A HAUL OF OVER $100,000,000!!!!!!!!!

2/16/2003 - At the heart of the world's diamond business, Belgium's Antwerp Diamond Center is hit for more than $100 million (no one will ever really know how much booty the thieves get away with) in loose diamonds, gold, silver, and other types of jewelry in a two-day robbery the authorities will call "the heist of the century."

Scene Of The Crime

Taking over two years of planning and prep work, career criminal Leonardo Notarbartolo (his first robbery takes place when the crook is only 6, taking $8 from a sleeping merchant that his mother has sent him to buy milk from) and a group of five thieves known as "The School of Turin," complete an almost perfect crime in which Notarbartolo poses as a diamond merchant and rents an office in the Antwerp Diamond Center (for $700 a month) that gives him 24-hour access to the building and his own safe deposit box in the vault of the building.  Photography in the Diamond Center (a gray fortress-like 14-story structure) monitored and restricted, Notarbartolo uses his access to take pictures of the building and underground vault (requiring an elevator ride to reach it) using a miniaturized digital camera concealed in the cap of an apparently innocuous highlighter, and it also allows him to find a spot above the vault door (3-tons of steel rated to withstand 24-hours of nonstop drilling) where another tiny camera is planted that allows him to observe the combination used by the guards to swing open the door leading to the safety deposit boxes (four numbers required, the combination has 100 million possibilities), the camera sends its signal to a sensor in a nearby storage room, fully functional fire extinguisher that the men have substituted for the real thing.

Notarbartolo

The Target

Robbery moves practiced on a mock-up of the vault, women's hair spray is used to temporarily bypass a thermal-motion sensor, which is later brought down in full by a thief known only as "The Genius'' (thought to be a man named Elio D'Onorio, the action doing this is recorded the day before the heist, but ignored by security personnel use to the Italians's visits).  During the robbery, Notarbartolo sits in a getaway car (a gray Peugeot 307) monitoring a police scanner, plastic gloves are used so that DNA and fingerprints are not left behind.  To avoid the many security cameras watching the building, a thief known as "The King of Keys" gets the gang access to the structure through an unused office in the building next store that shares a private garden with the Diamond Center that is not under surveillance.  A small ladder is used to climb up on to a balcony and get into the Center, "The Genius" using a homemade, polyester shield to block the infrared sensor and then disabling the alarms on the balcony's access window.  Security cameras are negated with black plastic bags which allow the crooks to turn on the lights and not work in the dark.  A magnetic field on the vault door is overcome by "The Genius" using an aluminum plate and two-sided heavy-duty tape that allows the field on the vault to appear intact as it is pivoted out of the way and taped to a wall.

D'Onorio

Even with the combination to the vault, a foot-long key is required which "The King of Keys" creates, but doesn't use when he discovers the original in an unlocked room used by guards prior to giving clients access to the vault.  Moves memorized but taking no chances, the gang works in the dark (except for briefly turning on pen lights to make sure of their positioning during the theft ) of the vault once "The Genius" picks the lock on an internal gate and another crook, called "The Monster" (Ferdinando Finotto) based on his height, strength, and ability to master any assignment he is given, moves to the center of the room, pushes up a panel in the ceiling, uses a bypass and reroutes the light monitors (tape on each is also used), while heat sensors are beat with the use of Styrofoam boxes.  And using a hand-cranked drill created by "The King of Keys," the men break into 123 of the 160 safety deposit boxes in the vault (made of steel and copper, each box also requires a key and a combination lock, each with 17,576 possibilities), dumping their contents into large duffel bags and stealing all the security tapes before vacating the premises (the robbing stops at 5:30 and takes an hour to extract themselves from the building.  Perfect, the next morning the vault appears sealed tight on all The Center's monitors, but reality underground is quite different. 

Inside The Vault - After

Unfortunately though for the crooks, the clean-up in which evidence like diamond envelopes is to be burnt up in France on the road back to Turin, is botched by a neurotic criminal friend of Notarbartolo named "Speedy" (Pietro Tavano) who has a panic attack that causes Notarbartolo to turn on to a dirt forest road and dispose of evidence in the woods, instead of burning it.  Sure enough, a hunter that owns the land, August Van Camp, soon finds the rubbish near the side of the road, contacts the police, and Notarbartolo is linked to the crime by a receipt for a low-light surveillance system purchased by Notabartolo, DNA on a salami sandwich wrapper that links Finotto to a surveillance tape made at a sandwich store.  at a local store where he bought the item.  Arriving in Turin, the men divide their booty and then appear to renew leading ordinary lives.   But the Notabartolo lead is enough for detectives to figure out a major chunk of the crime.  Never ratting out his partners, Notabartolo is discovered to have 17 certified polished diamonds which can be traced back to the Diamond center (and another handful is found in a rolled-up rug from his Antwerp apartment.  Placed on trial he will receive a 10 year sentence.  After raiding the French Riviera home of Finotto's girlfriend, the crook receives a five-year sentence for possessing marked $100 bills that can be traced back to the robbery.  D'Onorio receives a five-year sentence when his DNA is found on some adhesive tape left in the vault.  And Travano gets five years when cell-phone evidence is presented at his trial that triangulates him into the vault and shows he was in almost contact with Notabartolo during the heist.  Guilty and yet no one talks, awaiting their release and hopeful reunion with their loot ... and the fifth participant, "The King of Keys" is never identified.

Tavano

FAST FEET STILLED

2/11/1982 - Sublime dancer (after starring in her first MGM musical, a critic will write that she has, "the most eloquent feet in show business.") and American actress, Eleanor Torrey Powell, dies of ovarian cancer in her Beverly Hills home at the age of 69.

Eleanor

The girl that will grow up to be the "World's Greatest Tap Dancer" (per the "Dance Masters of America" in 1865), is born in Springfield, Massachusetts on November 21, 1912 to Clarence Gardner Powell (a hardware retailer) and Blanche Torrey Powell.  When Eleanor is only eleven months home, her parents separate (they will later divorce) and she is brought up by her mother (who works as a chambermaid, waitress, and bank teller to support her daughter), and her mother's parents, Harold and Susie Belle Torrey (for years she will be told her father is dead, and Eleanor will not really know him until she is twenty-three and Clarence introduces himself to his daughter).  Not having her father in her life, Eleanor grows up so painfully shy that she hides from guests when they call on her mother or grandparents.  Hoping to break the shyness afflicting her daughter, when Eleanor is seven, Blanche enrolls her in dance classes given by Ralph McKernan (McKernan will also teach Robert Alton Hart, the dancer and choreographer responsible for discovering Gene Kelly, working with Fred Astaire, being the dance director at MGM from 1944 to 1951, and designing the dance numbers for The Harvey Girls, Till the Clouds Roll By, Show Boat, and White Christmas).  Studying classical ballet, "interpretive" modern dance, and acrobatics, the blue-eyed youngster discovers she has a natural aptitude for physical movement and discovers her calling in life.  Jumping about and dancing wherever she is, twelve-year-old Eleanor's big break comes during a family summer vacation to Atlantic City, New Jersey when local entrepreneur, Gus Edwards, spots her doing cartwheels on the beach and offers her a job working three nights a week at the Ritz Grill of the city's Ambassador Hotel doing a specialty acrobatic act.  Not a bad gig, her opening salary is seven dollars a show.  Receiving good reviews and more local work, by 1927, she is performing dance numbers at the high-priced Atlantic City supper clubs of the Silver Slipper and Martin's, and is soon hearing from comedian Jack Benny, entertainer Eddie Cantor, and her teacher, Ralph McKernan that she should set her sights on dancing on Broadway.  Blossoming into a 5'6" brown-haired beauty with a 33-23-35 inch figure, forgoing her schooling, in 1927, Eleanor and her mother move to New York City, where the teenager signs with William Grady of the William Morris talent agency and begins getting jobs dancing in clubs, on vaudeville stages, and at private parties (she is now up to $500 a performance).

Young Eleanor

Teenager Powell

But the Broadway roles do not come, chiefly because Eleanor does not have tap dancing in her repertoire.  Seeking to make the deficit into a strength, Powell enrolls in a ten lesson tap dancing class with Jack Donahue (a master soft shoe dancer) and Johnny Boyle (a vaudeville hoofer known for his "buck-and-wing" style dancing).  The men emphasis the feet grounding tap requires, and known for her aerobatic dancing leaps, Eleanor almost quits after the first lesson, but perseveres and suddenly becomes a potential talent after her seventh lesson.  Ankles held while Donahue works with how her feet will move on the ground, the two men also devise a Rube Goldberg apparatus consisting of a belt off of which ten pound sandbags drape from either hip that the teenager must wear while dancing that keeps her even more grounded.  Lessons (by the eighth session Powell is being called on in class to demonstrate various taps she has just learned herself) combined with hours and hours of practice, and experience watching and dancing with legendary black entertainer, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (the two will become life long friends, with Powell using the same entrances and exits the black entertainer is forced to use, as well as always making sure whatever food and drink she is offered, is also offered to Robinson, and Robinson will teach Powell his famous "stair dance"), and equally famous black hoofer, John W. "Bubbles" Sublett (the two share a twenty week tour of the vaudeville circuit that has them performing five shows a day, during which Powell learns the heel drop tapping that Sublett has mastered and moves to wearing high-heeled tap shoes with a wider Cuban heel more conducive to reproducing the Sublett's style of rhythm tapping she falls in love with) and like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, Powell emerges from her work as one of the finest tap dancers of her generation.  Ballet fused to aerobatic leaps married to grounded machine-gun style tapping that flows into energetic swift turns and natural, loose arm movements that mix gracefulness and athletic ability, at only seventeen years of age, Powell gets her first Broadway success in the 1929 musical, "Follow Thru" (she auditions to a tune that will become one of the show's hits, "Button Up Your Overcoat," with a dance routine she works on with Donahue in class.  Aiming to get better and better, during the show's run, Powell continues to practice her moves, dancing up to twelve hours a day, creating her own routines as she listens to the records of various jazz talents of the day like Fats Waller.  Other Broadway successes soon follow, "Fine and Dandy" in 1930 (the opening night audience includes George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolsen, Ruby Keeler, Judith Anderson, and William Demarest), "Hot-Cha!" in 1932 for legendary Broadway impresario, Florence Ziegfeld, George White's "Music Hall Varieties" in 1933 doing two rhythm tap numbers, and "At Home Abroad" in 1935, with a cast that includes Ethel Waters, Reginald Gardner, Eddie Foy Jr., Vera Allen, and John Payne (Powell will dance to the new song, "What a Wonderful World").  Between shows, still working to perfect her craft, Powell takes jobs performing for jazz and big bands like the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and becomes the first tap dancer to perform at Carnegie Hall.

George White, Powell, And Robinson

Sublett

Playbill For "Follow Thru"

Never intending to make a career in movies, just trying to keep a roof overhead as Broadway starts cutting back on spending as the Great Depression in America deepens, Powell appears in the chorus line of a couple of minor, early film musicals before moving front and center in "George White's 1935 Scandals," a project Powell loathes because she thinks she is made up too much and looks like an Egyptian on screen.  Nonetheless, her tapping is a talent Hollywood wants, and when Leo B. Mayer of MGM comes calling, Powell gives the executive her money contract demands, which she believes will be rejected ... instead, Mayer accepts Eleanor's needs, Powell signs on and the studio soon has a new asset to put into a group of musicals which will save the company (behind the scenes, very little is done to change either her hair or makeup).  Supported by old friend Jack Benny, actor Robert Taylor, entertainer Buddy Ebsen (his screen debut) and veteran actress Frances Langford, the fresh faced new beauty displays her energetic talent for stunning dancing in her first starring role as Irene Foster in "Broadway Melody of 1936," playing a dancer her high school boyfriend (Taylor) refuses to put in his New York musical, forcing Powell to pretend to be an imaginary French hoofer (created by newspaperman Benny) that is hired.  Performing in scenes that include the songs "Broadway Rhythm," "You Are My Lucky Star," "Sing Before Breakfast," and "All I Do Is Dream Of You" (though possessing an adequate voice, her singing will be dubbed by Marjorie Lane) the movie and Powell are huge hits with 1930's audiences (the picture will be nominated for three Academy awards, including Best Picture, and will win for Best Dance Direction).  Men are drawn to Eleanor as a beautiful woman, moving beautifully, while women respond to a vision of their future in which they can do anything a man can do, and can do it leading.  Powell's follow-up to her first hit is "Born to Dance," in which she dances to the music of Cole Porter (the film features the debut of the hit song, "I've Got You Under My Skin") while trying to capture the affections of another big MGM male star, a gentleman named Jimmy Stewart.  Also featuring the hit song "Easy to Love" (Powell will again have her singing voice dubbed by Lane), the movie is another hit for MGM and Powell.  A backstage ensemble piece filmed in 1937 in which Powell plays a horse trainer breaking into show business at the behest of boyfriend (Lane again does Eleanor's singing and will for the rest of her career with MGM), actor Robert Taylor, "Broadway Melody of 1938" also features future California senator, George Murphy, legendary entertainer Sophie Tucker, Buddy Ebsen (again, his third pairing with Powell), and singing "You Made Me Love You" to a photograph of Clark Gable, MGM's coming musical star, Judy Garland.  Also filmed in 1937, Powell appears as football loving princess opposite singer Nelson Eddy in a reworking of the 1928 play, "Rosalie," by Guy Bolton, and featuring a new score by Cole Porter (the film also stars Frank Morgan, Edna May Oliver, Ray Bolger, Ilona Massey, and Billy Gilbert).  Finishing the decade with another hit, Powell starred next opposite Robert Young in the mistaken identity musical comedy, "Honolulu" (young plays the dual roles of a movie star and a Hawaiian businessman named George Smith).  In the movie, for the first time, Powell incorporates "hulu" movements into her dancing, and in a tribute to her friend, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (who one day will be the godfather of Eleanor's son, Peter), dances in blackface to "The King of Harlem," and manages to lose a toenail practicing her steps for hours for the movie. 

Beverly Hills Rooftop Dancing - 1935

Mayer

Finale Of Born To Dance

Honolulu - 1939

Hit after hit, it is inevitable that sooner or later a studio executive would think it might be a good idea to match Eleanor up on screen with MGM's best dancer, Fred Astaire (his first movie after leaving RKO for MGM as an example of the perfection each dancer is trying to achieve, they spend two weeks practicing just the arm movements for "Begin the Beguine"), and so for the first and only time in their careers, the pair are matched together as a new decade begins in "Broadway Melody of 1940."  Supported by George Murphy and Frank Morgan (with an uncredited cameo by voice legend Mel Blanc as a panhandler), with the words and music of Cole Porter, the film is a major hit for the studio and features in the number, "Begin the Beguine" what many film and dance historians believes is the greatest tap dance ever captured on film (Astaire will state, "She put 'em down like a man, no ricky-ticky stuff with Ellie.  She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself.  While in "That's Entertainment," Frank Sinatra will proclaim of the dance, "You know, you can wait around and hope, but I tell ya, you'll never see the likes of this again.").  Though there are plans to match the two stars together again (as well as plans for a Broadway Melody of 1944 with Gene Kelly and Powell), nothing gets into production (both stars are slightly intimidated by each other at first, but impressed once they start dancing and will bloody their feet trying to find perfection in their steps, along with wearing out their practice pianist) and Eleanor's next movie will be 1941's "Lady Be Good" (chiefly because Eleanor is ill and is sidelined for several months after undergoing a gall bladder operation) with Robert Young, Ann Southern, Red Skeleton, Lionel Barrymore, Phil Silvers, and the dancing Berry Brothers.  And once more, Powell has another astounding dance (this one directed by choreographer legend, Busby Berkeley) in which to the music of George and Ira Gershwin's "Fascinatin' Rhythm," clad in a tuxedo, Eleanor taps her way through a stage full of pianos, an orchestra, and lines of male dancers that pitch Powell into the finale (the film also includes a tap dance in which Powell's partner is a small dog Eleanor trained for the role ... if it doesn't make you smile after seeing the routine, there is something wrong with your funny bone!).  America at war and audience tastes turning, Powell is matched with Red Skeleton in "Ship Ahoy" (1942) and "I Dood It (1943 ... practicing for a complex dance featuring lariats and cowboys she manages to knock herself unconscious whipping a rop about her head and will wear a football helmet until the scene is finally filmed), films that aren't major hits for MGM (but do feature Powell tapping out a Morse code message to a spy and dancing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and drummer Buddy Rich to the tune "Tallulah" in "Ship Ahoy," and dancing to the music of Jimmy Dorsey in the second film).  Waiting for her next assignment, she volunteers her time to make a cross-country, 12-city trip with other entertainers (among the notables are Bob Hope, Cary Grant, and Claudette Colbert) selling war bonds for the Army and Navy Relief organization.  During the trip, Eleanor falls in love with a young, 27-year-old actor in the process of becoming a star for Columbia Pictures, Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford ... better known to audiences as Glen Ford.

Equals, Step For Step

Fascinatin' Rhythm

Dog Dance

Ford - 1943

Born to Newton Ford, an engineer with the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Hannah Wood Ford in Quebec, Canada on May 1, 1916 (the actor is the great-nephew of Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. McDonald and is also related to 8th United States President, Martin Van Buren), Ford is six in 1922 when the family transplants itself to the United States, settling first in the beachside town of Venice (Newton will have a job as a motorman for the Venice Electric Train Company until his death at 50 in 1940), and then in nearby Santa Monica.  Ford begins his acting career at Santa Monica High School, and continues it after graduation, appearing locally in small theater groups and productions while working odd jobs about town (working for Will Rogers, the young thespian will be taught horsemanship by the Cherokee cowboy-philosopher).  In 1939, Ford becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen and signs a studio contract with Columbia Pictures (the change to the moniker of Glenn Ford comes from his father's hometown of Glenford, Alberta).  Loan outs to other studios and parts in Columbia productions follow, and the young actor is soon attracting mobs of young female fans and being prepped for star roles.  After a White House visit (FDR becomes a fan after viewing 1941's "So Ends Our Night" in which he plays a 19-year-old German exile on the run in Europe from Nazis) and seeking to support his adopted country, Ford volunteers for the war bond selling tour in which he meets Eleanor.  Trains, planes, cars, speeches, dinners, thrown together on the road for weeks on end, the pair fall in love and by October of 1941, the couple are openly dating when they appear at the opening of the USO club in Hollywood.  When Ford impulsively joins the United States Marine Corps Reserve after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, after the release of "Thousands Cheer" (in which Eleanor is only on screen for a brief specialty solo tap number, her first appearance in Technicolor) Powell decides to terminate her MGM contract to be near Ford while he undergoes basic training in San Diego, and then as the actor's wife when the couple marries on October 23, 1943.  A full-time mother (a role for life that she takes seriously and is good at, producing a son who grows up to be an actor and singer, marries and has three children one of whom is named Eleanor Powell Ford like his mother, before becoming involved in building and remodeling homes and writing a biography about his father) after she gives birth to Peter Newton Ford on February 5, 1945.  And though retired from MGM (Europe will also see her in 1946's "The Great Morgan," in which some dance footage cut from "Honolulu" is used), there is one more star turn for Powell, when she appears in "Sensations of 1945" for United Artists (the movie marks comedian W. C. Fields last appearance) and dances to "Spin Little Pinball" inside a giant pinball machine (after six years, her final turn for MGM comes in 1950, when Eleanor has a special appearance as herself in the Esther Williams/Van Johnson musical comedy, "The Duchess of Idaho" in which she is called on to perform a dance for Sun Valley nightclub audience ... only a few minutes on screen, Eleanor nonetheless practices her moves until her feet bleed to get everything perfect according to Williams ... it will be Powell's last appearance in a major film).

Once Upon A Time

Eleanor, Peter, And Glenn

"Thousands Cheer"

Pinball Dance

Last Dance

Sadly, like far too many Hollywood marriages, the Ford & Powell bonding does not last (while Powell will never marry again, Ford will have three more wives before he dies at the age of from a series of strokes at the age of 90 in his Beverly Hills home), and after one-too-many times becoming involved with such leading ladies and entertainment beauties as Rita Hayworth, Stella Stevens, Gloria Grahame, Gene Tierney, Barbara Stanwyck, Eva Gabor, and Joan Crawford (many of the affairs caught on tape because Ford puts a recording system into the couple's Beverly Hills home to eavesdrop on whether Powell is aware of his serial cheating; their son Peter will claim his father has affairs with 146 actresses, all documented in Ford's personal diaries), the marriage ends with dissolution.  By the day of Glenn's 43rd birthday, May 1, 1959, Powell has had enough and files for divorce, asking for $3,000 a month in alimony and seeking total custody of Peter, citing adultery and mental cruelty (the pair will only appear together only once, in a 1955 three minute short film produced by the Variety Club of Northern California entitled "Have Faith in Our Children").  Granted custody of Peter, Powell's post Hollywood career involves appearances on television (her first will be a guest appearance on a episode of "All Star Revue with Danny Thomas and June Havoc) on shows like The Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace.  Ordained a minister in the Unity Church (other famous members include Della Reese, Betty White, Lucie Arnaz, Wally Amos, Ruth Warrick, and Patricia Neal) in the early 50s, from 1953 to 1955, hosts an Emmy award winning Sunday morning TV program for kids called "The Faith of Our Children."  Called out in real life watching a Pearl Bailey show in 1959 with her son as she was in "The Duchess of Idaho," encouraged by her son, Peter, Powell puts together a nightclub act that allows her way well into middle age during the 1960s (her highly publicized "return" takes place during a series of performances at Lou Walters' Latin Quarter in Boston).  Fittingly, her final public appearance takes place in 1981 at the televised American Film Institute tribute to Fred Astaire, at which when introduced after the "Begin the Beguine" dance is shown, receives a standing ovation from a crowd that includes Fred, Charlton Heston, David Niven, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bob Fosse, Cyd Charisse, Audrey Hepburn, Hermes Pan, James Cagney, and Gene Kelly.  Sadly, for family, friends, and her millions of fans around the world, Eleanor dies in Beverly Hills, California of ovarian cancer on February 11, 1982 at the age of 69.  Cremated, with her wishes that no lavish Hollywood funeral is planned, Powell is cremated and interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.  Now a forever angel in Heaven, her ashes reside in the Cathedral Mausoleum, Foyer Niche 432, Tier 3.

Peter & Glenn

TV Show Host

On The Nightclub Circuit

With Gene Kelly

Astaire Tribute

2/11/1982 ... one of the greats of Hollywood's Golden Age passes ... do yourself a favor and pop in one of Eleanor's DVDs today ... the dance sequences featuring Eleanor are just as vibrant and alive today as they were when first captured on celluloid decades ago!

Resting Place

Dancing

Eleanor Torrey Powell

        

       

           

 

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THE SACRAMENTO VAMPIRE - RICHARD TRENTON CHASE

2/1/1978 - Too late for at least six victims, the homicidal madness of Sacramento's Richard Trenton Chase, a serial killer, rapist, cannibal, and necrophile nicknamed "The Vampire of Sacramento" (he will also be known as "The Dracula Killer" and "The Vampire Killer") comes to a close with the monster's Wednesday arrest by local authorities (working with FBI profile agents, Robert Ressler and Russ Vorpagel) in the state capitol of California.

 

Monster

Born in Sacramento, California, on May 23, 1950, Chase's early mental problems are exacerbated by strict disciplinarian parents that beat and yell at the boy frequently (his mother, Beatrice, is a teacher, and his father, Richard Chase Sr., is a alcoholic computer specialist ... a baby daughter, Pamela, is born into the family when Richard is four), turning a child that is a Cub Scout, plays four years of little league baseball, has dozens of children attend his birthday parties and whom his teachers believe is a "sweetheart" into a budding monster.  Displaying all of the early psychiatric indicators of Dr. John Marshall Macdonald's "triad of sociopathy" (first postulated by the doctor in a 1963 article for the American Journal of Psychiatry called "The Treat to Kill"), by the age of ten he is setting stuff on fire, killing and torturing animals, and wetting his bed.   And his mind isn't helped at all by being exposed to the crumbling marriage of his parents.  Troubles building (at 13, Chase believes he is an actual member of the James-Young Gang of Missouri infamy), by the time Chase is a teenager he is a hypochondriac smoking marijuana, taking LSD, consuming amphetamines, and drinking heavily, but still putting forth the appearance of normalcy ... he has a string of girlfriends, but nothing lasts, and he has intimacy issues that won't allow him to maintain an erection.  Seeking guidance from a local psychiatrist due to his concerns about his erectile dysfunction, the youth is told that the root of his problems are the result of repressed rage or mental illness, but nothing is done to treat Chase.

High School

On The Way To Murder

Moving out of his parents' home when he is eighteen and graduates from Mira Loma High School in June of 1968 (his parents get him a Volkswagen Bug as a reward), Chase rents an apartment with friends and sinks deeper into his mental illness ... he will complain of his heat stopping from time to time, that a mysterious "someone" is attempting to steal his pulmonary artery, holds oranges to his head so that his brain can directly absorb the fruit's Vitamin C, believes his cranial bones have separated and shaves his head to observe the movements of the bones, thinks his stomach is backwards, lets his hair grow long, rarely bathes, doesn't brush his teeth, and nails the door of his closet shut to prevent people no one can see from invading his space.  Enough finally enough for his pals when Chase continually walks around in the nude, often when guests are visiting, his fellow renters ask him to leave, and when he refuses, they all choose to vacate the premises.  Left alone, he soon begins to believe his blood is turning to powder and that his heart is shrinking and comes up with a temporary solution, killing small animals (rabbits are a favorite), drinking their blood and then putting their organs in a blender with a Coca-Cola chaser, and drinking down the ghoulishly nasty brew.  Not enough money coming in to continue living in the apartment, he is soon back at his mom's place (by this time his parents have divorced), but leaves again when he suspects his mother is poisoning him.  Daddy to the rescue, Richard Sr. gets his son a place of his own and junior's mental faculties continue to deteriorate

Another Encounter With Authorities

Once more on his own, in 1973, Chase is diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic suffering from a drug-induced toxic psychosis ... and yet he is released from a mental institution after only 72-hours of observation.  The mental health community gets another crack at Chase in 1975 when he injects rabbit blood directly into his bloodstream and ends up with blood poisoning in a Sacramento hospital's emergency room.  Committed to a mental hospital, in 1976, Chase escapes, makes his way back to his mother's place, is apprehended by the authorities, and sent to Beverly Manor, a facility for the criminally insane.  A modern day Renfield, blood needs vocalized and soon on full display to doctor's and staff, the vampire catches two birds that fly through a window, breaks their necks, and drinks their blood, and using a stolen syringe, pilfers the blood of several dogs at the mental facility.  Known as "Dracula" at the institute, in 1976, despite the objections of many members of the staff, Chase is deemed to no longer be a danger to himself or society, prescribed a set of psychotropic drugs, and released into his mother's custody.  A major mistake, Ma Chase soon weans her soon from his regime of drugs and junior is soon going bonkers again ... in front of his mother on the front porch of Beatrice's home, he tears a dead cat apart and begins eating it's organs, smearing it's blood on his face, and screaming (the incident is not reported to authorities).  Given the boot again, Senior finds his son another place, which mommy pays the rent for (and also supplies her boy with groceries).

Beverly Manor

Rubber room nuts, alone again (his parents do not renew custody of their son when it comes up for renewal), Chase becomes a fan of the Hillside Strangler killings (believing whoever is responsible is also afflicted with powder blood problems), begins to acquire firearms (why would anyone ever give this guy a gun?), and now thinks he is being poisoned by Nazis flying UFOs, with more blood of course the solution.  Sneak preview of what's coming, on August 3, 1977, Nevada state police discover a Ford Ranchero stuck in the mud near Pyramid Lake.  Searching the vehicle they discover two rifles, a pile of men's clothing, blood all over the cab, and a white plastic bucket containing a large liver belonging to a cow.  Seeking the owner the vehicle, the police find Chase, nude and covered in blood.  Fleeing, Chase is easily caught, and when all the blood is found to be bovine in nature and no one files a complaint over the beast, not wanting all the paperwork of another state's problem, he is released and sent on his way.  Upset that his mother will not allow her boy to celebrate the holidays with his family, in December of 1977, treating himself to an early Christmas gift, Chase buys a .22-calber semiautomatic handgun, and practicing for slaughter, fires a round into the kitchen of a Sacramento woman.  Then Chase's mad Sacramento rampage begins.

Chase As Dirty Harry

Randomly selected, Chase's first victim is 51-year-old Ambrose Griffin, a married engineer with two sons.  On December 29, 1977, helping his wife bring a fresh load of groceries into their home, Griffin is shot in the back by an unknown person, and despite the best efforts of ER personnel, dies at a nearby Sacramento hospital, his body yielding a slug that matches the kitchen round.  Enjoying the feelings the murder has produced, Chase begins 1978 seeking new victims, Dawn Larson, a neighbor in the killer's East Sacramento apartment complex, escapes her possible murder when Chase accosts her for a cigarette, and she gives him her whole pack (thinking the man lonely, she had not reported that she had noticed him brining forbidden pets into his apartment, but never seen any of the dogs ever go outside).  Blood lust up, on January 23, 1978, a few blocks away from where Chase lives, Jeanne Layton finds an unkempt individual trying to break into her home (finding the doors and windows of the house locked, the stranger walks away after lighting a cigarette as he is confronted by Layton).  Police cruising the area find no one matching Layton's descriptions and a little later, down the street from Layton's home, Robert and Barbara Edwards return from a grocery run and discover someone in their home (inside the couple will discover that the intruder has urinated on their baby's clean clothes and defecated on their child's bed), a skinny, dirty stranger who runs out the back of the house, and as Mr. Edwards pursues the man, jumps several fences and vanishes into the neighborhood, still searching for the right circumstances and victim.  Sadly found, David Wallin returns home from work at about 6:00 in the evening and calls the police in anguish ... arriving minutes later at the home of Wallin and his 22-year-old, three months pregnant wife, Teresa, the authorities find a home that has been turned into a hellish abattoir in which Wallin's unlucky wife has been shot twice in the head while taking out the garbage (and through the hand as she strikes a defensive pose against her killer ... the bullets all match the one that killed Griffin earlier in the month), drug back into her home, taken to the bedroom, stabbed repeatedly in the chest and liver with a knife from her own kitchen, sexually assaulted, had her stomach opened up and her spleen and intestines pulled out, her kidneys cut out and then returned to the wound in her abdomen, her pancreas cut in two, and showing how evil the murderer is, her mouth filled with feces from her dog (the killer will also fill a bucket with her blood, take it into the bathroom and bath in the substance, while also drinking a mouthful from an empty yogurt container).  Knowing a monster is on the loose, the FBI is immediately contacted by the Sacramento police and begin preparing a profile of the killer ... one that will almost exactly match Chase.

Teresa Wallin

And it gets worse.  Two days later, two bodies of a mutilated puppies are discovered in the same neighborhood (the pups had been bought by a strange man with stringy hair driving a Ranchero), but it is not enough to satisfy the blood seeking killer.  On January 27, 1978, police are called to another crime scene only a mile away from where Teresa Wallin was butchered, the home of 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth.  Finding another door open, this time the killer leaves even more slaughter in his wake ... 51-year-old neighbor, Dan Meredith (helping babysit while his friend takes a bath) is shot in the head at point-blank range in a hallway (with the same weapon that killed Chase's other victims, Evelyn's six-year-old son, Jason, is shot to death in his mother's bedroom, Evelyn's twenty-two-month-old nephew, David Ferriera, is shot in the head, and Evelyn is killed in the bathtub with a single shot to the head, then the monster begins feeding on his victims.  Evelyn is drug from the bathroom, put on her bed and sodomized repeatedly as her killer simultaneously drinks her blood from a series of cuts to the back of her neck, then stabbed in the anus with a knife a half dozen times, before the maniac cuts into her body at various points so her blood can be collected from her abdomen, which Chase then drinks.  Then Chase carries the baby into the bathroom, and begins to attack Ferriera's corpse, splitting open his skull and eating some of hi brain, a meal that is interrupted when six-year-old neighbor knocks on the front door to inquire why Jason hasn't shown up at her home for their scheduled playdate.  Bolting from the home carrying the baby's corpse, Chase flees the area in Meredith's red station wagon, leaving behind perfect handprints and shoe imprints in Miroth's blood.  Back at his apartment, Chase decapitates his trophy, takes organs out of his prize, and drinks the crimson gruel he has created out of his blender (the head will eventually be discovered in Meredith's abandoned car in March).  City buzzing with fear and anger, the killings are the major topic of discussion on the radio, on television, and on the front pages of newspapers in the area.

Miroth

Jason & David

Meredith's Body

Filtering tips through the FBI's profile, the name of Richard Chase soon comes to the attention of Sacramento authorities by way of high school classmate Nancy Holden telling police of her encounter with Chase while visiting the Town and Country Village shopping center (on the same day that Wallin is killed) in which he tries to get a ride from her, but frightened by his transformation into a hobo , she drives off as he tries to get in her car, and neighbor Dawn Lawson relating her strange cigarette encounter with an individual who fits the description of the killer.  Running background checks on Richard Chase, the authorities find their suspect has recently purchased a gun and ammunition that matches the recent deaths, discover his history of mental health issues, and find out that he lives less than a block away from where Meredith's stolen car had been discovered.  Seeking to question their suspect, Chase refuses to open his door when the police come calling, but arrest him later when he steps outside carrying a cardboard box filled with bloody rags and papers, wearing a blood-stained orange parka (a piece of clothing that witnesses had identified as being the garb of the killer in the Miroth butchery), wearing blood stained shoes and carrying a .blood stained .22-semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster with Meredith's wallet in his pocket.  Warrants issued, searching inside Chase's apartment officers find horror after horror ... there are blood stains everywhere, on the walls, on plates, on drinking glasses, on the refrigerator, and even on the ceiling, a penis with a straw through it that has been used to drink blood is found, kitchenware is soaked in blood, a blood soaked blender is found rimmed in rotted flesh and bits of bone, animal organs are found wrapped in aluminum foil in the refrigerator, Ferriera's brain is discovered inside a Tupperware container, and pieces of his body are found wrapped in Saran Wrap, organs belonging to Miroth and Wallin are discovered, there are multiple dog collars but no pets, and there is a calendar for 1978 with "Today" marked on the days Wallin and Miroth were killed, along with over forty upcoming days also containing the same designation.       

 

Special Agent Ressler

The Vampire's Lair

Bloody Cook Ware

After being examined by a dozen psychiatrists, and a change of venue to Santa Clara County (one hundred and twenty miles south of Sacramento), represented by public defender Farris Salamy and prosecuted by District Attorney Ronald W. Tochterman, Chase is brought to trial on January 2, 1979.  Obviously guilty of the six Sacramento killings (the prosecution will present 250 exhibits of Chase's guilt), the vampire's fate is waged over whether he is sane or cuckoo clock crazy (a wraith of only 107 pounds, Chase will testify on his own behalf, talking about his difficult childhood, the trauma not being able to have sex as a teenager caused, admits to drinking Mrs. Wallin's blood, and states that he killed baby Ferriera and decapitated the corpse, but thought he was shooting "something" other than a child, and that he is sorry about what has happened).  Despite Tochterman's attempts to show Chase is not playing with a full deck of cranium cards (and also asking for verdicts of second degree murder to avoid his client from being executed), after four months of ghoulish exhibits and testimony, a jury takes five hours of deliberations to find Chase guilty of all six charges of first degree murder, and after a four hour competency hearing that rules him sane, the judge in the trial sentences Chase to execution in the San Quentin gas chamber.  But in the gas chamber is not how the human vampire will go.

In Court

In San Quentin, the other inmates taunt Chase. They threatened to kill him and encouraged him to commit suicide. Psychologists and psychiatrists who examine Chase during this time suggest that he be transferred to Vacaville Prison, California, a facility for the criminally insane, which Chase most certainly is!  According to the authorities, Chase is psychotic, insane, and incompetent.  Indeed!  Chase is admitted to Vacaville in December and after being stabilized, sent back to San Quentin in April, 1980.  On the morning of 26 December, 1980, a correctional officer assigned to guard duty on death row greets the prisoner in cell #5800. Chase is lying on his back and breathing normally. At 11:05 the same day, the guard checked his cell again. This time Chase is lying on his stomach, legs extended off his bunk and feet on the floor. His head is buried in the mattress and his arms extended upwards, to the pillow. Next to the bed were four sheets of paper covered in handwriting. Two of them contained drawn squares filled with a strange, cryptographic, like code of some kind.  On the other two pages is a message in which Chase indicates that he might take some pills which could cause his heart to stop beating . It turned out that Chase had saved his three daily 50mg tablets of Sinequan (doxepin hydrochloride), a psychotropic agent for depression, for approximately 3 weeks in order to ingest them that morning.  As a result, no wooden stake, cross, or garland of garlic necessary, the life of 30 year old Richard Trenton Chase, the “Vampire of Sacramento," is lost ... a good riddance goodbye loss almost no cares about.

Monster

     

  

   

 

   

  

BEAR RIVER MASSACRE

1/29/1863 - Mostly forgotten among the tumult of the American Civil War's third year of bloody battles, on a wintery day in which temperatures drop to twenty degrees below zero, near the confluence of the Bear River and Battle Creek (the locale is also known in Shoshone as Boa Ogoi), the worst massacre of Native Americans by United States troops takes place in the southeastern portion of The Washington Territory (where Idaho now is, close to the present day town of Preston) when elements of the 3rd Regiment, California Volunteer Infantry, commanded by 42-year-old army veteran, Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, attack a tribe of hundreds of Northwestern Shoshone (the word means "high-growing grasses") led by Chief Bear Hunter in a military engagement historians will dub The Bear River Massacre (other monikers for the clash are the "Engagement on the Bear River," the "Battle of Bear River," and "Massacre at Boa Ogoi").

Bear River - 1863

Located in what is now northern Utah and southeastern Idaho, Cache Valley had for hundreds of years been a favorite area of the Shoshone Indians (they call it "Seuhubeogoi" for Willow Valley) for gathering grass seeds and grains, taking trout out of it's waters, trapping small game like the ground squirrel and woodchuck, hunting large prey that includes buffalo, deer, and elk, and wintering against the region's harsh weathers (the tribe that will one day help explorers Lewis and Clark reach the Pacific Ocean, assisted immeasurably by the interpreter skills of the Shoshone woman, Sacagawea).  Sole proprietors of the sheltering real estate, in 1818, as part of an exploration of the area by the Pacific Fur Company of Donald McKenzie, Michel Bourdon becomes the first white man to delight in the charms of the valley.  Soon a favorite locale of trappers working for various fur companies (among it's early visitors are legendary mountain men, Jim Bridger and Jedediah Smith), the area is touted to Brigham Young as a potential site to settle his Mormon brood in and the area gets it's first permanent Anglo-American settlement when Mormon William Gardner plants roots in the valley in 1852 (as early as 1847, Mormons are in discussions with the Shoshone over land claims in northern Utah).  Warily at peace with each other, the whites in the area form a militia to protect themselves from potential depredations by the natives.  Expanding north into the area, in 1856, Peter Maughan settles a group of Mormons near a location called Sardine Canyon.  A natural pathway through the mountains leading to the Pacific Ocean, with gold found in California, Mormons in Salt Lake City and spreading through Utah, and new mineral discoveries being made to the northwest, Anglo travelers and settlers soon are pushing the Shoshone out of areas they have called theirs for centuries and as the American Civil War begins and President Lincoln orders troops to the area (the assignment will be given to 42-year-old Colonel Patrick Edward Connor as commander of the 3rd California Volunteer Infantry Regiment operating out of a location three miles to the east of Salt Lake City that will be known as Camp Douglas) to protect the mail and communication routes through the area, keep California a part of the Union, and to insure there are no more Mountain Meadows type incidents (an 1857 tragedy in which Mormons, disguised as Indians, wipe out a wagon train of settlers bound for California) the tribe is beginning to slowly starve to death.  And matters are not helped any when John White discovers gold at Grasshopper Creek, in the southwestern mountains of Montana in 1862, making Cache Valley the quickest and most direct route to the gold fields.

Cache Valley

Clark, Lewis, And Sacagawea

McKenzie

Connor

All the players in place for a first class tragedy, a series of misunderstandings and clashes between the natives and whites of the region lowly builds to the disastrous winter of 1863.  When a settler finds his horse missing, a Shoshone youth fishing nearby is grabbed, put on trial, and hung ... his father, one of the tribe's chiefs, retaliates and a couple of men from the Merrill family are killed to balance the scales of justice.  In 1859, a group of nineteen immigrants from Michigan are ambushed by what folks in the region believe are a band of renegade Shoshones that pillage the settlers wagons, steal their livestock, and kill at least five members of the party, torturing one five year old girl to death by cutting off her ears, gouging out her eyes, and amputating both the girl's legs at the knee while she is alive (by the time the dragoons from Fort Walla Walla arrive, the culprits have vanished into the region's mountain wilderness).  On September 9, 1860, a group of pioneers, led by Elijah Utter is attacked by what are believed to be Bannock and Boise Shoshone warriors and the white Van Ornum children are carried off (as a direct result of the attack, Colonel George Wright establishes a military fort capable of sustaining five companies of troopers near the present location of Boise, Idaho).  Seeking his missing nephew, Zachias Van Ornum puts together a small group of friends, and enlists the help of a detachment of Colonel Connor's cavalry under the command of Major Edward McGarry (a Californian politician and Mexican-American War veteran), and the group finds and attacks a group of Shoshones led by Chief Bear Hunter.  Forced to surrender, Bear Hunter and four warriors are held hostage until the small boy is returned a day later to his uncle.  Protesting that the boy is actually the son of a deceased French fur trapper and the sister of Shoshone Chief, Washakie (and confronted by 70 members of the militia), the Shoshone of Bear Hunter are momentarily placated by receiving the gift of two cows and some flour from the white residents of Cache Valley.  December 4, 1862 finds Connor sending McGarry on a new mission into Cache Valley, this time to recover some recently stolen livestock from the Shoshones.  Fleeing before being fully confronted by McGarry's soldiers, four warriors are too slow and are captured and held as hostages that will be exchanged for the missing livestock ... which is not returned and so the Shoshones are subsequently executed by a firing squad and their bodies pitched into the Bear River.  As predicted in an editorial of the Deseret News, the Shoshones begin seeking immediate retaliation for the deaths, retaliation they find when they attack the three man party of A. H. Conover (Conover's two companions, George Clayton and Henry Bean will be killed in the attack), the businessman who operates the Montana Trail freight hauling that moves back and forth from Salt Lake City and Montana's mining camps.  Shoshone blood not fully avenged, warriors of the tribe confront a group of eight miners caught in a mire of mud on the western side of Bear River, killing several horses and one settler, John Henry Smith of Walla Walla.  The deaths, coupled with another report of ten miners being murdered three days before convinces Colonel Connor that although the season isn't correct for a military campaign, he will nonetheless lead an expedition into the region to put the Shoshone problem in Cache Valley to bed for good. 

Members Of The Van Ornum Family - Young Ruben Is

The Child, Zachias Is To His Left

McGarry

Bear Hunter

Secretly making plans so the Shoshone don't find out about the expedition and scatter before Colonel Connor can punish them as he deems appropriate (making what follows appear to be legal, in Salt Lake City, Chief Justice of the Supreme court of the Territory of Utah, John Fitch Kinney, issues a warrant to the territorial marshal arrest Bear Hunter, Sanpitch, and Sagwitch Timbimboo for the recent murders in Cache Valley, and the marshal then in turn asks for Connor's help), elements of the colonel's command begin to leave Fort Douglas on January 22, 1863; 120 soldiers under the leadership of Captain Samuel W. Hoyt, with 15 baggage wagons, two mountain howitzers, and about 200 rounds of ordinance for the weapons).  The second contingent of troopers, with Connor in command (Connor is accompanied by former U.S. Marshal and Mormon scout, Orrin Porter Rockwell, once also the personal bodyguard of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young), 220 cavalry from Companies A, H, K, and M of the California volunteers, each man carrying 40 rounds of rifle ammunition and 30 pistol bullets, leaves the fort on January 25.  Keeping the expeditions' deception viable, the infantry moves during the day, while the horsemen move at night.  Near the small community of Franklin, the two commands come together again and plans are made to move forward to launch a surprise attack on the Shoshone at 1:00 in the evening, but the advance is delayed until 3:00 a.m. by unseasonably cold weather for northern Utah ... it is estimated to be twenty degrees below zero (the troopers are not amused at all when they discover whiskey has frozen solid in their canteens or in being unable to set up the artillery properly with snow drifts in the area measuring up to six feet in height).  Not surprised at all, but hopeful that the soldiers will not actually strike (while this is going on, Sagwitch, the same Shoshone chief named in the arrest warrant that sets the expedition in motion, is in Salt Lake City trying to negotiate a peace treaty for the tribe's northwestern people with Brigham Young),  the Shoshone try to accumulate as much food as possible from local Mormons in the area (the disaster dream prophecies of an older Indian named Tin Dup, that the Shoshone should leave the area, is ignored just two days before the event actually takes place), choose a defensible position for their camp (featuring natural warm springs), dig firing pits hidden by woven willow branch screens on the eastern bank of Beaver Creek and along Bear River 

Sagwitch

Justice Kinney

Fort Douglas

Rockwell

Soldiers upset that they are fighting Indians instead of Confederate rebels, and eager for battle, led by an officer wanting to make a name for himself, just as dawn is breaking, at about 6:00 in the morning, McGarry and company finally slog their way into position and launch a frontal attack on the Shoshone camp that is quickly stopped.  Driven back in retreat, Colonel Connor reorganizes his men into smaller mobile units that are able to cut off paths the Indians might retreat over, and sets his men from attacking the flanks of the natives all at the same time so they can be swarmed into slaughter (like his subordinate, Connor is looking to make a name for himself among his military superiors thousands of miles away on the East Coast of the United States).  The change of tactics works, and by the time the afternoon arrives, return fire from the Shoshone has for all intents and purposes, stopped.  But not the dying.  Bear Hunter (the chief is stabbed in the head by a soldier's bayonet) and most of the warriors killed in the first hour of the class (and the Indians run out of ammunition in hour number two, with some warrior bodies later being found killed with bullet molds in their hands), the troopers call on the women and children to come out of their hiding places and surrender, but those that do so are quickly shown the error of their ways by being shot, stabbed, and sabered, women and teenage girls are raped before being killed, children have their heads caved in with a host of hard objects, and when nothing blunt is available, are grabbed by the legs and have their craniums pulped by the frozen earth of Cache Valley.  And there is also death by drowning as some of the Shoshone try to find shelter by swimming across the ice clogged Bear River as the troopers set fire to tepees and butcher most of the life.  Battle or massacre, the clash of cultures is over before nightfall blankets the land ... in attacking the Shoshone, Connor's command has suffered 14 soldiers killed, another 49 men wounded (seven will perish at the field hospital), and 75 cases of frostbite (though no digits or limbs are taken by the cold), while the Shoshone lose somewhere between 250 and 350 souls (walking the campground afterwards, Danish immigrant and a Franklin resident, Hans Jasperson, will write in his 1911 autobiography of counting 493 dead bodies lying about the village ... twice!), have 175 of their horses captured, 70 lodges burnt to the ground, and most of their grain for winter thoroughly trashed. 

Massacre Site

North From Salt Lake City

Soldiers Approaching The Camp In The Distance

Two Survivors - Chief Sagwitch And His Wife, 

Beawoachee, Bear Hunter's Widow

For the Shoshone that survive their morning with members of the California volunteers, living into the 30th of the month seemingly is a matter of fate and luck (or a lack of luck).  Chief Sagwitch is one of the survivors ... barely.  Trying to flee camp, Sagwitch is shot twice in the hand, mounts a horse that is promptly shot out from under him, follows a ravine down to the river, and spends the rest of the day near a hot spring, floating under a thicket of brush.  In another part of the camp, Beshup Timbimboo, Chief Sagwitch's two-year-old son, takes seven bullet wounds, feigns death, and is rescued by family members after nightfall, while another member of the family, 12-year-old Yeager also escapes death by pretending to be corpse.  For so many, living is a matter of minute randomness ... standing here instead of there, waking early rather than late, etc.  After the savagery and the soldiers withdrawal back over the river (taking their wounded back to the community of Franklin, where individual homes are used for the wounded, and the village's church is filled with hay and blankets and converted into a make-shift hospital), and once darkness has fallen, the decimated Shoshone make their way into the wilderness and build sheltering campfires.  Over finally (the belligerence is formerly called off when the parties involved sign the Treaty of Box Elder at Brigham City, Utah on July 30, 1863), the day has produced the worst massacre of Native Americans in the history of "civilizing" the North American continent, and yet, for the most part, with the American Civil War raging along the eastern seaboard at the time, the tragedy fails to make a deep impression in the hearts and souls of the citizenry (the soldiers return to hero welcomes from the residents of Salt Lake City and then, the citizens in various California communities, and Colonel Conner is promoted to Brigadier General in the volunteer army for his actions against the Indians ... after the war, he will be put in command of the newly designated Department of the Missouri, a huge amount of space which includes the former districts of Utah, the Nebraska Territory, the Colorado Territory, and the Territory of Idaho where he will continue to butt heads with the Mormons of Utah and various Plains Indians tribes ... living on in Salt Lake City after leaving the military, Connor will start on of the city's earliest daily newspapers, will become a mining entrepreneur, and will found the town of Stockton, Utah before dying in Salt Lake City at the age of 71 in 1891).

Returning As Heroes

Small Band Of Shoshone - 1860s

Adult Beshup Timbimboo

As the massacre marks the nadir of a once great tribe (disease and other smaller clashes with whites during the Snake War of 1864 to 1868, the Bannock War of 1876 and the Sheepeater Indian War of 1879, along with battles against the Crow, Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho peoples also contribute), it is never forgotten (incredibly, despite their recent experiences with the invaders of their homeland, the Shoshone will fight on the side of the United States government during their battle with the Sioux in 1876).  Without shelter and food, the people that once helped Lewis & Clark survive their expedition across America to the Pacific Ocean almost move into extinction, but are saved in large part due to the efforts of Chief Sagwitch.  Survivors struggling in the decade that follows as they continue to butt heads with the U.S. military, and the Transcontinental Railroad now bisecting the Shoshone homelands, Sagwitch determines that the Mormons are the lessor of two evils to his people, and in the spring of 1873, hundreds of Northwestern Shoshones make their way to Salt Lake City where they participate in a mass baptism into the religion (the chief is ordained as an Elder in the Melchizedek priesthood) and are assimilated into Mormon society, even creating the town of Washakie, Utah, after the famous Shoshone chief (those Shoshone that decide not to become Mormons settle at either the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho or the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming).  Northwestern Shoshones tribal cohesion maintained by Sagwitch and then members of his family (his son, Beshup, will become the first native American to serve as a missionary for the LDS Church, and his grandson, Moroni, will become the first native American to serve as a bishop for the church), the people struggle up from the massacre to a position where their nation is now federally recognized, operates several programs to assist its membership, and is involved in business, cultural, and historical initiatives in the region, growing from an estimated population of 4,500 in 1845, to approximately 12,000 by the 2000 government census.  A people that honor their ancestors struggles, in 2008, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation reacquire the site of the Bear River Massacre (it is already designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990) and immediately construct a picnic and rest area on the grounds just off U.S. Route 91 that features a monument to what occurred on January 29, 1863 and historical markers explaining the day's events (in 2018, the tribe buys 600 more acres of land at the site and announces future plans to erect a cultural interpretive center and a new memorial on the grounds.  A holy site to the Shoshone, at dawn every January 29th, members of the tribe, guests, and scores of Shoshone supporters now gather to pay homage to their ancestors ... remembering, remembering forever.   

Sagwitch

Tombstone

Washakie

Memorial

2018 Rememberance

 

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