Town note
Known to Native Americans as Hoopa, meaning willow.
about 0:06:57Spoilers are covered until your reading preferences load.
FILE 206 / 14 January 2021 / 149 MIN / full
This is Moses Lake, Washington ... in central Washington, kind of dead center ... This is in Grant County. about 0:04:50
Known to Native Americans as Hoopa, meaning willow.
about 0:06:57Chief Moses was the leader of the tribe around the lake; under pressure from the government he traded the Columbia basin land for a reservation stretching from the lake north to the Canadian border.
about 0:07:04Settlers began arriving in the 1880s, and the settlers named the place Moses Lake after Chief Moses.
about 0:07:08The city was originally named Neppel, after a town in Germany where one of the first settlers had lived.
about 0:08:04Known to Native Americans as Hoopa, meaning willow.
about 0:06:57Chief Moses was the leader of the tribe around the lake; under pressure from the government he traded the Columbia basin land for a reservation stretching from the lake north to the Canadian border.
about 0:07:04Settlers began arriving in the 1880s, and the settlers named the place Moses Lake after Chief Moses.
about 0:07:08The city was originally named Neppel, after a town in Germany where one of the first settlers had lived.
about 0:08:04The first settlers had fisheries and farms and exported carp, jack rabbits and fruit.
about 0:08:12Irrigation attempts failed and the settlers left; this happened several times in the area.
about 0:08:53The town was incorporated and named Lake Moses, or Moses Lake, in 1938, when there were 302 people living there.
about 0:09:02The Moses Lake Army Airbase was built in 1942, and the military pumped water in from the Columbia River, after which people, fishing and livestock followed.
about 0:06:47A big dam was built on the Columbia River near the town.
about 0:06:47The average precipitation is under eight inches a year and the area is desert, with sometimes a month or six weeks without rain in midsummer.
about 0:06:26Evil Knievel lived in Moses Lake for a long time.
about 0:09:42BMW has a giant factory there making electric cars, and Conagra and paper plants also have factories in the town.
about 0:11:4340.8%
Biggest faith: Catholic, 17%
about 0:20:16White about 60% · Black 1.5% · Asian 2.1% · Hispanic 33.3%
Ethnicity can overlap race.Property crime
▲ almost double
Violent crime
▲ right at double
Houses for sale
about 0:21:51Three-bedroom two-bath house, 1,296 square feet
about 0:22:39Four-bedroom two-bath house, 2,784 square feet
about 0:23:15Four-bedroom three-bath house, 3,868 square feet
about 0:23:38"almost double"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:27:37
"right at double"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:27:43
"over 11,000"
Comparison: "up from 300 in 1940". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:17:54
"22,038"
Comparison: "up 96% since 1990". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:04
"about 54%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:18:54
"about 60%"
Comparison: "right about the national average". Direction: about the same.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:36
"1.5%"
Comparison: "well under the national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:42
"2.1%"
Comparison: "low for Washington State and for the national average". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:42
"1%"
Comparison: "high for the U.S.". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:52
"33.3%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:19:52
"40.8%"
Comparison: "less than the 50-50 norm". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:16
"17%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:19
"9%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:28
"0.0%"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:31
"about double"
Comparison: "national average". Direction: above.
As told in 2021 about 0:20:48
"$49,800"
Comparison: "national $57,500". No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:02
"85"
Comparison: "100 is average". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:38
"84"
Comparison: "100 is average". Direction: below.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:41
"$193,400"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:45
"a lot between $100,000 and $200,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:21:51
"$793"
Comparison: "national average about $1,200". No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:22:16
"$154,900"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:22:39
"$259,900"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:23:15
"$967,000"
No direction stated.
As told in 2021 about 0:23:38
1.4 / 5 · average of 5
“There is no mall and no national chains like Olive Garden, Red Lobster or Applebee's, and only two Taco Bells, two McDonald's, two Arby's, five Subways and three Starbucks, with no Wendy's and no chicken places except a KFC with the worst service.”about 0:12:34
“The town is very small, racist and bigoted, with too much crime, a huge drug problem, a lot of teen preg, overcrowded schools, badly paid jobs, unfriendly people, an airport hours away, crooked politics and horrible medical care.”about 0:13:57
“A tiny town overrun with crazy religious racist weirdos, not much for jobs, everywhere paying minimum wage, the worst customer service, and drugs and gangs equal to an actual city in a sixteen square mile dust ball.”about 0:15:31
“A lot of petty crime and gang activity for a small town, real issues with methamphetamine production and use, subpar and overcrowded schools, and little to do without driving two hours, but lots of sunny days, tons of lakes, a low cost of living and good traffic.”about 0:16:50
“There are a lot of homeless people and drugs, and the reviewer would not recommend walking outside at night or walking alone through the town.”about 0:17:21
In the autumn of 1986 Moses Lake, Washington, was a town of about 10,000 people in Grant County, in the desert of central Washington. Margo McKee was eighteen. She was a straight-A student at Moses Lake High School, a churchgoing girl whose parents had both died of cancer when she was twelve, within a year of each other. Ross and Myona Sterling took her in and raised her, and she called Myona mom. At eighteen she inherited $18,000, and her plan was to finish school, join the army under the delayed entry programme she had signed up for in her junior year, use the money for college and leave Moses Lake for good.
In the spring of 1986 Myona Sterling went into hospital to have a kidney removed. When she came home she found that Margo had moved out without telling her, into a small apartment she shared with another Moses Lake High student. McKee stayed at the apartment talking to her all evening instead of going to the party the others went to. Margo turned eighteen on 4 April 1986, collected her inheritance, and within a week of meeting him she and McKee decided to marry. She bought a car.
In April, with two of McKee's friends, they drove to Reno, then Disneyland, then Tijuana, and stopped at the MGM in Las Vegas on the way back. Margo was away from school for a month. When she returned to Moses Lake High she was told she had been expelled: thirty absences meant automatic expulsion, a rule she had never had reason to know. Her army contract depended on graduating, so that was gone too. By mid-May she was pregnant. The couple moved in with McKee's parents, and in September 1986 they took a studio apartment of their own.
Within a couple of weeks the apartment held five people. Margo, five months pregnant, was paying the bills and hated the arrangement. He said his aura had a busted link. McKee was acting as his disciple.
On 24 September 1986 the group talked about driving to California in early October.
The three men separated from the three girls to play rock paper scissors over who would kill Margo. The beating went on for about ninety minutes. She was stabbed five times and struck between twenty and thirty times.
The body was found on 15 October 1986, after a high school student, Robert Niverson, walked into the Grant County Sheriff's Office and said there was a body buried by the lake. Deputies went with him and found a young woman in a shallow grave in bushes, badly decomposed and beaten and stabbed. She was identified through dental records. Detectives questioned him for forty minutes and he admitted he had been there when she was killed, saying Steve and Jeff did it all.
McKee was questioned again the next day. He denied asking for the killing but admitted saying only that he should not be involved. The girls also told the police everything.
In December a bloodstained blanket was found near the scene with two blond hairs on it, but exposure had destroyed the evidence. The prosecution said McKee wanted his wife killed because he was tired of her complaints and did not want to pay for a baby.
The judge refused to admit the blanket. The judge called the killing cruel and senseless but found no reason to go beyond the standard range and gave him twenty-seven years and nine months, 333 months, plus a $10,000 fine.
He took the email address Shadowlord@AOL.com.
September 1986 / near Moses Lake, Washington
As told in the episode, on 14 January 2021.
Accused
Accused
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Public places are marked on the map.
crime scene
about 0:30:48police
about 0:29:55police
about 1:25:16school
about 0:34:29school
about 0:43:18home
about 0:46:29home
about 0:49:14home
about 0:59:36landmark
about 0:05:56landmark
about 0:06:47landmark
about 0:06:47landmark
about 0:54:46business
about 0:56:50