covered name & name withheld here: The Deadly Duo

this part of the story is covered for now His grandfather gave him his first rifle in the first grade and paid him a penny a bird to shoot sparrows' nests under the farmhouse eaves. He joined the Navy at seventeen in June 1960, served as a radio man on the USS Independence listening for Soviet submarines, visited Cuba during the Bay of Pigs and went to Africa, then was discharged before Vietnam. With nobody left where he came from, he took a Greyhound to Wyoming, where his parents had settled in Lander. He paid them $50 a month rent, worked as a maintenance man for US Steel at $2.29 an hour and spent his money on guns.

In the autumn of 1965 he shot a bull elk at Twin Creek below Limestone Mountain. While he was butchering it in his father's alley, Barbara Ann Phillips, the girl next door, walked up and asked him about the elk, the calibre and the hide. They married that December, lived in a $75-a-month apartment over the old JC Penney and then in a trailer in his parents' backyard. details of the account remain covered until revealed She filed for divorce. In 1973 he met Wanda, married her quickly and moved into a trailer behind a bowling alley; she left after six weeks. In 1974 he asked his landlady, Fran, to find him a woman.

Virginia Prunty knocked on his door with her grandfather's Winchester .22 and asked him to value it. She was a single mother with two young sons, Richard and Reagan, an ex-husband behind on child support and a series of minimum-wage jobs. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He married her on 3 July 1974. The marriage fell apart after she drove to Philadelphia alone, came back distant and asked for a divorce citing intolerable indignities. this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed She had worked as a bartender, a bus driver and a nurse in the psychiatric ward of a small VA hospital, where she met her third husband, Ronald Holz, a Vietnam helicopter door gunner who had been kicked out of the army for being too crazy. He beat her, threatened her and the baby, and told her he had killed babies in Vietnam and would kill hers. Near Christmas, she later said, she shot him in the back of the head while he slept, put the body in a cardboard barrel, drove it in her Ford Pinto to an abandoned mine shaft and dumped it. She left town with her children, filed for divorce a few months later claiming he had abandoned her, and was granted it when he failed to appear. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He said he understood and would take it to his grave.

They bought twenty acres on an unpaved county road east of Pavillion for $1,000, moved her trailer onto it, drilled a well and a septic tank and held a chicken slaughter for their friends. Virginia moved back to Wyoming, and the child support and visitation arguments began. this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed

On 12 September 1980 Virginia drove to the corner of Tunnel and Williams Road with Richard and Reagan. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He put the .22 together, fired a couple of test shots, then shot Virginia in the back of the head as she looked across the road. He shot Richard behind the left ear. this part of the story is covered for now He loaded the three bodies into the station wagon, drove home, hid the car behind the pig barn and told his in-laws he was going sage chicken hunting. He dumped the bodies in the Hidden Hand mine, went back for Richard's glasses and threw them in too. He calculated that he had saved himself just under $14,000 in child support.

Claire Martin, Virginia's mother, called that evening. details of the account remain covered until revealed She reported them missing the next day; the deputy told her they would look for the car first. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now The station wagon was reported three times before a rancher and his son found it on 4 October; the sheriff had it towed to Claire's house, where she pointed out the blood herself.

details of the account remain covered until revealed Claire spent the next thirty years searching. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it Virginia was declared dead in 1987. this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed Claire Martin died on 4 April 2013 at ninety-two without learning what had happened. A few months later a barrel containing Ronald Holz's skeleton, with a bullet hole in the back of the skull, was recovered from the mine shaft Tod had described, and DNA confirmed it. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed He said he was tired of paying $150 a month in child support, that he had done the arithmetic and that it had stopped about $16,000. He also admitted he had gone to the laundromat intending to kill Claire but lost his nerve because her friend Marie and her baby were there, and that he had cut her telephone line. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now