National Park After Dark - Unfinished Business: Crater Lake National Park

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Alice Simms always knew her grandfather was murdered. For most of her life, she didn’t know much about him, his life or death. Her mother never talked much about him, and Alice never wanted to ask ��� afraid she may open a painful wound. But after her mother died, Alice believes she came back to her from beyond the veil – and encouraged her to finish what she had begun, to find who killed Albert Jones. Today we visit Crater Lake National Park, the location of the biggest unsolved mysteries in the Pacific Northwest – the murders of Albert Jones and Charles Culhane.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Apostrophe: Get your first visit for only five dollars at our link and when you use code NPAD.Bombas: Use code NPAD at checkout for 20% off your first purchase. BetterHelp: Get 10% off your first month of online therapy by using our link.Microdose: Use code NPAD to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture, my work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff,

knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress.

Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. If you have ever lost someone that you love, you are familiar with platitudes. Remarks that are given to you with all of the best intentions and attempt to make you feel better,

but more often than not, these words usually miss the mark. These phrases can grate against an already raw and open wound. Anyone who has experienced grief knows all too well, it is paradoxical. It is feeling hollow while feeling heavy. It is being numb while searing with pain. It is conjuring flames with anger and extinguishing them with your tears. Grief is drowning. But between the waves, while gasping for air, sometimes we receive momentary relief.

This relief can and does come in a myriad of ways, shapes, and forms. And depending on who you are, you may feel relief in a way someone else wouldn't. but I can almost guarantee this relief does not come from well-intentioned platitudes. It comes from cooking their favorite meal, creating a memorial, blasting their favorite song, giving to a charity they supported. Working through grief often shows itself in continuing to live your life in the way that your loved one would. Sometimes our loved ones show us exactly what they want us to do. And sometimes, just sometimes, it involves solving a murder.

Welcome to National Park After Dark. I was not sure what direction that intro was taking us, and I feel like I just got whipped around to a murder story. And I'm excited. You were sad, and now you're curious. Now I'm like, hold on, a murder? All right. Yep, we're doing a murder story again. I feel like we kind of just did, well, the morbid girls did them. So I guess it doesn't count. So I guess it was my time again to do a murder, true crimey story. And what better place to do it than Crater Lake National Park in the Pacific Northwest. So Crater Lake, we've been to in, I'm trying to think, August of last year. On Patreon. On Patreon. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, never on the main feed, though. Never on the main feed. And yeah, have you been to Crater Lake in person? No, I have not. I tried. But when I drove through, there was a blizzard that came and we didn't make it. I think maybe I asked you that in August of last year when I covered Crater Lake for Patreon. Did I have the same reaction?

I'm like, ugh. I have not. I think so, yeah. Yeah, Ian and I went together. It was beautiful. Crater Lake is awesome. And of course, I'm going to tell you about it. Since you've never been, I have to paint the picture, you know.

Yes, tell me everything. Okay, so located in South Central Oregon, Crater Lake National Park is the country's fifth designated national park and the only national park in the state. But it is amongst five different national monuments and historic sites within Oregon. Established in 1902, the park encompasses the caldera of Crater Lake, the obvious point of interest of this park, the giant lake. The lake is not only stunning, it's actually pretty unique. At over 1,900 feet, which is about 579 meters, it comes in as the deepest lake in all of the United States. And if you've ever been or seen photos, it's apparent just how brilliant blue

this lake is. I mean, it's stunning. I hate to, I've been watching, just a total side note. I've been watching, like, selling the OC and selling sunset. Yeah, me too, because you told me to watch it. And it's just obviously such trash TV, but it's a guilty pleasure. And they always, any time they show a house, they're like stunning. Amazing. It's like three descriptors. They're like stunning, amazing, gorgeous.

Like there's nothing else to say. No other house like it. You can't give views like this in the only. You can't get views like this. And then it's a view and it's like 900 people's houses and then the ocean is like 40 miles away. It's like there's no other views like this. This house is only $28 million and it could be yours and your neighbors are only seven feet away. And there's always construction happening. Construction is great because construction means that the neighborhood's happening and then they can have the price. Yeah, it's being invested in. So actually,

That's going to be $38 million. We wish we could afford $38 million houses. Where was I? Oh, yeah, the lake. So this blue color that Crater Lake has is in part due to the lack of sediment and mineral deposits within the water. Because the water in this lake comes directly from snow and rain. So there are no inlets or other outside water sources coming in. So this helps maintain the rich color.

And it also makes it one of the cleanest. and Clearest lakes in the whole world. Wow. I didn't know that. That's very interesting. Yeah, it is. If you think about it, you're like, oh, yeah, there's nothing feeding into this water at all. So can you drink it? Is it one of those places where you can go and drink the water? I wouldn't do that, I don't think. I mean, maybe, but I wouldn't. I just know that there's some places like I remember when I went to, this wasn't alike. It was moving water. But when I was in Switzerland, they had all these springs that you could, you didn't have.

have to filter the water or nothing. You could just go in, throw your water bottle under there, and just drink it. Oh. And it was everywhere, and it was some of the cleanest water in the world. So I was just curious if it was the same, but a lake is stagnant. So. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I would do that. I would definitely go more towards the glacial springs of wherever you are, Switzerland. Okay. In recent years, Crater Lake and the park has drawn about 700,000 visitors every year. But for most of history, there was, is no lake here at all. Crater Lake was once a tall mountain called Mount Mzama, which was an integral part of the history to several indigenous tribes within the area. And even today, Crater Lake is an

important and sacred place. And in the Patreon episode, we actually, I don't know if you remember or not, but we actually did go into the different oral histories of the local tribes regarding like the creation stories that they have for Mount Mazzama and Crater Lake itself. So if you're interested in that portion of it, then it's all on Patreon, but I just did want to mention here that it is culturally significant. But geologically, Mount Mazama began its existence about 400,000 years ago in a similar way as other mountains out here in the high Cascade range as an overlapping shield volcano. Mazama went through periods of activity and dormancy until around 5,700 BCE when it collapsed onto itself during a huge eruption, in which 3,500,000,000,000,000.

feet, which is just over a thousand meters, was just blown off the top and completely lost. So when I give stats like that, it's kind of hard to imagine how significant this eruption was, but it was so large that the ash was deposited as far off as to what is now Yellowstone National Park, and it produced more than 150 times as much as the eruption of Mount St. Helens. So this was a huge explosion. Wow. I was just going to say this is giving me Mount St. Helens vibes. Oh, wow.

What year was this again? Oh, to be exact, it was around 5,700 BCE. So it was a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah, back then, right. Yeah, back then. If anyone was there, send us your ash. Yeah. Oh, my God. Did we talk about that on the podcast? Somebody was listening to the show to the Mount St. Helens episode. And at the same time, they were like moving furniture in their mother's house and they put their hand underneath a table and there was a baggie taped underneath it. and it happened to be Mount St. Helen's Ash. So cool. And they sent it to us. It's amazing. It's like, what are the chances of that happening at the exact same time that you're listening to our episode on that? It's just like the stars aligned and it was just, I do remember that and it was so, so nice that

they sent it to us. It's just such a meaningful piece of history to add to the stories that we already like. So it's really cool. Yeah, that was such an awesome find. So this eruption actually formed the caldera that over time has filled with rain and snow melt, which has since formed crater lake that we see today. Because the lake is exclusively fed by this rain and snow, there are no native fish. However, they've been introduced over the years and now it's regularly stocked. The park is also home to elk, deer, marmot, owl, fox, pine martens, there's mountain lions, lynx, and the occasional wolf. If you do visit the park, you can visit the geologic point of interest, hike on the many miles of trail, the PCT also actually kind of passes through here.

So there are sections of the PCT in Crater Lake. You can swim. You can take boat tours to Wizard Island, which is the little island in the middle of Crater Lake. Oh, cool. You can fish or drive. There's the rim drive, which Ian and I did. It's 33 miles, about 53 kilometers. And it's a scenic highway that loops around the entire caldera rim.

And there are tons of different viewpoints and pullouts with vista points throughout the drive. beautiful. I was going to say that must have been so pretty to drive that. And it was a perfect day. Yeah. There it is. There it is. It was and there was probably, so let's see, we were there in October of 2020. Yeah. End of October 2020 when we went to Crater Lake. And there was maybe like four cars that we saw the entire time. And it was not a cloud in the sky. I have so many pretty pictures of I took a bunch of the dogs at the different like pullouts and I have a bunch of Ian. It was great. It was a great trip. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice.

Off campus, L. Every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsessive. session is waiting. Watch only on Prime. So all of this beauty drew two men by the name of Albert Jones and Charles Colhane to the park in July of 1952. They had made a pit stop there on their way to a weekend away at a nearby cabin in Union Creek. They never made it to the cabin. And what happened to them after they entered the gates of Crater Lake National Park has since become one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in Pacific Northwest history. Oh, okay. So as a I just blatantly stated, this case is unsolved, and it went cold many years ago, but it has since

received renewed interest thanks largely in part to one of the victim's granddaughters. Alice Sims is Albert Jones's granddaughter. She was only a toddler when her grandfather passed away, and her mother, so Albert's daughter, was in her late 20s when her father was murdered. And throughout her life, Alice didn't really speak with her mother much about her grandfather's death and her mom passed away in 1993. A year later, Alice woke up suddenly one morning with like a sudden revelation. She woke up with the feeling that she just needed to look into her grandfather's death. When she asked her father about it, like if her mother had ever discussed it with him, he said, well, not particularly, but strangely enough, he had just been going through a lot of his late wife.

belongings and just happened to stumble across something he hadn't seen before. It was a manila envelope containing old newspaper clippings about the crimes, and then within that folder, there were two sealed envelopes containing two typed letters. The letters were written by her mother, Alice's mother, and they were addressed to local newspapers asking if they had any additional information on her father's murder, but they had never been mailed. Alice states that she had no idea why it hit her so suddenly or seemingly randomly, but she knows how. She said, I am sure it was my mother contacting me and I have to do something about it. So over the last 28 years, that is exactly what she did. Okay, so she's dedicating her life to this now. Yeah, so her mom passed away. A year

later, she woke up in the middle of the night with this like feeling that her mother was trying to get her to pick up where she left off with trying to find the killers of Alice's grandfather. Wow. Okay. I'm very interested in what she finds. So, well, let's get acquainted with the story first. I was going to say also, how was he murdered? Yeah, it's like, all right, there's a lot of unanswered questions. So let's rewind back to July of 1952. Albert Jones is a 56-year-old man from Concord, California, and Charles Colhane, a 52-year-old man from Detroit, Michigan, were on a work trip. They were both executives for General Motors and were in the area on business. On Saturday the 19th, they checked out of their motel that they were staying at nearby and entered through the gates of

Crater Lake National Park at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Stopping at Crater Lake for them was just a pit stop. They had a really busy weekend planned before their upcoming meetings the following Monday. That day they had planned to meet up with Jack Vaughn, Frank Eberlein and Frank's teenage son, Alan, to go sightseeing and then fishing in Union Creek, which is located just outside of the park. From there, they were going to continue on and meet up with their wives at a nearby cabin that was actually owned by Frank, who was offering it to them for the weekend. Jack and Frank ran an auto supply store in nearby Clammouth Falls, and they were also friends with Albert and Charles.

So it was kind of like they were friends, but they also did business with them. You know, their GM motor execs, and they have an auto supply shop. It's kind of like mixture of business and pleasure for this group of people. Okay. And Jack and Frank were making their way through Crater Lake in their journey to go meet up with Albert and Charles and were surprised to see their car. It was a dark green 1951 Pontiac sedan and it was parked at a scenic overlook right above any creek canyon, which is about three and a half miles from the entrance of Crater Lake.

The men pulled over to say hello but quickly realized that the men weren't in the car. The car's front doors were open and the keys were in the ignition. So they assumed that Albert and Charles had just recently stopped to take a look at the canyon, like hopped out real quick and were looking at the canyon somewhere. So they waited for them and waited some more. After several minutes, they were like calling their names, received no answer, no response. 45 minutes passes and their concern starts to grow. Jack and Frank decided to take one of the cars that they were traveling in back to the Ranger station

and they left Allen, which is Frank's teenage son, behind in case the two men showed up while they were gone. So they go to the ranger station and alert the park rangers. And soon after, park rangers arrived at Annie Creek Canyon Overlook. They combed the area, assuming that they had either become lost or, God forbid, fell into the canyon and were injured. This was the 1950s, and at this point, the National Park Service actually did not have the ability to formally investigate crimes. That ability was given to them later on in the mid-1970s. But what they could do was organize search parties, so that is what they did. Okay.

Rangers were lowered into the canyon with supplies while another crew was sent out separately onto the nearby trails. Active searches ensued for two days with no trace at all of either man. Wow. And their car was like the keys were in the ignition and their doors are open and they're just gone. For two days. For two days. And one of these men, Alan, actually. said that when they first arrived and they saw that, you know, the car was open, the keys were

in the ignition and after a few minutes of them not showing up, he actually stuck his hand on the, through the grill onto the radiator and he had to pull his hand away because it was so hot. Like they had just parked there. Like they had just parked. The car was still warm. By Monday, July 21st, both the Oregon State Police and the FBI had joined the investigation. That afternoon, trail crews came across the bodies of both. Albert and Charles about a half a mile south of the road in a heavily forested area. The two men were

deceased with obvious single gunshot wounds to their heads. Albert was laying face up while Charles laid about five feet away on the ground as well. They were both shoeless. Their hands were bound and they were both gagged. Both men were wearing their business suits. However, it was clear that Albert had removed his undershirt and then put his overshirt back on and strips of that undershirt that he was wearing before were torn apart and used as gags. Oh my god. Both men wore dentures and interestingly, they both had removed them and placed them into the front pocket of their dress shirts. Albert's shoes were found nearby. However, Charles's were never recovered. The men's socks showed no signs of dirt, which led investigators to think that they had been instructed to remove

their shoes directly before they were executed. It's not like they had taken them off. before and walked over to this point in the woods. The scene was immediately taped off and the medical examiner was notified. Autopsy reports showed that both men had been struck or kicked repeatedly in the groin as the area showed severe bruising and trauma. Wow. This was a very personal crime then. It's violent.

It's violent for sure. Burns and gunpowder residue surrounded the entry wounds indicating that these shots were made at point-blank range. and Albert's skull was fractured. The time of death was estimated to be roughly 4 p.m. on July 19th. So less than, if you think about it, so they were recorded as entering the park at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. And the overlook where their car was found was about 3.5 miles from where they entered the park, so not too, too far. And so by the time they entered the park to the time that they had been killed was roughly 3 hours. As I mentioned, the scene was taken. taped off, but that doesn't mean it was properly secured. Which is a common theme in the early 1900s for sure. Yeah, so 1950s especially, there's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. There's a lot of people involved as well.

Several members of state and local investigators, along with the National Park Service rangers, trampled through the scene before the FBI arrived. One of the trail crew members that was part of the search party was a 17-year-old man named Rex Ash. He recalled being taking a back by seeing the two bodies, which had begun to blow at this point. He had never seen a dead body, and it was something that the whole scene was just like seared into his memory. He also said, quote, it was a bunch of kids and everyone was gathering around to see what was happening. Ash also recalled about 24 members of the search party being alerted to the discovery of the bodies, and they all came running. As soon as someone said, look, I found them, like all of these trail crew search members came rushing.

over to take a look. So now we have like 24 people immediately on the scene. Like who knows what they're stepping on, what they're pushing around, any evidence that's being lost. Exactly. And he does say, quote, we might have destroyed some evidence. We didn't touch anything, but tore up the terrain quite a bit. And then another young man, his name was John Owings, who was 22 at the time, remembers a trail crew member taking out a camera. And he, quote, stepped over Jones and Cole Hane and around them and got pretty much in their faces. He was going to sell these pictures to a crime magazine and make a fortune, but the FBI took them away. Thank God. Imagine being their family and suddenly that photo is plastered

in a news article. That's awful. That's awful that that's your first thought too. Yeah, like, I'm going to make money off of this. Yeah, in this way, too. Like, I feel like you probably could have made money just by like spilling the beans to a news reporter to have actual photos is that's, that's It goes a step further. Yeah. Yeah. Also, the car, which is now clearly considered part of the scene, was not secured. And actually, the police allowed Frank to drive the car, this vehicle, back to the police station.

No. Why? They're like, oh, yeah, if you could just, like, bring it on down, that would be great. Yeah, I think it's fine. Like, there's no possible way that we would need to look at this first. There were two 32-calibre bullet casings from a semi-automim. Pistol that were found near the bodies and it was discovered that the $300, which is about $3,000 today, that the men had on them was taken along with their watches. However, the car that was nearby was

untouched and it still had the men's cameras, all their luggage, all their belongings in it, and it was visible just laying right in the back seat. So the car wasn't touched at all. The motive, or who was responsible was unclear, but what was clear was that this was, was a horrifically violent crime and the news of it spread very quickly. News of the double murder was splashed across papers as far away as New York, and the local newspaper in Oregon even ran a photo of the bodies right on the front page. Oh, I hate that so much. Investigations into the crime began immediately and potential leads started popping up.

One of the most interesting ones actually came before the bodies were even discovered. An hour before they were found, a man who had, identified himself as J.D. Harney called the local auto garage, which was the only one in nearby Fort Clameth. And he informed the garage owner's wife, Myrtle, who answered the phone, that his friend, Al Jones, was in a hospital nearby in Medford. He requested the garage pick up his friend's car, a 1951 Pontiac that was parked at Annie Creek, and even said the keys would still be inside. He gave his name, a phone number where he could be reached, and his address, 536 Plum Street, and in Medford, Oregon. But Myrtle immediately recognized the name of his quote-unquote friend as

Albert Jones, because at this point, it's, you know, everyone in the area knows that these men are missing. So she notified the police. They tracked down where that call came from, and it actually came from a railroad department lobby only two blocks away from the police station. But by the time they got there, the caller was long gone. A railroad attendant did say he saw a man on the phone and he gave a description of who he saw. And they did attempt to lift fingerprints from the phone, but a match was never found. And the information that he gave to Myrtle, his name and that address and everything, all of that was fake. That's so creepy. And like, so he did it. That's the person. That's the person we're looking for. I mean, he has information that no one else would know.

Yeah. Unless they were linked to the crime in some way. Unless someone was like, hey, can I pay you to make this phone call? That's a possibility. It is a possibility. It is a possibility. It is. A couple camping nearby reported seeing a pair of quote unquote dirty unkept men in a car near the crime scene the day that the men went missing. Someone attempted to sell a pair of men's wingtips, which is a particular type of shoe similar to what the men were wearing that day, which were the same size as Charles's shoes. And if you remember, Charles's shoes were not on the scene. They were never recovered. Right. So someone at a barbershop in LaGrand, Oregon, was trying to sell this pair of nine and a half the size wingtips, which is very interesting,

which is Charles's shoe size. Did they find out who the guy was? Nope. And then in early August, a person driving a truck with Oregon plates attempted to buy gas in California with Albert's credit card. Did they check into who this person was? So from what I am, yes, the short answer is yes. But from what I understand, so credit cards were operated a lot different in the 1950s.

It wasn't like a direct, like, this is who. you know, you swipe your card and this is linked to you and your account. It's different, but it came up with a dead end either way. They never found out who attempted to use it. God, they're really missing the mark on a lot of potential evidence here. Well, it gets more convoluted a little bit. A man named Lincoln Lins, who had a summer job driving delivery trucks in the park, was driving to Crater Lake Lodge on the day of the murders and saw two men leading two other men into the woods at Annie Creek Pulloff. He states, as he drove by, one of the men that was being led away, gave him a discreet

hand signal in the shape of a gun. As Lincoln drove around the bend, he saw a black Pontiac parked on the shoulder. And later that day, he stated he kept running into two men with a scruffy-looking appearance that kept staring him down. They even blocked in his delivery truck when he had stopped to get gas. And Lincoln obviously took note of these people. I mean, they were staring him down. He kept running into them.

They were giving him weird vibes. And he remembered clearly that one of the men was missing a finger on his left hand and had a tattoo of a girl in a bikini on his forearm. And then later that week, he saw what he believed to be the same car in the Medford area. I feel like these are very distinguishing features. Like, hey, does anyone know someone with a naked girl in a bikini? Well, I guess she's in a bikini. she's not naked. A girl in a bikini on his arm and he's missing a finger on the other.

I feel like that would draw some type of attention right there. Those aren't, oh, they has a freckle on his forearm and a long fingernail. Like you would notice those things. Yeah. Well, in all, the FBI questioned over 200 suspects. Nearly 180 pistols were examined via ballistics testing and hopes to find a match to the weapon. And hundreds of cars who had entered the park that day were all tracked down. via their license plates. And all potential leads were followed up on, but the trail went cold. And that brings us back to Alice Sims, the granddaughter of Albert Jones. She began investigating the case of her grandfather and Charles Colhane on her own. Almost immediately after receiving a feeling that she should pick up the investigation,

literally within that week in 1994, she started right out of the gate. She contacted local news outlets and the FBI. She had a full-time job as a clerical supervisor, but on her days off, she'd rise with the sun and get to work on the case. She would call or write to anyone that she could possibly think of that either had information on the case or could get the word of the case out and circulating again. She even wrote to the producers of Unsolved Mysteries and a plea for help, and she worried that anyone with information regarding the case or involvement in it would be either very old or dead by the time that she got to them.

Because this is now mid-90s, and now so it's, what, 40 years later at this point already. Yeah, and who knows how old the people who committed the crime were at the time. Yeah, it's a long time. Exactly. One of the people that she tracked down was Frank Everline, who was now 86, to get his insight. Her tactics of spreading word about the case helped and worked. David Bergman picked up a paper one day to read an article about her efforts, and he too felt a strange nudge.

His father, Lawrence, who had passed away at this point, was an investigator for the Oregon State Police at the time of the crimes. David said that his father was always bothered by the fact that they were never able to solve the case. So now he took this as a sign that it was his chance to help. He reached out to Alice and offered his assistance, including sending her crime scene photos that his father had

and gave her more and more contacts to pursue. She was happy for his help. especially when he asked her a chilling question. Have you ever heard of the Mountain Murder Mob? No, what is the Mountain Murder Mob? So just a little backstory on this mob. The Murder Mountain Mob is a name that's given to kind of like a loosely knit gang. This is not, we're not talking organized mafia or anything like that, but they were a group that

committed a lot of atrocious crimes out of California in the 1950s. Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins were the ringleaders of this small operation and they were responsible for committing a lot of violent crimes in the area. For example, I'll just outline too, because I think that's enough. In March of 1953, they heard a rumor that a wealthy widow named Mabel Monaghan had hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden away in a safe in her home. They enlisted the help of a woman named Barbara Graham to pose as someone in need of Mabel's help. So Barbara went up to her door, ring the doorbell, and said that her car had broken down and needed to use her phone. As she was speaking to Mabel, four men pushed in behind her and ransacked the home looking for the safe. Mabel was utterly terrified and was obviously distraught and screaming.

Barbara smashed her in the face with the butt of her pistol repeatedly until Mabel was silent on the floor. Barbara then slipped a pillowcase over her head while Perkins bound her hands together. The safe was never. found and the group fled. But apparently one of the men in this group apparently felt bad for Mabel and secretly called an ambulance for her, but ultimately ended up giving the wrong address. So by the time that medical attention arrived for Mabel, she had passed away. Yeah, well, didn't she have a bag over her head? She had a pillowcase over her head, yeah. A pillowcase. Oh, that's awful. That's so violent. All for a robbery. All for a robbery. And it gets a little worse. Oh, good. Santa,

Perkins, those, the ringleaders, found out what this other gentleman had done, calling help for Mabel. And according to this gentleman's wife, kidnapped him from his house at gunpoint, kind of as like retribution for betraying them. Yeah, betraying them. Later, the two men and Barbara were apprehended and convicted for the murder of Mabel. And at the same time, they were also indicted for another horrific crime. The previous year, so this is, you know, months before, about six months before, a man named Guard Young was driving his children and a young boy from their neighborhood to go get ice cream.

The children ranged from three to seven years old, and they were all the victims of a violent carjacking. They were robbed and violently attacked with a tire iron. The car was found less than a day later, and all four of them, so Guard and the three young children were stuffed into the trunk of the car, and only the youngest, girl who was three years old was barely alive. All three of these people, Santos, Perkins, and Graham were executed in June of 1955. Good. And just an interesting little side note. I mean, I'm not going to linger on it, but it was intriguing. Barbara Graham was actually the third woman

to be executed in the state of California, and she had earned the nickname Bloody Babs. So her story in and of itself is very interesting. There is a book that kind of uses her story as a springboard to a greater subject. The book is called Proof of Guilt, Barbara Graham, and the Politics of Executing Women in America. And it's very, very interesting. Like her story, I mean, she's obviously a criminal and very violent. Yes. But yeah, anyway, so we're not going to get into it, but I did have to mention it. I'm sure it's super interesting just because when you look at that, I mean, there's so many aspects that make that really interesting. One, it's women and really vicious violent crimes because it's not unheard of, of course, but it's certainly less common. And then also to talk

about executing women. Or executing in general, I think, is like the death penalty and all that is discussed. What actually grabbed my attention on this little like side avenue was there was a reporter that was speaking about Barbara Graham during this trial of them, her and these two other men to go, you know, whether or not they're guilty. And if so, like, will they receive the death penalty? And he said something along the lines of like, if Barbara Graham is to be sentenced to death, the gas chambers will claim its prettiest victim.

Like something about that. It was just like, I'm like, what is going on here? And that's how I got kind of roped into her side story. And yeah, she's not a good person. But she did some bad things. Yeah. But anyways. So Alice and David look deeper and deeper into the mountain murder mob's string of crimes.

And the more that they did, the more they were convinced that they were the ones that were responsible for Albert and Charles's murders. Santo had family connections in Southern Oregon. The whole MO of this mob matched the crime of regarding Albert and Charles. Their history of robberies and murders with the allegations. with the added details of almost always gagging and shooting their victims. Plus, Santo being linked to several burglary cases in Medford, Oregon, all started to really raise significant suspicion that these were the people that they had been searching for all along.

Had they stolen anything from them besides the shoes? Their watches and their wallets or the money in their wallets, yeah. Because I guess I just remember you saying their dentures were in their shirts. and dentures, like, can be worth some money sometimes. So I was... Oh, really? Yeah, I think... Maybe I'm making that up. But I feel like they're worth money. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure, like, what dentures go for. It's just funny that their car was left behind. If they're robbing people, I mean, a car would be worth some money. Well, we'll kind of get to that. A little bit. I think I have a little side note on that later. If not, I'll be sure to touch on that.

Sure. Alice filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 1995. and finally received the FBI report on the case five years later in 2000. And boy, did she receive it. All 1,400 pages of it. That's why it took so long. So she spent a ton of time pouring over this case, going through every page. And because the case is still technically open, a lot of the info was redacted. But there was some information in there that to her was this bright, flashing neon sign,

Santo and Perkins. She found that the FBI considered them suspects initially due to, quote unquote, the viciousness of their crimes and their connections to the area. So this file shows that they were questioned repeatedly in regards to the Crater Lake murders, even right up to their deaths. They were questioned two days prior to their execution about their involvement in the Crater Lake murders, but they always denied it. They always denied any involvement in it. Did they have a tattoo and a missing finger? They did not. They did not.

Who is that guy? The case report reads, quote, all the members of this gang as well as known associates have been questioned and their movements during the pertinent period checked out in an effort to connect them with the crater late case, end quote. So that's what this FBI file regarding them determined. But it's really important to note that Alice made note of many, many contradictions and discrepancies in the case of various details, times, and dates. And also, Santos and Perkins contradict each other and even themselves in different statements, they trip each other up. Like, it's not cut and dry. Well, that makes it kind of shitty that. I mean, I know I said earlier, I was like, good, they deserve to be executed. They're awful.

Even though I, I don't know, execution is obviously very controversial. But if you're executing someone who is a suspect to an unsolved murder. But they're being executed for a different crime. know, but if they're suspects of another crime for a crime that hasn't been solved, then I feel like you would hold off on that maybe a little longer while, I mean, they obviously still had their reservations about it if they're talking to him two days before their execution date. And Alice does go on records stating that she believes that at the time, the FBI just didn't want to muddy the waters regarding involving them in this other investigation. Like stopping and end it and execution.

Right. She was basically saying, you know, it's her belief and belief of some others that, yeah, they probably were involved or they may have likely been involved. But they're already being executed anyway. So like, let's just get it over with. Which sucks. I guess. But you're missing closure on a whole other family. Right.

And that's where her problem is with this whole thing. That's why she's still looking into it. And although Alice does not see eye to eye. on a lot of the different details regarding the case and how it was handled. She does agree with the FBI's belief that this crime likely started off as a spur of the moment robbery and that more than one killer was involved. Oh, here's my note right here about the car. So perhaps they had planned to take the car, but by the time they got back to it,

Frank Allen and Jack had pulled up. Because remember, they stumbled upon this car. It was still warm. It looked like they had just gotten out. So if they had done that, led the two men away, killed them. By the time they turned back to go to the car, there was already another group of people right next to it and they just took off. Like ditched their plans. That would make sense. So she's kind of, you know, wondering if Frank, Alan, and Jack narrowly missed this by minutes. The mountain murder mob isn't the only theory. Oregon State Police member L.W. Haran passed away in the 1990s, but his wife Ruth said he took.

talked about and looked into this case for many, many years. She states that her husband always suspected the killers were two men by the name of John Cole and Kenneth Moore. Moore had been convicted of binding and robbing two trappers, and they were both considered outlaws. A woman stepped forward to tell the Oregon State Police that Moore actually confessed to her late husband that he was responsible for the murders of Charles and Albert. However, Moore and Cole were both found deceased after freezing to death outside in 1962. So both of them are dead. And in 2002, a college student named Cheryl Usi gave a presentation at the Clameth County Museum.

She had written a paper on this case and was presenting it to a small audience in the museum. One of Cheryl's friends was in the audience and noticed that as she was speaking, a man walked up to the guest register and seemed very strange. she was like studying it, looking at all the, he was looking at all the names. And he was just, he seemed odd. Odd enough for her to take notice. After her presentation, that same friend went up to Cheryl and told her about what she noticed while Cheryl was giving her presentation, mentioning an observation about this man that not only was he acting odd, he was missing a finger.

I was going to say, does he have a tattoo and a missing finger? No mention of the tattoo because he was wearing long sleeves, but he was missing a finger. So that delivery truck driver, Lincoln, that we talked about earlier, had heard about this presentation because it made news, you know, local news. And he contacted Cheryl after hearing, you know, because he was driving that truck. He saw a lot of suspicious activity. He was the one that made mention of all this stuff in the beginning. So when he heard that someone however many years later was, you know, talking about the case again, he contacted her. And as they talked, she mentioned the detail of this person coming. up and like, yeah, it was weird. He was missing a finger. And his blood just like ran cold. And he asked which finger was he missing? And she said it was his left index finger. And that was the same exact finger that was missing on the gentleman that he saw all those years ago. But even more creepily, he never shared that particular detail to anyone originally. So he mentioned that this person was missing a finger, he had a tattoo, all this stuff. He mentioned that to the FBI. But he was really,

really frustrated with the FBI because he said he reached out to them with his statement, which they took, but he feels as if he was never taken seriously. He was interviewed, but he was never contacted for any further follow-up on the information that he gave. And he has been really haunted by that ever since. So for him to have this small detail about the particular finger, he never told anyone, and now it's coming back around. He's like, you can't make this up. No one knows. No one knows.

Documents do show that the FBI did aggressively pursue the Crater Lake murders for several years, as we discussed earlier. But to Lincoln, like, he had a lot of valuable information. He thinks that was really important and he felt kind of brushed off. And who knows if they had paid more attention if that would have ever led to something. Who knows? While Alice is open to other scenarios, she maintains. her belief that Santo and Perkins or individuals connected to them are responsible for the murders

of her grandfather and his co-worker and friend Charles. To this day, she continues her work on the case and has even attempted to track down relatives and descendants of Santos and Perkins through different websites like ancestry. When the Golden State Killer was located through the use of familial DNA, it really gave her renewed hope, a surge of, you know, this could happen for me too. But as of today, September of 2022, the case remains unsolved. However, Alice says of her efforts, quote, I'm doing this to say, no, mom, you did not come to a dead end. I know you are here and I hope I can find some answers. David also continues assisting as well. He scours the internets for belongings taken from Albert and Charles, like their watches and hopes that somehow they'll pop up, like someone's selling them, like a vintage thing, that he can maybe track down. over the years where they came from.

Just anything. Just literally anything. He also hopes to hire different private investigators for more help accessing files and different material items left from the investigation, all in hopes to further advance the case. Hopefully with advancements of DNA technology, more and more will be uncovered.

But like Alice says, she's doing it for her mom and she knows that her mom's helping her along the way and she's hoping still she can find these answers. But as of today, it's still a big question mark. And that is all we know so far of the story of Albert Jones and Charles Colhane, the Crater Lake murders of 1952. Oh, that's so frustrating. I want to know, I hope she gets some type of closure.

And if anyone's listening to this and they know someone with that tattoo and the missing left hand ring finger, someone's listening to this and they're like, shit, Uncle Bob. I mean, who know? I mean, again, like, I'm not. Alice has said many times, time is ticking. Not only for different people to pass away, people get older, forget, you know, who knows if this will ever be solved, but she really, really hopes that it's something that will be solved within her lifetime, but if not, you know, who knows with the advancements and the whole ancestry thing in 23 and me really has done a lot other than telling you

where your great-great-grandfather came from, you know. Yeah, I just signed up an Ancestry.com thing. Oh, you did? Yeah, and I'm waiting for my results. It says I'll get them between two and four weeks. So we'll see. Oh, I'm interested. Yeah, I was curious because my grandmother was adopted.

So we have this whole side of the family that we really don't know that much about. Yeah. And my mom, she did do it. I think she did 20. I got it for Christmas for her a few years ago. It might have been 23 and me, or it was Ancestry, one of those. So she got a little bit of stuff, but I'm just curious. from my end. And then on my dad's side of the family, I don't really know, like, how far my last

name is Armenian. So I know that we have a Middle Eastern heritage in the back, but I don't really know much else. So I was just really curious to see, like, where my family line will take me. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm very interested to know. My mom went on a, this is probably when I was in grade school or middle school at the latest. She was super into scrapbooking. Like, I have a scrapbook for everything. Like, my mom went buck wild with scrapbooking when I was young and she dove headfirst into a, like a family history, putting together a family history. And we have like three or four albums of it all the way back. Like there are photocopies of, you know, people's signatures coming from Ellis Island, all like photos going back to the 1800s. Like she spent years looking into our family

history. That's really cool. Yeah. So before there was like the Ancestory.com and 23 and me, like that's, she was on that. And yeah, I know that I'm from, my family's from Sicily and another part of northern Italy. So yeah, thanks, Mom. Cool. Yeah, but anyways, oh, oh, just one side note, because I know someone's going to say something about the intro about like someone coming from beyond the grave, beyond the veil to kind of like encourage finding solving a murder. There is a very famous case that I am very well aware of. I don't know if you know, but the case is nicknamed the Green Breyer Ghost. And the morbid girls and actually lore, one of my other favorite podcasts, did an episode on the Green Briar Ghost. And it is one of

the only known cases in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer, like actually. Wait, what? Yeah. So just to give it a bridge version, because you should listen to the podcast on it because they're awesome. But essentially, this woman, this is like the 1800s in West Virginia. And this young woman was murdered by her husband. Her husband covered it up and basically said she fell down the stairs, whatever, signed seal delivered. The mortician was like, okay, great.

They buried her. And the young woman's mother said that her daughter came to her in a vision or in a dream and said, no, like my husband killed me. He snapped my neck. I need you to like look into it. And she was right. And the guy ended up getting tried and convicted for murder. Wow.

Yeah. That's wild. She was a pissed ghost. She's like, no, you're not getting away with this. Even if I'm dead, like I'm coming at you. Yeah. So it's obviously way more involved in there's a lot of cool podcasts who cover that story.

But yeah. Anyway. Interesting. Unfinished business. Unfinished business. Definitely. Definitely. Wow.

Well, thank you for telling you. that story because I had not heard of it. And I also, we've gotten so many requests about Crater Lake because it's so creepy and a lot of things have happened there and it's beautiful and it's incredible. So I do have to ask, is the murder mountain mob, are they still a thing? No, I don't believe so. Thank God. And all three of them, like I said, were executed. The ringleaders and Barbara were all executed. Yeah. So they're gone. But I do not believe that they are still in operas. So that's a relief because we're like, we want you all to go outside and have a nice time.

But there's a murder mountain mob out there. So be careful. But also be careful of that. So if you're in Crater Lake, just remember to enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye. Bye. Thank you for joining us again this week.

If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook. at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Become an outsider by joining our Patreon where you'll gain access to monthly bonus stories and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our partners, you're supporting our show. To access our special discount codes along with source information from today's episode, check out the show notes.

For information on the show, to shop our merch store, sign up for our newsletter and more, visit NPAD Podcast.com. And if you're enjoying the show, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet.

Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount.

Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.