A few weeks before the tearing down of the Nevada Hereford Ranch barn and other outbuildings in Spanish Springs, Nevada, I decided to go exploring the buildings that weren’t locked. In one of the outbuildings I found the remains of a wooden wing frame, a throwback to when the National Reno Air Races were held in the area and not at the airport in Stead, Nevada. I don’t think anyone thought to salvage the wing for history’s sake.
“We gotta do something about this,” Maggie Winslow complained as she held up a wad of hair larger than a softball which she’d pulled from the dryer’s lint trap. “And I don’t even wanna think about what it’s doing to the washer.”
Her husband, took the hair from his wife and sighed, “I’ll do a better job. I promise.”
She wrapped her arms around Harm, “I know it’s not really your fault. I’m jus’ frustrated with it, that’s all.”
“Well, I’ll do a better job about not making a mess with all this hair,” Harm responded.
He stepped into the garage and dropped the mass into the garbage can. Harm reflected back, realizing that he couldn’t remember a time in his adult life where it hadn’t been this way.
Each month, he readied himself for the hunt, purchasing used-up clothing from various second-hand stores, placing clean clothes in a gym bag, tucked behind his trucks’ seat. Each month, he returned home with a dozen or more coyote hides to be prepped, cured and set for sale in Southern Oregon and Idaho.
The next morning Harm kissed Maggie as she lay in bed, “I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
“Okay,” she smiled. “Be careful. I love you.”
“Love you, too.” Less than two minutes later, he backed out of their driveway, pointing the truck north and east towards his hunting ground.
“Let’s see what this bird can do,” the Nevada Army National Guard pilot stated to the other four men over the CH-47F Chinook helicopter’s internal audio system. It was a few minutes after sunset as the aircraft lifted off from the Reid Army National Guard Training Center near the Stead Airport, north of Reno, proceeding north-east over the open terrain of the high desert.
Night time training was nothing new to these men a they’d done it several times before. In fact, training at night was a particular thrill as the two side-door mini-gun operators and the rear-door gunner could firing their weapons.
Twenty-minutes later, and far from known civilization, the first request came from the rear-door operator, “Permission to get wet.”
“Roger,” came the response, followed by a sudden burst and slight shudder through the craft.
Below, racing to avoid the rotor wash and heavy thumping sound, three packs of coyote’s sprinted towards the nearest hillside. Each gunner took turns blasting away at the frightened animals as soon as they came into sight.
“Holy crap!” shouted the gunner on the port-side of the craft, “Did you see the size of that one?!”
“No,” responded the other operators. Someone then asked, “Did you get’em?”
“I think so – led him for a burst before he tumbled out of sight.”
The pilot, listening in on the conversation, moved the helicopter closer to the ground and passed over the area in which the animal went down. After the third fly over, they continued on mission, completing a full shakedown of the Chinook before returning to the training center.
Day four since her husband, Harm had left for his monthly coyote hunt and Maggie began to worry. The full moon had long since lost a sliver of it’s once bright self in the night-time sky.
“It’s not like him to disappear like this,” she cried to the Washoe County deputy taking her report. She had given him a note Harm had written a couple of years before, explaining where he like to go hunting and where to look if something happened.
Two days later, a local resident walking her dog along Hungry Mountain Road noticed a blue truck parked along County 165. It had been there over a week and suspicious, she called the sheriff’s office to report it.
Within half-an-hour, two deputies pulled up near the vehicle to check it out. After radioing in the license plate, they confirmed it belonged to the missing Harm Winslow.
Though no one suspected foul-play, a full-out search began. It was two men, searching, driving an off-road-vehicle that first noticed the chewed up ground and the strewn about and decaying carcasses of coyotes and called it in.
Less than an hour later search crews discovered the naked, torn up body of Harm Winslow. He’s been raked by a large-caliber weapon, but had somehow managed to crawl under a creosote bush before curling up and dying.
“Naked and shot to death?” was the resounding question of anyone who viewed the scene, followed by, “It doesn’t make any sense.” In the distance and out of sight of searchers and investigators, a group of coyote’s howled in raucous unison from the base of a nearby hillside.
When the deputy and the chaplain came to Maggie’s front door to tell her that they’d found Harm deceased, they thought her response strange when she half-laughed, half-cried, “And to think, he promised to take care of the hair problem.”
Suspecting, Mrs. Winslow was not handling the news very well, “Can I call someone for you?” the chaplain offered.
“Yes, Harm’s niece,” Maggie said. “Her name is Alycn. Here’s my cellphone.”
It’s perhaps one of the hardest news stories I had to cover when it happened in 2008; 19-year-old Brianna Denison goes missing from a friend’s Reno, Nevada home, only to be found murdered and abandoned in a field. Her murderer was eventually caught and now awaits his turn in the state’s death chamber.
Then last January, nearly 10-years to the day, Brianna’s cousin, 19-year-old Caitlin Denison (also of Reno) disappeared after flying from Northern Nevada to Midland, Texas and remains missing.
If you have any information about Caitlin, contact the Missing Persons Clearing house at (512) 424-5074 or on the helpline at (800) 346-3243 or the Midland County Sheriff’s Department at (432) 688-4600.
Months ago, I turned down a neighbor’s offer of a dog and I never forget to turn off my Television. However tonight, I wish this were different.
The evening is warm with an ever so slight breeze, which sighs unheard through a broken window. Oh, how I wish that shattered pane of glass were simply a tempest’s misdeed.
Tonight, I’m home alone and I really wish those footsteps I hear creeping up from behind, could be my imagination gone wild. And as I turn to face my terror, I wish I could die of fright.
Sometimes, wishes do come true.
Depressed, Gordo looked at the razor blade and shuttered. He contemplated suicide time and again throughout the past two days, but couldn’t find a way that suited him.
“Freakin’ gun’s too messy,” he told himself. Besides, Gordo didn’t have one.
Plummeting to his death made his hands sweat, knees quake and stomach churn. Gordo even examined the various kinds of rope at the hardware store.
“Doesn’t anyone make a good old-fashioned hemp rope anymore?” he observed.
As he left the store, Gordo caught the scent of cooking food. He hadn’t eaten in the last 24-hours and the smell nearly overwhelmed him.
“That’s it!” he exclaimed, “Death by food.”
For the next hour Gordo ventured from one diner to another, looking for his piest de resistance. “A man’s gotta eat,” he proffered, “What happens afterward, well that’s not up to me.”
Gordo smile, “One order of Thai peanut sauce prawn’s to go, please.”
“Black Rock, Nev. (AP) – A woman found dead in desert has marring the opening of this years ‘Burning Man’ festivities. The cause of death is still being investigated. Authorities have not released her name pending notification of next of kin.”
The search stretched on for days, weeks and even months, but no other sign of the Winap-Denault woman was found in or around the caves. The case might have been forgotten and left as two dusty file boxes on a shelf if it hadn’t been for two off-roaders playing on the ash-white dust of the Black Rock desert.
“Yeah, Sheriff, you need to come out here and see this,” the deputy told his boss via cellphone.
The Deputy refused to explain any further, citing the fact that anyone with the right technology could listen in on what was being said. So as not to belabor the point, the Sheriff said, “Okay, I’m on my way.”
Less than 45 minutes, the Washoe County Sheriff’s helicopter, Raven appeared in the southwestern sky. The pilot deftly touched the skids in the sandy loam despite his inability to clearly see the ground from above due to the dust the rotors kicked up.
The sheriff waited until the blades of the craft had slow sufficiently to allow most of the playa’s dry earth to settle before getting out and joining his deputy. “What’s so important that I had to see this dead body first hand?”
“Something strange about this,” he answered. “I can’t find a single foot, tire print or a drag mark anywhere around her. And from the lack of trauma to the body, it doesn’t seem that she was dropped from a plane or anything. It’s like she simply appeared out of thin air.”
“That’s absurd. The wind probably wiped the prints away.”
“No, sir. There are prints out here from years ago. I mean I can show you were the truck was driven and the horse chased down during the filming of ‘The Misfits.’ They’re still out there.”
The Sheriff rubbed his chin, perplexed by the scene as he stepped closer to the naked body, save for a single sock on her left foot. “Have you taken photographs, yet?”
“First thing after I met with the witnesses, who are over there by my vehicle.”
“Okay. I agree that somethings off here. I’ll notify the coroner’s office and get an evidence team out here.”
He squatted down and touched the alabaster-white skin of the dead woman and shook his head. The Sheriff knew it was going to be a long day as walked back to the helicopter, climbed in and directed the pilot to return to the office.
As the aircraft lifted away, he saw the deputy pulling a yellow tarp from the back of his truck, to use as a cover for the body. The body was laying on it’s left side, as if peacefully at rest.
Hour’s later the county coroner called the sheriff’s direct number. “I can’t find any reason for this woman’s death,” he stated.
“That doesn’t surprise me,” the Sheriff responded. “And I don’t think you’ll ever find a cause.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“She’s been missing nearly 30 years.”
“Bullshit! How can that be? This woman’s 19 or 20 years old, if she’s a day.”
“Look, we’ve run the prints your office sent us three times now. Same result, Marilyn Winap-Denault, born April 5, 1972, went missing July 20, 1991 out by the Lovelock Cave in Pershing.”
“That would make her nearly 46. But…”
“I know…”
“But how? There’s no freezer burns, putrefaction or even mummification. There’s not a mark on her body.”
“If I had the answer to that, we’d be a step closer to solving this thing – but so far I haven’t an explanation. Hell, we can’t even find her next of kin at the moment.”
“So what next?”
“Right now, we’re waiting to see if Pershing County has any files remaining on the case. If they do, we’ll go from there.”
“And if they don’t?”
“We’re gonna have to start from scratch.”
“Something else that’s weird is her stomach content…”
“Yeah?”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say she had fried chicken, potato salad and chips for lunch today along with some beer.”
“Don’t know what to tell ya, other than go home, eat, relax and we’ll get back at it come tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah,” the Coroner said, “With a strange case like this, that’ll be easier said than done.”
“I know what you mean,” the Sheriff replied. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” responded the Coroner as he hung up. He looked at the body laying on his autopsy table and mindlessly asked her, “Where in the hell have you been for the 27-years?”
My cousin Autumn and I share the enjoyment of researching our family’s history. She recently sent me a picture of my great uncle, Vince Darby (born in 1910) from his time in the U.S. Navy, during World War II. I need to find out more information about his service. The second is my great aunt Melzine, Vince’s wife (born in 1912.) She’s a Childress/Timmons/Darby and makes a pretty cute farm girl during the Great Depression. The final picture is of the two of them together, date unknown.
“Reno, Nev. (AP) — The remains of 38-year-old Almarinda deOliveria have has been found. She disappeared in January. Authorities have said there was no evidence of foul play.”
The Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said deOliveria body was located Rose Creek Canyon, close to where her cell phone was found. Two hunters, out scouting for deer, found her remains and alerted authorities.
Prior to her disappearance, her mother passed away following a lengthy illness. That and the failure of a years-long spiritual retreat left her despondent. It’s believed by both the family and the Washoe County medical examiners office, that she took her own life.
They couldn’t explain why they hadn’t been able to locate her when she first went missing other than to have a spokesperson say, “The landscape can make it very difficult to spot a person either from the air or the ground. In the case of Almarinda, she was located between to large rock outcroppings and was clothed in a gray-colored blanket, obscuring her from view.”
Meanwhile, two file boxes containing the investigative notes on the disappearance of Marilyn Winap-Denault remain housed in the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office’s evidence locker. The case remains open.
Long since retired, the younger of the two detectives recently told a news reporter, “It’s the one case we could never solve. And honestly, I don’t think I’ll live long enough to learn what happened to Marilyn. I guess you can say that her vanishing waits for the desert to give up its long held secret.”
Lights can still be seen after dark and wild laughter and crying can be heard echoing through out the area surrounding Lovelock Cave at all times of the day. And the local Paiute-Shonsone tribes people continue to avoid the area at night.
As Jim and Susie and the other three conspirators raced back to the village, other’s also in on the killing, torched the medicine woman’s wickiup, her clothes and all her belongings so nobody in the tribe could use them. Her rattles, eagle feathers, shells, stones, animal skins and medicinal herbs all went up in smoke and by doing so, Winnescheika ghost could not return, seeking vengeance on the tribe.
They might have gotten away with it, but there was a witness to the execution. Winnescheika’s twelve year old niece, Lizzie Cinnibar Winap, who had followed her aunt to Jim’s camp.
She was peeking through a curtain when she saw her aunt nearly decapitated. She was so stunned and fearful, that she fled to the sagebrush and stayed there until late the next morning.
Eventually news of the killing reached Deputy F. M. Fellows, the Lovelock area’s only lawman and because none of those involved, including Winnescheika, were reservation Indians, the Indian Affairs Bureau took no interest in the killing one way or the other. It was left up to Fellows to send a wagon and several men out to retrieve Winnescheika’s body and arrest Jim, Susie, Jennie and the fourth woman.
After receiving the report of the Lovelock coroner the four accused murderers were bound over to the Grand Jury in Winnemucca. Three weeks later, on May 24, the same jury found sufficient evidence to bring Jim, Susie and Jennie to trial, but because she appeared in court with a baby at her breast, charges were never filed against the fourth woman in the case.
During the trial, the principal witness, an older Paiute who claimed to be a judge among his people, said that it had always been the custom among his people to ferret out witches and put them to death. Such persons, he said, often assumed the guise of a medicine man or woman and inevitably revealed themselves when their patients began to die and that in such a case it fell to the friends and relatives of her victims to kill her and dispose of the body.
He further stated that his grandfather told him that in years past the Indians, like the whites, burned supposed witches at the stake as well as stoned them to death on occasion.
When brought to the witness stand, all three of the defendants claimed that they thought their act was for the good of the tribe and professed an inability to under stand why they were being held in the white man’s jail. The jury met in the afternoon and returned a verdict of second-degree murder within an hour, a sign that although the killing was clearly premeditated, there were mitigating circumstances which precluded a “first-degree verdict which would have surely meant hanging at worst or a life sentence at best.
Two days later Judge Cheney sentenced the trio to ten years in the state prison, with their sentences beginning on June 22, 1891. Within months after their incarceration, Chief Naches and Captain Dave of the Pyramid Lake Reservation were petitioning Nevada Governor Roswell Keyes Colcord for their release.
They were later joined in the appeal by Paiute Chief Johnson Sides, the famous ‘United States Peacemaker,’ who in referring to witches said, “We kill ’em, now for the same reason the white the man killed ’em long ago.”
When the State Board of Pardons met the following year, they released the three on July 14, one year and 21 days from the commencement of their sentences. Winnescheika’s death would be the last execution of a witch in the United States.
With the help of a couple of tribal officers, the search for the man on the opposite side of the gap was made. ‘Shoshoni Johnny’ Hansen was an 83-year-old Paiute who lived by himself and often could be seen wandering the desert in the company of his dog.
“So, did you see anything on that day?”
“I see lots of things. Anything in particular?”
“The day the two women disappeared.”
“Yes. I saw them, but I did not make them disappear.”
“What can you tell us about what you saw.”
“I saw a red car with four girls in it. When it left there were only two girls in the car.”
“Didn’t that seem strange to you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I figgered the Nimerigar got the other two.”
“Nimerigar?”
“Yes. The little people. Bad. Don’t like humans and will eat them, both Whites and Indians.”
“Did you see these little people?”
“No, I’ve never seen them. I have a dog. They do not like dogs. Afraid of dogs.”
“So, what about the young man who came out to the caves yesterday, did you see him?”
“Yes. Nice motorbike. Always wanted one. Looks like fun to ride.”
“Did you watch him.”
“Watched him until he called out to me. I left because I do not want him calling the Nimerigar’s attention to me. Stupid boy.”
“Anything else that you can tell us?”
“About that day when girls go missing, I saw lights floating in the sky above the caves early in the morning, before sun. I also heard Winnescheika screaming and crying. Came home immediately.”
“Can you describe the lights?”
“Blue. Like a hot fire on a torch, without torch, that move back and forth and up and down. I have seen them before. I always return home when I see them.”
“And you said you heard a scream?”
“Not jus’ a scream – Winnescheika.”
“Winnescheika?”
“A witch. She’s believed to be dead by many, but White man dug her up after her death and her ghost walks the desert not far from where she was buried. If it is the Nimerigar who stole young girl, they have already eaten her, bones too. If it is Winnescheika, her ghost will return her when it is finish using her. Could be long time.”
The detectives looked at each other quickly. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Hansen.”
“You are welcome. Come by again. I enjoyed the visit.”
Once back in the car, “I think the old chief’s cheese has slid off his cracker.” The pair laughed at the remark.
The Old Blog in the Desert 