Park Predators - The Reservoir
Episode Date: July 16, 2024When a devoted father and outdoorsman is found shot to death near Potholes State Park on Mother’s Day weekend in 1999 his family is left with more questions than answers. Law enforcement immediately... finds a promising trail of clues and surveillance video only to have their investigation fizzle out. If you know anything about the unsolved murder of Jesse Guy Loman, call the Grant County Sheriff’s Office in Washington, USA at (509) 754-2011. View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-reservoir Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck
Transcript
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra.
And the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place near Pothole State Park in Washington State,
an area of the United States that's known for having large depressions in the ground
that floods carved out around the time of the Ice Age.
Many of these seep lakes, as they're commonly called, are referred to as potholes
because they're just kind of here and there.
Some are deep and others are shallow.
Technically, the official pothole lakes are about 30 to 45 minutes
away from the boundary of the park itself,
but most people who visit them just sort of group them in
with the general area of Pothole State Park
and the nearby O'Sullivan Reservoir.
And when I say reservoir, I don't mean like a little small reservoir.
It's actually a massive body of water that has 6,000 feet of shoreline touching the state park.
Some maps label the O'Sullivan Reservoir as just Potholes Reservoir.
Visitors are attracted to this park and its surrounding habitats,
like the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge,
because these locations have a lot of places to camp, boat, and fish.
And when I say fish, I mean like serious fishing. Anglers can fish year-round for bass, trout,
walleye, and much more. In fact, just reading about how great a destination this place is for
anglers got me itching to book a plane ticket and grab my tackling rod like yesterday. However, I'm kind of thinking twice about that.
Because in May of 1999, the lure of this part of Washington lost its luster a little bit.
A brutal murder took place, and though there were numerous clues
that made detectives feel like they were on the verge of netting a suspect,
to this day, the killer or killers are still at large.
And that's something that needs to change. to this day, the killer or killers are still at large.
And that's something that needs to change.
This is Park Predators. Around 1130 in the morning on Sunday, May 9th, 1999,
two friends named Chris Mora and Rodrigo were driving on Seap Lakes Road in Grant County, Washington.
The pair was making their way south
from where they lived in the town of Moses Lake
to go fishing at a body of water known as Hampton Lake.
All around them was dry land that was mostly used for cattle grazing.
Some parcels were owned by private citizens and others were owned by the state,
and even a few tracts belonged to the federal government.
So essentially, they were traveling through an expanse of rural landscape
that was kind of in the middle of nowhere.
If you were going to stop anywhere on Seap Lakes Road, you'd likely go to one of the public access points at Hampton Lake, Canal Lake, or Marco Polo Lake.
Those are just a few of the small pothole lakes that are dotted all around that area.
And like I said, that morning Chris and Rodrigo were on their way to spend the afternoon at Hampton Lake,
when suddenly they noticed something kind of odd.
On the right-hand side of the road in a field was what they thought looked like a blue barrel lying on the ground.
Curious about what something like that would be doing out in the middle of nowhere,
the pair pulled over and the two got out.
As they stepped off the roadway and walked closer
to the object in the field, more of it came into view, and that's when the pair realized they
weren't looking at a barrel at all. The blue item lying about 75 feet in front of them was a person.
Whoever it was wasn't moving, so Chris and Rodrigo immediately retreated to their car and tried to call for help
using their CB radio. But unfortunately, the signal wasn't good enough, and their call wasn't
getting through. So that's when the duo decided to flag down a passing car to see if anyone driving
along the road had a cell phone they could use to try and call law enforcement. Thankfully, Chris
and Rodrigo didn't have to wait long because an oncoming car with a
couple of campers, Jean-Paul Banks and Tamitha Pierre, saw them and pulled over. Right away,
Chris told the pair about the body in the field, and that's when Jean-Paul used his cell phone to
dial 911. Dispatchers at a multi-agency communications center that serviced the region
alerted deputies with the Grant County Sheriff's
Office about the discovery. And after that, the department dispatched several investigators to
the scene. When units arrived, deputies immediately blocked off traffic on Seap Lakes Road so that
they could better assess the situation and gather evidence. It didn't take long for the authorities
to determine that the person lying in the field was a middle-aged white man dressed in blue jeans, a bluish-turquoise-colored t-shirt, and white socks.
He'd been left face-up in a sort of depressed area of the field, and his shoes were missing.
His feet were pointed toward the roadway, and his head, which was covered in blood, was furthest into the field.
He was surrounded by cheatgrass, which, for those of you who don't know,
is a weedy grass that can grow up to two feet high.
So he wasn't super visible from afar.
In fact, the only reason Chris and Rodrigo
had been able to spot the guy's body in the first place
was because they'd been traveling south on Seap Lakes Road.
And the way that road kind of naturally rises
and falls in elevation when you travel from
that direction had given them just the right angle to catch a glimpse of the body. Anyway, when
deputies looked over the victim, they saw a visible bullet hole in the left side of his midsection,
and lots of bruising and swelling on his face. Deputies surmised that in addition to being shot,
whoever this guy was had also endured a severe beating.
His shirt was pulled up high over his chest
and stained with blood and had lots of grass on it.
However, his white socks and pants
didn't have any signs of grass stains or blood on them.
They were both pretty clean.
I imagine the detectives figured the blood on the shirt
likely came from the gunshot wound
and other injuries he might have sustained while being beaten.
Still, investigators collected several hairs and fibers from the victim's clothing and body as evidence.
They also videotaped the scene and took photographs.
Back at the edge of the roadway, deputies found two sets of footprints in the dirt,
a spent shell casing, and visible drag marks
that indicated something heavy, likely the guy's body, had been pulled from a vehicle. The drag
marks started at the roadway and continued for at least 150 feet into the field. They stopped where
the body was located, and the path they traced was obvious because the vegetation was compressed
or bent over, indicating something heavy had been dragged over it.
There were also several tire marks right there near the roadway, too.
The source material doesn't say if investigators took impressions of these tire tracks, but I have to imagine they did.
Deputies interviewed Chris, Rodrigo, Jean-Paul, and Tamatha and took photos of the bottoms of their shoes
so that they would be able to eliminate their footprints
from the two sets of footprints deputies had discovered near the roadway.
Now, I imagine authorities did this because they figured
since everyone in the group had likely walked around the area
before law enforcement arrived,
it was best to just know what the bottom of Chris, Rodrigo, Jean-Paul,
and Tamatha's shoes looked like
so that detectives could rule them out if they needed to.
In speaking with Jean-Paul and Tamitha,
detectives learned that the two had actually seen the victim's body that morning prior to Chris and Rodrigo.
However, at the time, they hadn't paid much attention to it because they didn't have any idea it was a body.
Just like Chris and Rodrigo, though,
they'd been driving south on Seap Lakes Road and seen a glimpse of something in a field,
but Jean-Paul and Tamitha just hadn't stopped to check it out. The couple said that not long after
passing the body, they'd run into some people on the roadway who were having car trouble and
stopped to help them. It wasn't until later in the morning while driving north on Seap Lakes Road,
passing back through the area where the field was, that Jean-Paul and Tamitha were stopped by
Chris and Rodrigo, who explained that the blue item in the field they'd passed earlier was in
fact a person's body. The source material isn't super clear on who spoke up about this next part,
but according to incident reports I requested from the Grant County Sheriff's Office,
someone in the group of folks
who reported finding the victim's body
told investigators that they had a.22 caliber rifle
that had been shot recently,
and they just wanted deputies to know about it.
In fact, this person even offered to give deputies the gun
so that detectives could compare it
with any bullets related to the crime so that it could be ruled out.
After that, investigators let Chris, Rodrigo,
Jean-Paul, and Tamitha go.
A chief deputy coroner removed the victim's body
from the scene and transported him
to the Spokane County Morgue for an autopsy.
While authorities had been working to collect evidence
and interview the witnesses at the scene,
an investigator for
Grant County Sheriff's Office received word that the male victim might have been a Basin City man
who was reported missing just a few hours earlier. According to the official incident reports in this
case, around the same time of morning that the unidentified male victim was found, the Sheriff's
Office learned that the family of a 45-year-old
man named Jesse Guy Lohman had reported him missing from a campsite at Canal Lake. For reference,
Canal Lake is about 15 minutes south of where the field was, and you can get to it from Seep Lakes
Road. According to what Jesse's brother, Ernest Lohman, told the sheriff's office, Ernest said
he'd driven up to a campground at Canal Lake around 5.45 in the morning that Sunday and been surprised when he hadn't found Jesse
there waiting for him. Jesse had left his hometown of Basin City, Washington in the morning the
previous day, Saturday, May 8th, and he'd gone ahead of the rest of his family to get a campsite
set up for an annual getaway they all planned for Mother's Day weekend.
The group was going to be comprised of Jesse, his wife Gail, one of their sons William,
Ernest, and Jesse's parents. When Ernest realized Jesse wasn't at the campsite at Canal Lake that morning, he'd been concerned but not overly panicked. Jesse's truck wasn't there and neither
were any of his camping supplies, so the absence of those two things indicated to Ernest that Jesse had either never arrived
or had just set up camp elsewhere around Canal Lake,
in a spot Ernest just hadn't thought to check yet.
Ernest told deputies after searching around for his brother and not finding him,
he decided to leave and drive the 45 minutes south to Jesse's home in Basin City
to see if anyone there knew what was going on.
When he arrived, he spoke with Gail, Jesse's wife,
but she told Ernest that she didn't know where her husband was
and agreed that Jesse not being at the campsite was really odd.
So right away, Ernest got back into his car,
this time with William, one of Jesse's sons in tow,
and together the two of them
drove the 45 minutes back up to Canal Lake. When they got there, they searched high and low for
Jesse, but again couldn't find him. Shortly after that, Robert Lohman, Gail and Jesse's other son,
got a phone call from his mom notifying him of what was going on, and he made his way to Canal
Lake too. But despite Ernest, Robert, and William
collectively trying to locate Jesse,
no sign of the missing 45-year-old surfaced.
So that's when they decided to call 911
and report Jesse missing.
They told authorities that Jesse's truck,
a 1994 Chevrolet pickup, was also missing.
The source material isn't clear
on what time exactly in the morning
the sheriff's office took down this information from Jesse's family, but like I said earlier,
it was believed to be around the same time that Chris and Rodrigo first spotted the body on the
side of Seap Lakes Road. So like somewhere around 11 30 a.m., give or take. Incident reports from
the Grant County Sheriff's Office also state that while Robert, Ernest, and William were at Canal Lake reporting Jesse missing,
they learned from someone near the scene that a man's body had been found in the general area,
and they were eager to know from law enforcement if it was their missing father and brother.
In the end, it didn't take long for Jesse's family to officially learn from authorities that the dead man was in fact Jesse Lohman.
So really in just a short amount of time, investigators with the Sheriff's Office
had learned a couple of critical things.
One, Jesse was their victim.
Two, he'd been shot and then dumped off Seap Lakes Road.
And three, his 1994 teal-colored Chevrolet pickup truck was still missing.
Well, sort of.
That third conclusion quickly changed.
Because as sheriff's office detectives would learn by late Sunday afternoon,
Jesse's truck wasn't MIA.
It was parked right out in the open, just waiting for investigators to find.
According to incident reports from the Grant County Sheriff's Office,
a few hours after Jesse's body was found,
police officers in the nearby town of Moses Lake, Washington, which is about 35 to 45 minutes north of Canal Lake, found his teal-colored 1994 Chevy pickup truck parked in
the parking lot of a Safeway grocery store. I guess word about Jesse's case had spread fast
to this agency, and so the officers who spotted the truck had immediately gotten in contact with
Grant County detectives. When Jesse's truck was
located, the front of it was facing out from the store toward the street. Thankfully, when Grant
County deputies got on scene, they were able to find surveillance video from the shopping plaza
that showed when the truck had been parked there. The recording showed a man, who was not Jesse,
dropping off the truck well after dark on Saturday, May 8th,
and then getting picked up by a car which was being driven by someone else.
It's unclear from the source material what time this event happened,
but the incident reports state that videotapes from inside the Safeway store
were seized and reviewed as well.
So it's possible the unknown man who left Jesse's truck
and then got picked up by someone else was there while the grocery store was still open.
Thus, the reason law enforcement wanted those tapes from inside as well.
You know, to maybe see if those cameras
caught a better angle of the stranger or something.
I'm not sure.
It's hard to tell based on how the reports are written.
But unfortunately, other than those brief few seconds
that captured the mystery man in the parking lot,
detectives didn't have much to work with as far as identifying anything noteworthy about the guy.
At least that's what I can tell from the source material available.
Anyway, the next day, Monday, May 10th, the doctor overseeing Jesse's autopsy in nearby Spokane County
released the results of his examination
to law enforcement. The doctor determined that Jesse suffered two gunshot wounds,
one to the left side of his torso and another to the front of his head. His official cause of death
was ruled as a homicide and his manner of death was attributed to the gunshot wound to his head.
The coroner clarified to the Tri-City Herald that initially investigators had mistakenly interpreted
the swelling and bruising on Jesse's face
to mean that he'd been beaten before being shot.
But after performing the autopsy,
the doctor stated those things
were the result of the gunshot wound to Jesse's face,
not proof that he'd been assaulted
or beaten prior to his death.
Thankfully, the doctor was able to locate
and retrieve two bullets from Jesse's body.
One was a.32 caliber and the other was a.25 caliber.
The large caliber had been fired into Jesse's head.
The smaller one was pulled from the wound in his torso.
The clothes that Jesse had been wearing when he died were searched,
and other than some loose change in his pants,
the rest of his pockets were empty.
His wallet and ID were missing.
They'd not been found on him
or in the field where his body was placed.
So the next obvious step authorities turned to
was examining Jesse's bank card activity
for Saturday night and Sunday morning.
I imagine they figured if his wallet was missing,
then any activity on his cards
might lead them to a possible suspect.
When investigators got a hold of Jesse's bank,
they learned that around 7.30 p.m. on Saturday night,
before that stranger was seen driving his pickup truck
into the Safeway parking lot,
Jesse's bank card had been used to withdraw $100 cash
from an ATM located near the grocery store.
Now, it wasn't an ATM associated with the grocery store.
It was located at a bank very close by.
Immediately, authorities wondered if Jesse had made that withdrawal himself
or if someone who was just using his card and knew his PIN
had initiated the transaction.
According to Shirley Wentworth reporting for the Tri-City
Herald, when detectives went to the ATM to check its surveillance tapes, they discovered that the
camera inside the machine had not been turned on when Jesse's card was used. I know, a huge bummer.
So I don't know whether Jesse was the person who took the money out or not, but part of me feels
like investigators might have thought he
was because it states in the sheriff's office's incident report that for a little while detectives
thought Jesse may have gone to gamble at a popular casino in town before making his way to Canal Lake
to set up his family's campsite. Authorities surmised that maybe Jesse wanting to gamble was
the reason why the $100 had been withdrawn.
But after reviewing surveillance video
from the casino for Saturday night,
as well as interviewing the casino's employees,
authorities quickly ruled out Jesse going to gamble
as a possible avenue of investigation.
The following day, Tuesday, May 11th,
detectives executed a search warrant
for the inside of Jesse's pickup truck
and processed it for evidence. I don't know if they found anything of forensic or evidentiary value,
because that's a detail Grant County investigators have never released to the public.
But what I can tell you is that after examining the truck, detectives released it back to a farm
that Jesse worked for. Where it is now, I have no idea. Something authorities in 1999 didn't have to
wait for lab tests to confirm, though, was that they could see with their own eyes none of the
camping equipment Jesse had packed for the Mother's Day trip had been removed from the truck. Meaning,
whoever had abandoned the Chevy at the Safeway hadn't stolen the gear. According to reporting
by Candace Boutelier, investigators also noticed that a diamond plate toolbox
was still in the truck's bed,
which again, only puzzled detectives
as to why the perpetrator had left that valuable item behind
if in fact their motive had been to rob Jesse.
I should note though that Shirley Wentworth
reported for the Tri-City Herald
that investigators did say some items
from the truck were missing.
Now, I don't have any information about what those items were or if the missing items the reporter referred to meant Jesse's wallet and ID.
It's hard to tell.
But it's safe to say authorities believed robbery was connected and a possible motive as to why Jesse had been killed
and why his truck was left abandoned by a mysterious
stranger in the Safeway parking lot, regardless of the fact that the camping gear and toolbox
were still there. While that part of the investigation was going on, deputies canvassed
the stores and bars near the ATM where Jesse's card had been used, but no one working at any
of those places remembered seeing the 45-year-old on the night of Saturday, May 8th.
For a second, detectives thought they'd caught a lucky break
when they located some more surveillance video
from another establishment in Moses Lake
that showed Jesse's truck being driven by a stranger
early on Saturday.
But just like the video from the Safeway parking lot,
that video was too grainy
to really make out much of anything.
Feeling like they were
hitting a wall, detectives sent off all the surveillance they had to the FBI to see if better
technology could enhance the videos or make out any features on the man who'd abandoned Jesse's
truck in the Safeway parking lot. But unfortunately, even for the feds, the videos were too grainy and
dark. While that was going on, investigators started interviewing
Jesse's family members and friends,
and the first person they formally interviewed
was his wife, Gail.
The details of law enforcement's conversations with her
are not included in the incident reports
Grant County provided to me.
But what I can tell you is that it seems like back in 1999,
authorities quickly cleared Gail of any suspicion.
Based on everything I've read
in news reports, it doesn't seem like investigators working the case now believe she was involved in
what happened to her husband. In addition to his family members, detectives also interviewed
Jesse's boss, a man named Ted Shirky, who told them that Jesse was a good man who worked hard
to provide for his family. He didn't have any enemies
that Ted knew of. An obituary posted in the Tri-City Herald distinguished Jesse as a devoted
father of four. In addition to his sons, Robert and William, he and Gail had two daughters, Katrina
and Michelle. Even though their kids were mostly grown in between the ages of 17 and 23, Gail and
Jesse got together with their children
on a regular basis to celebrate things
like birthdays and holidays,
which is why the Mother's Day camping trip at Canal Lake
was something everyone knew Jesse was looking forward to.
Jesse had lived in Basin City, Washington
for two decades prior to his murder,
so the impact his death had on people
in both Franklin County, where Jesse was
from, and Grant County, where he was killed, was massive. Citizens rallied around Gail and the kids
to help with Jesse's funeral expenses or just provide a hot meal during their time of grief.
Many folks knew Jesse well because he'd spent a long time working as a mechanic for a local
transmission shop in the Tri-City area.
That job had required him to make long commutes, though, and so a few years before May 1999,
he'd left that job and started working full-time for Ted.
Jesse's obituary states,
He was born in Columbus, Montana, and came from a big family.
He'd spent his childhood and young adulthood living in Montana, learning how to hunt, fish,
and camp.
He soon met Gail, and a few years after they got married in 1974,
the Lomans moved to Washington State.
The most puzzling question people couldn't wrap their heads around was how someone had gotten the drop on Jesse.
If authorities could determine that part,
then the answer of who killed him might be that much easier to find.
According to that same article I mentioned earlier by Shirley Wentworth for the Tri-City Herald,
Jesse's friends said he was strong,
stood six foot three and weighed 275 pounds.
Gale had even described him as a teddy bear,
which reinforces his strength,
but also his fun-loving energy.
His best friend told the newspaper, quote,
there wasn't anybody who was his enemy.
That's why this is so shocking and mind-boggling.
If he had a scrape with anybody, he'd get up and walk away. He could go out there and pick up the side of a car. He's
a bull, end quote. So the suggestion that a person or even two people had been able to restrain Jesse
and force him into a car or make him do anything he didn't want to do just felt really unlikely to the people who knew him best.
However, in my mind, though,
if the perpetrator or perpetrators had firearms,
that would have probably made Jesse seem like less of a threat
and he might have complied.
The shock of his murder reignited a concern
that perhaps the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge
should have had its own law enforcement officers
patrolling for suspicious activity
to prevent or deter crime.
In 1999, the manager of the refuge
said that the area wasn't regularly patrolled
and didn't have a full-time officer
due to lack of resources.
Considering Jesse's murder,
the manager told the Tri-City Herald
he was going to ask for funding
to put more routine measures in place to staff the popular recreation spots along Seap Lakes Road.
Shirley Wentworth reported that anglers who frequented Canal Lake and other pothole lakes
in the region said they wondered if they should start arming themselves before going it alone.
To help address the public's fear that a gun-toting killer was on the loose,
deputies from Grant County Sheriff's Office and troopers from the Washington State Patrol fanned out in droves to make sure citizens and visitors saw them making their presence known in and around Pothole State Park.
Still, people were worried.
There were so many places for a murderer to hide out in the remote landscape that surrounded the park.
A fishing guide told
reporter Shirley Wentworth, quote, it's a wide open area, easy to get lost in. It's kind of a
no man's land once you get out there, end quote. Law enforcement continued to work the case and
follow leads. Jesse's friends and family held his funeral service on May 13th, 1999, and set up a trust fund for his son,
William. After the ceremony, his remains were cremated. Then May ended with no new updates,
and June also passed with no word from investigators about a suspect or possible
persons of interest. Jesse's family began to wonder what was going on with the case.
On the two-month anniversary, his wife and
children expressed that they were eager to know if detectives had any new information and if the
murderer would ever be caught. Gail Lohman expressed her frustration with the lack of progress in law
enforcement's investigation when she told reporter Shirley Wentworth, quote,
We replay it over and over as a mail delivery driver,
plagued by questions that no one could answer for her or her children.
Jesse's son Robert expressed how sad everyone in the family was that their dad
had been taken in such a brutal manner.
He said, quote,
what was so bad they had to do that to him?
End quote.
Unfortunately, a whole year went by
before another update in the case.
In May 2000, the Grant County Sheriff's Office
remained tight-lipped about its investigation,
but it did publicize that it was offering a $3,000 reward for any information related to the case.
A big flyer with the basic facts of what had happened to Jesse, alongside some photos of him
and his Chevy pickup, were displayed on the poster. Authorities' plea to the public was clear,
help us. The poster advertised in bold letters that all information and tips would remain confidential.
In the years after that, the investigation slowly grinded to a halt.
No new information was released, or at least none that was publicized by the media.
Jesse's family took out ads in local newspapers,
reminding folks how much they wanted answers
and how much they missed Jesse.
By June 2007, eight years after the homicide, a new detective for Grant County Sheriff's
Office had been assigned the case, and at that point it was considered a cold case.
Anniversary articles written by Lynn Lynch for the Tri-City Herald and Candace Battiglia
for the Columbia Basin Herald stated that this new investigator had officially reopened the case and felt confident that Jesse
had been killed sometime on Saturday night, May 8th, likely before or after that 7.30 p.m. ATM
withdrawal, or during the morning hours of Sunday, May 9th. In 2007, this detective resubmitted old
case evidence to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, hoping that advances in technology since 1999 would yield better results.
He also discussed resubmitting old surveillance video from the Safeway and that other Moses Lake location for a second round of evaluation.
According to the article by the Columbia Basin Herald, the hope was that images from the video would be, quote,
refined and touched up to possibly get a look at the person who brought the vehicle there, end quote.
It appears Jesse's family was instrumental in getting Grant County to take these big steps in 2007.
Jesse's sister Debbie told reporter Lynn Lynch that she called the sheriff's office every month asking what they were doing
and if there was anyone actively working on the case.
But even with Jesse's family members pushing investigators,
the case went cold again.
It wasn't until August of 2022, just two years ago,
that the Grant County Sheriff's Office
issued another statement,
once again asking for the public's help. By that point, Jesse's unsolved murder was 23 years old.
The department created an updated poster which showed Jesse's photo and provided the basic facts
of the case. News outlets and newspapers published the update, but whether that media blitz helped move the needle in the case remains unknown.
A public information officer with the Sheriff's Office told me over the phone that there is
a cold case investigator currently assigned to Jesse's case, and the department is desperate
for any scrap of information they can get to help close it.
But something that I just can't stop thinking about, though, is how different this case would be now if only that camera on the ATM in Moses Lake had been working when the $100 was taken out using Jesse's bank card on Saturday night, May 8th.
Like, if Jesse was who took the money out, then that could help clear up the murky timeline surrounding when he encountered his assailant or assailants.
And more importantly, why. If it wasn't Jesse who used the card, though, then that's still
kind of important, because we'd likely have a decent picture of the potential perpetrator's face,
or at least a better description. The other thing that bothers me, and this is also something law
enforcement has never been able to pin down, is where exactly Jesse was shot in the head and torso.
Based on everything I read in the source material
and incident reports from the sheriff's office,
it seems like detectives believe Jesse was shot somewhere else
before being dumped in the field on Seap Lakes Road.
I didn't get the sense from the source material
that law enforcement has ever thought the field is where Jesse was shot.
To me, though, that spent shell casing deputies said they found near the roadway by the field kind of points to it being the place where the murder occurred.
But maybe that piece of evidence just fell out of the vehicle Jesse was transported in.
Maybe it's not proof that a gun was discharged there.
Maybe it's not proof that a gun was discharged there.
I also want to know what the sheriff's office has done with those hairs and fibers they said they collected from Jesse's clothing and body.
Have those ever been tested?
If not, let's send those things in.
Do the fibers match fibers known to be in the interior of Jesse's pickup truck?
I have all the questions.
And while I'm on the topic of vehicles, we don't even know if Jesse's body was transported in his own truck to the field.
He could very well have been killed in another vehicle,
dumped in the field,
then the killer or killers had to ditch his truck somewhere, so they took it to the Safeway parking lot in Moses Lake.
I guess the question that bothers me the most about this story
is where is the crime scene?
Is it the field? Is it somewhere near the Safeway out of view of the surveillance cameras?
Was it the parking lot of the ATM?
There's just so much that I, the Sheriff's Office, and Jesse's family don't know, but want to know.
So if you have any information about the unsolved murder of Jesse Lohman, please contact the Grant County Sheriff's Office or email crimetips at grantcountywa.gov.
Park Predators is an Audiochuck original show.
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Do you approve?