The Campgrounds
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the cases I'm going to tell you about today aren't technically related, but they're usually mentioned together, which is why I decided to merge them both into the same episode. When you look up information about one, you often find the other. So it just makes sense to do it this way.

The connective tissue that links these stories, at least as far as research goes, has to do with their eerie similarities. They both happened in Oregon National Forests right next to one another. They both occurred just two years apart, and they both have unfinished endings. The first incident took place during the summer of 2003 in Umpqua National Forest, a serene landscape located in western Oregon, about two and a half hours south of the city of Portland.

It's very close to Oregon's border with California. The second case happened in the summer of 2005 in Willamette National Forest, a woodland slightly northeast of Umpqua National Forest. Both recreation areas have similar geography and wildlife. In fact, if you visit one, you likely end up making your way to the other if you have time.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, Umpqua National Forest is situated more on the western side of the Cascade Mountains and has 40 different campgrounds visitors can use. The rogue Umpqua Scenic Byway is a big attraction there which stretches for 172 miles and showcases scenic views of rivers, mountains, and tree-blanketed hills.

Well, Lamet has a little bit of everything too. You can camp, hike miles of trails, raft on one of its many rivers, or visit any of the seven major volcanic peaks that exist within its boundary. A lot of people come in and out of these forests every day, whether it's summertime or wintertime. The nagging question that will never go away is what human predators visited these locations in the early aughts with murder in mind? And why have they eluded law enforcement for so long?

This is Park Predators. Around 10 o'clock at night on Thursday, August 21st, 2003, a dispatcher working at a 911 operations center in Douglas County, Oregon, received an alarming call from a man who sounded like he was in serious distress. The voice on the other end of the line said that his name was Norris Hilda, and he and his wife Cheryl were being shot at at their campsite in the Briggs Camp inside Umpqua National Forest.

Norris explained that he was calling from his wife's cell phone and emergency responders needed to get there as soon as possible because Cheryl had been shot. He then went on to give step-by-step directions on how police and EMS could get to his location. According to the Associated Press' reporting in the Statesman Journal, Norris and his wife were camping in a meadow near Lumolo Lake. It was just off North Umpqua Highway near an old mill.

While the dispatcher was trying to gather all the location information from Norris and figure out what the heck was going on, the call got more chaotic when suddenly there was a loud bang and Norris stopped communicating with the operator. The line went dead. But a few seconds later, the dispatcher called back and heard a woman answer. It was Cheryl Hilda. She breathlessly told the operator that Norris had been shot and he was lying outside their camper, unconscious and bleeding.

She also complained that she was having a hard time moving her legs. When the dispatcher asked Cheryl if there was anyone else around or in the camper with her, she said no, but did mention that the man who'd attacked her and Norris had demanded their keys so he could steal their truck. The source material isn't clear on exactly how long it took authorities to get to Cheryl and Norris' campsite, but I imagine it wasn't too long because when they did, they found her inside the camper still bleeding from a gunshot wound to her chest.

She was still alive, but in bad shape. Norris, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky. He was already dead when EMS teams and investigators from the Douglas County Sheriff's Office arrived. The Statesman Journal reported that when Cheryl was loaded and transported via ambulance from the crime scene, she was going in and out of hysteria. EMTs took her straight to St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon to undergo emergency surgery.

However, Steve Doohan reported for The Oregonian that Cheryl was life flighted out of the National Forest by helicopter. So I'm not sure which one is true or if maybe they both are, but reading between the lines, I think a portion of Cheryl's trip to the hospital involved both ground transport and air transport. Either way, that's not really a detail that matters as much because what's important is that while en route, Cheryl began to tell detectives what had happened to her and her husband.

She told an EMT who was riding with her, quote, they wanted the truck, end quote. The statement was presumably referring to the person or persons who'd attacked her in Norris. Steve Doohan reported that numerous times while being treated by medical staff, Sheryl referred to multiple attackers being at their campsite. One nurse overheard her say, quote, they let me live because I didn't see their faces, end quote.

Yet one important detail she revealed was she remembered at least one man who'd been involved wore a dark-colored shirt and ball cap. That detail about the shooter's potential clothing wasn't super helpful to investigators, but it at least gave them a place to start. Immediately following the shooting, word spread quickly throughout the couple's hometown of Roseburg, Oregon. Everyone wanted to know what happened. Local news outlets and newspapers picked up the story right away.

Initially, the hospital where Cheryl was taken wouldn't release information about her condition to the press. But eventually, her father, Arthur, told reporters that the bullet that had been fired into Cheryl's chest lodged somewhere near her spine, which to me makes sense about why Cheryl initially told the 911 dispatcher she couldn't feel her legs. More than likely, after being shot, she was dealing with some kind of paralysis since the bullet was putting pressure on her spine.

It was also reported that the type of firearm used in the attack was a large caliber hunting rifle. Once Douglas County investigators knew Cheryl was out of harm's way and being cared for, they quickly got in touch with her and Norris' two children. 25-year-old Norris Jr., who was a firefighter, and 12-year-old Chenoa, who happened to be away that week at a church summer camp. Norris Jr. also happened to be away from Oregon when his parents were shot.

The Statesman Journal reported he'd been helping emergency crews in Colorado battle a wildfire when he received word that his dad had been killed and his mom was fighting for her life. The reality that someone had overtaken or been able to get the jump on Norris and Cheryl at their campsite surprised everyone who knew them. According to an interview the Associated Press did with one of the couple's close friends, Norris was a Marine Corps and Army National Guard veteran who'd served in the Vietnam War.

Steve Doohan reported for the Oregonian that Norris had survived four helicopter crashes in wartime and had successfully battled bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder since leaving the service. He was also an avid bow hunter who'd come to that part of Oregon to hunt elk. So all that to say Norris was someone whose natural reaction would have been to fight rather than surrender.

The realization that a man with as valiant and heroic a reputation as his could be gunned down in cold blood was shocking. Regarding this, the friend who gave an interview to the Associated Press said, quote, He survived Vietnam and is killed like this? This just really bothers me. We still can't believe Norris is dead. End quote.

According to Steve Doohan's reporting, the whole reason Norris and Cheryl had picked Briggs Camp to settle in on the night of August 21st was because it was one of the few locations in the National Forest where they would be able to get cell service. And honestly, it's kind of a miracle they did end up there. Because considering what happened to them, if they'd been anywhere else, they might not have been able to get through to 911 at all.

I mean, Cheryl could have very easily bled out and died if Norris had not walked outside of their camper and made that 911 call. As police tried to piece together what happened and jumpstart their investigation, they knew they were going to have to rely on Cheryl to provide them with as much detail as possible. She was the sole survivor and detective's best shot at finding whoever did this. They needed her to tell them everything she remembered. There was just one problem: Cheryl couldn't talk to them right away.

Authorities had to wait until two days after the attack, August 23rd, to sit down with her for the first time for a formal interview in her hospital room. And even then, Cheryl was unable to talk because she had a breathing tube down her throat. She mainly answered yes or no questions by nodding her head up and down or shaking it side to side.

And it's at this point in the investigation where some of the best information about what happened came to light. But it's also where investigators made their biggest mistake. Hi there. I'm a PBM. I'm also an insurance company. We middlemen are often owned by the same company. So, hard to tell apart.

We control what medicines you get and what you pay at the pharmacy. That's why today, more than half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen like us. Middlemen are driving medicine costs, and you don't know the half of it. Get the whole story at prma.org slash middlemen. Paid for by Pharma. It's okay if you aren't ready for kids right now. It's okay if you don't want to be a mom now or even ever.

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According to reporting by the Associated Press and the Oregonian, in the short amount of time between when Cheryl and Norris were attacked, but before detectives physically sat down to interview her at the hospital, law enforcement had learned a lot of important information behind the scenes. Information that had ultimately led them to single out one man as their prime suspect.

Turns out, detectives had caught a lucky break on August 22nd, less than 24 hours after the crime, when two people called into the sheriff's office to report they thought they might know who the shooter could be. These tipsters offered up the name Samuel Lawson. According to multiple news reports, Sam's adoptive parents, Carl and Beverly Lawson, who lived in the town of Lapine, Oregon, about two hours from the park, were the people who'd placed that call to the sheriff's office.

The Lawsons had seen the coverage about Norris and Cheryl's brutal attack in the news, and they realized that their 28-year-old son, Sam, might be someone police would want to talk to. Now, ordinarily, I don't know many people who would just offer up their child as a potential suspect for police to investigate for a murder and attempted murder, but the Lawsons had their reasons. You see, they'd been traveling for a trucking company for three weeks and had been in and out of touch with Sam while they were gone.

When they arrived home in the days leading up to the shooting, they noticed Sam wasn't there. He'd left the doors to the house unlocked and several fans were still on, which indicated to Carl and Beverly he'd most likely just ran out for a minute to run an errand or something, but intended to come back. However, a few hours passed and then a few days went by, and Sam just never came home.

Which was why after a while of not hearing from him, Carl and Beverly had called the Douglas County Sheriff's Office to report him missing. They wanted detectives to know he was MIA and that they had reason to believe he might be in a fragile state of mind. The Associated Press reported that the Lawsons told investigators Sam had recently gotten a DUI and was experiencing depression. The end of a relationship with his girlfriend and the loss of his job were catalysts for this.

They'd grown increasingly worried about his mental health and wondered if during the time he'd been away, he may have done something to harm himself or worse, someone else. The biggest red flag to Carl and Beverly though was the fact that Carl's .357 Marlin brand hunting rifle and the ammunition that went with it were missing from their house. They discovered it was gone not long after returning home and noticing Sam was nowhere to be found.

The couple told deputies that they assumed Sam had taken the gun without their permission, which again was seriously concerning to them. Now, this detail about a missing .357 caliber rifle really grabbed the attention of detectives working Norris and Cheryl's case because they knew that kind of gun could have been used in the attack.

Essentially, investigators had learned from examining the crime scene and bullet fragments extracted from Cheryl and Norris' bodies that that style of firearm was capable of shooting the type of rifle ammunition found in both victims. So, naturally, police wanted to find and speak with Sam as soon as possible. They needed to question him about where he was on the night of August 21st.

And it didn't take very long before investigators found him. Because just days before the shooting, a deputy who'd been out patrolling a neighboring campground not far from Lamolo Lake had seen Sam's yellow pickup truck abandoned on the side of the road. At the time, this deputy didn't think much of it and definitely didn't know the significance of the name Sam Lawson.

But still, he had run the truck's vehicle information and determined who owned it, which prompted him to leave a tag on it, notifying the owner he needed to move it. That action generated a report in the sheriff's office's system, which gave detectives working the murder investigation days later the ability to confirm one very important thing. Sam Lawson and his truck had been in the National Forest shortly before the attack on Norris and Cheryl.

That information, combined with all the other suspicious stuff they'd already gotten from Carl and Beverly about the missing hunting rifle and Sam's fragile mental state, made the lead investigators feel confident that they were headed in the right direction. They had their prime suspect, Sam Lawson. The only problem was, they couldn't establish a solid motive for the crime. They assumed it was probably a robbery gone bad, but that theory on its face still felt kind of weak.

As far as anyone could tell, Sam and the Hildas had zero personal connection. They were from different cities in Oregon, and according to information provided by their families and friends, neither party had ever met. Despite that though, law enforcement eventually tracked Sam down and he willingly agreed to speak with them on the evening of Saturday, August 23rd, 48 hours after the shooting.

None of the source material explains how the police found Sam in the National Forest, or like, if he'd since left and gone elsewhere. But whatever the circumstances were, I don't think the detectives were too abrasive or confrontational when they did get a hold of him. Because according to Steve Doohan's reporting, when Sam arrived at the sheriff's office to talk with investigators, he was completely unaware he was the authority's prime suspect.

When questioned about where he was on August 21st and in the days leading up to that date, Sam openly admitted to taking his father's rifle without permission, but said he'd done so to target practice in the woods by himself. When investigators asked him where the gun was, he told them it had been stolen from his pickup truck while he'd been in the National Forest, and he didn't know where it was. He said the theft had occurred because he'd left his truck unlocked. Investigators didn't buy Sam's story though.

After interrogating him until the wee hours of the following morning, they arrested him for aggravated murder, attempted murder, and robbery. Despite maintaining his innocence and denying any involvement in the attack, something unexpected Sam revealed during his interrogation was that he'd bumped into Cheryl and Norris earlier in the day on August 21st at their campground, and the couple's interaction with him had been somewhat awkward and uncomfortable.

You see, about a week before Norris and Cheryl were attacked, so sometime in mid-August, Norris had been bow hunting by himself and had kind of randomly found Briggs Camp near Lamolo Lake. After checking it out, he decided to pitch a tent there so he and his wife could come back and not have to fight other campers for a spot. As planned, he and Cheryl had returned with their truck and camper in tow on August 21st. But when they got to their tent, they noticed something odd.

A yellow truck was parked next to it and inside the canopy was a young man sound asleep. The sleeping man was, you guessed it, Sam Lawson. Sam said he could tell the couple was annoyed. He apologized for squatting and explained that he had assumed the tent was abandoned since no one had been using it for about a week. When detectives sat down with Cheryl in her hospital room after arresting Sam, she verified the story about bumping into a young, disheveled man hours before the attack.

However, she stops short of positively identifying the squatter as Sam Lawson. And full disclosure here, there's some discrepancy in the source material as to whether Cheryl positively identified Sam as the man that she and Norris had discovered sleeping in their tent when she first spoke with authorities. The Associated Press reported that detectives who initially interviewed her did get her to ID Sam as the guy from the tent, but other reports don't confirm that information.

What is clear, though, is that during the first interview she had with investigators, Cheryl did not make a definitive connection and identify Sam as the person who she thought had killed her husband and attempted to kill her. That part wouldn't come until much later. Just hang with me. We'll get to that. Because it's a whole thing in and of itself.

Anyway, during Cheryl's follow-up interview, when detectives quizzed her about what she remembered from the brief interaction with the young man squatting in their tent, she said the guy had seemed unsure what to say or do when Norris asked him to leave, but he was polite and quickly gathered his things and left. She said they saw him drive his truck to a nearby picnic table on the other side of the campground and sit for a while. The last time she and Norris noticed him was about 40 minutes later when he drove away from the clearing altogether.

When investigators probed Cheryl for more details, she told them that nothing about the guy had seemed sketchy or violent. She said he looked like he was, quote, someone who was depressed, like somebody who had just lost everything, lost his girlfriend, job, something, end quote.

Regarding what transpired at their campsite on the evening of August 21st, before the shooting, Cheryl told detectives she and Norris had spent some time picking huckleberries together in the woods, resting at the lake, playing board games at their campsite, and cooking dinner outside their camper. After their meal, they'd had sex outside, and around 10 o'clock, she'd gone into the RV to shut a window.

She said while bending down to secure it, she'd felt a searing pain pierce the left side of her chest. And that's when she and Norris realized she'd been shot. Bill Donahue reported for Reed Magazine that it took a whole month before Cheryl recovered from her injuries and was well enough to really be able to assist investigators. Right away, it was clear she would be the star witness for the prosecution because by that time, she'd solidified the identity of her shooter as none other than Sam Lawson.

Now, you might be asking yourself, how? How is she so sure? Well, that's where this story takes a very frustrating and important turn. The single strongest piece of evidence prosecutors had against Sam when he went to trial in late 2005 wasn't physical evidence at all. It was really just Cheryl Hilda's testimony.

The government was extremely reliant on her memory of what had happened that fateful night in August 2003, because she was the only surviving witness. Her recollection of seeing her husband's murder and being confronted by the alleged shooter in the camper was the cornerstone of the state's entire case against Sam. The government had no physical evidence linking their prime suspect to the crime. The alleged murder weapon, Sam's father's missing hunting rifle, was nowhere to be found.

It wasn't left at the crime scene and it wasn't in Sam's truck. It had never been recovered. However, the state argued anyway that bullets fired from the .357 Marlin brand rifle were a close match to the fragments recovered from Norris and Cheryl. The prosecution also lacked compelling forensic evidence tying Sam to the shooting. None of his fingerprints were found at the crime scene and none of his hair, fibers from his clothing, or blood were present in the trailer either.

There was literally nothing to support the notion that he'd ever been inside the couple's camper. The only thing prosecutors had as far as forensic evidence was a bloody shoe print Tex had photographed and lifted from the crime scene. But when investigators compared that impression to the shoes detectives seized from Sam at the time of his arrest, they found no traces of blood on the footwear. There was also no blood on the floorboard of Sam's pickup truck when they'd examined it.

which meant either Sam had worn different shoes to commit the crime or he wasn't involved in the attack at all and the sheriff's office had the wrong guy. But lack of physical evidence or not, the prosecution was determined to move ahead with the case. They felt like Cheryl's testimony was all they needed to secure a conviction.

They firmly believe that Sam had carried out the crime in a desperate attempt to steal the couple's pickup truck, and he'd specifically chosen them because of the interaction he'd had with them earlier in the day on August 21st when they'd asked him to leave their tent. None of the source material says why prosecutors thought Sam would have wanted Norris and Cheryl's vehicle since he had his own truck, but my best guess is that maybe his had become disabled, and that's why they theorized he tried to steal Norris and Cheryl's.

However, from the get-go, there were noticeable problems with Cheryl's testimony, problems that gave Sam's defense team fuel. In his article for Reed Magazine, Bill Donahue wrote about a number of glaring discrepancies in what Cheryl said she remembered from the night of the crime. In fact, she'd given a couple different versions of events over the course of several interviews with police.

For example, initial reports from when Cheryl was being transported to the hospital indicated that in the chaos of the moment, she'd pointed to the pilot of the medevac helicopter and said that she thought he was the shooter, which of course was not true and more than likely a result of her having a stressful reaction to the situation she was in. In a later interview, she told Douglas County investigators that she never actually saw the perpetrator's face.

However, by the time the state was ready to go to trial, Sheryl was more confident than ever that Sam was the person who'd attacked her and her husband. According to an article by the Oregonian, before trial, Sheryl had picked Sam's picture out of a photo lineup, but only after being shown his image about half a dozen times before that. The Associated Press reported that she'd said at the 2005 trial, quote, "'I'll never forget his face as long as I live,' end quote."

However, Sam's defense team had a lot of questions about whether Cheryl's memory could be trusted. For one, they felt like the traumatic event she'd endured might have affected her ability to recollect specific details. And secondly, more than two years had passed since the attack occurred. The defense felt like that was an awful lot of time for Cheryl to be influenced by investigators and prosecutors.

A psychology professor named Daniel Rysberg testified for the defense during trial and talked about why Cheryl's memory was such a problem. He claimed that her ability to positively identify Sam as the shooter was flawed because in many, many cases, most people's memories are unreliable after they've endured a traumatic event. Like, say, surviving a shooting in which your husband was also murdered right in front of you.

And I know from having personally covered crime stories which relied heavily on eyewitness testimony that what Daniel said is a true statement. During his time on the witness stand, Daniel talked about how faulty memory isn't just a result of someone coping with trauma. It's also a physiological phenomenon. He told the court that a variety of physical factors would have made it impossible for Cheryl to positively form a memory about the man who fired the gun at her and Norris.

He said because she'd been severely injured, was in a medicated state during her initial interviews with police, and would have experienced neural activity unlike anything else in her life, all those things would have hindered her ability to consolidate accurate memories. As an expert witness, Daniel told the court, quote, I honestly cannot think of a single case I have ever seen or heard about that has this many concerns about one or another factor that could compromise somebody's capacity to remember, end quote.

He then went on to suggest that law enforcement may have inadvertently or intentionally coached Cheryl into believing Sam Lawson was in fact the person who attacked her and Norris. He said when detectives had repeatedly showed Cheryl Sam's photo prior to her finally picking him out of a lineup, that tainted her ability to decide for herself if in fact he was the actual suspect.

During the four-month trial, a nurse from the hospital Cheryl had been taken to testified that Cheryl declared multiple times, quote, they let me live because I didn't see their faces, end quote. A statement that Sam's defense lawyer said proved Cheryl had not gotten a good look at her husband's killer and that she was unreliable because she'd flip-flopped about whether more than one person was involved in the attack.

Another employee of the hospital testified that some of the interview tactics law enforcement investigators used while initially speaking with Cheryl in the hospital were kind of odd. This witness, who was a HIPAA privacy officer tasked with making sure Cheryl was lucid enough to be interviewed, said that during her first conversation with detectives, Cheryl had firmly said she was unable to see much in the camper after being shot because it was so dark.

She'd explained that when the perpetrator entered the trailer, he'd tossed a sofa cushion or pillow over her face to obscure her from seeing him. But in court, Cheryl's version of this changed slightly. When she testified, she said she peeked out from behind the cushion and gotten a clear look at the man who'd attacked her and Norris. And you guessed it, she was confident that man was Sam Lawson.

The HIPAA officer's testimony cast doubt on Cheryl's new version of seeing her attacker, though, because according to the witness, on two separate occasions in the hospital in September of 2003, when investigators showed Cheryl Sam's photo, she did not identify him as the shooter at first.

It was only after several hours of interviewing Cheryl and the HIPAA officer briefly leaving the room that detectives left claiming Cheryl had positively ID'd Sam outside the presence of a third party. Yeah, kind of sketch, right?

And if that wasn't strange enough, something else shady that Steve Doohan reported for the Oregonian was that right before a pre-trial hearing leading up to the jury trial, the lead detective over the case had shown Cheryl a picture of Sam wearing a baseball cap and shirt, then immediately brought her to court where she saw him in a jail jumpsuit and shackles.

But probably the biggest point the defense tried to argue at trial was that someone else, an unknown killer, was responsible for the brutal attack on Cheryl and Norris. And the main thing they used to support that claim was the fact that another, nearly identical killing had occurred 12 miles away from Briggs' camp in neighboring Willamette National Forest. That had occurred in July of 2005, two years after Norris' murder.

And that attack had happened while Sam was locked up in jail awaiting trial, which meant there was no way he could have done it. Hi there. I'm a PBM. I'm also an insurance company. We middlemen are often owned by the same company. So, hard to tell apart.

We control what medicines you get and what you pay at the pharmacy. That's why today, more than half of every dollar spent on medicines goes to middlemen like us. Middlemen are driving medicine costs, and you don't know the half of it. Get the whole story at phrma.org slash middlemen. Paid for by Pharma.

Before I go any further with details about the Hilda case and Sam's trial, I need to give you a little background about two other murders which are so often associated with Norris, Cheryl, and Sam's story.

I promise, they tie in in a big way with what I've been talking about thus far. On Friday, July 1st, 2005, nearly two years after the attack on Cheryl and Norris, a camper hiking through the Sand Prairie Campground in Willamette National Forest stopped at a campsite to look around. The area was roughly 12 miles away from Briggs Camp where the Hildas had been staying in Umpqua National Forest in 2003. So we're talking very close proximity, but not directly next door to one another.

Anyway, at the Sand Prairie campsite, the hiker found some belongings and a vehicle which indicated to him that someone was staying at the spot. Except he didn't hear any noises or sounds that pointed to it actually being occupied. Curious about the oddly quiet campsite, he continued to investigate, and that's when he discovered something horrible. The bullet-riddled bodies of a middle-aged man and woman lying in the middle of the campsite.

Not far away from the couple was the corpse of a retriever mixed breed dog who also looked to have suffered serious injuries. Right away, the guy made a beeline for the manager of the campground's office and called 911. When he got a hold of a dispatcher, he reported what he'd found to the city of Oak Ridge, Oregon police. But it was deputies from the Lane County Sheriff's Office who ended up responding.

Shortly after arriving to the crime scene, deputies went through the campground's list of registered guests and discovered the victims were 54-year-old Stephen Hogan and his girlfriend, 56-year-old Jeanette Bowman. Both were relatively new residents of Oak Ridge, a town several miles north of their campground. I'm not sure how police confirmed the identity of the dog, but several news reports stated authorities positively identified the animal as Caesar, Stephen's pet.

The area where the crime scene was is several miles up a hard road inside the National Forest. So it's not a location that's super difficult to get to, but it would be a place you'd have to go looking for if you weren't familiar with the forest. Right off the bat, detectives considered Stephen and Jeanette's deaths to be homicides. They clarified to the press this was not a situation of a murder-suicide.

When the couple's autopsies were conducted the following morning, July 3rd, the manner of death as homicide was officially confirmed. The examinations revealed that both Stephen and Jeanette had sustained multiple gunshot wounds from a high-powered rifle and a low-powered firearm, which was a detail that got detectives' attention right away.

The trajectory of their wounds indicated some shots from a high-powered gun had come from about 15 feet away, but other shots had been fired closer to the victims, around five to seven feet away. The pathology findings also indicated both victims had been facing their shooter when they were killed. One detective told the Register Guard, quote, this was an overkill situation. These people were executed, end quote.

In the days following the gruesome murders, Lane County investigators sent up helicopters and dispatched ground searchers to scour the woods around the crime scene for clues. Deputies even searched a few bodies of water that were nearby, but whether they found anything useful is something that's never been publicly released. What was reported by the registered guard is that authorities were unable to find fingerprints, tire tracks, footprints, or any kind of evidence at the scene that could point them toward a suspect.

Like I said earlier, initially, and even to this day, investigators have kept a lot of evidence-specific details about this case to themselves. They've never said what kind of weapon was used to shoot Stephen and Jeanette, and they've never released exactly how Caesar, the dog, was killed, though some source material did report he'd been shot. My personal opinion, I think forensic evidence from the bullets or potential casings, if any were left behind, are going to be the key to identifying a suspect.

Law enforcement has never said, though, if that's something detectives are looking into, but I have to imagine they are. Officials have also never confirmed if any personal belongings were taken from the couple's campsite. However, an article published by the Registered Guard a year after the murders said some camping gear was missing from the couple's campsite.

KVAL News also released a report that said a Smith & Wesson .41 Magnum revolver, brown leather shoulder holster, and some custom fishing rods were taken from Stevens' vehicle. Whichever version is true, if any of that stuff was missing or not, and robbery might have been a motive, that's something only the detectives handling the case and the killer or killers know.

However, it is worth mentioning the Register Guard article I mentioned earlier said that Stephen's wallet was still at the crime scene after the murders, which to me kind of points to the motive not being robbery. But then again, we just don't know. There's a lot of discrepancies on this specific topic. The Chinook Observer reported that the authorities' initial belief was that Stephen and Jeanette were killed on June 29th, two days before they were found dead.

And to this day, that still seems to be the thinking as far as I can tell. A peculiar detail about the crime scene that was publicly released had to do with the license plate for Steven's Oregon-registered Ford Ranger pickup truck. It was discovered missing when investigators processed the scene. A quick note, coverage by CNN and KVAL News reported that the couple's car was a GMC Jimmy SUV, and I'm not sure which is correct.

But regardless of whatever make or model the car was, the missing license plate was what authorities were most intrigued by. To locate it, deputies put out information asking anyone who may have seen it on a vehicle to come forward. Authorities also issued a be on the lookout or BOLO to fellow law enforcement agencies as well. The numeric for the plate was CL47763.

And I think the investigators' thought process here was that maybe the perpetrator had stolen the plate to use on another vehicle. However, one detective told The Oregonian that there was only going to be a small window of time to capitalize on tips from the public about the plate, most likely because whoever the suspect was would see that authorities had released information about the plate and they would ditch it to not get caught.

But something that came into my mind is if the license plate frame or area of the couple's car that the killer likely touched to remove it could have trace evidence on it. But again, that's not a detail authorities have ever spoken publicly about. Local residents' reaction to learning about the murders was a mix of shock, sadness, and to be quite honest, stubbornness.

The mayor of Oak Ridge told Oregonian reporter Alice Talmadge, quote, End quote.

Despite looking closely at their two victims' lives and pasts, investigators couldn't find anything that pointed to them being targets of someone they knew. Neither Stephen nor Jeanette had any known enemies. There were no secret lovers, no scandals, no financial motivators. Nothing. The couple was squeaky clean, which made the question of who would want to hurt them even more frustrating to try and answer.

According to that same article I mentioned earlier by Alice Tallmadge, when Jeanette was in her 40s, she'd gone back to school to learn how to be a teacher. She'd been employed for years at a high school in Montana, educating students about business and computers. Articles by CNN and the Daily Historian reported that Stephen had spent time working as a substitute teacher, school counselor, and track coach in various districts, one of which included the same Montana school district as Jeanette.

Three years into their relationship, they'd moved to Washington State and finally landed in Oak Ridge, Oregon to teach. Kevin Heimbigner reported for the Chinook Observer that Jeanette had literally just moved with Stephen in late June 2005, so like right before they were killed. Their trip to Willamette that Fourth of July weekend was one of their first times going camping in Oregon. One of her former co-workers back in Montana said it was something she'd really been looking forward to.

In mid-July, about two weeks after the murders, a group of Jeanette's friends, colleagues, and former students held a memorial service for her in Montana. Her son Dan, who lived in Minnesota at the time, told the Oregonian, quote, My mother was the kind of person who is amazing, but I didn't even know it until I went to the funeral. I heard stories all the time, all the students she touched and how much they appreciated her, end quote.

When the anniversary of the murders rolled around in 2006 and then again in 2007 and 2008, and investigators still had no new information, Stephen and Jeanette's families felt disheartened.

Authorities had chased down numerous leads, including investigating whether the murderer could be notorious serial killer Israel Keys, who was known to have attacked people in Oregon and Washington State in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before being caught and eventually dying in prison in 2012. But that lead fizzled out. Lane County investigators had also consulted a few psychics, but it just seemed like each time information dried up or was proven to be unreliable.

Now, despite there being a compelling argument that whoever killed Jeanette and Stephen could have also been the same person behind Norris' murder and Cheryl's shooting, jurors weighing Sam Lawson's fate during his trial in the winter of 2005 never got to hear any details about Jeanette and Stephen's case. And that's because the judge presiding over Sam's trial banned the defense and the prosecution from mentioning how similar the crimes were.

The court also struck down Sam and his lawyer's request to examine the records related to Stephen and Jeanette's death investigation. You know, just to see if, I don't know, anything important might be in there. But it made sense for investigators in Lane County, Oregon, to put up a decent fight to keep that information about Stephen and Jeanette's murders from getting into Sam's court proceedings and possibly hurting the ongoing investigation.

So, with discussion of the other similar case off the table and prosecutors still insisting that Cheryl's memory had not been tainted by law enforcement, that was enough for jurors to convict Sam. They deliberated for several days in early December 2005 and eventually found him guilty of murder, attempted murder, and robbery. A month later, in January 2006, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The Associated Press reported that it took the jury less than an hour to decide on his sentence. He'd been eligible for the death penalty, but got life in prison instead. After the verdict was read, Cheryl and her daughter showed visible signs of relief. According to news reporters who were in the courtroom, Cheryl leaned back, looked up at the sky, and mouthed the words, thank God, into the air as the jury foreperson announced Sam was guilty. Outside of court, the lead prosecutor told the Associated Press, quote,

Sam spent the next few years in prison serving his sentence, but also worked hard with law professors in Oregon and the Innocence Project to appeal his conviction.

In 2010, the Oregon Court of Appeals reviewed the case, and though the panel's decision resulted in a split vote, Sam's case was recommended to the Oregon Supreme Court for reevaluation with regards to how heavily prosecutors and detectives relied on the eyewitness testimony from Cheryl. Steve Dubois reported for the Associated Press that in November 2012, the Oregon Supreme Court revised the rules which allowed eyewitness testimony in a trial.

And in a wild turn of events, the justices overturned Sam's original conviction and ordered he get a new trial. Without going through the entire opinion that the Supreme Court issued, the main thing you need to know is that all the justices overwhelmingly agreed that there were serious questions about whether Cheryl's memory had been manipulated by police. The court said it was clear that detectives had utilized suggestive methods in how they obtained a positive ID from Cheryl about Sam.

Basically, the court was like, hey, this woman might have been given one too many suggestions, which caused her to identify Sam as her husband's killer, when he might not have been. So in February 2013, seven years after being convicted, Sam stepped into a Douglas County courthouse to face murder, attempted murder, and robbery charges for the second time. The proceeding he showed up in person for was regarding a motion his defense attorney had filed.

Carl Lawson, Sam's dad, did an interview with the News Review afterward in which he said, quote, "I hope he gets a square deal out of this," end quote. One year later, on March 6th, 2014, that's exactly what happened. The state of Oregon dropped all the charges against Sam, and he walked free. Essentially, it got to the point where if they were going to retry him, they'd have to exclude Cheryl's testimony. And without that, they had no case.

So prosecutors were forced to dismiss the charges. With Sam a free man and no one else ever having been accused of the crime, the identity of who really gunned down Norris Hilda nearly 21 years ago remains a mystery, and probably always will. If you ask his widow and the detectives who worked the case, they'll tell you what they think. Sam did it. Other people who believe Sam is innocent, though, worry the real killer may never be caught.

I'm personally unable to shake the feeling deep down that maybe, just maybe, the gunman who killed Norris and tried to kill Cheryl could be the same perpetrator who murdered Stephen and Jeanette in July of 2005. To this day, their murders remain unsolved. And when you look at their case side by side with what happened to the Hildas, there are just too many similarities to ignore.

With each anniversary that's passed, Stephen and Jeanette's case has gotten colder and colder, and I worry that whoever killed them thinks they've gotten away with the perfect crime. CNN and KVAL 13 News reported that Lane County Sheriff's detectives still have a suspect profile that the FBI helped them build, and it's something they've put a lot of stock in. The strongest theory to date is that whoever killed Stephen and Jeanette is a person who's familiar with the Oregon woods.

Authorities believe that this person murdered the couple because they saw them as intruding on their territory. Essentially, the profile states that whoever the killer is, they view Willamette National Forest as theirs, and they don't want other people intruding on it. This kind of person is someone police have coined as a "super hunter," meaning someone who moves into a national forest or park and takes a sense of ownership of the land.

Officials have gone on record saying that they feel the perpetrator is most likely a territorial person who randomly selected Stephen and Jeanette out of anger or hostility because they simply coexisted in the same landscape. One of Jeanette's sons, Gary Bowman, told CNN, quote,

Stephen's daughter, Kelly, echoed that same idea when she told KVAL News how heartbreaking it was to know that her father had died in such a beautiful place. She told the outlet, quote,

End quote.

Today, a stone memorial sits at the Sand Prairie Campground in Stephen and Jeanette's honor. And law enforcement investigators are hopeful that ongoing DNA testing on items of evidence collected from the crime scene that have been sent off to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab will produce fruitful results and lead to an arrest.

If you have any information about the murders of Stephen Hogan and Jeanette Bowman, please call the Lane County Sheriff's Office tip line at 541-682-4167 or contact Crime Stoppers of Oregon. Park Predators is an AudioChuck original show. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? No! No!

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