The Rest Stop

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Hi, Park Enthusiasts.

I'm your host, Delia Diambra.

And I want you all to pay close attention to this episode because the case I'm going to tell you about today is a crime that I feel could literally happen to any of us.

It takes place near Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, which has been the ancestral home of the Pueblo people for more than 700 years.

If you've ever visited this park, then you know just how unique the landscape is, especially in areas where communities built structures directly into the cliffs of the park.

There's an example of what I'm referring to in the blog post for this episode, so check it out if you need a visual.

Two areas closest to the park are Mancus and Cortez, Colorado.

Many visitors travel between those two areas along U.S.

Highway 160 to make their way into the park.

And of course, like any highway, there are rest stops along that road.

One in particular became the epicenter of a terrible tragedy in the late summer of 1998.

A crime that's trail would eventually lead all the way to southern Idaho and the California coastline.

This is Park Predators.

Around 8.30 p.m.

on Wednesday, September 16th, 1998, a California Highway Patrol officer named Richard Hedgecock noticed a 1991 dark gray Mazda pickup truck driving erratically in Oceanside, California.

Richard was a 15-year veteran of the CHP and was used to conducting traffic enforcement while patrolling on his motorcycle near the area's freeways.

It wasn't unusual for him to see a suspected drunk driver or even a tired driver in that area during nighttime hours.

And that scenario was exactly what Richard believed he was likely dealing with.

Whoever was behind the wheel of the Mazda was possibly intoxicated or had fallen asleep.

When he spotted the pickup, it had just drifted from the roadway into the shoulder while merging off an interstate and onto a nearby highway.

So the fact that it was no longer on a busy interstate, I imagine, made it that much easier for Richard to pull it over and see what was up.

After he parked his motorcycle, he began walking toward the passenger side window of the pickup, but along the way, he noticed a couple of odd things that stood out.

First, it appeared that an old license plate had been covered with a new one, and beneath a camper shell that was fixed over the truck bed, someone had stretched out a sleeping bag, almost as if they'd been living or sleeping there.

When Richard asked the driver for his ID and the truck's registration, the man inside apologized and claimed he didn't have either of those things.

The only form of identification he was able to produce was a social security card.

Unable to do a whole lot with that, Richard decided to walk around to the driver's side windshield and take down the VIN, which he knew would likely be displayed on the dashboard.

But once he got over to the driver's side, he saw that there was some kind of mat covering the information he needed to write down.

So he reached out his hand and began to move it.

But right as he did that, the driver pulled out a 9mm handgun and fired two shots in Richard's direction.

One round struck the officer in the left side of his chest, right above his bulletproof vest, and went out his left shoulder, and the other went through the visor of his motorcycle helmet.

Neither wound was fatal.

And despite the chaos of getting ambushed, Richard was able to retreat from the front of the pickup, unholster his firearm, and return several shots, one of which struck the driver in the top of his head.

Once Richard saw that the suspect had sort of slumped over, he stopped firing.

But just like Richard, the driver had not been fatally wounded.

At some point, Richard had also called for backup.

According to news coverage about this incident, Richard's round had only grazed the man's skull.

However, the injury was serious enough that when first responders arrived to transport Richard by helicopter to a nearby hospital in Escondido, California, they realized just how potentially life-threatening the perpetrator's gunshot wound was, so they called for a second chopper to transport him to the same hospital.

Just a few hours after the incident, Richard was patched up, discharged from the hospital, and returned home.

But the suspect was kept under guard and eventually moved to UCSD Medical Center in San Diego.

He was listed in serious condition, but expected to survive.

While he recovered, law enforcement charged him with felony assault and attempted murder of a police officer and felony obstructing an officer.

After running his fingerprints through a State Department of Justice database, they determined he was 34-year-old Christopher Dean Paul, a convicted felon out on parole whose last known address was Phoenix, Arizona.

And kind of random but interesting fact, This freeway shooting wasn't even Officer Richard Hedgecock's first brush with death while working as a motorcycle cop for CHP.

According to Karen Smith's reporting for the North County Times, two years earlier in August 1996, a motorist had plowed into a vehicle he'd pulled over and nearly killed him in the process.

Miraculously though, he'd been able to jump out of the way at the last second and ultimately walked away uninjured.

So a different situation in many ways, but still, this cop was two for two with near-death experiences.

I don't know of many traffic enforcement officers who can say that.

A follow-up article by Karen Smith stated that Richard was friends with and went to the same church as another Oceanside Motorcycle Police officer who'd also survived two near-death experiences while on duty in that part of California.

One of which, by the way, was a shooting.

And get this, both men were 42 years old when they experienced those brushes with death.

So talk about a coincidence.

Anyway, once investigators learned more about Christopher Dean Paul and the gray Mazda pickup he'd he'd been driving, the more their suspicions about him grew.

For one thing, and this was a big red flag, the truck's registration and license plate didn't tie back to him.

They belonged to a 67-year-old man from Idaho named Lavoyne Parish.

The vehicle hadn't been reported stolen, but it was a long way from home, which I imagine naturally made authorities curious to know why Christopher had been using it and what his connection to Lavoyne Parish was.

And thankfully, they didn't didn't have to wait very long to get those answers.

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On Friday, September 18th, two days after the freeway shooting incident, Christopher had recovered enough from his head injury to voluntarily speak with detectives from the Oceanside Police Department, which was the agency in charge of investigating that crime.

He told them that he'd served several years in prison for armed robbery, and by the beginning of August, he'd been granted parole and moved into a recovery residence in Phoenix.

He'd stayed there for a few weeks, but in early September had borrowed a friend's Ford pickup truck and 9mm handgun and split town.

The friend who'd owned the Ford ended up having his father report it stolen to Phoenix police on September 11th, but Christopher was long gone by then and had driven it more than 400 miles away to Durango, Colorado.

Christopher told Oceanside investigators that he knew he was going to have to ditch the Ford at some point and find a new vehicle.

As he made the hour or so drive from Durango to Cortez, Colorado, which took him right past Mesa Verde National Park, he'd come up with a plan to kill someone in order to steal their car and get rid of the stolen one he'd driven in from Arizona.

So on Sunday, September 13th, after visiting some historic cliff dwellings at the park, he'd pulled over at the sleeping Ute rest area on Highway 160, about two miles or so away from the park's entrance.

For three hours, he'd hung out in the parking lot waiting for someone to come along who he could target.

Eventually, he saw an elderly man who was traveling alone pull in and park.

Christopher said he'd approached the man and struck up a conversation with him.

The unassuming victim was Lavoyne Parrish.

At some point during their conversation, Christopher said he told Lavoyne he wanted to show him some quote-unquote real good Indian ruins in a tree grove just north of the rest area.

And Lavoyne, a tourist who was on his way to a railroad attraction and museum, agreed to follow him because he was interested in seeing good sights in the area.

Once the two men were alone, Christopher said he pulled out a 9mm handgun and shot Lavoyne in the chest and head, then stole his wallet and vehicle and spent the night at an area motel.

No one had seemingly heard the crime or come to help Lavoyne.

The following day, Monday, September 14th, Christopher said he returned to where he left his victim's body and hid it in a more secluded area.

Then he covered him with a blanket from LaVoyne's truck and disposed of the man's belongings and a dumpster located in a parking lot at the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park.

After that, he said he left Colorado, headed toward Escondido, California.

Court records explain that later in the day on the 14th, a Colorado State Patrol officer found the stolen Ford pickup Christopher had ditched before stealing Lavoyne's truck and ended up towing it away from the rest stop.

So that detail supported at least some part of Christopher's story of having murdered Lavoyne to get a new set of wheels and quietly get rid of the stolen vehicle he'd been driving from Arizona.

Shortly after Christopher confessed to all this, Oceanside detectives placed a call to the Montezuma County Sheriff's Department in Colorado, which is actually now known as the Montezuma County Sheriff's Office, to let them know they likely had a recent homicide victim concealed somewhere in their jurisdiction near a rest stop along Highway 160.

Not long after getting that call, the Sheriff's Office deployed search teams with scent dogs and scoured the terrain near the sleeping Ute rest stop.

Late on Friday night, the 18th, they found Lavoyne's badly decomposed body about 250 yards off the highway, exactly how Christopher had described it, covered with a blanket and still clothed in apparel that was later identified as belonging to Lavoyne.

Because his remains were in such an advanced stage of decomp, authorities had to use dental records to confirm for sure that it was him.

Colorado investigators then traveled to the dumpster in the National Park, where Christopher said he'd tossed some of the elderly man's belongings, including the title to his 1991 Mazda pickup truck.

And sure enough, when they arrived, they were able to recover those items from some park rangers.

The title was there along with other personal items that Lavoyne's loved ones later confirmed belonged to him.

I read one source that explained a bit more detail about this, and according to that coverage, a visitor to the National Park had actually been the one to find Lavoyne's personal items in the parking lot of the park entrance on the 13th, which included the Mazda's title, a diabetic medication kit, $1,000 in traveler's checks, and clothing.

It was this visitor who'd reportedly given everything to Mesa Verde Park Rangers shortly after discovering them.

But whatever the sequence of events was, after the murder was uncovered, Montezuma County Sheriff's Office seemed to end up with all the relevant physical evidence for their investigation.

Something else that's important to understand in the timeline of this case is that LaVoyne had actually been reported missing in Idaho either on or shortly after September 13th.

You see, by the time Christopher got into California on the 16th, the 67-year-old had failed to call some of his family members and check in, which is what had prompted them to alert authorities in his home state that something wasn't right.

But based on everything I read, it appears the various law enforcement agencies involved in this case didn't make all these connections right away.

Or, I don't know, maybe there was just a bit of delay between investigators in Idaho, Colorado, and California because there was so much going on simultaneously.

And unfortunately, it's not like Lavoyne had a travel companion who could better aid investigators in solidifying his timeline or movements.

According to an article in the Cortez Journal, Lavoyne was super into railroads and the history of the locomotive industry.

And it seems that was one of the reasons why he chose the Mesa Verde area to spend some of his solo vacation.

When he bumped into Christopher, he was headed in the direction of the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, which is located in Durango.

It's an attraction that explores decades of Colorado's railroad history and takes visitors through San Juan National Forest on an old-time train.

The whole experience is themed as if it were set in 1882, so I feel pretty confident it would have been something right up Lavoyne's alley.

But he never got the chance to enjoy that experience because By all accounts, he encountered Christopher right before going.

After his murder, his family laid him to rest in Aberdeen Cemetery in Idaho.

His tombstone is one of the most beautifully crafted gravestones I've ever seen.

On the front, there is a snowy mountain range etched as the backdrop, a winding river covering most of the bottom, and trees dotted along both sides.

Towards the middle, there's a train with a steam engine puffing along, and beneath his dates of birth and death is the title of the sing-along song, The Happy Wanderer.

On the back of the memorial are his children and other family members' names, and right beneath those are some lyrics from the Happy Wanderer.

They go like this.

I love to go a wandering along the mountain track, and as I go, I love to sling my knapsack on my back.

I love to wander by the stream that dances in the sun.

So joyously it calls to me, come join my happy song.

As investigators continued to work the case, they dug into Christopher's background and spoke with other law enforcement agencies that had interactions with him throughout his life.

They learned that not only did he have a criminal record in Arizona for things like burglary and armed robbery, he'd also been taken into custody in 1991 in Cortez, Colorado.

I'm not sure what kind of crime he was arrested for in that instance, because it isn't something I saw mentioned in the source material, but whatever it was for, it's clear Christopher was a career criminal who got around in a variety of U.S.

states.

According to Karen Smith's reporting for the North County Times, when he confessed to Oceanside detectives after his arrest in California, he did an interview with a criminal psychologist from Orange County who specialized in profiling serial killers.

Over the course of that conversation, he ended up admitting to other violent crimes, including an incident in Galveston, Texas, and another in San Diego, both of which were from like seven to ten years prior to Levoyne's murder.

At one point, he also confessed that he'd wanted to kill a family in Escondido.

But it seems that getting pulled over and into the shooting with CHP officer Richard Hedgecock had thwarted those deadly plans.

Which, when you stop and think about that, it's super terrifying because if the freeway shooting had never happened, it's very possible we could be talking about even more murders in this episode.

What's wild to me is that authorities never seemed to publicly identify the family Christopher was supposedly targeting in Escondido.

But whoever that person or family was, they quite literally dodged a bullet.

At Christopher's arraignment on Monday, September 21st, 1998, he pleaded not guilty to the freeway shooting and a judge ordered he be held without bond.

According to reporting by the Associated Press, he'd already been convicted at least three times for a felony-armed robbery and was now in violation of the three strikes law, or in other words, a habitual offender.

Plus, the fact that he'd been carrying around a 9mm handgun while on the run meant San Diego's deputy district attorney could also tack on an additional charge for him being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

In early October, officials in Montezuma County and Colorado, who'd waited until Christopher had been arraigned in California, filed charges against him for first-degree murder, aggravated motor vehicle theft, and sentence enhancers for using a deadly weapon and the robbery of an elderly or handicapped person.

A few days after that, the district attorney in Montezuma County requested he be extradited back to Colorado to face the murder case against him there before California tried him for the freeway shooting.

But that didn't end up happening.

According to an article by David Hicks for the North County Times, on October 21st, a Superior Court judge in San Diego County held a preliminary hearing for Christopher regarding the officer-involved shooting.

The goal of that proceeding was to determine whether there was enough evidence or probable cause to move forward to trial.

Officer Richard Hedgecock testified about what he'd endured as a result of Christopher's ambush attack and described it like this: quote, There were two loud pops, bright flashes.

I felt like somebody hit me in the left shoulder with a sledgehammer.

It took me an instant to figure out what was going on, and then I realized that a weapon had been fired twice and that I had been shot.

End quote.

At one point during Richard's testimony, Christopher made an outburst in court and yelled at the officer to tell the truth, then said,

I was justified.

He told me to shoot, so I shot.

That's the the way it goes, end quote.

That display from Christopher elicited no response from Richard, but did prompt two bailiffs to quickly reposition themselves on either side of Christopher.

I guess to make sure he wasn't going to do something else out of line.

But after barking this remark to Richard, Christopher didn't make another peep for the rest of the hearing.

Nearly two dozen people who attended that prelim and sat in court behind Christopher were either Officer Hedgecock's colleagues or other members of law enforcement who wanted to show their support for him.

An Oceanside police detective who'd interviewed Christopher after the shooting also took the witness stand and said that when he'd initially spoken with the 34-year-old, Christopher had described the officer-involved shooting as very chaotic.

He said after hearing glass shatter and metal grind, he'd felt a warm sensation on the top of his head and realized he'd been shot.

It was at that point Christopher explained to this Oceanside detective that he realized he might die, which is why he hadn't continued to fight once Richard Hedgecock subdued him and more backup arrived.

So based on the evidence and all of this testimony presented during the preliminary hearing, the judge overseeing the proceeding ordered that the case against Christopher for the attempted murder of a peace officer and being a felon in possession of a firearm was to move forward to trial.

In the interim, he was held without bail until his next court date.

His trial was originally scheduled to get underway in mid-January 1999, but that date got pushed to the spring of that year.

According to David Grant Long's coverage for the Cortez Journal, Christopher was eventually found guilty of attempted murder for the freeway shooting incident and sentenced to 77 years in prison.

After that trial wrapped up, he was extradited to Colorado to face the murder case against him there in relation to Lavoyne's death.

In early November at his arraignment in Montezuma County, a judge set his bail at $1 million, which he couldn't pay, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway because he was still technically a convicted felon awaiting incarceration in California.

For the rest of November 1999, Christopher's public defender filed motions to limit pretrial publicity about the murder case and make sure the physical evidence the state planned to use at trial was preserved.

A preliminary hearing was also scheduled to go over what the prosecution's case was going to be and whether the state had enough to even impanel a jury and secure a conviction.

By the end of December, though, the answer to that question must have been an overwhelming yes, because shortly after the start of the new year, Christopher made a pivotal decision.

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Because the first-degree murder charge and other crimes Christopher was accused of committing in Colorado were so serious and the prosecutor had tacked on sentencing enhancers, which made him eligible to receive the death penalty if convicted, Christopher made a request.

In early January 2000, in an effort to avoid likely going to death row, he asked the district attorney's office in Montezuma County for a plea bargain.

Court records and coverage by the Cortez Journal explain that in exchange for Christopher admitting full responsibility for Levoyne's premeditated murder, the prosecution agreed to drop the aggravated robbery and car theft charges against him, as well as the sentencing enhancers that made him eligible for the death penalty.

In early March, a few months after the deal was finalized, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole and required to pay close to $7,000 in restitution.

But there was a bit of a catch, or at least a logistical issue.

His prison time for the attempted murder conviction in California had to be served before his sentence in Colorado could begin.

The punishments were consecutive, which meant once his 77 years were up in California, he would be moved to Colorado to begin serving life there.

But because Christopher was in his mid-30s by the time these two legal cases wrapped up, that essentially meant he might never see the inside of a Colorado prison cell.

I mean, if my math is right, That would mean he'd have to have been over 100 years old before even beginning to serve his sentence in Colorado, which seemed highly unlikely.

At his sentencing hearing, Lavoyne's three children spoke about how hurtful it was to lose their father in such a vicious and violent way.

One of his daughters named Lisa tearfully said in court, quote, my dad had an amazing love for life and people, and maybe that's what allowed this man to prey on him.

But I wouldn't have wanted him to be any less trusting and loving.

The irony of this tragedy is that he was murdered in cold blood by a self-confessed predator, a weak little man who should never see the light of day.

You took from us the kindest, gentlest man we ever had the privilege of knowing.

End quote.

Linda, another one of Levoyne's children, told the court that she wondered if perhaps God had allowed Christopher and her father to meet that fateful day in September 1998, because it would begin a series of events that would ultimately lead to Christopher's demise and prevent him from being free to harm others.

She remarked, quote, you took away all our tomorrows.

It is my wish that you have no tomorrows too.

I pray it eats you up inside, end quote.

Lavoyne's son, Dameron, felt certain that Christopher deserved capital punishment for what he'd done, but he explained that he and his sisters had resigned themselves to the fact that their father's murderer would spend the rest of his life in prison instead.

And that would have to be good enough.

During his remarks, Dameron expressed his appreciation for all the investigators who'd worked on the case and everyone who was involved in prosecuting the man who he said had murdered the best father and his best friend.

Before the sentencing hearing concluded, Christopher spoke directly to Lavoyne's loved ones and told them that he didn't feel sorrowful about what he'd done.

He remarked, quote, I could lie to you and tell you a nice story, but I'm a person without remorse.

I wish I could feel remorse.

That's why I need to be in prison the rest of my life.

That's who I am, and I don't know how it happened.

I regret that I killed him.

I apologize for bringing you such pain and agony.

⁇ End quote.

Christopher's public defender told the court that perhaps the reason why his client was so unremorseful was because he'd had a very difficult childhood and been abandoned by his parents.

The lawyer also said that while incarcerated in California, Christopher had a documented history of hearing voices in his head and been diagnosed with a quote-unquote psychotic condition.

But what specifically he meant by that term or like what mental health disorder he was specifically alluding to isn't mentioned in the available source material.

Like not in the news coverage, not in the court records, nothing.

Something else that took me a little while to figure out while researching this episode too is where exactly Christopher ended up after both his convictions.

It was something that I thought would be pretty obvious obvious and easy to find, but it wasn't.

When I first searched his name and information through California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Inmate database, fully expecting to see Christopher pop up, he didn't.

So I furiously tried to figure out if maybe his sentence in California had been reduced at some point in the last 25 years and he'd gone on to begin serving his time in Colorado.

But that search was also a dead end.

Finally, I got on the phone with California prison officials and ended up filing a records request for the dates he was admitted to a state prison and when I assumed he'd been transferred somewhere else.

Well, turns out, he'd never actually left California.

In the summer of 2002, he'd committed another murder while incarcerated at a state prison in Kings County, California.

Most of the official records about that offense are exempt from public record laws because prisons often don't allow much of what happens behind bars out when it relates to inmate-specific offenses.

But I was able to pull some court filings about the incident, which clearly state Christopher was indicted for assaulting and murdering another inmate named Rick Wasson in June 2002.

He eventually pleaded guilty to that crime in 2006 and was sentenced in 2008 to an additional term of life without the possibility of parole.

That sentence seems to have been added on top of the 77 years he was already serving in California, plus the life sentence he was theoretically still supposed to fulfill in Colorado.

On November 9th, 2024, Christopher died in prison, exactly where he'd told Lavoyne Parrish's family he believed he should be.

A disturbing detail I read while putting together this episode is that according to the National Park Service, When Christopher was arrested in California driving LaVoyne's stolen pickup truck shortly after killing LaVoyne, officials discovered an entrance receipt for Grand Canyon National Park inside that vehicle.

It was time stamped sometime after Lavoyne's murder took place, but before Christopher was caught.

Meaning, after leaving Colorado and heading west, Christopher had purposely made a pit stop at the Grand Canyon.

This small detail just sticks out to me for so many different reasons.

I mean, it's strange and kind of eerie when you think about it.

We know that Christopher had already ditched quite a few personal belongings of Lavoyne's back in Mesa Verde National Park, and there was no way he'd made this stop at the Grand Canyon to ditch the handgun he'd used in the murder, since that weapon was found on him when he was eventually arrested for shooting CHP trooper Richard Hedgecock.

So my question is, what was Christopher doing visiting another national park while on his multi-state crime spree?

Why did he go to the Grand Canyon?

Was he just sightseeing?

Or perhaps scouting out another potential victim?

I'll likely never know the answer to that question.

No other crimes that I could find during that timeframe have been connected to him, but it's a thought that keeps me up at night and probably

always will.

Park Predators is an audio chuck production.

You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.

And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram at ParkPredators.

So, what do you think, Chuck?

Do you approve?

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