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Bocas del Toro, Panama. Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple.
survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the story I'm going to tell you about today is the first of its kind in American national park history, the brutal murder of a park ranger in the line of duty. It's also the oldest case I've ever covered on this show.
It's the story of James Alexander Carey from 1927, and it's one of the most baffling murder investigations in a parkland that I've ever read about. It takes place in Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas at the height of the Prohibition era. Throughout the decades, the park itself has lured visitors with stories that the waters from the natural thermal springs have healing powers, and the jury is still out on that one.
But back in 1927, the park also attracted the attention of unsavory characters operating the illegal liquor trade, aka bootleggers and gangsters. And caught right in the middle was park ranger James Carey, who went out on a routine patrol, never to be seen alive again. This is Park Predators.
December 7th, 1926, was a cold day as 31-year-old park policeman James Carey made his way through the forested terrain and icy creeks of Hot Springs National Park. James was patrolling like every other day, making sure the trails in the park were clear of debris and no one was around doing things they shouldn't be.
The conditions in winter were harsh, but lately weren't as hard to bear. It was much worse back when James first took the job almost four years earlier. Before that, he fought in World War I for the United States Navy. So his long patrols through the park's woods and thermal springs were definitely a welcome change of scenery compared to those long stints stationed aboard the USS Orient, cramped up with hundreds of other sailors.
Wartime overseas was long over, but James was fighting a new kind of enemy, one operating inside of the national park he was charged with protecting. While hiking his route near a ridge in the park known as West Mountain, James stopped and noticed something odd in the distance. He saw three men hauling containers that looked like they were full of some type of dark liquid. Immediately, James realized what he was looking at.
bootleggers. Criminals illegally hauling gallons of liquor to and from hiding spots in the mountains. This had been an ongoing problem in Hot Springs National Park, and James had personally made it his mission to see to it that these smugglers were arrested and prosecuted. Two of the men James saw seemed to be the ones possessing the contraband, while the third guy just gestured suggesting an exchange of some sort.
James continued to watch the men barter, and when it appeared they finished their deal, he moved in. While he attempted to arrest the trio for violating liquor laws and doing so on federal land, one of the men, named Raymond Hunt, escaped.
A few hours later, Raymond showed up at Hot Springs Police Headquarters and turned himself in. He made a point to tell the police that he would face the penalty for his crimes, but he wanted to make it clear that he would not let Park policeman James Carey be the person to put him in handcuffs. Raymond Hunt, Walter Weldon, and Ed Halsey were all subsequently charged with violating liquor laws.
A few days later, at their first court hearing, Raymond and Walter were federally indicted, but the case against Ed was dismissed. His lawyer was somehow able to show that Ed was not connected with the transaction. Prosecutors who took the remaining defendants to a grand jury planned to rely solely on James Carey's testimony when the case was scheduled to go to trial in April of 1927. That trial was supposed to take place at the federal courthouse in Little Rock, Arkansas.
According to the Arkansas Gazette, James told colleagues with the Park Service that he wouldn't be surprised if he ran into trouble with the defendants or their associates prior to testifying. James knew that making the arrest was going to ruffle feathers in the illegal liquor trade gangs, but he didn't care all that much. He felt what he'd done was just and necessary to prove to criminals that they could not hide contraband in the national park.
James arresting Raymond, Walter, and Ed was no surprise. It was known in Hot Springs that liquor was being stowed away and hidden in secluded spots all over the mountains. Bootleggers would often distill liquor in the woods of Garland County, then transport it into the city at night via roads that were almost never patrolled.
According to an article on the City of Hot Springs website, the park was infamous in the late 1800s and early 1900s for being a haven for criminals, gangsters, and people running illegal gambling and liquor rings. There were even accusations that these criminal enterprises had gotten so powerful that they had police officers and judges in their pockets who would turn blind eyes to the illegal industry.
In early January 1927, while the three defendants James had arrested were awaiting their trial, they were released on bail. A few months later, on March 12, 1927, around 8 p.m., Hot Springs National Park Superintendent Joseph Bolton was walking to his office at the park's headquarters when he noticed something odd. The flag flying on a pole above the building was still up.
Joseph knew that was unusual because typically at the end of the day, the park ranger on duty would lower the flag. Joseph thought it was strange, especially because he knew that James Carey was the ranger on shift that night, and James never neglected his duties before leaving for the day. James had an impeccable record as a park policeman ever since he joined the service four years ago. He worked 56 hours a week, eight hours a day, and never had a single blemish on his service record.
Joseph couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. So he checked with witnesses who stated the last time they'd seen James, it was around 4:15 p.m. When they spotted him, James was leaving the park headquarters in his patrol car. Joseph's concern for James grew worse when he walked further down the road from his office and noticed something else odd outside of the Springs bathhouses. The entire road that ran alongside the bathhouses was dark. No one had turned on the lights.
This was a clear red flag to Joseph that James had never been over to this area or completed his duties for the day. Joseph was worried because he knew that bootleggers and people involved in illegal activities had a history of roaming the park and the nearby roads at night. Pretty soon, an all-out search began to try and find James. The superintendent sounded a general alarm and sent out squads of men with the park service to look for the missing officer.
Their starting point was an area of the park called West Mountain, and it literally is a mountain. Joseph knew that a big section of James' routine patrol route was West Mountain and the roads surrounding it. Within a few hours, searchers found James' patrol car, an old-timey-looking Ford Touring, which if you Google pictures of this car, you'll see what I mean. It sort of looks like a classic Model T. And it was parked near the summit of West Mountain, with the driver's door swung wide open.
Reports are a bit slim on the details. Some publications from 1927 say the car was located sometime between 8 o'clock and 10 o'clock at night on Saturday, March 12th. But other reports say it was found at dawn the morning of Sunday, March 13th. I don't know exactly which one is right, but I think it's safe to say that by daybreak on Sunday, they knew the last place James had been, and that was on West Mountain.
According to the Arkansas Gazette, shortly after 6 a.m., James' brother, brother-in-law, and father-in-law, who were walking along Gem Street, came upon James' bloody body lying in a ravine at the base of a mountain. The spot was only about a quarter mile downhill from where searchers found his abandoned patrol car.
Jem Street was the road that led to West Mountain. It was also a common route that bootleggers would take to smuggle liquors to hiding spots inside of the park. The answer to the question of how James had gotten down to where he was found seemed obvious. He'd confronted someone there, and they'd shot him. The real question was, did James see something suspicious and go to his killers, or had the shooter been lying in wait and ambushed him?
Officers didn't find James' service weapon on his body. According to reports, it was normal practice back then for Park police officers to pay for their own uniforms and weapons. James did own a revolver he carried with him while on duty, but it wasn't on him that day. When police spoke with James' father, he told police that he was in possession of James' revolver and had been all weekend.
The gun had originally been James' father's service weapon years ago, and James often would borrow it while on duty. So it was clear that whoever shot James didn't use his revolver to kill him. The killer had brought their own. Bocas del Toro, Panama.
Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Almost as soon as James Carey's body was found, police told reporters that they expected the investigation was going to wrap up quickly and the people responsible would be apprehended. The park's superintendent, Joseph Bolton, notified the park's director that James was dead and that the investigation suggested he'd been ambushed.
Joseph told the director that law enforcement personnel from all over Garland County, the city of Hot Springs, and Park Service employees were working to find the shooter or shooters. He asked the director to approve a request to send in federal agents from the U.S. Bureau of Investigations. That request wasn't immediately approved. A day after the murder, officers combing the mountainside found James' watch. It was located a good ways away from where his body had been discovered.
Police believed that meant whoever had killed him stripped it from his corpse, then for some reason ditched it in the park. The watch itself was an interesting clue because it had stopped ticking at 5 p.m. This told investigators that more than likely that was around the precise time James had been killed. They thought either the mechanisms in the watch had stopped when James fell to the ground or they'd been damaged when the watch was tossed down the road from his body.
A woman who had been just outside the park on Saturday afternoon told police that she heard a gunshot between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., so that definitely lined up with the watch telling the time of death theory. When investigators took a close look at James' clothing, they found bloody fingerprints on the lining of one of his pant pockets. They compared James' fingerprints to those bloody ones, and they were not a match.
So, this led authorities to believe that whoever left those bloodstains inside James' pocket was likely the killer and they'd rummaged through his trousers after shooting him. Nothing of any value was missing though, just a few scraps of paper were strewn around his body.
Initially, some people thought just by looking at the crime scene that the bloody fingerprints could have been a sign that James himself had reached into his pocket to grab a handkerchief to plug up his wound and stop the bleeding. But once police confirmed the bloody fingerprints did not belong to James, that theory fell apart. When the local coroner did an autopsy on James's body, he'd found that James had died from a .45 caliber gunshot fired at close range.
The doctor knew that whoever had fired at James had to have been really close to him when they killed him because of evidence found on his clothing and skin. The autopsy report stated that based on where holes were in James's shirt and where they weren't on his coat, it was likely that when he was shot, he was in a physical fight with someone. It appeared that James had been wrestling for something while being overtaken.
The report stated that a bullet definitely pierced James' right shoulder, just a few inches below his neck. The shot never passed through his coat, though, only his shirt. It entered sort of sideways and traveled through James' right shoulder blade, then passed through his body in a direct line, eventually lodging near his left shoulder. There are a few reports, though, that I found that indicate some officials initially believed James may have been shot twice.
These officials suggested the autopsy showed a second small bullet near James' left shoulder that wasn't consistent with an exit wound. They believed this mystery hole indicated James could have been shot from a distance, perhaps with a small caliber rifle first, then his attacker ran up on him and fired the .45.
A rifle wound from afar would likely not have killed James, so his attackers would have had to walk close to him and fire a second fatal shot. Investigators speculated that as the shooter approached James is when that scuffle of some sort happened. The final ruling from the coroner states that the only sure bullet hole was the one in James's neck.
The angle of that shot indicated that James' right arm was likely raised with the front of his coat thrown open or somewhat hanging off of him when the shot was fired. There was no bullet hole found in the coat, but there was one in his shirt. The area around the hole in the shirt and on his skin where the bullet entered was severely burned, meaning that the muzzle flash likely had direct contact with his shirt and body.
The prevailing theory that drove police's investigation was that James had come across someone in the park associated with bootlegging. Officers reviewing James' previous record of busting up such crimes noticed that where his body was was only 50 feet away from where he'd arrested three men a few months earlier on West Mountain. That incident was when he'd caught Raymond Hunt, Ed Halsey, and Walter Weldon smuggling and exchanging five gallons of distilled liquor back on December 7th.
Officers found it suspicious that James, who was set to be the sole witness against those men, was now dead in the same spot where their arrest had happened. Authorities believed one of two things had occurred. James likely stumbled upon the same kind of smugglers using West Mountain seclusion to transport liquor, or perhaps he was lured to the spot and murdered.
The biggest clue supporting that second theory was information police gathered that indicated prior to his death, James had received an anonymous tip that bootleggers were going to be moving a big stash on West Mountain the evening of Saturday, March 12th. Police uncovered that earlier in the afternoon on Saturday, a man had been walking on Gem Street near West Mountain's Ridge, asking about James and when and where he usually patrolled.
Officers suspected that James had been set up and when he drove his patrol car to West Mountain Saturday night, he had no idea what he was walking into. Police began rounding up anyone and everyone who had been arrested or suspected of liquor violations in Garland County and the city of Hot Springs. This included all of the men James had previously arrested in December 1926, the guys that had all conveniently been out on bail awaiting trial.
And when police found them, the entire trajectory of the case changed. Bocas del Toro, Panama. Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple.
I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Local and state law enforcement officers investigating James Carey's murder split up into groups and started running down men James had previously arrested for bootlegging.
The first to be apprehended was Raymond Hunt and Walter Weldon. The others were David Camp, an associate of Ed Halsey's, who was a former arrestee of James's, and a man named Chester Henderson. Police found Walter sleeping inside the house of the female witness who'd come forward and told police she heard a gunshot on Saturday afternoon. Raymond was located at his home. When police searched the inside, they found a bloody shirt and a bloody pair of pants in his closet.
The other men were detained because of their known associations with Raymond and Walter and previous violations of liquor laws. According to the Arkansas Gazette, on March 13th, a police constable in Hot Springs named John Young and a Garland County deputy began searching for two other men they suspected were involved in the killing.
Police had gotten intel that two guys, Lawrence Wilson and Garland "Doc" Weldon, had been inside the National Park the day James was murdered. They were also known associates of Raymond Hunt. On March 14th, Police Constable John Young located Lawrence and Doc 15 miles north of the National Park. They were at a farm owned by Lawrence's father. At the farm, police seized a Winchester rifle they believed could have been used in the killing.
Lawrence's father told police that he'd found the rifle beside one of his barns on Sunday morning. One of Lawrence's brothers, Roy Wilson, told police that he and his father had shot the rifle in the woods the day prior. But when investigators asked his dad about that detail, his father said Roy had lied. So officers detained Roy along with Lawrence and Doc.
When the men got to the city jail, officers began questioning them about the crime, but they all refused to talk. The Gazette reported at that time police told reporters they had evidence that strongly pointed to Roy, Lawrence, and Doc being involved, but they didn't explain what that evidence was. All police would tell the press was that Lawrence and Doc were known to be inside the park with two girls the Saturday evening James was murdered.
The women that had been with the men came forward to police and spilled the beans. They told officers that while they were with Lawrence and Doc on Saturday afternoon, the two men had been drinking a lot and the entire time the group was together, they'd both been behaving nervously. Police took these women's stories into consideration, but their stories alone weren't what convinced detectives that Lawrence and Doc were somehow involved. It was actually something much more obvious.
Doc Weldon was actually the brother of Walter Weldon, the same Walter Weldon that James Carey had arrested three months earlier for bootlegging inside of the National Park. Police believed that Doc may have been seeking revenge against James Carey for having arrested his brother the year before. Investigators believed Roy, Lawrence, and Doc, along with Raymond, David, Walter, and Chester, had all conspired to kill James. Their motive?
The trial against Raymond and Walter, in which James was going to be the star witness, was scheduled for April 1927, one month after the murder. The police's theory was that the men simply had to get rid of James Carey. Proving that theory, though, and getting the resources they needed wasn't going to be easy. On March 23rd, Hot Springs National Park Superintendent Joseph Bolton's request for federal assistance was officially denied.
The U.S. Attorney General at the time determined that the federal government and agents with the U.S. Bureau of Investigations technically did not have jurisdiction in Hot Springs National Park. And this was true. According to a report from the National Park Rangers Lodge, in 1927, it wasn't yet a federal crime to kill a park ranger. On top of that, back then, the U.S. government didn't actually have exclusive jurisdiction of West Mountain.
According to historic records, the state of Arkansas didn't formally surrender jurisdiction of that land to the federal government until 1933. On March 15, 1927, James Carey's family held his funeral and he was buried 14 miles outside of the boundary of the park. James left behind his wife Thelma and their five-year-old son, James Orvis, and eight-month-old daughter, Leora.
To help cope with the loss of her husband, Thelma actually had James' sister move in, which really wasn't that big of a move because James' sister's house actually joined Thelma and his. The shock of the killing, though, not only rippled through the family, but through all of Garland County. Authorities who were furious that people involved in liquor sales were likely behind the killing began cracking down hard on alcohol operations.
The Arkansas Gazette reported that three days after the murder, Garland County's prosecuting attorney filed formal complaints against five establishments in the city that were suspected bootlegging headquarters. The DA's move was successful. He was able to get a judge to sign off on temporary padlock orders that closed down several of those places. A lot of the people named as the operators of these booze barns were husbands and wives or members of the same family.
According to the Arkansas Gazette, every single person, with the exception of one woman, had previously been arrested for bootlegging or had been on the county's court docket in some form or fashion. The news article also stated that each location had previously been raided and the owners were cited on suspicion of either making alcohol or harboring it.
One of the homes that was shut down was a backdoor speakeasy that several soldiers in the U.S. Army and Navy told authorities they'd bought whiskey and other liquor from over the years. So the people behind these alcohol fronts definitely had a history of being on police's radar. But for some reason, it seemed like they time and time again just kept popping back up after a few weeks of going underground.
The county's head attorney wanted to finally put a stop to that. So he petitioned another judge to make the padlock orders permanent. He told the Arkansas Gazette the whiskey business was, quote, a threat against the lives of all officers, and we intend to accept the challenge, end quote. While the DA waited to see if the padlock orders would stick for good, several months passed with nothing materializing in the murder case.
Police officials who detained the five men suspected of the crime never got a confession from any of them, and investigators were never able to link any evidence directly to them. Because of that, police had to release the men. Police reports are vague, but the next update in the case didn't come until January of 1928, nearly a year after James was murdered.
His widow, Thelma, wrote a letter to two U.S. senators in Arkansas pleading with them to help investigate her husband's murder. She wrote that she felt the local investigation in the case wasn't getting any real results and she was upset that no one had been formally charged. Within just days of receiving her letter, the two senators launched a formal inquiry into the case.
After a few weeks of investigating, staff in charge of the probe uncovered that there were serious problems in how the murder investigation was handled by Garland County Sheriff's Office and the Hot Springs City Police Department. The most damning accusation came from Hot Springs National Park Superintendent Joseph Bolton, who wrote in a letter that local police did not perform harsh enough interrogations with the known suspects.
While that was all happening, Thelma, James' wife, took her own initiative. She decided to offer up a $500 reward for her husband's killer. The people living in Hot Springs matched her funds with another $500, bringing the total to $1,000, which back in those days was a lot of money. According to Saving.org, that's worth about $15,000 in today's currency.
But even with so much money up for grabs, 1928 dragged on with no movement in the case. Thelma continued to press officials on the state and federal level. She wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior asking him to get involved because she was worried that authorities in Hot Springs might be part of a bigger cover-up.
In her letter, Thelma accused park superintendent Joseph Bolton of conspiring with the suspects in the case to have James killed. She said James kept a notebook of observations he made around the park and information he was investigating in the months leading up to his murder. A lot of that info pertained to James uncovering misdeeds by the Department of the Interior's officials.
One entry Thelma had found read that James suspected a man with the initials JSB, aka Joseph S. Bolton, was in the habit of tipping off bootleggers and gangs if Prohibition officers or park rangers were onto them. Contents of the notebook also indicated that Hot Springs Chief of Police William Brandberg was also involved.
Thelma suggested that the reason her husband's pockets had been rifled through after he was shot was because the killer had been looking for his notebook. But James didn't have it on him that day. He left it at home. Thelma said the Department of the Interior took James' notebook from her, and according to reports, it was never seen again.
In September 1929, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the U.S. Investigation Bureau, assigned a special agent to conduct an undercover investigation into these allegations of conspiracy and local officials wanting James dead. The probe, which was named the Wren Report after the agent who conducted it, wrapped up in December 1928. It contained transcripts of witness interviews from people closely associated with the prime suspects in the case.
Those interviews revealed that on the day James was shot, Lawrence and Roy Wilson had stolen 20 gallons of whiskey and hidden it on West Mountain around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. One witness, the woman who'd initially reported hearing a gunshot ring out between 4 and 5 o'clock, told investigators that she saw the suspects come down the mountain around 6.30pm.
Raymond Hunt had a Winchester rifle in his hands and she heard him tell Doc Weldon that he nearly missed James the first time. Then Doc replied, "It didn't matter because they got him good the second time." This woman witnessed the men hide the rifle under the Weldon's barn. She also said that they threatened her life if she told anyone what she'd seen or heard.
After the Wren Report wrapped up, the U.S. Attorney General filed a criminal complaint against all five suspects for conspiring to murder a government witness in the process of performing his duties. Arrest warrants were issued for all of the men, but by that time, most of them had split town. Thankfully, authorities were able to track all of them down, and by January 1929, they were arraigned in court.
According to Max Bryan's reporting, on February 1st, 1929, Raymond Hunt, David Camp, Walter Weldon, Roy Wilson, and Lawrence Wilson were indicted for first-degree murder in Garland County. Raymond's trial was scheduled to start on February 25th, 1929, nearly two years after James' murder. Political jockeying between the state of Arkansas courts and the federal government is what delayed the trials for so long.
The feds had clearly stated back in 1927 that West Mountain was not federal jurisdiction. They denied the park superintendent's request for federal resources. However, by the time the trials came around and federal prosecutors saw a potential high-profile murder conviction could be theirs, they began squabbling with the Attorney General of Arkansas to have Raymond tried in federal court.
Ultimately, the two sides came to an agreement to first prosecute Raymond and the other defendants for murder locally in Garland County. Then they would go to trial on conspiracy charges in federal court. Raymond's defense at his murder trial was that he was working for a family member's business at the time of the murder and these relatives could vouch for him.
Raymond even testified that there was no bad blood between him and Ranger James Carey. He stated to jurors that it was quite the opposite. He and James were the best of friends. One of Raymond's uncles took the witness stand and testified that at one point in time, he'd even heard Raymond and James laughing together outside of his shop. Now, this testimony was a slap in the face to James's widow, Thelma, and the entire Carey family.
Many people in the courtroom were appalled to hear Raymond's testimony. Another severe blow to the prosecution at trial was the fact that most of their witnesses were criminals too, gamblers or sex workers who had decided to testify against Raymond.
The defense destroyed these people's testimony and successfully showed the jurors that they were not credible witnesses. After roughly four hours of deliberation, the jury returned and they acquitted Raymond. Prosecutors, fearing the other four defendants' trials would go the same way, decided to drop all of the charges.
News reports are a little murky, but sometime between February and April of 1929, Raymond was moved out of state custody and faced the federal charges for conspiracy.
He was convicted after taking a no contest plea. A judge sentenced him to one year in a federal penitentiary. Then he was released. The government dismissed all of the charges against the other defendants due to people coming forward and providing them alibis and the fact that the state courts had dismissed murder charges earlier that year. No criminal charges or indictments were ever brought against the Hot Springs police chief or National Park Superintendent Joseph Bolton.
In May 2016, the National Park Service erected a memorial inside of Hot Springs National Park to honor James Carey. The bronze plaque monument is fixed to a boulder facing toward West Mountain. It features the iconic Park Ranger campaign hat. James Carey's son, who in 2016 was 94 years old, told news reporters that after his father's death, the family faced very hard times financially and emotionally.
The National Park Service superintendent delayed paperwork that required the government pay in full for his father's funeral. James Orvis supported the notion that a larger government conspiracy was to blame for his father's murder. He and his family found their peace about the tragedy over the years and forever will be proud of James Carey's sacrifice.
As for the identity of the true trigger man behind whatever gun killed the ranger, no one to this day truly knows. It's a secret forever kept by Hot Springs National Park. Park Predators is an AudioChuck original podcast. Research and writing by Delia D'Ambra, with writing assistance from executive producer Ashley Flowers. Sound design by David Flowers.
You can find all of the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Bocas del Toro, Panama.
Scott Makeda's tropical haven becomes his personal hell. A serial killer pretending to be a therapist. A gringo mafia. A slaughtered family. Everybody knows I'm a monster. The law of the jungle is simple. Survive. I'm Candace DeLong. This is Natural Selection, Scott vs. Wild Bill. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.