The first known explorers from the United States to come through Modoc country were John Charles Fremont together with Kit Carson in 1843. In the early evening of May 9th, 1846, Fremont received a message brought to him by Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, from President James Polk about a possible war with Mexico.

Reviewing the messages, Fremont neglected the customary measure of posting a watchman for the camp. By doing so, it was clear Carson, had “apprehended no danger.”

Later that night Carson awakened to the sound of a thump. Jumping up, he saw his friend and fellow trapper Basil Lajeunesse sprawled ou on the ground in blood.

Carson sounded an alarm as he realized the camp was under attack by Native Americans, estimated to be several dozen in number. By the time the attacked end, two more members of Fremont’s group were dead.

The one dead attacker, it turned out, was a Klamath Lake native. Fremont’s group fell into was he described as “an angry gloom.”

To avenge the deaths,  the following day, Fremont attacked a Klamath Tribe fishing village named Dokdokwas, where the Williamson River and Klamath Lake meet.  The village, it is now known, had nothing to do with the attack from the night before.

It’s generally agree Fremont and Carson, chose the wrong tribe to lash out against and that in all likelihood the band that had killed Fremont’s men were from the neighboring Modoc. The attack destroyed the village structures; one of Fremont’s men, by the name of Sides reports the expedition killed women and children as well as warriors.

The Klamaths are culturally related to the Modocs, but the two peoples were bitter enemies.

FOX Executive from Los Angeles, Gavin Smith has been missing since May 1st, 2012 and his brother Greg Smith lives in Reno and sister, Tara Smith Addeo lives in Minden. The family of the 57-year-old exec and former UCLA basketball player has offered a $20,000 reward for information about his whereabouts.

Investigators say Smith had separated from his wife Lisa and three sons, and was living with a roommate in the Los Angeles area. They add, he received a late night telephone call May 1st, and left the house about 10:30 p.m., wearing purple sweatpants and black and gray shoes.

Police now saying he was likely murdered, this after Smith’s Mercedes was found February 21st in a Simi Valley storage locker.  Authorities have named John Creech as a person of interest in the case; he is in custody on unrelated drug charges.

The Simi Valley storage unit is linked to Creech, and he and his wife’s West Hills, house has already been searched twice by police. Smith met Creech’s wife, Chandrika in drug rehab.

Smith’s body has yet to be found.

As quietly as possible, officers encircled the man they tracked over the last year. They could see his make shift camp site as they approached.

“Gun!” one of the officers shouted. Another yelled, “Police! We have you surrounded!”

Seconds later, the single report of a gunshot echoed over the rock-strewn landscape. The chase had concluded and the man dubbed “The Ballarat Bandit,” was no longer.

The desert camp where the Bandit shot himself with a .22 rifle, ending a yearlong manhunt about a mile outside Inyo County, where he was well-known to local authorities. In death, the Bandit became an even greater mystery when every effort to identify him met with failure.

In 2003, he made himself known to law enforcement. The Bandit stole a geologists car and wallet and used his credit card to purchase supplies, including filling his gas tank in Tonopah.

During the year-long pursuit he stole food, weapons, cars, wallets, and even a child’s little red wagon in Nevada, which he used to transport a stolen battery to jump-start a stolen car. He was neat and precise in his habits, cleaning his campsites so thoroughly not even a square of toilet paper, much less a fingerprint, remained.

In one instance, authorities discovered the Bandit’s camp near the base of a 9000-foot mountain. They launched an assault at dawn with a K-9 unit and a SWAT team.

They chased the Bandit up the slope following his tracks and came within 50 feet of him, but the Bandit eluded them He sprinted five miles up and over the mountain and across the valley beyond leaving law enforcement officers in the dust.

A couple of months later, he again escaped by jogging through desolate backcountry to the Reno area. Officials hunted him from helicopter and horseback, from the triple-digit heat of the desert to the snow-capped High Sierra Mountains.

Suspected of being a terrorist, the Bandit set up paramilitary style camps, well stocked with high-tech firearms, overlooking the Tonopah Test Range, the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake, NAS Fallon and the government’s secret installation, known as Area 51. He was also believed to be a mental case or some sort of folk hero.

When possible, he avoided human contact and confrontation. He did, however, have a temper, as investigators found when they discovered he had shot a stolen vehicle full of holes when it became stuck in the mud, kicked a dent into the side of the stolen truck when it wouldn’t start, and disabled the vehicle of the man he bunked with in a remote cabin after the man asked him to leave.

For the owner of that isolated cabin, his house-guest was irritating and lazy, constantly talking about his hatred of the Bureau of Land Management. Still others reported brief interactions with a lean, highly energetic man with bright blue eyes.

Either way,the bandit burglarized uninhabited ranch homes, farms and cabins in remote areas. He took batteries, macaroni and cheese, soup and other nonperishable food, pots and pans, guns, cars, clothes and cooking spices.

But all that changed when an off-duty BLM ranger spotted a campsite on his way through Death Valley. He stopped to check it out, discovering marijuana plants, several weapons and ammunition.

Inside the vehicle, a pickup truck stolen in Nevada’s Humboldt County, the officer found the geologist’s driver’s license. He disabled the truck and left the park, alerting authorities to the camp.

But by the time rangers reached the scene, the Bandit had returned, grabbed a plastic bag of .22 bullets from the cab of the truck, a few cans of food and a sleeping bag, and fled on a stolen ATV.

Temperatures in Death Valley at the time were in excess of 120 degrees, and the Bandit had only one small 2-quart water container him when he fled. The heat, apparently, was beginning to affect him for his usual careful habits faltered.

And it only got worse as he went further south, avoiding the settlements of Tecopa and Shoshone where he could have found water, and descending further into the dry desert heat until he ran out of gasoline for the ATV. A National Park Service ranger spotted him sitting near a callbox on California Highway 127 near Ibex Pass and called for backup.

Three hours later, as officers converged on his remote campsite, the exhausted Bandit was out of options. He stripped off all his clothing, stretched out under a tarp held up and shot himself.

The only thing found in the pocket of the shorts removed before he died was a handful of marijuana seeds. It seems he had, in fact, thoroughly erased himself.

It was a hot, quiet day at the Samaritan Cemetery in San Bernardino as the man known as the Ballarat Bandit was finally laid to rest. John Doe #39-04, the identity assigned to him by the coroner’s office, seemed to have taken his all his secrets to the grave.

Eighteen-months later the Ballarat Bandit authorities identified the Bandit as George Robert Johnston, left his family after being jailed in 1997 after officials found 4,000 marijuana plants on his Prince Edward Island farm in Canada. Perhaps it was prison that drove him to the open desert and to take his own life, fearing more confinement.

It’s a secret that sleeps with the resting bones of the still-mysterious Bandit of Ballarat.

At first I wasn’t going to share this, and then I asked, “So why write at all?” It’s a re-discovery that re-opened my eyes: the power of simple prayer.

Towards the end of 2012, I was down, nothing was going my way and it showed. Everyday, I found it hard to keep going.

Tired of the perpetual downward cycle, I gave up and asked God for help — I mean REALLY asked for His help. By this time I was operating on a couple of hours sleep in a week-long period.

And soon my outlook changed.  Now, I’m calm, the world proceeds as it should, and I have nothing to do with either.

Something’s shouldn’t be so easily forgotten.

“Big Bill,” was born in Ireland and served as a pilot in Great Britain’s Royal Flying Corps during World War I. By 1918, William Blanchfield was a pilot with the U.S. Air Mail Service, having immigrated and applied for U.S. citizenship.

In 1921, Blanchfield was assigned the Reno-Elko run.  The Nevada State Journal describes one of his flights:

“During the month of November 1922, Blanchfield made his phenomenal run from Elko on the wings of a hurricane. The thermometer registered 16 degrees below zero at Elko and the field manager there told him it was impossible to make the flight. But Blanchfield, with that soldier tradition of generations, demurred. He said that the mail must go. And he won. But the fight he made with the blizzard is still talked about in aviation circles.”

Such exploits made him a national hero. But it was his death that left an indelible mark.

Friday afternoon, August 1st, 1924, Blanchfield flew over the Knights of Pythias Cemetery off Nevada Street in his DeHaviland DH-4 biplane. A group of mourners were gathered below for the funeral of Air Mail Service mechanic Samuel J. Garrans, who had died in an accident three days earlier.

Blanchfield planned to say goodbye his friend by circling the cemetery three times, then dropping a wreath on Garrans’ grave. He had jus’ completed the second circle, something went wrong.

His plane went into a flat spin, crashing into the side of a home on Ralston Street. The impact split open the planes gas tank, setting the craft and the house on fire.

Blanchfield was trapped in the wreckage. When his burned body was removed from the wreckage, his hands were still grasping the controls.

His funeral was at St. Thomas Aquinas Cathedral. He was laid to rest at in veterans plot at Mountain View Cemetery.

Reno Air Mail Field was renamed Blanchfield Air Field (also known as Blanch Field) in his honor. It’s now the site of the Washoe County Golf Course.

Originally, I posted these in 2006. Then I decided to unpost them, but I’m putting them back up so they can be shared by anyone and everyone in the radio news business. Besides it clears one more file from my computer….

Stick with Who, What, Where and When. Avoid Why or How. If a listener would like to know why or how, they can pick up the newspaper. Think in terms of, “noun, verb, noun, verb.”

Once you have the four-Ws in your mind, tell the story to yourself, and then write it out in no more than two or three sentences. This takes some practice.

Stay in the present tense. The subject “says,” not “said.” Remain in the NOW. If it is snowing, that should be the lead story. If a pile-up is clogging the afternoon commute, lead with it.

Be LOCAL, however if a lead story isn’t obvious, look at the local headline of the paper for an indication.  If the first large LOCAL headline is the state budget or an attempted kidnapping make it your first story lead.

Use a bullet-point style of writing. The idea is to be “quick-in and quick out.”

Keep sentences down to 10 words if possible. When using newswire copy, rewrite the lead sentences. Each sentence is generally 25 words long. This is because they were written by someone who is a newspaper reporter. Avoid using compound sentences.

Don’t use numbers if you can help it. When you cannot avoid using numbers, round the number up or down. Then use “near,” “around,” “above,” “below,” or “about” to add accuracy to the story.

Stay away from radio-speak like, “The 1300 block of…,” instead just use the street name. It just means that you don’t “know” the actual address anyway, so why telegraph it.

If you have two numbers that cannot be avoided, add them together. “Just above 5-thousand,” sounds better than, “two-thousand-one-hundred and three and another estimate of two-thousand-nine-hundred and ninety-six…”

Delete quotes from your story. That is what actualities are for. Instead use a generic phrase like, “The police say…”  Also avoid repeating the subject’s name. “John Smith says he’ll run for governor next month. He’s a high school teacher.”

Remember “district officials say…” works as good as, “School district superintendent Joe Blow says…” Police sergeant Jim Badge says…” can be replaced with “Authorities say…”

The word “That” is over used in many cased. “He says that he’s a construction worker,” is reduced by a one-word if rewritten to read, “He says he’s a construction worker.” Use contraction as much as possible.

Avoid language that is too technical or designed to make the article sound “educated.”  The word “accused” works as good as “alleged.” Replace words like, “residence,” with “home” or “house.”

When editing actualities, use only six to 10 seconds of recorded material; anymore and the immediacy disappears.  Wrap it with two-lead sentences and close with a single sentence.

Remove words that tend to editorialize. For example: “The nominee gave an rousing speech last night…,” should be edited to read, “The nominee gave a speech last night…”

Watch out for words that are unnecessary. “The police are looking for a thief that is described as…”  The word’s “that is” are not needed to complete the story.

Don’t write, “This unidentified woman says…”  Instead make it read, “This woman says…”

Remember:  This only a guide and not a set of rules.

“I’ll never drive at night again,” 86-year-old Patrick Carnes is heard telling the Nevada Highway Patrol trooper who pulled him over after he passed by too close to him as he stood by a tractor-trailer he had stopped.

“I’m only following him because he’s going to Elko,” the elderly man is also heard to say.

He was talking about the big rig truck and trailer he was following westbound on I-80, a few miles east of Wells about 9 in the evening of April 13th. It would be the last time Carnes’ would be seen.

Interstate 80 is one of the nation’s most important freeways; it carries thousands of travelers each day. It’s most desolate part is the one that slices through northern Nevada.

At night, inky darkness swallows everything. Some call the road “The Big Lonely.”

Earlier in April, Carnes and his dog, Lucky drove to Ohio to visit family. The day before he was last seen, he packed up his dark green Subaru station wagon and head back towards Reno.

After the Trooper gave Carnes a traffic warning, the World War II veteran continued into the night.

The following day, Carnes car was found abandoned at the Pumpernickel Valley off-ramp, a three-hour drive from where the Trooper had talked with Carnes. There was no sign of foul play and the car had gas, but Carnes and the dog were nowhere to be found.

Investigators were quick to notice that Carnes’ vehicle was on the south side of the freeway. However, he was travelling west, which should have placed the vehicle on the north side of the interstate.

That told officers, someone had dumped the Subaru.

Despite their immediate findings, they searched the desert for Lucky and Carnes for several days. Nothing was found to show where they had gone.

Then the Trooper, who pulled Carnes over, heard about the man’s disappearance and decided to check his cruiser’s dash-cam. The video shows the two men talking and tractor-trailer speeding by.

Though the vehicle zipped by quickly, authorities were able to freeze-frame the trucks’ trailer, and zoom in on the upper left hand corner. There, a logo is visible, though so far , no one recognizes it.

Two years before Carnes’ disappearance, the FBI quietly created a task force to look into the possibility that a serial killer working as a truck driver, was operating along the I-80 corridor.

Three years earlier 62-year-old Judy Casida of Cold Springs, Nevada,  went missing along the same stretch of roadway. Furthermore her white, Mazda pickup was also found abandoned at the same off-ramp.

When investigations stall, good detectives are open to calling on unusual resources.  Seven months after Carnes disappeared, psychic Elaina Proffitt, a former Reno resident and a veteran of a number of high-profile criminal cases became involved.

While she confirmed many of the investigators suspicions, none of her findings are directly available to the public. Authorities did say she left then with other avenues to explore in the case.

One unsettling theory that can’t be dismissed is this might be the work of a pair of serial killers, working as a team. To the east, Utah authorities are looking for a young man who disappeared in May 2012 along I-80 near Dugway. To the west, an elderly hitchhiker vanished in April in California’s Humboldt County.

There is also the case of the skeletal remains found off of State Route 89 between Truckee and Calpine in 2003 in the central part of Sierra County. It took authorizes nine-years to identify the remains.

Charlene Rosser of Eureka, California, went missing in October 1998 after having last been seen in April 1998. She was also known to accept rides from truck drivers.

For the last couple of years I’ve searched for a friend that I went to school with and so far he’s proving very hard to find. I have very scant information, though I’m in touch with his sister, Ina who lives in Colorado.

Thomas James Smith was born April 11th, 1960 in West Germany, and has gone by the nicknames, “Tommy,” “Tom,” and “T.J.”  He and his family were assigned to Requa Air Force Station in Klamath in 1974.

He was in my 8th grade class and all the way through our senior year, graduating in 1978. Shortly after graduation, his family was reassigned to Colorado Springs, Colorado.

I spoke with him one last time in 1979, while I was stationed at Warren Air Force Base.

Time and again I’ve run his name and date of birth through an Internet search and have come up with very little. What I have been able to find is that he has a wife named Deborah Smith, who I believe is in Olympia, Washington and that she’s been looking for him as well.

Furthermore, after Tom disappeared from Deborah’s life he was in a four-year relationship with another woman and he walked out of her life with her camping gear and hasn’t been seen since. Finally, this woman says he has a “Tenbears” tattoo on his buttocks and a tribal paw print on one of his forearms.

I’ve put our inquiries to various police departments in Washington and Colorado, but I’m beginning to fear the worst.

When the two men headed into the desert of southern Nevada in the winter of 1902, they were hoping to strike it rich. They had been present when Paiute Indian prospector Tom Fisherman wandered into Tonopah with gold ore.

Fisherman received a ten-dollar grubstake from Jim Butler and Tom Kendall, to find a claim where the rock was found. But, Tom immediately got drunk, and the only information they could get from him was the rock was found thirty miles to the south.

After giving up on Fisherman, Kendall and Butler grubstaked Harry Stimler, a half Shoshone Indian, and William Marsh, both native Nevadans from Belmont to find the gold. As they set about hunting for the ore ledge, a dust storm arrived.

However, despite the conditions, they found what they were looking for. They named their first claim the Sandstorm and soon other prospectors joined them and a small city of tents and dug-outs appeared.

Stimler and Marsh eventually dubbed the new settlement, Gran Pah, which in Shoshone means great water. It was later anglicized to Grandpa, as in the Grandaddy of all strikes, which it remained until October 1903 when the name officially  to Goldfield.

By that time many of the structures in the town were a mixture of mud and empty whiskey bottles. A year later, the rush was on, and demand for housing had become so great that carpenters worked around the clock, with new residents were arriving on foot, horseback and by wagon.

Soon Goldfield would be Nevada’s largest city.

Perhaps it’s hard to spot Trinidad Bay from the ocean in December, or perhaps the brigantine Cameo’s captain needed a refresher course before he began. At any rate, in 1850 the ship’s captain missed the bay and reported back to San Francisco that the bay was “a myth.”

His pride must have been stung when survivors from a group led by Josiah Gregg reached the city shortly after and reported Trinidad Bay’s existence. Gregg’s group had fought their way across the Coast Range and through the redwoods to reach the bay at about the time those on the Cameo were trying to find it.

The ocean-going group, an expedition from the Trinity mines, had left the diggings in November 1849 to travel to Sacramento Valley and, via Sutter’s Mill, to San Francisco. Once there, they chartered the Cameo and headed up the coast.

Their intention was to find Trinidad Bay. After Gregg’s party “re-discovered” Trinidad Bay, San Francisco newspapers played up the event and re-kindled interest in the Humboldt Coast. In early February 1850 two vessels sailed from San Francisco in another unsuccessful effort to pinpoint the body of water from the ocean.

Cameo advertised for passengers and freight, resumed the search for the shy body of water in March. Eleven other vessels followed her.

Due to a rough sail up the coast, she hove to near Trinidad Head on March 16 and put ashore a four-man landing party. Foul weather forced the brig’s captain to continue up the coast without those on board knowing the shore party had located Trinidad Bay.

The four knew when they found an inscription locating the bay. Gregg’s party had carved it into a tree near the headland Dec. 7 of the previous year.