The Body--A True Story

Our "home away from home".  This is the view from our hotel room window.  Downtown Denver skyline, Elitches, and a park in the foreground. 

Facebook is so much fun!  Especially when a group of my former students let their imaginations go wild.  Yesterday they brought back memories of an incident that happened years ago in the late 60's or early 70's.  Here's how it went.

It was summer and haying season had begun.  Uncle Albert, Bob's bachelor uncle who owned a rather remote ranch (where we now have our "cabin" and live) had his usual hay crew of old men and weird misfits.  It was particularly rainy, and not just a quick afternoon shower type of hay season.  Finally Albert told his crew to take a few days off if they needed to until the weather dried up.  There was a big strapping eighteen year old boy who asked if he could go to Colorado Springs to take care of some business down there.  We figured we'd never see him again.

About that time it was all over the Denver news that a priest from Colorado Springs was missing and a search was in progress.  Meanwhile about a week later the rain stopped and everyone showed up including the young man to get to work.  The big guy had shown back up driving a car he had acquired down in the Springs.  After about 2 or 3 days the rains came back and most of Albert's crew took off for town all in one car.  When the crew came back the next day the young man was not with them and that was the last any of us saw of him. He never even came back for his car.

After about a week Uncle Albert's dogs kept sniffing and jumping around on the car.  Finally Keith, Uncle Albert's hired man, called the sheriff and asked him to come get the car.  They towed it into Walden and put it in the alley behind what is now Amy's Hoopla store.  It sat there for another week or so and then it began to stink really bad.  All the stray dogs in town were yapping around it.

Finally, the sheriff and the town marshal (my brother-in-law who filled us in on the grisly details) had to pry the trunk open.  The stench was unbearable.  There was the missing priest with his belt around his neck, strangled!

The sheriff came out to the ranch to question everyone and it was big excitement for the hay crew.  They finally picked up the young man down around Colorado Springs.  For awhile there was talk of a big trial right up here in the Jackson County courthouse, but I think the guy confessed and there was no jury trial anywhere.  I suppose he is still in prison. 

Bob says when he was county commissioner in the 80s there was a body found with multiple shots in it dumped off in the north end of the county.  As far as he knows they never found out who the body was.

My former students are right!  People have used this remote area to stash  bodies on occasion!

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Near where the body was stashed.  At least the trunk of our car is open!  This is our "cabin" in fall.

Notice the "big country" behind us.  Pretty remote!