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Stand Just so people understand that you aren't chasing ghost stories in Bigfoot all the time, I'd like you to sort of give us a broad scope of what the challenges of the job were.
Like.
Navajo Nation, of course, is gigantic. I mean it's enormous. You have the same kind of crimes out there and law enforcement duties that cops would have in a big city, but also special challenges given how big the area is, how desolate it is, how few rangers there were to cover it all. Tell me about the nature of that challenge about and maybe as an example, that very serious hunt you did for these murderers, these militia fugitives who gunned down a cop in broad daylight.
Yeah, I mean it's hard for people to realize that this size of the Naba Reservation is twenty seven thousand square miles. That's not acres, it's miles. And this is the size of the state of West Virginia. And you're trying to provide enforcement over and protections over all the natural resources. You know, your timber, your wildlife, your archaeological resources which are spread throughout the reservation and you're trying
to do that with eight commissioned law enforcement officers. At the time that I left, there was eight rangers remaining. These are federally commissioned law enforcement officers, and it's just not enough personnel to do that job. As a ranger, you had to be a standalone officer. You know, you're out there on your own. You know, in the city you might have a backup partner or you know, on calls, your backup is less than minutes away, you know, if that.
On the reservation. As a law enforcement officer, your backup maybe well over an hour hour and a half away if that. So you had to be highly trained. And Jonathan and I were federal firearms instructors, so we taught firearms. We conducted the qualification courses, you know, several times a year with the pistol, rifle and shotgun. But yeah, you had to be able to stand on your own two feet. You didn't have somebody standing there holding your hand, so to speak, as you did your job.
You have all the same kind of crimes, but also a lot of special challenges. I mean, Monument Valley you got all kinds of tourists coming through there. As you note in the book, Mom and Pop driving an RV at twenty miles an hour, not paying attention, Hollywood celebrity types driving a Maserati at one hundred and fifty bus an hour, drunken locals, crazy visitors from all over the world.
Right, very true. You do have the challenges that you have in the bigger cities. For the navamation. Let's say, in the summertime, a lot of the youth will will travel to the inner cities and spend time with their cousins during their summer break, and they end up bringing back, you know, at a time, they brought back the gang activity that you would see like let's say in Los Angeles or some of these other metropolitan areas, and they bring that gang activity back to the reservation and it
ends up being a serious problem. You have homicides, you have drug trafficking, human trafficking, all of these problems that you see in the inner city.
These militia guys so three bad own brace they are pulled over and stolen water truck and they gunned down a cop right one morning, and then take off and you're part of the You're right in the thick of this pursuit tell us about that story.
That's very true. It was only days that I actually completed the Federal Police Academy and I was asked to bring some watercraft up to the scene where they had staged the operations following the death of the Cortes police officer Dale Claxton, and there was a man ensued where there were officers that had been injured and shot by these militia and they took off out into the desert, and so that asked for my assistance, and I quickly volunteered.
Once I got on seeing one of the commanders knew me, and he asked if I wanted to participate in the operations, go out with his swat team, so to speak. And I told him, you know, if we get the permission by my commanders and the Chief Ranger, that I would happily be a part of that. And that's what I did. So I spent the next month out there crawling in the river bottoms in the San Juan River basin and learning what it meant to be a technical officer technical operator.
And there were some tense moments that you describe in the book, and you got close to them a couple of times but didn't catch them, and eventually at least the remains of two of them were found all over the place, right.
That's very true. One of the there was, so there was three militia personnel, and one of them ended up committing suicide early on in the very beginning of that event, and the other two eluded capture for a long time after that. People would have sightings in and around that
particular region. These individuals grew up in that particular area, having worked in the oil fields of that area and being a part of militia, and they knew that area like the back of their hands, and they had already staged food stuff, that staged ammunition and other supplies in areas that led up to that event on what was known as Y two k. You know, there was a preparation by certain individuals that there was going to be a financial collapse and society would collapse, and these individuals
were firm believers in that. That's what they were what they were banking on, is that that this was going to occur at the change of the year two thousand and so.
Yeah, Livestock are an important part of the novel economy, as you note and as a young officer, that's part of your duties is livestock inspections correct and that that eventually leads you to these dead sheep. This rapport on dead sheep that before you're a ranger, you go out to a very strange case. Tell us about that.
Actually I was already a commissioned ranger, but that was one of my early cases, and so I was dispatched to respond to a situation where there were twenty six head of sheep that were discovered dead by a family on the reservation. They woke up one morning and there was no indicator that night that there was any type of disturbance with these animals. Typically, if there was a predator that got into the sheep crowd, the dogs would be the sheep. Dogs would be carrying on and you
would immediately be awakened by something. But in this situation, there wasn't. That didn't happen. They woke up and they discovered that all of their sheep, twenty six were dead, and the sheep aron there was already a veterinarian from the nomination that was onseen and I arrived there and this guy was wide eyed and he just shrugged his shoulder. He didn't know what had caught the death of these
twenty six sheep. You know, I grew up around livestock in Oklahoma, and so I get there and immediately the sheep dogs wouldn't come near the corral, which usually on Navajo, your sheep dogs are the ones that are providing protection for these your flock, and so I get in there, I didn't look into the corral. All of these sheep are dead, but you don't see the telltale evidence of
a predatory kill. If a bear or a mountain lion or bobcat gets into a corral and kills some animals, there's obvious evidence, so that you have entrails and blood and a lot of myths really within that coral, and you didn't have that with this particular situation. All of the animals were dead, but there was no blood within
the corral. And these sheep were slid open from their neck area all the way down to their growing And it's a pretty tough feat to be able to cut through a sheep's wool with standard scissors or shears or something of that nature. It's not that easy. And all of these were slit in a precise straight line from the neck to the groin, and again there was no blood within the corral, so it was very odd. There was an obvious stinch in the air as you approached
a corral that was not normal. It was it. I describe it similar to that of a petroleum smell, like what you smell in the oil fields or something like that. And it was just really odd and really nauseating smelling this, And yeah, it was just a really odd case that I investigated.
Yet, I mean, what what would have done that? You know, the dogs should have heard something and that would have blurted the people, but nobody heard anything. There's no blood on the ground. Something carved these sheep up in that way. What did they use to do it? How did they do it without getting detected? What are your thoughts that?
I don't know.
I've never seen anything like it, and I don't think the bed and Aaron had ever seen anything like it either. He was just kind of shocked by the whole thing because typically when you do have livestock killed, you know you're going to see the evidence of what killed. Either you'll have bear tracks or mountain lion tracks in the soil. And there was there was nothing like that to support
this particular caste. And the daughter was the middle aged daughter was extremely upset because her parents were crying and upset and she wanted answers, but we didn't. We didn't have any answers. I mean, it didn't follow the normal fill till signs that you have with predatory keels.
Well, gosh, I guess we would be upset. Number One, that's an incredible investment for them. That's like they're life savings in those sheep. And two whatever, did it could come from people for people the next time?
Well, that's that's that's very possible. Did we didn't know the source of what it is that caused this action?
So does that seem like it's comparable to cattle mutilation cases that are elsewhere around the world? And did you ever see anything like that elsewhere where on the Novajo Nation?
Well, there were lives thuff cattle mutilations. You know, I've read and I had met with Linda molten how at times, and the research she's done in regards to cattle mutilations, it's very fascinating. And I do you know, in looking at that particular case at that time, I think it would fall under that particular umbrella of cattle mutilation.
One other question, no blood, but was anything taken out of the animals, any organs or anything, or just sliced, you know.
I inquired that to the veterinarian, and to my knowledge, there weren't. There weren't any internal organs that that were missing. But because of the unknown, uh, something of that nature, you're you don't nor know the source of this is, is there is there some type of disease. I mean, that's kind of far fits as far as the disease involved,
but you don't. It's a big unknown, and you've got to be really careful whatever cause the death of these animals, You certainly don't want to be on the receiving end of something like that, you know. So I think at that time the there was a large trench that was dug and the animals were disposed in there and and and burned and then after they were in semon, you know, burned up and they were covered up.
You know. So you mentioned earlier we touched on briefly about the first call you went out with on with John Dover is because these two other cops had sort of sloughed off this lady's report about a bigfoot. You guys go out there, take it seriously, you calm her down, and you start investigating. Share with us what did you find, what, if anything, you found.
Well, in those particular cases, a challenge is a lot of times people will report these kind of incidents, let's say, a siding of what people were commonly referred to as a bigfoot or sasquatch. They may report it days later and out here on the reservation because the arid environment, you know, the evidence a lot of times that's left is going to be degraded. In criminal investigation, when you get let's say a homicide, do you want to get there as soon as you can so you can start
documenting and collecting evidence before it degrades. And in this situation, sometimes you would have somebody reporting an incident that may have actually occurred months earlier or sometimes even years later. You know, you would get to talking to them and it actually occurred a year earlier or something like that, which doesn't leave the investigator with any let's say, credible evidence to be able to work with. So, yeah, it can be a challenge.
Did you find tracks in that case? I think I remember from that part of your book that you didn't find any.
Tracks in that particular case. I know, in and around the sheep Corral there was there was nothing tangible that could be recorded in that as far as like being able to cast something or photograph some type of tracks or tractive.
You had a lot of other big foot cases though, that you took seriously and you think there there are indications that something really was going on. The smell definitely, right, yeah.
Definitely, there's you know, commonly in big foot cases there's often associated a certain smell and over the years, you know, I did experience that in some of these cases where you have this odd wet dog smell. Sometimes it can be more leaning more to a the foul odor involved with like an eggs ful free eggs smell, and it can be it can range to something that smells like like something dead. And so yeah, there's there's often odors that are they can be associated with those events.
And I know you did find tracks here and there, you made tracks, so you know, people would think, all right, Bigfoot, he's up in Washington, Oregon, up in the big trees. What's he doing out there in Monument Valley or Novo Nation? What do you say that right?
Well, you know the case that I mentioned earlier involving the coin of Ports. Again, that phenomenon made me realize that they're like with the coins, the coins had to be materializing from somewhere else, from some other plane of existence. They did I mean, I mean I witnessed the coins fall out of thin air. And so if the points the coins were traveling from point A to point B to the floor of an office building there in winter up,
they had to originate from somewhere else. So I began to look at this these different phenomena like like the Bigfoot, like the UFOs, and realize that these things are coming into existence into our physical world from some somewhere else. And you know, John and I never followed this idea that bigfoot were migrating from one location to another across North North American continent or something like that. We lived out in the woods and we didn't see the evidence of that.
They just pop into our reality and then pop back out exactly.
I think the witchcraft up the shape shifters to use the same same technique and going in and out. I think at times you're experiencing naturally occurring what people refer to as vortics, where there's a crossing between one plane of existence and to another. UFOs I feel do the same kind of thing, but I think that's the commonalities dimensions or you know what people referred to, there's dimensions.
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