Ron Franscell - Crime Buffs Guide to the Outlaw Rockies

Ron Franscell is a bestselling author and journalist whose atmospheric true crime/memoir The Darkest Night was hailed as a direct descendant of Truman Capotes In Cold Blood and established him as one of the most provocative new voices in narrative nonfiction. His work as appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, San Jose Mercury-News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The Crime Buffs Guide to the Outlaw Rockies is his fifth book. His other Globe Pequot Press titles are The Crime Buffs Guide to Outlaw Texas and The Sourtoe Cocktail Club. Ron grew up in Wyoming and now lives in Texas.

PHOTO BY MARY FRANSCELL

A book such as this requires a passionate, unofficial, and unpaid support staff to point the way to the places Ive described. As always, chief among them is my devoted wife, Mary, who has ridden shotgun on most of my ghost-chasing explorations. She spent thirty-five days and 8,300 miles with me on this book, and remains married to me. When a man drags his wife to dozens of muddy cemeteries, old crime scenes, and presumably haunted buildings, and she tells him she wouldnt want to be anywhere else, then he knows he chose the right one.

One special day in my research stands out. Archaeologist David Darlington supplied the four-wheelers, beer, and antelope sausage for a day in the remote outlaw hangout of Powder Wash, Wyoming. It was not a trip back in time but a trip into a place forgotten entirely by time. Magical.

Other people were also important in some small but important ways, earning my respect and gratitude. So many thanks are owed to editor Erin Turner at Globe Pequot, my agent Gina Panettieri, Johan P. Bakker, Patrick Brower, Dan Brumbaugh, Rita Butler, Amy Cashel, Beryl Churchill, Charles and Leslie Clapper, Laurena Mayne Davis, Geoff Dobson, Dave Dovala, Craig Douglass and Catherine Richard, Bob Edwards, Rick Ewig, Sharon Field, Dr. George Gill, Earl and Kathy Gipe, Frank and Jackie Graham, Terrick and Alyssa Hagen, Dan Haley, Steve Henson, Bernie and Adria Hohman, Linda Holloway, Conrad Hopp Jr., Grayce Keller, Danette Kinsley, Rod Laird, Earl and Barbara Madsen, Mary McKinstry of the Fort Sedgwick Historical Society, Kirk Mitchell, Jessica Monday, Bill and Susan Pennington, Julie and Dan Perala, Dr. Phil Roberts, Stone Saville, Lynn Smith, Starcraft RV Inc., Guy and Bonnie Thompson, Thomas Trotman, Kevin Vaughan, Rod Warne, Pat Watson, James Wetzel, Wyoming State Archives, and all those who often knew literally where the bodies were buried.

To my fellow authors Larry Brown, Dan Buck, Anne Meadows, Chip Carlson, Frank J. Daniels, Debra Faulkner, Robert Hardaway, Steve Jackson, Dick Kreck, Rick Mattix, Carol McNew, Dr. Jerred Metz, Victoria Newman, Silvia Pettem, and Kevin Sullivan, who all offered expert reflection.

And to all the rest who happily led me through their homes, scribbled directions, said follow me, called other people who should know, and shared memories that nobody ever asks about anymore.

Ron Franscell
San Antonio, Texas

Aurora

The building that once housed the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant is in a strip mall at 12293 East Iliff Ave., Suite A. GPS 39.675207, -104.844887

Less than two weeks before Christmas in 1994, Nathan Dunlapan angry kitchen worker whod been fired a week beforeslipped into the Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria just after closing. In a murderous rage, he shot five former coworkers (three of them teenagers) with a small-caliber, semiautomatic handgun. Four of them died on the spot, but despite being shot in the jaw, a fifth escaped to a nearby apartment building where he called police.

Dunlap, twenty, escaped and was hidden by his girlfriend until he was arrested the next day. He was convicted in the mass murder two years later and given four death sentences, one for each of the victims gunned down at the pizza parlor. He remains on Colorados death row.

Aurora

Eastlawn Memorial Gardens is at 19600 Smith Rd. The grave is at GPS 39.75053, -104.75159.

Three times, convicted killer Sylvester Lee Garrison (19322005) ate his last mealalways fried chicken, stewed onions, french fries and real coffeebefore eleventh-hour stays saved his life. In eleven years on death row, he shook the hands of five condemned men who never came back from the gas chamber. He himself had fourteen different execution dates for the 1958 pistol-whipping murder of an elderly manbut all came and went as Garrison, who always said he didnt do it, survived.

When the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in 1972, Garrisons sentence was commuted to life. Despite his murder conviction, he was paroled in 1978 and became a city maintenance worker and beloved family patriarch, still maintaining his innocence.

He grew philosophical about what hed seen while awaiting his own death.

You could see all the weak parts of people, the child in them, he told a newspaperman in 1989. I seen some of them fantasize and never come back.

How many times can you die? he once asked. Well, Garrison escaped death row and became a kind of poster boy for capital punishment opponents, but he couldnt escape death. He died of a brain tumor in 2005, just a week shy of his seventy-third birthday.

Aurora

This memorial is in the City of Auroras government complex at 15151 East Alameda Parkway, or GPS 39.71154, -104.81341.

This site is among the most ambitious and contemplative memorials ever created to honor police officers who have died in the line of duty. Sculpture and a somber wall of memory pay tribute to the local lawmen and women.

Centennial

Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens is at 6601 S. Colorado Blvd., or GPS 39.59981, -104.94614.

Aleszandra Alie Berrelez (19881993) was only five years old when she was abducted from the yard of her familys Englewood apartment building on May 18, 1993. Four days later, a police bloodhound named Yogi led his handler over more than fourteen miles of rugged terrain to her smothered body, which had been stuffed in a khaki duffel bag and dumped down a ravine near Deer Creek Mountain Park.

The city of Aurora pays tribute to fallen officers at an elaborate, touching memorial.

Yogi tracked the killers scent back to an empty apartment in Alies apartment building, but to date, the case is unsolved. Police believe Alies killer either lived in the apartment complex or had visited someone there.

The slain girls grandparents established the Alie Foundation, which buys bloodhounds for police agencies throughout the United States. Since then, the nonprofit foundation has placed more than three hundred bloodhounds in forty-five states.

Yogi died of cancer in 1998. He is buried with twenty other police dogs at the Aurora Police Shooting Range at the Spring Hill Golf Course, 810 Telluride St., or GPS 39.72957, -104.77373.

You can learn more about the Alie Foundation at its website: www.alie.org.

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