Torture, Torment & Terror

Spearfish, South Dakota, sits in Lawrence County in the western part of the state, about twenty minutes from Deadwood and three hours from Pierre. It was originally called Queen City before it was renamed. The Sioux lived in the area until the gold rush of 1876, after which Spearfish and Deadwood sprang up and Spearfish made its living supplying the mining camps. Frank Lloyd Wright visited in 1935 and called the landscape more miraculous than the Grand Canyon. By the time of the murder the town had 12,031 people, a median age of about 37, a population that was 91.9% white and 2.3% Native American, and 43% of residents belonged to a religion, Lutheran being the largest at 12.9%.

Chester Allan Pogue was born on the Fourth of July in 1980 and grew up on a farm outside Norton, in Norton County, Kansas, the son of Dottie and David Pogue and the brother of Samantha. His father had severe asthma, which made farming impossible, so in the spring of 1994 the family moved to Rapid City, South Dakota. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now Chester was sixteen. Dottie took him out of Rapid City High School and moved the family back to north-western Kansas to be near relatives. He graduated from high school in Norton and enrolled at the technical school in Goodland in the autumn of 1998. By every account he was a gentle boy: he went to church without being made to, he made his mother a coffee table and a wooden puzzle, he turned a baseball bat on a lathe, and he crocheted an afghan for his Aunt Becky. He also smoked some weed and fell in with a crowd his mother did not like.

At Christmas in 1999 he came to Spearfish to take a semester off and work for a few months. He got a job with Kramer Concrete Construction setting forms, and the owner remembered him as a fast learner who never called in sick. He also began asking people to stop calling him Chester and to call him Alan instead.

details of the account remain covered until revealed He was hyperactive from the start: at three he set his parents' bedroom on fire with a lighter, and in kindergarten he was thrown off the school bus. 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 spent much of his first three years with a stern grandmother who spanked him with a brush, and a Wyoming boot camp report warned that he should be supervised around fire-starting materials. By 2000 he was living in Leeds, South Dakota, and had a young daughter.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now Reports said his mother sexually abused him from the age of two and sold her children for money and drugs, and that the family lived for a time in abandoned buildings. He was fostered by Tammy Person from spring 1993 to the end of 1994, then sent to his father in Athens, Texas, before moving through more foster homes. From sixteen to eighteen he worked in Kansas City and shared an apartment with his sister Desiree, then began drinking and ended up living on the streets. In December 1999 he came to Spearfish with people he knew from church. He was quiet, polite and churchgoing, and he was seeing a girl named Misty Guttler.

The three men had been on a two-day spree of LSD, methamphetamine and alcohol when, on the evening of 12 March 2000, Alan went out with them. details of the account remain covered until revealed They played PlayStation and smoked cigarettes. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it The three then decided to rob Alan, and drove to the house on 3rd Street on the pretext of buying more methamphetamine.

this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed They sat him upright in a chair, tied him with a cord and laid a tyre iron across his feet. 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 They got his ATM pin, untied him, put him in the back seat of his own 1997 Chevrolet Blazer and warned him not to run. They stopped at a petrol station and drove about seven miles to Higgins Gulch in the Black Hills.

There was a foot of snow and the temperature was about 25 degrees. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it When that did not work they walked him down to an icy creek fifty feet from the road, kicked him repeatedly, made him lie in the water and stabbed and beat him. 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 Alan begged to be taken home to die. details of the account remain covered until revealed

They went back to Alan's house and stole a PlayStation, games, CDs, a camcorder and a Dremel set, about 400 dollars' worth of property. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it On 14 March, between four and six in the morning, the three left for Hannibal, Missouri, in Alan's Blazer. 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 Christine Wartman later found a T-shirt and a towel stained with a black substance under the driver's seat of her car and washed them with bleach before handing them to police. About a month after the killing, a woman who owned land near Higgins Gulch found Alan's body face down in the creek, dressed only in a sleeveless shirt, socks and shoes. A Rapid City forensic pathologist found a stab wound to the jugular vein, a stab wound through the skull into the brain and a five-inch spider-web fracture of the skull, and said any of the injuries could have caused death.

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

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 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

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 He asked for steak with A1 sauce, onion rings, jalapeno poppers, a salad with ham, cherry tomatoes, bacon bits, cheese, ranch and blue cheese dressing, coffee, iced tea and ice cream, and he said he had no final words. details of the account remain covered until revealed Alan is buried in Norton County, Kansas.