***previous*** — ***next***
1952
1952 Dick Brown of San Diego, California begins his long career at Crater Lake. Dick holds the record for holding the most seasonal and permanent positions in the Park. (1952 – 1957) Seasonal Naturalist, (1957 – 1960) Assistant Chief of Interpretation, (1960 – 1963) Interp Chief at Muir Woods, (March 1963 – 1966) Chief of Interp at C.L., (1966 – 1970) Chief of Park Research, (1970 until retirement) at Point Reyes National Sea Shore. The Park’s research library is named the Richard M. Brown Library in his honor.
1952 The newly designed National Park Service arrowhead insignia is first used on an information folder for Oregon Caves National Monument published in April 1952. It soon gained recognition as the Service symbol and became widely used on signs and publications and uniforms.
March 15 1952 Ernest P. Leavitt, Park Superintendent since 1937 retires to Central Point, Oregon. At the time of his retirement, Mr. Leavitt had served the longest of any employee within the National Park Service; 46 years. In a letter dated August 11, 1978 Mrs. Katherine Leavitt writes, “I have lots of interesting memories – some about the bears. They were in our home twice – resulting in the death of the second one. Also one wrecked the upholstery in Mr. Leavitt’s car the day before he was to meet the director. Mr. Levitt formed a children’s bottle brigade to pick up bottles and debris in the Park after gasoline rationing was over and visitors came in droves scattering bottles along the roadsides and leaving Kleenex blossoms on the shrubbery.”
The “dead bear” incident happened while the Leavitts and the Hamiltons were attending church in Ft. Klamath on a Sunday morning. Upon returning to the Superintendent’s Residence, they found the back door had been broken open. The bear had destroyed the kitchen in its quest for food. Mrs. Leavitt’s famously clean floors were trashed. A 50-pound bag of flour had been torn open and consumed by the bear. Looking out of the destroyed back door, Superintendent Leavitt found the bear slumped against a large hemlock tree. The 50 pounds of flour in the bear’s belly was beginning to swell and the bear was in agony. An armed ranger was summoned and the marauding bear was promptly dispatched while it slept. (Story from Alex Hamilton, age 8 or 9 at the time. Alex thinks the year was either 1945 or 1946. Related to the author, August 25, 2006 at the Old Superintendent’s house.)
March 20 1952 Record snow depth of 218 inches (18.2 ft) on ground at headquarters. The average seasonal maximum snow depth at Headquarters usually is 155 inches.
April 1 1952 John B. Wosky enters on duty as Superintendent. Wosky had been appointed to the position on March 3.
April 27 1952 Dr. and Mrs. Arnold Toynbee visit the Park.
May 31 1952 Two cars collide, 0.7 miles above Headquarters. Six people are injured, with two ambulances being called out from Klamath Falls. A coyote is killed by a car on the South Road.
July 1952 Heavy rains and rock slides wash out completely the lower sections of the Lake Trail, three days before opening date. So much permanent reconstruction was required on the Trail, that it remained closed the entire summer.
July 19 1952 Albert Marston Jones, 56, of Concord, Calf. and Charles Patrick Culhane, 52, of Detroit, Mich., are found murdered on the South Road, 3.5 miles north of the south boundary. Both men were executives with United Motors Service, a subsidiary of General Motors. The case has never been solved. The two men, taking a shortcut through the Park, had driven on ahead of their wives, agreeing to meet at a summer cabin at Union Creek. The men’s wives found the car the men had been driving, a green 1951 Pontiac, parked along a turnout overlooking Annie Creek Canyon. The doors to the car were standing open. When the missing husbands could not be found, the rangers were alerted. The two bodies were found a short time later, about a quarter of a mile off the road, in an open stand of Ponderosa Pine. Both men were found with their hands bound with rope, their shoes removed and powder burns to their heads, indicating an execution style of murder. The two men had been gagged but not tied up. Their stockings were clean which indicated they had not walked after removing their shoes. While Jones’ shoes were lying nearby, Culhane’s shoes were never found. In the excitement of the discovery, dozens of people trampled the murder site, destroying much of the evidence. Since the entrance rangers during these years recorded the license number of every car entering the park, the FBI began a massive investigation, taking years to trace each tag number. Some people were even tracked to Europe. Several local suspects were identified, but lacking hard evidence, no arrests were ever made.
Virginia Jones Cota, A.M. Jones’ daughter, always felt that the killing of the two men was actually a murder, made to look like a robbery. Even though over $300 was taken from their wallets and their watches taken, the men’s luggage was left in the car. In a letter to his daughter one month before he was murdered, Jones wrote, “Things are worse than they have ever been.” In a letter dated, Sept. 29, 1990 to the Mail Tribune, but never mailed, Ms. Cota writes, “I know who was responsible for my father’s murder. I don’t know the murder’s name, but I know the organization that arranged for my father’s death. I just don’t believe the story that it was a simple robbery. I have a feeling there was so much more to this, that the people who killed them knew them.”
The Crater Lake Double Murders
Background
Frank Eberlein, my father, came to Klamath Falls in 1931 to work for Paul Johnson’s Super Service as an automotive electrician. Paul Johnson’s automotive repair facility was located at the corner of 11th and main where the building with the train mural now stands. Mr. Johnson was heavily invested in real estate which was his ultimate downfall and in 1932 he filed bankruptcy.
My father and another Johnson employee, Bill Welch, pooled their resources, a total of $700.00, and bought enough inventory from the bankruptcy to go into business for themselves. They opened Specialized Service Company focusing on automotive electrical and radiator repairs at South Sixth and Elm Streets, the present location of Barco Supply.
At that time the electrical components, starters, generators, and magnetos were individually overhauled and the business added employees and inventory to become a major factor in southern Oregon. They outgrew their facility and in 1939 built their first building at 1440 Main Street. This was the first building in the Northwest to be heated by geothermal water circulating in pipes within the concrete floor. The second building was added at 1434 Main in 1948.
The automotive parts industry is structured with distributors who buy directly from the manufacturer and then sell to jobbers who sell to dealers who ultimately sell to the end user. As Specialized’s volume grew they increased their inventory and their buying power and became a distributor for the largest manufacturer of electrical components, Delco Remy and Delco Batteries, which were made by the Delco division of General Motors and supplied to the aftermarket thru a GM subsidiary, United Motors Service.
United Motors Service western region headquarters was located in San Francisco and managed by Ira Kennedy. Specialized’s contact was Al Jones, 56, United Motors Service Zone Sales Manager, who made regular calls on Specialized and had become close friends with Frank Eberlein. Both were fishermen and when schedules permitted, would enjoy a short fishing trip together.
The Situation
Charles Culhane, 53, was a General Motors executive and was the newly appointed National Sales Manager for United Motors Service headquartered in Detroit, MI. Mr. Culhane was on his first tour of his western region operations and was accompanying Al Jones on his sales calls. The two arrived at Specialized Friday, July 18, 1952, and spent the day on business matters. The weekend was ahead and their next call was scheduled for Monday morning in Medford. Charles Culhane wanted to see Crater Lake. Frank Eberlein had a cabin on the Rogue River at Union Creek.
Culhane was not a fisherman so it was decided that he and Jones would go to Crater Lake and then to Union Creek where Jones made a reservation for himself at the Union Creek Resort. Culhane would take the car on to Medford while Jones would be joined at Union Creek by Frank Eberlein, Jack Vaughn Specialized’s Sales Manager, and me, aged 13 at the time, for a weekend of fishing. We would bring Jones back to Klamath Falls Sunday evening and he would take the bus to Medford in time for their Monday morning sales appointment at Littrell Parts Co.
The Story
Jones and Culhane concluded their business at Specialized late Friday afternoon, went to the Gun Store where Jones bought a fishing license, and then adjourned to their hotel for the evening. On Saturday morning the two returned to Specialized to wrap up some business details and finalize the weekend plans. Jack Vaughn would also stay at the Union Creek Resort, Dad and I would stay at his small two bedroom cabin. Jones and Culhane left Specialized about 11:00, checked out of their hotel, had lunch, and departed for Crater Lake.
Specialized closed at noon on Saturday. We went home, gathered our gear, and departed for Union Creek. At that time there was an entry check-in station at the south entrance to Crater Lake Park. Records show they entered Park at 1:00, we at 2:45. 3 ½ miles into the park we came upon their car, a green 1951 Pontiac sedan, at the Annie Creek canyon observation point. Their car was parked between a large Ponderosa pine tree and Annie Creek canyon. The passenger door was open, the keys were in the ignition, their suit coats folded on the back seat, and a camera and other personal items were neatly in place.
We assumed they were sight-seeing so we waited for them to reappear. I remember reaching thru the grille and putting my hand on the radiator, a carryover from my farm equipment days where temperature gauges seldom worked. The radiator was too hot to hold my hand there, indicating the car had not been parked long.
We waited about 45 minutes and concluded something was wrong. Dad & Jack went back to the entrance station to report them missing. I stayed with the car, sitting in it reading a magazine. There was some traffic on the highway and I didn’t pay much attention to it. I specifically remember, however, a car pulled in from the north, crossing the road, crunched gravel at the turn-out, and then sped away. My vision was blocked by the pine tree so I only knew it was black colored car.
Dad & Jack returned and Chief Ranger Lou Hallock met us there. Hallock suspected they had either fallen into Annie Creek canyon or wandered across the road into the woods and become lost. Jack went back to the south entrance station to call his wife to determine whether either was in a local hospital. The report was negative.
Hallock organized two search parties – one in the woods across the road, and lowered 2 men by ropes into the canyon. Both searches were suspended at dark. Food and bedrolls were lowered into the canyon where the rangers spent the night. Dad & I accompanied Hallock to park headquarters where we spent the night. Jack took the Pontiac back to Klamath Falls.
Both searches continued all day Sunday. The woods search party, comprised of a 12 man trail crew, was spaced 20 feet apart combing the area. Dad & I returned to Klamath Falls Sunday evening and the canyon search was suspended. Dad notified Ira Kennedy who arrived on the Monday morning plane. The woods search party resumed Monday morning.
At 1:15 PM Monday a call was made to Myrtle Wimer at Wimer’s garage in Ft. Klamath by a man who said he was J.D. Harney of 536 Plum St, Medford. He said Jones was in Sacred Heart Hospital in Medford and asked that Jones’ green Pontiac sedan parked at the first Annie Creek observation point be picked up and stored until Jones was feeling better and would pick it up. He said the keys were in the ignition. Mrs. Wimer called the State Police. The phone call was traced to a phone booth at the Medford railroad station. Medford police were dispatched from the police station, two blocks from the railroad depot¸ but found the phone booth empty. The receiver and coins were removed and fingerprinted but no match was found. J.D. Harney’s name and address both proved phony. A railroad employee remembered the man who he said was between 28 and 35 years old, slender build, about 5’7” tall with sandy hair and a receding hairline.
About the same time, Dad received the call from Lou Hallock that the bodies had been found by the trail crew. Dad and Ira Kennedy took the car to Wimer’s garage for storage as directed by the State Police and then went to the Park where they met Ranger Hallock who took them to the scene about ¼ mile from the road.
Sheriff Red Britton and several park rangers had taped off the area and were waiting for the FBI and the coroner who arrived about an hour later.
Both men had been gagged with 1/2 of Culhane’s undershirt and their own neckties, but their white dress shirts were buttoned and neatly in place. Both men’s upper dentures were in their shirt pockets. Both men’s shoes were removed and their socks indicated they had not walked without their shoes. Jones’ shoes were near the bodies, Culhane’s were never found. Both men’s wrist watches were missing. Their bill folds were in their pockets but there was no money in them. They were thought to have about $300.00 with them. Jones’ Shell credit card was missing.
Autopsies showed both men had been kicked in the groin and Jones had a fractured skull, indicating a possible struggle. Jones was a former logger and not unaccustomed to a good fight. He possibly tried to save his boss seeing what was happening.
Jones was seated in front of a small tree, hunched forward, with a bullet hole in the back of his head surrounded by powder burns, indicating he was executed at close range from behind while sitting. Culhane was sprawled on the ground and had apparently been shot in the side of the head while standing. Two casings found at the scene indicate the murder weapon was a .32 cal. automatic pistol. Ballistics tests on the bullet removed from Jones’ head identified the weapon as either German Mauser or a Spanish Vilar, 7.65 mm.
The FBI took charge of the case since it was in a National Park. I remember being interrogated at length by FBI Agent Mike Lenihan. There was apparently some territorial jealousy between State Police, Sheriff, and FBI resulting in lack of communication and less than complete cooperation.
The Leads
On July 25 a man driving an old model dark green Pontiac Coupe tried to sell a pair of 9 ½ wing tip oxfords (Culhane’s size) at a barber shop in LaGrande.
On July 25 two men driving a light blue 1951 Ford tried to sell a gold watch at three separate service stations in Lapine.
On August 2 someone used Jones’ credit card to buy gas in Colton, CA, driving a Chrysler 2 door sedan with Oregon plates heading east toward Arizona.
Over the years 167 guns were fired for ballistics tests with no match.
Theories
The first theory was the killer was George Dunkin, a mountain man who killed State Policeman Phil Lowd near Prospect a few days earlier but he was seen many miles away on the date of the killings and had no vehicle.
The FBI believed the killers were the Santos gang whose motive was always robbery and sometimes included murders. They got a conviction on Jack Santo, Emmitt Perkins and Barbara Morgan for other murders in California and did not want to delay the execution which happened at San Quentin in 1955. Members of the Santos Gang were staying at a motel in Medford at the time of the murders, but Jack Santos paid a bill in Auburn, CA, the day of the murders.
Charles Culhane was new in his position with United Motors Service. He had previously negotiated a rather contentious union contract for General Motors and some felt there might be retribution involved.
Jones’ daughter Virginia reported a letter that Jones had written to her very shortly before the killings stating ‘things are really bad now. I don’t see how they could get much worse.’ She had no knowledge of the meaning of the statement.
Klamath County Deputy Sheriff Alvie Youngblood, who lived in the Chiloquin area for 36 years and was the resident deputy there, firmly believed the murderers were Kenneth Moore and John Wesley Cole of Chiloquin. Moore reportedly once bragged about being the killer and several Chiloquin residents stated they believed Moore was capable of murder. Moore robbed, gagged, and shot to death two trappers in 1934. Both Moore and Cole were found frozen to death in 1962 four miles east of Highway 97 on the Military crossing road.
George Brown was a local mechanic known by my father thru the business. He was employed on a highway construction project near Prospect at the time. The contractor’s son was on the payroll but George stated he was worthless and never had any money. Monday morning, before the bodies were found, he showed up at the job site with money and a new wrist watch. He drew his pay and left. He was not seen by Brown again. Brown told his story to Sheriff Britton who apparently discounted it as he knew or knew of Brown.
In the late 1990’s I was contacted by Lincoln Linse, a retired accountant from Portland, who wanted to meet with me to talk about the murders. I contacted Rex Ash and John Owings who were high school students from Ashville, MO, working on the trail crew and found the bodies. Both remained in the area. Rex Ash became a salesman for Pape’ Cat and John Owings was a heavy equipment operator for Francis D. Brown & Son Logging. We met Linse at the Shilo Inn for breakfast.
Linse said at the time of the murders he was a student at the U of O and his summer job was driving the supply truck for the Crater Lake Lodge. He made a daily run to Klamath Falls. On Saturday, July 19, 1952, he was headed for the lodge with a heavy load. The truck was an old Chevrolet with not much power so he was moving slowly up the grade.
He remembered two business type guys in white shirts and neckties followed by two scruffy looking guys walking south on the shoulder of the road. One business type was making a hand signal which he later determined was in the form of a gun. Around the turn beyond the observation point where the Jones car was found, a 1936 black Pontiac coupe was parked on the shoulder of the road.
Before he got to the lodge the Pontiac pulled up alongside of him and the occupants glared at him. He noted the license number of their car and wrote it in the dust on the dashboard of his truck. That evening he saw the two at the Lodge and the younger man stood in front of him and again glared at him The next morning they blocked his way with their car for several minutes as he attempted to leave the Lodge parking lot and again as he tried to leave the cafeteria parking lot after breakfast. At the service station when he was fueling up his truck they pulled in, raised the hood of their car, and watched him the whole time he was there. One man had a leather belt with the name Ralph beaded on it and a tattoo of a nude or bikini-clad female on his left forearm. He was missing a finger on his left hand. Linse saw what he believed to be the same car in the town of Rogue River a week later, but when he looked for the license number he had recorded he found his dashboard had been wiped clean.
Linse said he reported all this to the FBI but didn’t think they took him seriously.
In 2001, Cheryl Ousey, a student at Southern Oregon University, submitted her thesis on the Crater Lake murders. She subsequently did a program on the subject for the Klamath County Historical Society which I attended since she had interviewed me as part of her project. A friend who accompanied her saw a man from the audience intently studying the attendance roster and noted that he had a missing finger. She told Cheryl who contacted Lincoln Linse and told him of the incident, reporting which finger was missing. Linse said it was the same finger, and he had never told anyone which finger it was.
Conclusion
So, nearly sixty years later, the mystery remains unsolved and the perpetrators are probably deceased. I am no doubt the only living witness to this incident and never expect to see justice served.
Alan Eberlein
September 2011
50 years later a follow-up article published in the Mail Tribune – July 21, 2002
The Crater Lake murders and the 9-fingered man
Was it a mob hit? A robbery? The mystery, 50 years old today, is far from forgotten
By DANI DODGE
On July 21, 1952, a trail crew discovered the bodies of two General Motors executives murdered in the woods of Crater Lake National Park. The men had been shot in the head execution style. Their mouths were gagged with their own neckties. Their shoes had been removed from their feet, and one pair had been stolen.
Fifty years later, FBI agents still haven’t identified the killer. One man insists, though, that if the FBI had taken him seriously then — or even if his story came out today — the crime could be solved.
A 24-year-old truck driver for the Crater Lake Lodge at the time, Lincoln Linse believes FBI investigators discounted his eyewitness account after branding him a smart aleck.
“I feel for these two guys that lost their lives, and I also feel the follow-up of the murder case should have transpired a lot different,” said Linse, now a retired accountant living in Portland. “I don’t feel like they got justice, and that hits me right between the eyes.”
Linse says he was driving canned goods to the lodge July 19, 1952, when he saw two men in work clothes taking two “white-collar types” into the woods where the executives’ bodies were later found. As he continued driving slowly to the lodge, he heard two bangs that sounded like firecrackers.
Later that day and the next, Linse was followed and harassed by two scruffy-looking men. He’s come to believe those two men were the killers.
The older one was the most distinctive. He wore a beaded belt that appeared to spell out “Ralph.” He had a tattoo of a bikini-clad female on his right forearm. He was missing a finger.
Linse, coincidentally, also is missing a finger.
Asked if he murdered the businessmen, Linse replied Friday — the 50th anniversary of the actual shooting — “Absolutely not. But I’d sure like to find out who did.”
He’s offering a $1,000 reward to anyone who identifies the nine-fingered killer.
On July 19, 1952, two out-of-town executives from United Motor Service, a General Motors subsidiary, decided to do a little sightseeing at Crater Lake.
Charles Patrick Culhane, 53, of Detroit was the national sales manager for the company. Albert Marston Jones, 56, was the manager of the San Francisco zone office. The two men were touring Jones’ sales area, but it was Saturday, and they didn’t have another meeting until Monday. They left Klamath Falls at 11:30 a.m. It was 71 degrees and the sky was clear.
The men expected to meet up with business associates Frank Eberlein and John Vaughn, operators of a Klamath Falls auto parts firm, later in the day at Union Creek, a popular fishing spot.
Vaughn, Eberlein and Eberlein’s 13-year-old son, Alan, left for Union Creek after closing the shop at noon.
The locals passed the old south park entrance at 2:45 p.m. A few miles on, they saw Culhane and Jones’ green ’51 Pontiac sedan sitting by the side of the Highway 62 at the Annie Creek Canyon viewpoint. The right front door was open. The keys were in the ignition. The luggage and Baby Brownie camera were still in the car.
“I reached my hand in the grill and put it on the radiator,” Alan Eberlein said this week. “It was hot enough so I yanked my hand off it. The car hadn’t been there too long.”
Eberlein, now a Klamath Falls property manager, said the trio figured the men had just wandered off for a few minutes.
“We just hung around,” he said.
After about an hour, though, the older men went to report the missing executives. Eberlein waited in the ’51 Pontiac.
“One car came through crunching gravel, then took off really fast,” Eberlein recalls. “I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now I wonder if that was them, and they were coming back to the car and saw someone inside it, and ‘Adios, let’s get out of here.’ ”
Rangers began their search by dropping into the steep Annie Creek Canyon.
Two days later, a man who gave his name as J.D. Harney of 536 Plum St., Medford, placed a long-distance call from a pay phone at the Southern Pacific Railroad depot in Medford. At 1:15 p.m., he asked operator Phyllis Haas to put the call through to a garage — “the only one” in Fort Klamath, a small community near Crater Lake.
Haas told FBI officers at the time that the man sounded like “he would like to take my head off” because she wasn’t able to put the call through to the Wimer Garage until 1:45 p.m.
When he got through, the man told Myrtle Wimer, whose husband owned the garage that a friend of his named Jones was in the hospital. He asked her to pick up his car at the south end of Annie Creek Canyon and store it in their garage until Jones got better. He said the keys were in the ignition.
Wimer immediately called authorities, and Medford police descended on the depot. But Harney was gone. The name and address were fictitious. A baggage man described the caller as slender, 5-foot-7, sandy-haired, wearing a bright red and yellow short-sleeved sports shirt. The man was never found and the fingerprints lifted from the phone, and the change inside, never identified.
Retired Medford officer Bob Allen said the FBI— which had jurisdiction on the murder because it occurred in a national park — swooped in and took over. Medford officers “just didn’t have a lot to do about it except to sit around and speculate for a long time.”
“We always figured it was some mob deal from back East,” said Allen, 79, of Medford. “It just didn’t sound like anyone from around here. The guys we dealt with in those days were safe burglars and (bad) check- writers.”
As authorities searched for the man in the loud sports shirt, a trail crew combed the woods for the missing men. One searcher was 17-year-old Rex Ash, a farm boy from Missouri who considered his summers at Crater Lake a holiday.
“We were working west from the highway, all spread out about 20 feet apart,” recalls Ash, now a retired heavy equipment dealer in Klamath Falls. “I thought, ‘Oh Lordy, there they are.’
“It was really hot and they had started to bloat. I’d never seen a dead body like that.”
Ash yelled and two dozen searchers ran to the grisly crime scene.
“It was a bunch of kids and everyone was gathering around to see what was happening,” Ash recalled. “We might have destroyed some of the evidence. We didn’t touch anything, but tore up the terrain quite a bit.”
John C. Owings, who was 22 at the time, remembers one member of the trail crew taking out his camera.
“He stepped over (Jones and Culhane) and around them and got in their faces practically,” said Owings, a retired Klamath Falls logger. “He was going to sell them to a crime magazine and make a fortune, but the FBI took them away.”
Ash and Owings stayed with the bodies until the coroner arrived at dusk.
“We were sitting there scared to death, wondering which one of us was going to get shot next,” Owings said.
Both Ash and Owings went back to Missouri at the end of the summer.
“I was back in time for fall football practice,” Ash said.
Oregon State Police Pvt. L.W. Harroun and an FBI agent got to the bodies at 3:27 p.m. Monday, July 21, 1952.
They were about a quarter-mile south of Highway 62 in a wooded area, according to OSP reports. Culhane was lying on his back, legs outstretched with his right arm across his chest. Jones was about five feet away — his stocking feet pointing at Culhane’s torso. He also was face up, legs outstretched and arms at his side.
Both men’s dentures were in their front shirt pockets. The socks on their shoeless feet were clean. Their cash and watches were missing.
In addition to a single bullet wound each, they had bruised groin areas, and Jones’ skull was fractured.
Harroun, who died 12 years ago, was fascinated by the case, according to his wife, Ruth Harroun, 77, of Klamath Falls.
“He talked about it and looked into it for a couple of years,” Harroun said.
The officer suspected the killers were John Wesley Cole and Kenneth Moore, both of Chiloquin. Moore had been convicted of binding and robbing two trappers. Also a woman informed OSP troopers that Moore had confessed the murders to her late husband, according to OSP reports.
In 1962, Moore and Cole were found frozen to death 4.4 miles east of Highway 97 in Klamath County.
“He suspected them from the beginning because they were outlaws and around at that time,” Harroun said.
She added her husband was at peace, even though the case was never officially solved because “they ended up dead anyway.”
In the days following the murder, FBI agents interviewed more than 200 park employees — including Linse. But Linse said the FBI dismissed his story.
If they had come back to me, I could have shown them even where the (killer’s) car had been parked and beer cans that were there that might have had their fingerprints,” Linse said.
And details kept coming back to him after the initial interview, he said. So, after the lodge closed in the fall and Linse was back at the University of Oregon, he tried to contact agents several more times. They didn’t return his calls, possibly because it’s hard to understand how he could have seen the murderers going into the woods and still heard the fatal shots even though the bodies were found a quarter-mile from the road.
Then-Mail Tribune reporter George Bell had complete access to the FBI files in 1962 while writing an article about the crime. He recalls no mention of Linse’s name or story. Bell, now retired from a career that included a stint as assistant director of the Oregon Department of Transportation, said agents were baffled by the case.
“It was just one of those damnable mysteries that couldn’t be solved,” he said.
After reading an article on unsolved murders in 1969, Linse called Oregon State Police.
“He was wondering if the FBI had handled his information as that of a ‘kook,’ ” OSP Cpl. George Winterfeld wrote in his report. “He felt there were some things possibly he did not report to the FBI and things he felt the state police should know about.”
Linse described the men who had harassed him and the car they were driving — a 1935 or 1936 black Pontiac sedan that also “had been parked some distance away from the area where the victims’ bodies were found.”
A few weeks later, he saw a similar car in Gold Hill.
Winterfeld, now 72 and retired, forwarded his report to the FBI, but never heard back.
“They kept it close to their vest, and still do as you can tell from 9/11,” he said.
Documents show FBI agents aggressively pursued the Crater Lake murders for years. They tested 167 guns in a vain attempt to find the murder weapon, according to FBI files. They tracked down reports of pawned gold watches across the nation. They interviewed several men who had tried to sell brown oxfords.
Agent Terry Larson, who is stationed in Medford, talked with Linse last year. He declined to discuss the investigation but said if Linse’s tale was credible it would have been taken into account back in 1952 and 1969.
“You don’t ignore major pieces of the puzzle,” Larson said. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.
- • •
In 1994, Alice Simms found two letters her late mother had written about the murder of Jones, her mother’s father. But Virginia Cota never mailed them.
In the letters, one written to the Mail Tribune, Cota referred to a letter she had gotten from her father before his death, which had included this cryptic passage: “Things are so bad now they could not get worse.”
In 1990, when Cota wrote her letters, she believed she finally understood what he meant.
“Forty years late, I remembered what my father had said in his letter,” she wrote. “I know who was responsible for my father’s murder. I don’t know the murderer’s name, but I know the organization that arranged for my father’s death. … I did call the local FBI, but they said the case was too old to do anything about it.”
Since seeing that letter, Simms, a 51-year-old state clerical supervisor living in Santa Maria, Calif., has contacted hundreds of people and spent thousands of hours researching the murders. She’s convinced that the notorious Santo gang did in her grandfather.
“I think they just saw the fancy car and it was a case of robbery, even though people say there was more to it than that, I just don’t think so,” Simms said. “I think it was Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins and Barbara Graham and their gang. And their motive was always robbery.”
The trio was executed for other murders in 1955.
FBI reports show that on the day of the murders, Santo paid bills and ate at the Chat and Chew Cafe near Auburn, Calif., more than 300 miles from Crater Lake. But Simms said she’s seen too many other clues pointing at the Santo gang to discount them. And she’s heard from relatives of investigators that Santo’s gang — likely holed up in Oregon at the time — were the most likely culprits.
Simms continues to welcome other possible scenarios. She contacted Linse several years ago after reading his name in a police report. She says she didn’t fervently pursue his story, though, because Linse seemed “peculiar.”
“But, anything that could jog someone’s memory from that day is good,” Simms said. “All I want to do is find out who killed my grandfather.”
- • •
Last spring, Cheryl Ousey, 47, was taking a class at Rogue Community College when she heard about the Crater Lake murders. She spent three months obsessively investigating the crime for a research paper. Her extensive report is now part of the files at the Southern Oregon Historical Society.
“Culhane was a big mucky-muck with the company, and there were problems with the union then,” Ousey said. “It was a hit.”
She gave a presentation on the murders Thursday at the Klamath County Museum. About 40 seniors showed up. The last to walk in was a “suspicious-looking” man in a long-sleeved shirt, she said. Ousey’s friend noticed the man because of the way he studied the names in the guest book so intensely.
He was missing a finger.
Crater Lake murders still a mystery 61 years later
http://www.katu.com/news/local/Crater-Lake-murders-61-years-later-216468571.html
By Ian Parker, KATU News Published: Jul 22, 2013 Last Updated: Jul 23, 2013
CRATER LAKE NATIONAL PARK, Ore. — It has been 61 years since Detroit, Michigan, businessmen Al Jones and Charles Culhane walked into Crater Lake National Park and never walked out.
Their bodies were found gagged and shot through the head. Their cash, watches and shoes were stolen. Investigators found no evidence at the scene.
Alan Eberlien was at the park when the murders happened. His father sold parts for United Motors, the same company that Jones and Culhane worked for. They flew in, did their business with Eberlien’s father, and were set to meet the Eberliens again at Union Creek. But their 1951 Pontiac never made it that far.
“We figured they were probably just sight-seeing around here,” said Eberlien. “Maybe had looked here and walked up the canyon a ways to take a look. And so we waited for about 45 minutes and they didn’t come back.”
While his father went to the park’s south entrance to launch the search that led to the bodies of Jones and Culhane two days later, Eberlien sat in the businessmen’s car. He saw another car come up beside him, pause, and speed away.
“When the car sped off, I turned around to see what it was,” Eberlien said. “All I could see was the tree. I never could see the car. All I saw was a black fender disappear behind the tree.”
The park was nearly empty, Eberlien said. He’s convinced the car belonged to the murderers.
Former Crater Lake National Park Lodge employee Lincoln Linse agrees.
Linse said he drove a truck loaded with canned goods up the steep dirt highway when he saw the Pontiac. He said he saw an abduction; four men disappeared into the woods. Two of them were dressed like businessmen.
He saw the other two men the next day.
“I pulled in to the service station on the inside of the pumps and shortly after that, this car with the two men pulled in on the other side of me,” said Linse.
“I could tell he had a tattoo on his arm. The tattoo was of a naked lady with a bikini,” Linse said. “Also at that time, he had a beaded belt. There was a name on the beaded belt: Ralph.”
The FBI discredited Linse as a witness in the case. Linse said his friend at the service station wouldn’t corroborate his story.
There was another hole. The overlook where Jones and Culhane’s car was found abandoned was about one mile from where their bodies were found.
Serial killer’s alibi
The FBI investigated serial killer Jack Santo.
“The modus operandi of the Santos gang was always robbery, and generally they gagged their victims before they shot them,” said Eberlien.
Santo had an alibi putting him in California at the time, but Eberlien said two known Santo associates were staying near Crater Lake.
Santo and his gang were convicted of a murder in California and executed at San Quentin. The FBI never named them suspects in the Crater Lake murders. Then the case went cold.
KATU called the FBI in Portland to get some of the documents they have on this case. A spokesperson told us they weren’t sure whether their file on the murders still exists. KATU is using the Freedom of Information Act to try and find that file.
Now, 61 years later, the same questions linger. Eberlien admits those questions may never be answered.
“I may well be the only person still alive that was a party to this thing.”
The story behind the story?Today’s story grew out of a phone call to the Mail Tribune from Alice Simms, the granddaughter of Albert Jones. Simms provided reporter Thomas Moriarty with copies of the original FBI case file. By Thomas Moriarty Mail Tribune? Posted Aug. 16, 2015
When Albert Jones and Michael Culhane failed to show up at Union Creek on June 19, 1952, their friends thought they were lost. The two representatives of United Motor Service, in the area on business, had planned to join the friends that afternoon for a fishing trip.?When their bodies were found two days later a quarter-mile from Crater Lake Highway, gags in their mouths and bullet holes through their heads, it sparked one of the largest interagency murder investigations in state history. Investigators from the FBI, Oregon State Police, the Klamath County Sheriff’s Office and the National Park Service worked on the case. But more than 63 years later, no arrests have been made or official suspects publicly named.?”It was a nationwide manhunt for those individuals (responsible),” says Jones’ granddaughter Alice Simms. “I was told it was the most sensational murder of the time.”?Simms, 64, of Santa Maria, Calif., hasn’t let the case get far from her mind since she picked up the story in 1994. “Over the years, as a young girl, my mother had talked about her father and how he was killed,” she says. After Simms’ father gave her copies of two unmailed letters her mother had written to newspaper editors about the case, Simms decided she’d waited long enough to pick up the trail herself.?”I didn’t have a computer in those days,” Simms says, explaining that she’s since spent countless hours filing public records requests and calling retired investigators. “I found (county) sheriffs, I found George Bell,” she says, referring to a former Mail Tribune reporter who had followed the story. “I found Frank Eberlein.”?Frank Eberlein, owner of an auto parts supply company in Klamath Falls, was the man who’d invited Jones and Culhane to go fishing with him, his sales manager, Jack Vaughn, and Eberlein’s son, Alan, then 13. Both Jones and Culhane worked for General Motors’ United Motor Service, an auto parts manufacturer known today as ACDelco.?”Al Jones was the territory manager for this area,” says Alan Eberlein, now 76. Culhane, he says, had been recently appointed United Motor’s national sales manager. “(The murders were) really hard on my dad, because he and Jones had grown close over the years.”?After finishing up business at Specialized Service Co., Eberlein’s auto parts business in Klamath Falls, Jones and Culhane left at about 11 a.m. to check out of their hotel. It would be the last time Vaughn or Eberlein ever saw the victims. ?Jones and Culhane headed to Union Creek via Highway 62, cutting through the southern portion of Crater Lake National Park. Park records show the victims’ car was registered at a check station around 1:05 p.m.?After the Eberleins and Vaughn found the men’s 1951 Pontiac sedan almost two hours later, seemingly abandoned at the Annie Creek overlook off Highway 62 near the park’s southern entrance, its keys still in the ignition, they waited for about 45 minutes, Eberlein wrote in a 2011 account that’s now part of the National Park Service’s historical file on the case. When the men still didn’t turn up, Alan Eberlein says, his father fetched Chief Ranger Lou Hallock.?Hallock’s report shows he began to suspect foul play within the first 24 hours, after an exhaustive search of Annie Creek Canyon failed to turn up any sign of the men. “At this point, all concerned felt that the possibility of serious injury, accidental death or becoming lost in the forest was becoming a very remote possibility,” he wrote.?Steve Mark, the Park Service historian at Crater Lake, says it’s easy to tell in government circles whether someone is held in high esteem by their peers. “I’ve never heard anybody say a bad thing about Lou Hallock,” he says, explaining that Hallock later went on to become superintendent at Lassen Volcanic National Park in California. But in those days, the investigation of major persons crimes wasn’t part of a park ranger’s duties.?”The commissioning (as sworn law enforcement officers) didn’t start until the ’70s, after the shooting of a ranger at Point Reyes (National Seashore),” Mark says, referring to the seaside preserve in Marin County, Calif. Within two hours of the discovery of the bodies on June 21, the FBI assumed control of the investigation.?”The crime scene, according to my father, was not well preserved,” Eberlein says, explaining that the trail crew that discovered the bodies had found Jones in an upright position near a tree, while the OSP and FBI accounts of the case say both bodies were discovered lying face up. An autopsy determined each man had been shot once — Culhane in the face, Jones in the back of the head. A fingerprint analysis of the car didn’t turn up any viable prints, but police found two spent cartridge casings from a .32-caliber pistol near the bodies. Culhane’s size 9½ dress shoes were missing from his feet.?Both men’s wallets had been emptied of cash. Jones and Culhane are believed to have been carrying at least $300, equivalent to roughly $2,700 today.?Less than an hour after the bodies were found, a garage in Fort Klamath took a call from a man at the Southern Oregon Pacific Railroad depot in Medford. The caller identified himself as “J.D. Harvey” of 536 Plum St., Medford, and asked whether somebody could pick up his friend’s car, which had been left at an overlook at the park. The caller said his friend, Jones, was in the hospital in Medford and asked whether the garage could store the car until he was released. The woman who answered the phone immediately called Medford police after hanging up, but officers responding to the train depot found the mysterious caller long gone.?Over the next three years, the FBI combed the country tracking down leads with little apparent success. Several weeks after the murders, two young men were caught with a .32-caliber pistol in a traffic stop in Milbrae, Calif., but were apparently discounted as suspects. George Dunkin, a prospector who murdered OSP Trooper Phil Lowd near Elk Creek five days after the Crater Lake killings, was also considered a suspect, but witness accounts put him far from the scene on June 19.?The most popular theory held that members of the so-called “Mountain Murder Gang” were behind the men’s robbery and murder. Led by Jack Santo and Emmet Perkins, who gained notoriety for the brutal 1952 murder of a grocer and his three children in Chester, Calif., the gang was believed to be responsible for a string of murders and robberies throughout the western United States. Santo, investigators determined, also had links to Oregon, including as a suspect in a number of burglaries in the Medford area with which he apparently was never charged.?Santo and Perkins were ultimately sentenced to death for the 1952 murder of 63-year Mabel Monohan, a Burbank, Calif., widow they had planned to rob of gambling winnings they believed were hidden in her home.?The FBI’s case file, obtained by Simms via the Freedom of Information Act, shows investigators considered Santo and Perkins as suspects right up until their execution. Two days before the men entered the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison, agents made one last attempt to get them to divulge information about the Crater Lake murders. But Santo and Perkins refused to talk. They were executed along with their accomplice, Barbara Graham, on June 3, 1953.?Simms says she’s convinced Santo’s associates were involved in the crime, even if witness accounts put Santo himself in California at the time. “Over the years, other people, including my mother, have thought it was a hitman — the mafia,” she says. But Simms says she doesn’t think the murders fit the profile of a mob hit, considering the bodies were hidden from public view and their wallets stripped of cash. Mark also thinks the Santo theory is the most plausible and that investigators likely didn’t feel the need to continue to press the issue with Santo and Perkins, since the criminals already were scheduled to die for Monohan’s murder.?But Alan Eberlein, perhaps the last surviving witness to the events of June 19, 1952, has his own thoughts on the matter.?”I go by what my father went by, which is the George Brown theory,” Eberlein says. George Brown was a local mechanic who had worked on a construction project near Prospect. According to Eberlein, the contractor’s son also had been on the payroll, but Eberlein says the son was “always spending money faster than he could make it.”?The morning of June 21, before the bodies were found, the contractor’s son turned up to draw his pay, already unusually flush with cash. “All of a sudden, he shows up with money and a new wristwatch,” Eberlein says. Brown reportedly never saw the man again, and his findings were apparently ignored by the county sheriff.?With the murders more than six decades past, the chances of solving them appear to diminish with each passing year. “It’s so far into history, I assume that everybody who was party to it is gone,” Eberlein says.?Simms says she worries interest in the case may pass with her and Eberlein. “One of the things for me is I’m going to be 65 in December, and Alan and I are pretty much the only people left who have information about the case,” she says.?But Mark, the historian, says it’s likely the ever-intriguing nature of cold cases such as this will keep people digging back into the past.?”Once the case is solved, there’s no story,” Mark says. “That’s what keeps people going on it.”?Reach reporter Thomas Moriarty at 541-776-4471, or by email at tmoriarty@mailtribune.com. Follow him at @ThomasDMoriarty.
August 1952 Flocks of California Tortoise Shell butterflies are seen migrating through the Park.
August 11 1952 The 7th arrowhead ever found in Crater Lake is found by a Park visitor near Discovery Point.
August 19 1952 An inspection repot notes that the dining room ceiling in the Lodge is seriously deteriorated. The Lodge’s septic tank is reported to be inadequate and effluent discharges in seepage trenches allow effluent to run in considerable volume down the mountain to Munson Valley. Sewage disposal at the Lodge is totally inadequate and its correction calls for emergency action before reopening next season.
Summer 1952 The Crater Lake (Mazama) Newt is extensively studied. Hundreds has been observed massing under debris. Since the newt is not found anywhere else in the world and since they were not in the Lake prior it its formation, this has become one of the most clearly dated cases of subspeciation available anyplace in the world.
42 Clark’s Nutcrackers banded by the Farmers.
The Lake level is now 6 feet below the 1873 level. The government boat house, constructed in 1942, 18 inches above Lake level, is now so nearly submerged, the gunwales of a row boat will just slip under its eaves.
September 1952 The South Entrance Kiosk sustains $300 in damages after being struck by a car.
September 26 1952 New Mt. Scott Lookout completed at a cost of $12,682, replacing the old 1924 building.
Season 1952 Visitation: 323,410 (Online says: 312,677)
***previous*** — ***next***
***menu***
