Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Life on the Run

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

When a beloved fixture of a Colorado community goes missing, his neighbors are shocked to learn that the man they thought they knew never existed, and a con man is in the wind again. Check out our great sponsors! KiwiCo: Get your first month of ANY crate line FREE at KiwiCo.com/coldcase  Listen to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast, KILLER PSYCHE DAILY, in the Amazon Music App. Download the app today! Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Hey, Cold Case fans, we have something special for you. We're bringing you double the episodes every week. We know you dedicated fans need your fix in between new episodes. So every Thursday, we are back bringing some of our best episodes from previous seasons. Let us know which classic episodes you'd like to hear again in the comments. And don't worry, we'll see you back here every Tuesday for all new episodes of Cold Case Files 2. Now, on to the episode. When Neil Murdoch left the town of Crested Butte, Colorado in 1998, the entire town threw a party

for him. There was even a guest book filled with well wishes for Murdoch's future. He was obviously well-liked in the community. He worked at a local daycare, volunteered at the town theater, and ran a natural food store. Known for his mountain biking skills, Murdoch was inducted into the town's Mountain Biking Hall of Fame in 1988. He was considered an interesting and fun character by many of the residents in the town. For example, in the early 1980s, he attended a New Year celebration dressed as a baby, wearing only a diaper. Murdoch had moved to Crested Butte in 1974, and the small ski town with a population of 700 welcomed him.

Though active and well-known in the community, Neil Murdoch didn't speak much about his past. People thought that he was just a private person and didn't give it too much thought. The thing was, though, that before his move in 1974, Neil Murdoch didn't exist. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. In 1974, Richard Bannister owned an import-export store in New Mexico. He traveled a lot for work and had most recently made a trip to Bolivia, where he purchased some wooden statues and shipped them back to his store. On November 30th, the statues arrived at the airport in Albuquerque.

It was then that a customs inspector discovered something unusual about the statues. This is Special Agent Ruben Gomez. One of the statues, between the base and the actual statue itself, there was a little corner of plastic sticking out. It was pretty obvious that something was inside that thing. When they opened the statues, the inspectors found $2.2 million worth of Bolivian cocaine.

So then they opened the other three statues, and sure enough, each one of them was packed with cocaine, and I believe it came out to a total of 22 pounds. In order to catch and charge Bannister for drug trafficking, the agents replaced the cocaine with a similar-looking white powder and allowed the package to continue on to its intended destination. We surveilled as Bannister came up and received the package. It was like an old thing for him.

He just nonchalant and went up to the counter and received the packages and signed for them and walked out. He left directly to his residence, which was up towards Cuesta, New Mexico, and that was a hippie commute. Once Bannister brought the package into his home, the agents rushed onto the property and arrested him. The bail amount was originally set at $75,000, but it was eventually lowered to $20,000 with a 10% provision.

What that means is, Bannister only had to pay $2,000 to be released, which he did. On December 26th, Bannister left the jail and promptly disappeared. Dick Lepley lived in a quiet town in northern Pennsylvania. He'd never heard of Gordon Bannister, the man accused of dealing drugs 22 years earlier. Lepley owned a bike shop, and business was good for the most part. He didn't have any money problems. When he filled out a loan application for an RV, Lepley got an unexpected call from the banker.

This is Dick Lepley got an unexpected call from the banker. This is Dick Lepley. Had a good relationship with a banker and he called me while he was putting the loan together and said, you ought to take a look at your credit. There's some real weird stuff showing up on it. The weird stuff included delinquent credit cards and a loan for a $60,000 home in Crested Butte, Colorado, a place that Lepley most certainly did not own a home. Then what happened is I began to get calls from a collection agency in Denver asking me when I wanted to take care of these bills.

Lepley's social security number had been taken over by another person, and all three credit bureaus believed that it belonged to a man named Neil Murdoch from Crested Butte. The interesting thing was, Murdoch's name actually supplanted mine on all my credit reports. It was kind of like I was the guy that didn't exist, or I was the bad guy. Lepley contacted everyone he could think of for three years to help him regain his Social Security number and to restore his good credit. Finally, after countless frustrating attempts, Lepley took his case to the investigative unit of the Social Security Administration. This is Special Agent

Ray Plummery. I received a call from Dick in January of 1998. He indicated to me that there was a person in Crested Butte, Colorado that was using his social security number. Agent Plummery decided to run a background check on the person who was using Dick Lepley's social security number. I tried to find out as much information as I could on who Murdoch might be. I tried to track down where he might have been born, where he might have lived, and basically establish who he might really be. And essentially I got nowhere. Everything I tried to track down on the guy came up blank.

Plummery then placed a call to the Crested Butte Police Department on the off chance they knew a man named Murdoch. And he said, oh yeah, he's lived here for 20 plus years and used to run a bike shop and he works in the health food store now and a nice guy, kind of one of the leading citizens of town. And I'm thinking to myself, this doesn't add up. Plummery decided he needed to go pay Mr. Murdoch a visit. Ted Connor had been the town marshal of Crested Butte for 20 years in 1998. Neil Murdoch was an interesting person who resided here in town. I didn't personally know him that well, but I think everybody who's lived around here for a while knew who he was.

Connor said that Murdoch was well-liked and active in the community, but no one really knew much about his past. I would personally look at him and think, I wonder where he came from. Agent Plummery also wanted to know where Neil Murdoch had come from, so the two investigators paid Murdoch a visit at the health food store where he worked. This is Agent Plummery. Well, I told him that we had a report that the social security number he'd been using belongs to someone else. And he seemed taken aback by that. I was like, well, I don't understand this. I mean, I've been used, this is my number. I don't know what to tell you. This is very strange. I don't know what to do. You know, I don't know how to respond to this. It was kind of his attitude. Plummery then asked Murdoch if he could photograph and fingerprint

him to set the record straight. I couldn't resolve it any other way. If he'd have admitted who he was or something, I probably wouldn't have bothered, but he didn't. And I knew he wasn't who he was saying he was, so I had to have something to try to find that out. Agent Plummery returned to Denver with Murdoch's photo in prints. Two days later, he got a phone call from the bookkeeper at the health food store. I asked her what Social Security number was on his original application for employment, and she pulled it out and looked at it, and it was a different Social Security number.

Agent Plummery ran the new number through NCIC, the National Crime Information Center database. And up popped a warrant on Richard Bannister. Richard Bannister, a fugitive who was wanted on international drug smuggling charges 25 years earlier. I thought, well, I know what he's doing in Crested Butte, and he's apparently been hiding ever since he was wanted because he's been there for 20 years. The prints and photos from Neil Murdoch were compared with prints and photos from Richard Bannister's 1973 arrest record. We matched the thumbprints and it was the same guy. Then they had photographs faxed out and you could see it was the same guy. He was a lot younger, obviously, but it was the same guy. Ron Halverson, a U.S. Marshal located in Denver, was assigned to arrest Bannister.

This is Deputy Halverson. I was approached about 1 o'clock in the afternoon saying there's a sheriff down in Crested Butte, Colorado, who has information on a possible fugitive located at Bannister. The assignment came at a busy time for Halverson, who was on the trail of another fugitive in Denver. We had already had other investigations lined up and arrests ready to go, so the decision was made not to go down to Crested Butte that night,

but go at first thing in the morning, at 5 o'clock in the morning. Halverson began the trek from Denver to Crested Butte, nearly 250 miles before it was even light outside. But he still hadn't made it on time. And by the time we got to Crested Butte at about 8 o'clock in the morning, he had already departed. There was frustration on all the agency's parts

because it appeared that we'd had an opportunity to possibly apprehend him and it didn't happen. Deputies Connor and Halverson tried to question the locals in Crested Butte about Bannister, but received little cooperation. Here's Deputy Halverson. It was a very guarded community. We actually became stonewalled with a lot of individuals, and we felt like they weren't telling all the truth that they knew. The people in Crested Butte, Colorado, really liked Bannister. Finally, investigators found a local woman who was willing to speak with them. She saw Richard Bannister get in the car with a friend of hers at about 7 o'clock in the morning.

And she said they looked like they were, they mentioned they were headed to Four Corners, Colorado. Four Corners is the place where four western states come together at a single point. Here, according to the woman, Bannister had made his exit. This is Four Corners U.S. Marshal Lee White. Basically, he took off on his bicycle and disappeared either into the sunset or the sunrise. Personally, at the time, I thought it sounded too much like Casablanca. In the following weeks, the marshals chased Bannister through dozens of leads and suspected sightings. Here's Deputy Halverson again.

We began receiving reports from all over the western states that we had seen this guy on the bike and the photo had been widely distributed and we had 65 different sightings that came in and we sent out local police departments, local sheriff's department to track down each and every lead. None of them turned out to be our guy Bannister. For the second time, Richard Bannister evaded investigators and vanished. I'm Lola. And I'm Megan. And we're the hosts of Trust Me, cults, extreme belief, and manipulation.

We both have childhood cult experiences. And we're here to debunk the myths about people who join them and show that anyone can be manipulated. Our past interviews include survivors and former members of the Manson family, NXIVM, MS-13, Teal Swan, Heaven's Gate, Children of God, and the Branch Davidians. Join us every week as we help you spot the red flags. Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Taos, New Mexico sits at the base of the Crystal Mountains. It's the type of place that attracts skiers, mountain bikers, and artists. It could also attract people with a complicated past.

Lisa Alfonso was one of the two U.S. Marshals who covered northern New Mexico. In the fall of 2001, she got a tip about a man named Grafton Mahler. This is Deputy Alfonso. Basically what we had here was we had an individual in the Taos area using a name of Grafton Mahler. Grafton Mahler purchased a piece of property in Tres Piedras, New Mexico, using the fugitive Richard Bannister's original social security number. Alfonso reached out to the investigator assigned to the case, U.S. Marshal Lee White. She said, I have a source that says he's living in Taos, New Mexico, under the name of Grafton Mahler. I said, listen, guy's been a fugitive for 27 years. Don't wait. I will start

towards Taos, but do not wait for me to get there. If you see him, put handcuffs on him. Let's bring him in. With Bannister's photo in hand, Alfonso asked around Taos about Mahler. This is Deputy Alfonso again. I came across a woman, a merchant there, and asked her if she knew a gentleman by the name of Grafton Mahler. And she said, oh sure, I know Grafton really well. And so I asked if she would review a photo. And so I showed her the photo and she said, oh yeah, that's Grafton. And he has very

distinct eyebrows. And so I knew that if his eyebrows remained the same, there was no doubt in my mind that I'd be able to positively identify him. Like Neil Murdoch and Crested Butte, Grafton Mahler had many friends in Taos. Those friends directed Deputy Alfonso to the thrift store where Mahler worked. Walked into the store and Grafton Mahler, a.k.a. Richard Bannister, Neil Murdock, is walking towards me. And I said, Mr. Mahler. And he just stared at my badge. And he blinked quite a bit, I remember that, but he didn't move. He froze. He was shocked.

After 27 years on the run, Richard Bannister had been found and arrested. When I got him to the jail, I told him, you know, we could spend the next 30 minutes here taking your fingerprints, and then I'd have to run them through the FBI database to get confirmation that you are Richard Gordon Bannister, or you can just sit here and tell me that you are. And he said, I am Richard Gordon Bannister. Richard Bannister pled guilty to trafficking cocaine and jumping bail, and a judge sentenced him to nine years in prison. For many who knew Bannister, though not by that name,

the sentence seemed severe. Dick Lepley, though, the man whose Social Security number Bannister stole and whose credit Bannister ruined, had no problem with the sentence. Now let me see. I'm an honest guy. Employ 50 people. Have paid my bills. Have contributed to this community for 35 years now. Spent five years cleaning up that mess that he got me in. Nine's not enough. He could sit there for the rest of time for all I care. For the U.S. Marshals who chased Bannister through three states and for more than 20 years, the lesson seemed clear. Where the feds are concerned, men like Richard Bannister can run, sometimes for decades, but they can't hide.

I always expect to end the day with an arrest. When I leave to work a warrant, I leave with the positive attitude that I'm going to come back with the body. We're relentless, and eventually we're going to catch them. Every fugitive is catchable, and we're going to catch them. Unless time catches up to him first. Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. You can find me at Brooke Giddings on Twitter and at Brooke the Podcaster on Instagram. I'm also active in the Facebook group Podcast for Justice. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash real crime.