or hunters would come up and stay in the cabin.

Speaker 2 By 2003, Jake's sister, Stephanie, had moved out, looking for a life beyond the sprawl of the 7-Eleven.

Speaker 2 What about Jake and his sister? I know that he loved his sister, but

Speaker 14 he kind of

Speaker 2 was upset that she married who she married. That would be David Jackson.

Speaker 14 So Jake didn't like Dave so much because he was a carney and he did the paintball booth in Gunnison when a carnival came through.

Speaker 2 And Jake thought, what, my sister can do better than a guy who works the paintball booth? Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They married anyway and lived in town, only coming out to the ranch occasionally. Jake's pal Nate Lopez says Jake had an adventurous streak.

Speaker 3 He was kind of a recluse, but he was always willing to go explore the mountains and just to try anything new with his friends.

Speaker 2 Randy Martinez was another member of Jake's posse.

Speaker 2 He was always very quiet.

Speaker 2 Jake's stepfather died in 2009 and the workload got heavier. Now it was 23-year-old Jake and his mom running the ranch.
Except for that time he took off to Alaska to make money on a fishing boat.

Speaker 2 And even that was really about the ranch.

Speaker 3 He was out on the ship for I think three months and he came back with a with a good chunk of money and he he put all that into the to the ranch to kind of save it from going under.

Speaker 2 The only break Jake ever got was time with his friends, a kind of second family.

Speaker 3 We were all best friends so we would all hang out. We would kind of know everything we were doing and

Speaker 12 always do it together.

Speaker 2 That meant shooting pool at some local hangouts and drinking beer. Except for Jake, who was always happy to be the designated driver.

Speaker 3 Jake would always go up to the bar and order a Coke. Even though he was just a couple years older than us, he always acted like an old man.

Speaker 3 He was always the responsible one trying to do the smart thing in tricky situations.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 15 I met Jake in the winter, December of 2012 at the Gunnison Jiu-Jitsu Gym.

Speaker 2 That was the other important part of Jake's life and another group of friends, martial arts, particularly Jiu-Jitsu. Derek Chautorowski was one of his sparring partners.
And Jake was good at it.

Speaker 15 Jake was good.

Speaker 15 Jake was the most consistent student that was ever in that gym. He was there every night, four nights a week.

Speaker 2 Jake usually announced his presence on his beloved motorcycle, a 1976 Harley-Davidson sportster. He'd had it since high school.

Speaker 15 I can picture him coming on it right now.

Speaker 2 He was proud of it.

Speaker 15 Oh yeah, he wore a red bandana when he drove it, his

Speaker 15 leather jacket.

Speaker 2 In mid-May 2015, they were practicing for an upcoming tournament in Denver.

Speaker 15 He landed on his ankle and he twisted it. And I believe he had to pull out of the tournament because he couldn't walk.

Speaker 2 Then came Friday night, May 15th. Stuck at home, Jake called his pal Randy about going to a movie up in Crested Butte.

Speaker 2 After the movie, they hit a couple of bars, played some pool, and parted ways around midnight. There aren't a million things to do in Gunnison, and this all seemed routine.
It turned out not to be.

Speaker 16 The next morning, I woke up.

Speaker 16 We kind of planned on doing something. I texted him, see what was up, and never got a reply, which is really weird because I pretty much talked to him every day.

Speaker 2 The next week, Jake's jiu-jitsu pals were back from that tournament and back on the mats. No Jake.
They figured he was still nursing his ankle. And then after a few days, they started to wonder.

Speaker 15 A week goes by, and we're like, guys, where's Jake?

Speaker 2 Unusual for him not to come in.

Speaker 15 Also unusual for him not to tell one of us that he was going to be gone.

Speaker 2 Gone because he he was fed up with that hard life on the ranch, or was there a side of Jake that even his best friends didn't know about

Speaker 17 coming up?

Speaker 2 He meets some girl and they decide to go to Las Vegas. He has some fight with his family or somebody and decides to just hit the road and hell with it.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's a lot of things that might have explained his absence that aren't criminal.

Speaker 12 Absolutely.

Speaker 10 And that's why I didn't want to jump to any conclusions.

Speaker 5 But Jake's mother had her own idea about what might have happened to her son.

Speaker 8 I'm not supposed to know, but I do know because everybody's kept it a big dark secret.

Speaker 2 It was May 2015. 10 days had passed, and there was still no sign of Jake Millison Millison at the Jiu-Jitsu Gym or anywhere else in Gunnison, Colorado.

Speaker 2 Jared Hooks, one of Jake's gym buddies, decided to do something.

Speaker 10 This needs to be reported to the police. And so I stepped up and said, you know what, I'll do it.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 you're not just any friend.

Speaker 10 No, I'm a sergeant with the town of Mount Christabutte.

Speaker 10 And so I thought, you know, I had a little bit of credibility. And so if I had red flags, you know, it would translate also to the deputy there.

Speaker 2 That deputy was Gunnison County Undersheriff Mark Michael. His first order of business, call Jake's mother, Deb Rudabaugh.

Speaker 7 Deb told us that he left with a friend and was going to the Reno, Nevada area.

Speaker 2 Investigators also phoned Jake's father.

Speaker 7 His dad, Ray, stated that he's been known in the past to take off abruptly and do things like that fishing job in Alaska and a few camping trips.

Speaker 2 At 29, Jake had no obligation to tell anyone where he was going, and it didn't mean something bad had happened. When somebody doesn't show up, there's a lot of ground to cover.
Right.

Speaker 2 He meets some girl and they decide to go to Las Vegas. He has some fight with his family or somebody and decides to just hit the road and the hell with it.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's a lot of things that might have explained his absence that aren't criminal.

Speaker 12 Absolutely.

Speaker 10 And that's why I didn't want to jump to any conclusions.

Speaker 2 There was something Jake's pal, Randy Martinez, noticed when he'd gone to the ranch with a buddy looking for Jake, and they ran into Jake's closest friend.

Speaker 16 His dog, Elmo, which is a big black, curly-haired dog, really cool dog. And he runs out and meets us and it's like, oh, that's really weird.
Elmo's here, so Jake should be here.

Speaker 16 And so then we start talking to more people and we literally talked to everybody we knew that he knew, we talked to, and everybody that we knew that he knew

Speaker 16 hadn't heard anything, hadn't been told any stories about any trips, anything. So it was really weird.

Speaker 2 In early June, Under Sheriff Michael paid his own visit to the 7-Eleven and heard that Jake had returned. His mom said Jake had been gone for a little while, but then came back to pick up supplies.

Speaker 2 She said Jake was with a friend, someone she didn't know.

Speaker 7 Deb was telling us that it was late at night,

Speaker 7 took a bunch of camping gear and loaded this up in a dark-colored pickup truck and took off. There wasn't any room for the dog.

Speaker 2 None of it made sense. What could Jake be up to? And who takes a trip without his cell phone?

Speaker 7 She told us the phone fell in an irrigation ditch and she showed us the phone. It was

Speaker 7 in a bag of ice.

Speaker 2 That could definitely explain why Jake wasn't answering any calls or texts. Deb said Jake told her he was off to Nevada to study martial arts.

Speaker 7 So really didn't have anything to go with at that point.

Speaker 2 By August, Jake had been gone almost three months. And by then it seemed even his mom was becoming concerned.
She filed a missing person report.

Speaker 2 That wasn't enough for Jake's friends. They wanted to get his story out, so they contacted Chris Rourke, a reporter for the Gunnison Country Times.
And she called Jake's mom.

Speaker 8 Hey, Deb, thanks for calling me back.

Speaker 18 No problem.

Speaker 2 What's Deb like?

Speaker 2 A

Speaker 6 small, wiry woman, very talkative. She liked to talk.

Speaker 8 I know he originally was going to go on his motorcycle, but decided to go with somebody.

Speaker 2 While the reporter's recorder ran, Deb told her the same thing she'd told the sheriff's deputy.

Speaker 6 Jake had run off and Jake took took off in a truck with a friend, and the friend didn't want the dog along.

Speaker 8 And he took enough stuff for two people.

Speaker 6 She started out a little reticent, and then

Speaker 6 the details started coming.

Speaker 8 He also wiped out my groceries.

Speaker 2 Oh, really?

Speaker 8 Huh? And, you know, he took all the Chef Boyard, spaghetti and meatball thing, or raviolis or whatever.

Speaker 8 When is the last time you heard from him?

Speaker 8 I'd have to look it up up on a calendar.

Speaker 8 It was about the 20th.

Speaker 8 Of September? No. No.

Speaker 8 Way back in. May?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Deb also told Rourke something the reporter had never heard before. Jake had a dark side, a serious drug problem.

Speaker 8 I'm not supposed to know, but I do know, because everybody's kept it a big dark secret, that my son has been doing drugs.

Speaker 2 Because of that, Deb said there was tension between mother and son.

Speaker 8 Have you two been typically close? No. Once he started doing the mixed martial arts and the drugs and stuff, we had one argument and fight after another.

Speaker 2 So maybe that's why Jake left. He was just sick of fighting with his mom all the time.

Speaker 8 And I knew he was going to be gone a while. He's been gone too long, and so I have declared him a missing person.
So it's possible he left of his own volition and then...

Speaker 8 Oh, he did, and then ended up getting into some kind of trouble. Right.

Speaker 2 A picture of a different Jake was starting to emerge.

Speaker 6 And I think it lends itself to the two sides. that were painted of who Jake was.
This reckless person that was irresponsible and had run off.

Speaker 6 And his friends described him as someone who was very disciplined, who cared about his martial arts, cared about his friends very much. So you had to figure out who is Jake Millison really.

Speaker 2 With that in mind, Chris filed her story.

Speaker 2 So you make sort of reference to the two Jakes. Right.
And what reaction does that article provoke?

Speaker 6 Well, the friends were mad. They were upset, and they said that something has happened to him.
The Jake that Deb is portraying is not the guy we know.

Speaker 2 Jake's friends seemed hell-bent on finding him. That was in October.

Speaker 2 Soon, the case would get as cold as a western Colorado winter.

Speaker 13 Coming up, with Jake gone, his sister Stephanie moves in to help with the ranch and reveals a dark side.

Speaker 12 If the wrong thing was said or wrong thing was done, there was fire in her eyes.

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Speaker 2 He had never met Jake Nellison, but Jeremy McDonald would have a ringside seat to the circus that was Jake's family, starting with Jake's brother-in-law, Dave.

Speaker 2 You've known Dave Jackson for a long time.

Speaker 12 Yeah. Since we were like nine or 10 years old.

Speaker 2 Remember, Dave Jackson was married to Jake's sister, Stephanie. It was the spring of 2016.
By then, Jake had been gone almost a year.

Speaker 2 And without him, his mom had been running the ranch all by herself. That was about to change.

Speaker 2 Dave called Jeremy and offered him work.

Speaker 12 He said, hey, we're going to be taking over the ranch again.

Speaker 2 Jake's mom, Deb, had been diagnosed with cancer and recently undergone major surgery. Dave, Stephanie, and their then eight-year-old son had moved to the ranch to help out.

Speaker 2 Dave asked Jeremy to live with them and fix up the place in return for room and board.

Speaker 12 I just decided, you know what,

Speaker 12 it's not a bad idea. We were going to turn the ranch around, have the guest cabins and all of that.

Speaker 2 Get the ranch back to making money.

Speaker 12 Pretty much, yeah.

Speaker 2 What's it like when you get there?

Speaker 12 It's a mess. And

Speaker 12 there's clutter and junk everywhere.

Speaker 12 A lot bigger project than I had even expected.

Speaker 2 He decided to stick it out. After all, Dave was one of his best friends.
What about Deb? Did you know her when you moved there?

Speaker 12 I never had met Deb and Deb until I moved there, and

Speaker 12 she seemed very reclusive, but it was very obvious that she was a little bit Arnry.

Speaker 12 We'll say that.

Speaker 2 How'd that manifest itself?

Speaker 12 She was super controlling.

Speaker 12 Anytime we tried to clean anything up on the ranch, for instance, there was a building that we were cleaning out and it had some couches in it that were covered in rat feces and they were destroyed.

Speaker 12 And Dave and I were moving them out and she came out and started screaming and yelling at us that she wanted to keep those couches.

Speaker 2 And you chalked that up to what?

Speaker 12 Crazy.

Speaker 12 Honestly.

Speaker 12 That's just how she was. Like everything she got didn't leave.

Speaker 2 And Jake's sister Stephanie, Jeremy says there was a side of her few people ever saw.

Speaker 12 There is the Steph that most, a lot of people knew, which was a very nice lady. But it seems like there was a switch.

Speaker 12 And if the wrong thing was said or wrong thing was done,

Speaker 12 there was fire in her eyes.

Speaker 2 Stephanie and her family seemed pretty cool with Jake's disappearance. His friends were not.
They created a Facebook page, Where is Jake Millison?

Speaker 2 And they peppered Sheriff Rick Bessiker's office with phone calls.

Speaker 29 They would not give up on Jake. Every one of the friends had credibility.

Speaker 2 Bessiker says his investigators have been looking all over for some sign of Jake Millison. Our heads are up in Alaska.

Speaker 29 Our notions are in Nevada. And we're still running across nothing.

Speaker 2 In the fall of 2016, mostly because of the attention generated by Jake's friends, the case finally landed on the desk of Gunnison County Deputy District Attorney, Jessica Wagoner.

Speaker 19 His friends knew that this is not something he would have done.

Speaker 2 At that point, Jake had been missing for more than a year.

Speaker 19 The Colorado Bureau of Investigations got involved, and we went from there to put in a plan in place to

Speaker 19 do search warrants on phones and begin the process of looking for Jacob.

Speaker 2 The more the prosecutor talked with the investigators, the more concerned she became. Normally when somebody disappears,

Speaker 2 it's the family who's saying to you, this isn't normal. Something's wrong.
But in this case,

Speaker 2 family is telling you, telling law enforcement, there's nothing to worry about.

Speaker 19 Right. And it wasn't until the friends really pushed.
They started posting it on Facebook and started calling law enforcement. And I think that's where we had to just keep digging.

Speaker 2 And when Wagoner dug into Stephanie's Facebook page, she noticed something Stephanie had written just a few days after her brother went missing.

Speaker 19 She did a posting that said, big things are happening for the Jackson family. A couple days later, she posts again, do you ever hear such great news in the morning that

Speaker 19 you can't stand it or something like that? And her friend responded saying, oh, Jake's gone.

Speaker 2 Stephanie seemed to be treating Jake's sudden absence as some sort of opportunity.

Speaker 2 The prosecutor found that troubling as she read through the interviews Jake's friends had given to investigators, and she saw comments like this.

Speaker 3 It was always pretty tense at the ranch

Speaker 3 whenever Dave was out there.

Speaker 2 In fact, she learned Jake was afraid of Dave and taking up jiu-jitsu hadn't been just for the exercise.

Speaker 16 So he decided to start taking Jiu-Jitsu because he was kind of scared for his, fearing of his brother-in-law trying to do something to him and just kind of protecting himself.

Speaker 2 So that made it all the more strange when Wagoner saw this posted on Dave's Facebook page. Him astride Jake's prized bike.

Speaker 2 Something Jake never would have tolerated.

Speaker 19 He loved that motorcycle. It had a history with him.
Nobody could ride it, if I remember correctly.

Speaker 16 He loved that bike and he rode it as much as he could when he could.

Speaker 16 To see somebody, his arch nemesis on his bike was really, really weird.

Speaker 2 Maybe Jake would ditch the ranch, maybe even the dog, but not the Harley. That picture told Jake's friends something they didn't want to admit, but now couldn't avoid.
Jake was never coming back.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 12 Deb said that she thought that he might be in witness protection somewhere.

Speaker 5 As the family's excuses grow stranger, the prosecutor grows more suspicious.

Speaker 19 We couldn't buy the family's reasoning anymore.

Speaker 2 Spring 2017, Jake Mellison had been off the grid for nearly two years. He had disappeared without a trace.

Speaker 2 Reporter Chris Rourke had been watching the story closely, along with all of the town of Gunnison.

Speaker 6 It was always talked about in the community. It was always on people's mind.

Speaker 6 I recall a body was found west of town. It turned out to be a hiker that had, you know, gone the wrong way on a trail.

Speaker 6 But, you know, anytime something came up like that, we always wondered, do you think that's Jake?

Speaker 2 Rourke kept thinking back to her interview with Jake's mom and to something Deb had said.

Speaker 8 When is the last time you heard from him?

Speaker 8 I'd have to look it up on a calendar.

Speaker 8 It was about the 20th

Speaker 2 of September. No.

Speaker 2 Way back in May. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Now for just a second, think about that.

Speaker 2 I interview a lot of women whose children have disappeared, and they know exactly when the last time they spoke with them was. Yeah.
To the minute.

Speaker 30 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I can't remember when the last time I talked to him was.

Speaker 6 Right. I'd have to look at my calendar.

Speaker 2 Very odd. Yes.

Speaker 2 By now, prosecutor Jessica Wagoner had moved on from odd to possibly criminal. Jake's friends seemed credible, saying Jake would not have taken off like that.
His family? Not so much.

Speaker 19 We couldn't buy the family's reasoning anymore. Deb Rudabaugh had said from the beginning that he had left for Reno, Nevada to do some martial arts fighting.

Speaker 19 And then Stephanie Jackson would tell friends and family that Deb Rudabaugh had told her that he was in Portland or Seattle, and the cities kept changing, and the reasons why he was leaving kept changing.

Speaker 2 And in any of those cities, you couldn't find anybody who'd seen him or talked to him. And there was no financial record of him anywhere in those places.
Correct.

Speaker 2 Since he disappeared, Jake had never used a credit card, never used his passport, never gotten a new cell phone, and never visited an ATM.

Speaker 2 And as she pieced it all together, the prosecutor began to wonder if Jake Millison had really ever left the 7-Eleven ranch.

Speaker 2 It was time to search the land that seemed to have a starring role in this family drama. That would be easier said than done.

Speaker 19 The property that we're talking about was massive. They owned some hunting rights in various places up in the mountains.
They had a quarry across the road. They had caves.

Speaker 2 By spring, she had enough to convince a judge to sign a search warrant. But the prosecutor was born and raised here, and she knew she had to wait.

Speaker 19 With Gunnison and its weather, we couldn't have searched for him in the spring. Grounds are still frozen, and that would have caused some problems of being able to find him.

Speaker 19 So we knew it had to be in the summer.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jeremy McDonald's experience was going from weird to weirder. How'd they explain Jake's absence?

Speaker 12 So they had

Speaker 12 always told me that he had just left. He'd just disappeared.
I had never met Jake, and so I didn't know anything about what he was like.

Speaker 12 So I just kind of thought, well, maybe he did just leave, you know, if that's what they say. There was even times where Deb said that she thought that he might be in witness protection somewhere.

Speaker 2 Witness protection. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So maybe he's living under another name somewhere else in the country.

Speaker 12 Yep.

Speaker 2 He said theories about what happened to Jake would be dinner conversation. Maybe Jake was dead, had an accident, maybe worse.

Speaker 2 One night, Jeremy says he was having dinner with Stephanie and Dave and threw out his own theory just as a joke.

Speaker 12 I mentioned what if...

Speaker 12 What if Deb did it and buried him in the backyard?

Speaker 12 And at that very moment that I said that, the whole demeanor of Steph completely changed and it got really awkward. And you could see that darkness in her eyes.

Speaker 12 I remember just feeling I stepped somewhere wrong.

Speaker 17 Coming up.

Speaker 12 I just kind of froze and I just said, is that what I think it is?

Speaker 5 A macabre discovery followed by a terrifying threat.

Speaker 12 She just looked at me and said, you know, you can't ever leave now, right?

Speaker 5 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 2 By summer 2017, Prosecutor Jessica Wagoner was ready to execute a search warrant at the 7-Eleven Ranch.

Speaker 2 She had listened to Jake's friends, gathered her evidence, and then waited for the Colorado sun to melt the frozen ground. And there was one more event Wagoner had waited for.

Speaker 2 An annual convention of dogs. But not just any dogs.
These dogs have a very particular set of skills. Skills that make them a nightmare for some people.

Speaker 19 So every year, a bunch of cadaver dogs will come out and get certified for FEMA by going to these old mining towns and doing these searches for the old gravesites.

Speaker 2 That's right. It's a gathering of some of the top cadaver search dogs in the country.
In, of all places,

Speaker 2 Gunnison.

Speaker 2 And you thought, what better time to look for a body than when there are a lot of cadaver dog teams in town?

Speaker 19 Exactly.

Speaker 2 There we go. Lisa Higgins was there, a dog trainer for more than 30 years.
Her dogs have helped solve all kinds of cases, from missing children to serial killers.

Speaker 30 The sheriff asked that I become the liaison between the canine group and the agencies working with this case.

Speaker 2 So early on July 17th, the cadaver dogs formed up with dozens of investigators about a mile from the 7-Eleven ranch.

Speaker 2 A small group of investigators went ahead to serve the warrant. Jeremy McDonald was asleep in a trailer in front of the main house.

Speaker 12 It was fairly early. It was about seven in the morning.
And

Speaker 12 all of a sudden,

Speaker 12 pounding on my door, you know, please open up, please come out with your hands off.

Speaker 2 Jeremy wasn't wondering for a moment why they were there because it turned out he'd seen something.

Speaker 2 So let's talk about what happened where you sort of accidentally witnessed something that I'm guessing you wish you could unsee.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was two months before the day of the raid. Jeremy says David Jackson was operating a backhoe.

Speaker 12 And as I walk around the corner, I see Dave and Steph standing looking at

Speaker 2 a rib cage. You heard that right.

Speaker 2 A rib cage.

Speaker 12 And I just kind of froze and I just said, is that what I think it is?

Speaker 12 And at that moment, Steph and Dave both turned around and Dave had shock in his eyes and Steph turned and threw her arms up in the air. I don't know what it is.
I'm going to go call mom.

Speaker 2 Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 12 And took off running to the house. You could see,

Speaker 12 you could see the ribcage, and you could see

Speaker 12 the top part of what looked like a pair of jeans. Steph came back, and she said it's a bear or some wild game that Jake shot illegally.

Speaker 12 Just cover it back up.

Speaker 2 You have to be thinking, is that Jake?

Speaker 12 I definitely was thinking it was Jake, and

Speaker 12 in my heart, I knew it was Jake.

Speaker 12 It had to be.

Speaker 2 Did you say anything?

Speaker 12 So I guess

Speaker 12 I didn't know what to think.

Speaker 12 And I know a lot of people outside looking in think, why didn't you just call the police?

Speaker 12 You have to understand at that moment that was my family. And even though it wasn't the most functional family in the world, it was That was who I ate dinner with every day.

Speaker 12 And so a lot of it was I didn't want their boy to be drug into all of this.

Speaker 2 That boy was Stephanie and Dave's nine-year-old son. And Jeremy said, any thought of contacting police later evaporated in the name of self-preservation.

Speaker 12 Steph was kind of talking to me and Dave was there and she just looked at me and said, you know you can't ever leave now, right?

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 12 At that point, I didn't really know what to do.

Speaker 2 That sound like a threat to you? Because it sounds like a threat to me.

Speaker 12 It did sound like a threat.

Speaker 2 You sleep with one eye open that night? Or maybe both eyes open?

Speaker 12 I don't think I slept for a couple nights.

Speaker 2 And you never told law enforcement?

Speaker 12 I didn't. I tried to just block it all out.

Speaker 12 I didn't want to be involved and I wanted no part of it.

Speaker 2 And yet,

Speaker 2 you were a part of it.

Speaker 7 Yep.

Speaker 2 Now there they were. The prosecutor, the police, and the dogs.
The search for Jake Mellison was about to get very focused, very fast.

Speaker 17 Coming up,

Speaker 2 an answer no one wanted. Damn.

Speaker 21 And questions no one can answer.

Speaker 6 We're all scratching our heads saying, why

Speaker 6 and how?

Speaker 2 July 17, 2017, Jake Millison had been missing for more than two years.

Speaker 2 While a convoy of law enforcement and a pack of cadaver dogs waited down the road, an investigator questioned Deb Rudabaugh about her missing son. She was evasive at first.

Speaker 2 And then when Deb heard about those cadaver dogs, she coolly and calmly dropped a bombshell.

Speaker 29 Deb Rudabos said that while Jake was asleep in the upstairs area of the lodge, she went up and she shot him in the head.

Speaker 2 The confession was almost casual as a mother described murdering her own son.

Speaker 29 She said that she was able to drag the body out and then she took a thebacco and buried him in a manure pile.

Speaker 2 Deb had pointed them to the corral, so that's where dog handler Lisa Higgins sent Jack, a German shepherd from West Virginia.

Speaker 30 Jack went in and he performed his trained final response, which was a passive sit in the area he was most concerned with.

Speaker 2 Investigators brought in a backhoe and the 7-Eleven ranch slowly gave up its secrets. Jake Millison was no longer missing.
His remains were found wrapped in a trash bag.

Speaker 29 I think at that point we felt tapped out. I felt tapped out.

Speaker 29 And reliving it right now,

Speaker 18 I'm reliving that aspect of it as well.

Speaker 18 Damn.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 18 Do you mind if we take a break?

Speaker 2 Jake's friends had long accepted the truth that they'd never see him alive again. So when they got the word, it was no shock.

Speaker 16 It's closure, but it sucks because I'd rather have my friend than closure.

Speaker 10 Now it was time to get

Speaker 10 some convictions, find out the truth, find out, you know, who was involved.

Speaker 2 If this feels to you as if it should be the end of the story of what happened to Jake Mellison, listen to this. No one was arrested that day.
The news spread quickly around Gunnison.

Speaker 6 We learned that Deb had confessed and we're all scratching our heads saying, why

Speaker 6 and how

Speaker 6 and asking ourselves all the questions,

Speaker 6 but still no arrests.

Speaker 2 You got a body? You got a confession. Why aren't you putting the handcuffs on people?

Speaker 19 There was a lot of people on scene that wanted that to happen and I heard a lot of screaming when I said no.

Speaker 19 But nothing was matching up yet.

Speaker 2 It was hard to believe. As tough as Deb was, she was five feet tall, 97 pounds, and remember, suffering from stage four cancer.
About a week before Jake was murdered, she'd had surgery.

Speaker 19 Deb admitted that she couldn't lift a gallon of milk all the way into July or August from the surgery without help.

Speaker 2 Investigators didn't think there was any way she had dragged Jake's 180-pound body down the stairs, outside, and then buried him all by herself. They were certain she had help.

Speaker 2 The suspect needle is sort of pointing away from Deb and towards Stephanie.

Speaker 19 This entire case, the suspect needle was pointed at Stephanie.

Speaker 2 The motive? The prosecutor said this was all about the 7-Eleven. Millions of dollars of valuable ranch land.
Stephanie wanted it. But Jake stood to inherit it.

Speaker 2 Jake was murdered so that he wouldn't inherit the ranch.

Speaker 19 We believe so, yes. I believe that Stephanie knew almost immediately, if not at the time.

Speaker 2 And had manipulated this into happening.

Speaker 19 And had created the situation. If it was not for Stephanie Jackson, Jake Millison would be here beat today.

Speaker 2 The prosecutor also believes Stephanie persuaded her husband Dave to help with the cover-up.

Speaker 2 Finally, seven months after Jake's body was discovered, deputies arrested Deb. Being arrested for a warrant, for a murder charge,

Speaker 2 and Stephanie. And Dave.

Speaker 2 Jeremy McDonald cooperated with investigators and was never charged with any crime.

Speaker 2 After initially denying any involvement, Dave Jackson pleaded guilty to tampering with the deceased body and received 10 years.

Speaker 33 You repeatedly misrepresented your knowledge about the disappearance of the victim. Is that correct?

Speaker 33 Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 By then, forensics left little doubt who actually pulled the trigger. At Jake's autopsy, they found the slug that killed him.

Speaker 19 The bullet was still there, and we were able to match it to the gun.

Speaker 2 Deb's gun, a lady Smith ⁇ Wesson revolver. They found it under Deb's bed.
with Deb's DNA on the handle.

Speaker 4 Ms.

Speaker 15 Ruba, you certainly do have the right to make a statement.

Speaker 2 In May of 2019, four years after she killed her son,

Speaker 2 Deb pleaded to second-degree murder. Even then, Deb maintained she alone did the crime and the cover-up.

Speaker 11 That my daughter, Stephanie Jackson, in no way knowingly had anything to do with Take's death or subsequent cover-up.

Speaker 2 She was sentenced to 40 years.

Speaker 11 I would like to start out by saying thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Speaker 2 Then, facing a trial for the first-degree murder of her brother, Stephanie admitted she was part of the cover-up. She pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting

Speaker 2 and to tampering with a deceased body.

Speaker 11 What I am guilty of

Speaker 11 is believing the stories and lies

Speaker 11 my mother told everyone.

Speaker 30 for over two years.

Speaker 2 All of it, she said,

Speaker 2 was her mom's idea.

Speaker 11 I would also also like to apologize to my father, my grandparents,

Speaker 11 my extended family, and anyone else who's been affected

Speaker 11 by my mother's heinous actions.

Speaker 2 The judge didn't buy it and sentenced Stephanie to the maximum 24 years in prison. It all seemed to flow from homespun greed.

Speaker 2 And the river that ran through it was green with money and maybe a drop of jealousy. In November 2019, Deb Rudabaugh died in prison from her cancer at the age of 70.

Speaker 2 So whatever really happened, maybe Deb took that to the grave with her.

Speaker 19 I think so. I don't think Stephanie will be telling us anytime soon what really happened that night.

Speaker 2 We do know this. All those stories, Jake taking off, Jake abusing drugs, The idea that there were two Jakes.

Speaker 2 Those were all lies, and his his friends never believed them.

Speaker 2 You know, if it weren't for you and Jake's other friends, this case quite possibly would never have been solved.

Speaker 15 I believe that. Jake's several buddies on the Mat

Speaker 15 and his friends outside, we were the ones that pushed this to get this salt.

Speaker 2 His family kind of underestimated his second family, didn't they?

Speaker 15 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Now it's the end of the story of what happened to Jake Millison. His friends fought for him.

Speaker 2 His family fought against him.

Speaker 2 And in the end, it's hard to tell who won.

Speaker 4 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 13 Thanks for joining us.

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