Stillman - Desert reckoning: a town sheriff, a Mojave hermit, and the biggest manhunt in modern California history

DESERT
RECKONING

ALSO BY DEANNE STILLMAN

Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West

(Houghton Mifflin, 2008)

Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave

(new, updated edition, Angel City Press, 2008;

first edition, William Morrow, 2001)

Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango

(University of Arizona Press, 2006)

DESERT

RECKONING

A Town Sheriff, a Mojave Hermit,
and the Biggest Manhunt in
Modern California History

DEANNE STILLMAN

Copyright 2012 by Deanne Stillman

Published by Nation Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

116 East 16th Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10003

Renegade

Words and Music by Tommy Shaw

Copyright 1978 ALMO MUSIC CORP. and STYGIAN SONGS

All Rights Controlled and Administered by ALMO MUSIC CORP.

All Rights ReservedUsed by Permission

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation

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Designed by Linda Mark

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stillman, Deanne.

Desert reckoning : a town sheriff, a Mojave hermit, and the biggest manhunt in modern California history / Deanne Stillman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-56858-691-5 (e-book)

1. Criminal investigationCaliforniaMojave DesertCase studies.

I. Title.

HV8073.S7332 2012

363.2'32--dc23

2012004961

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my father, Edward Stillman, 19271996,
coyote, shapeshifter, writer at heart

A FEW WORDS ON NAMES

Many people let me into their lives so I could write this book. Some requested anonymity, and that request has been honored, either by a name change or not using a name at all. Other names were changed to accommodate the privacy of family members who were not interviewed for this book. Pseudonyms are generally indicated in the text.

Oh Mama, Im in fear for my life from the long arm of the law

Oh Mama, Im in fear for my life from the long arm of the law

Lawman has put an end to my runnin

And Im so far from my home

Oh, Mama, I can hear you a cryin

Youre so scared and all alone

Hangman is comin down from the gallows

And I dont have very long

The jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me

A renegade who had it made, retrieved for a bounty

Nevermore to go astray, this will be the end today

Im a wanted man

Oh, Mama, Ive been here on the lam

And had a high price on my head

Lawman said get dead or alive

I was for sure hed shoot me dead.

Dear Mama, I can hear you a cryin

Youre so scared and all alone

Hangman is comin down from the gallows

And I dont have very long

The jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me

A renegade who had it made, retrieved for a bounty

Nevermore to go astray

This will be the end today

Im a wanted man

Im a wanted man

And I dont wanna go, No, No

Styx, Renegade

Whats the use of holding down a job like this? Look at you. Whatd you ever get out of it? Enough to keep you eating. And what for?... Thats right.... They dont even hang the right ones. You risk your life catching somebody, and the damned juries let them go so they can come back and shoot at you. Youre poor all your life, you got to do everything twice, and in the end they pay you off in lead. So you can wear a tin star. Its a job for a dog, son.

John M. Cunningham, The Tin Star, short story that became High Noon

Old Rattler, it is part of Natures plan

That I should grind you underneath my heel

The age-old feud between the snake and man

As Adam felt in Eden, I should feel.

And yet, Old Rattlesnake, I honor you;

You are a partner of the pioneer;

You claim your own, as youve a right to do

This was your EdenI intruded here.

Vaida Stewart Montgomery, To a Rattlesnake

ALONE IN HIS SMALL TRAILER, DONALD CHARLES KUECK had been singing a song. It wasnt a pretty song, nor was it a song that the casual passerby would hear on the off chance that he or she was in the vicinity of the remote little abode. No, the weird and discordant tune emanating from the trailer, always calling, calling, calling for someone to come and put him out of his misery, was broadcast on a frequency few could monitor, its sound waves fading in and out of the radio dead zones that pockmarked the vast desert expanse. But the singer was persistent and unwavering, and his song encircled the sage and drifted across the nest of the last desert tortoise; it traveled down washes cut by ancient floods and caressed the tough backs of scorpions, and one day it crossed a bajada, and the singer, yearning for his days to end, sang more furiously, sending the dirge into the higher elevations, up a butte studded with Joshua trees and granite slabs and bobcats and up higher until it was swept away by a Santa Ana windthat high-voltage swirl of hot air that is born in the Mojave and is said to carry messages of eviland it wafted across the high-desert scrub, over mountains and sea, and was heard by sensitive souls in other lands, far-flung sisters of the man who sang his own death song, and they called each other from Okinawa and Pensacola and Arizona and knew something was wrong. In another desert community outside of Los Angeles there was a daughter who also sensed impending doom, and she wrung her hands as she knew the end was near. Animals with their keener hearing responded to the softer notes of the singers grim melody (for all living things respond to music) and would come in from points south, east, north, and west of the trailer to be fed and nourished by the man who loved them but hated cops. In the mornings, the jackrabbits were the first to arrive, arranging themselves around a special outdoor breakfast table with portions of food placed at individual settings. Other critters would stop by throughout the day on their rounds. There was a raven that would alight on the mans arm. Kangaroo ratsamazing for their ability to go for days without water and often seen skittering across the sandswould slow themselves, finding a rare moment of rest in their perpetual state of panic, oblivious to the Daewoo automatic rifle inside the trailer, the magazines loaded with high-velocity rounds, and the handwritten will, perhaps calmed by the repeating reverberations of the death song (for all living things love an echo). But the company of animals was not enough to stop the mans desire to die. It is certainly within reason to figure that some of the animals, a coyote licking his chops possibly, or a tangle of rattlesnakes, may have even watched or slithered by as one night, perhaps under a full moon, while he was tweaked on a desert cocktail of meth, Darvon, and Soma, with the sound of his own blood thundering through his body, the Devil threw him a spade. Oh, its you, the man said. Now what? The Devil did not answer and the man said, I see. He approached the spade and walked around it, knowing that when he picked it up, the deal was done. At the call of the raven, he picked it up and said, Where do I dig? Between a rock and a hard place, the Devil replied, laughing at his own absurd joke. The man did not resist. He began to pace his property, looking for the right spot to bury himself, taking to the task with a kind of grim purpose, for he liked projects, and in fact eked out a meager living by assembling desert flotsam and jetsam into items that other desert dwellers found necessary, which is why his property was cluttered with junk. On this, the first night, he gazed at the skies, which were ablaze with constellations and shooting stars, and he stopped at various sites but they did not feel right and the same thing happened on the second. The Devil returned and said, Whats so great about the stars? Did they ever grant you a wish? and the man said, I cant remember, and then walked to the edge of his property. Looks good to me, the Devil said, and so the man commenced to dig, with great fervor, sinking spade into hardpack and heaving the first shovelful to the side.