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Plus, you are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good evening, Under a Cold Moon is the extraordinary true story of a man that devastated two worlds, a killer that used the chump card as his cover for two brutal murders. His first victim lay under the rocks for fifteen nights, his second lay under the dirt for sixty one. Two women, two murders, one spurned slayer. In this cool tale, the author exposes the dark secrets of a man that
stalked older women lay them. Weaves this story from an insider's window, a writer that was in the thick of things and interviewed the man behind these two cataclysmic homicides. The book that we're featuring this evening is Under a Cold Moon, a chronicle of an Unrequited killer. With my special guest, Tony H.
Laytham. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Tony H.
Laytham, Dan, I'm quite pleased to be here. This is an order a great crime podcast.
Thank you so much, Thank you so much for that. Congratulations on this incredible book. Let's start off first with as you do, right to the incredible event that happens November seventh and a call to the sheriff dispatch in North.
Fork, Salmon, Idaho. Yes, yeah, so it's occurred in North Fork, Idaho, which is a tiny little burg of the sense that says the population of one hundred and fifty, but really only ten people or so lived there at the time. Very remote country. Three hours to the nearest walmart, two hours to the nearest package of men's underwear, thirty minutes to the county seat of two thousand, three thousand, and
nothing but for a service ground around there. And that morning a guy that was seventy six years old went down to where his wife ran a bar and kind of a small eatery seven miles away from his place. And he did this every morning. He'd go down there, have coffee with her, and then he'd go do whatever you do that day. And then he'd come back for dinner there spend a little time with his wife, Nancy, And they lived apart like that because she was an
extrovert and ran that bar till midnight or so. And he had a lodge seven miles away where he lived, and they had five adult kids. They had run several successful businesses, they had some money. And that morning, on the seventh of November, he got there to have breakfast in coffee with his wife and she was missing. She was gone, and there's nothing amiss there at this place called the River's Fork Inn. So he calls the sheriff's office all upset. His voice was quick, quivering, and explained
what was going on. And when he called the sheriff's office, people need to understand that this sheriff's office at that time still is god awful small. There were six patrol officers that covered the whole nine yards in a huge county the size of New Jersey, and so it was six officers. From time to time. There'd normally be one deputy on board for each shift, and then the sheriff and the chief deputy. And the only people that were available that morning when Cliff called was the sheriff and
the chief deputy. So they couldn't believe what they're here in. A seventy four year old business woman with a family disappears in a n So they ran up there. They get up there, there's eight inches of fresh snow on the ground. Her car is still sitting out front with eight inches of snow on it, and there's Cliff, one of his sons, and his brother in law, and they're all upset because Nancy's missing, and they look around. There's the money from the till that's still there where she
was counting the money that night. Her bed's kind of tussled up and it didn't look so left in the only thing missing was the Nancy Cummings.
What was your occupation and what was your connection to this area? And as we find out to this story, so.
I was an Idaho conservation officer, a game warden, and I think most of your listeners are going to understand what a game organ does. But we chase poachers, and in Idaho, game wardens have the same statutory or powers police powers as the Idaho State Police do. But the primary focus, of course is on poachers wildlife crimes.
Now, what happens in this investigation with the Sheriff's at Barseloo and Chief Deputy Sam Slavin, what's their approach, what's their next step and who do they speak to and very quickly what person of an interest is alerted to them.
Well, you know, initially there was just no evidence of a crime. Just suddenly this woman is missing, a type of woman, you know, a family woman, a businesswoman that just shouldn't be missing, but no evidence of a crime. You know, there was one door that was open on the inn, unlocked. And in this tiny little town of North Fork, there's only two businesses, this Rivers Fork In plus the North Fork Cafe, and that's basically it. And Nancy is the only employee of the Rivers Fork In.
So they go over to the North Fork Cafe one hundred and fifty yards away and start talking to people. And one of the guys, one of the workers there, a guy named of Harmon, said, you know, you ought to go talk to Eddie Hotel. He lives up the North Fork here, And so Sam Slaban drives up there, the search and rescue member and finds Ed Hurtel. He's
twenty nine years old. He's looks and acts a little goofy because he suffered from feed alcohol centiment birth, so he had a wandering right eye and he had a stutter, and he gets defancied right off the start with those guys. And his first response back to Deputy Slaven was well, what do you think happened to her? Which was, you know, it's not a normal answer to a question of what do you know? And what Edhurteil said during that very informal interview was I worked last night. I never saw Nancy.
I wasn't over at the end. And that's kind of where it sat for a little bit that day.
Now they have to investigate Cliff, obviously, people close to Nancy. So in pursuit of that, what do they find out about Cliff and the status of the relationship between him and Nancy? You right about what their plans were following this date, in a couple of weeks, what their plans were for both of them.
They were going to retire. They bought a motor home, and they were going to head south, get out of the Idaho winters and head south and spend a great winter in Arizona where it was warmed. And this all came crashing together, and so you know even that morning, Barslow was scucum enough to realize that you got to
look in close before you start widening the circle. And he sat down with Cliff in the End that morning and ask him if there was something going on, and had Cliff explain this marriage where one's living at the end and the other one's living up the other lodge seven miles away. And Cliff explained all that, and Cliff agreed, if I got to if I have to take a polygraph,
I don't have a problem with that. And Cliff promised Barshallow at that time there wasn't anything else a miss going on between the relationship.
Now, at the same time, he had a pretty good alibi in that he had a fellow, his brother in law with.
Him, He had Nancy's brother that was staying with him, and so order for Cliff to have committed this thing, Cliff Wood had a snuck out of his place in the middle of the night, driven down there and did the dirty deed and got back home. And yeah, yeah, Now.
With in terms of ed Heurtel, they have some information and obviously what he says is his first statements. Now they also find out how he comes to be in the area, and then Leo Noak and his wife so tell us how he ends up being there in the first place, and then the evolving story of Eddie Hertel Well.
About five months prior to this incident, Leo Noak and Edward tel and Noak's family were living in Grand Junction, Colorado, and they met at miss Christian Identity movement, which in my opinion is an odd duck. What Christian identity is is those people believe that Adam and Eve had their offspring,
but then Eve also had offspring from the serpent. In the offspring from Adam were the Aryan people, including Jesus Christ, and that the people from that derived from the Serpent and Eve were what they would call mud people, blacks, Mexicans, anybody with any skin color, and so it was a Christian identity is a very extreme racious movement. That same concept is in the KKK and that sort of thing, and they're very into the Second Coming apocalyptic stuff, and
along goes with that is malicious stuff. And in this Christian Identity movement that the Noaks and her Tail were involved in the witnesses that had been there, they characterized it as more of a militia than origin, all religion. All of the males were side arms, so it was a strange mix. And Noaks and Nertel moved to Idaho because the wrong kind of people were moving to Grand Junction, i e. People of color.
Now with this Noak and his relationship with Eddie Hotel, the thing is he overhears a conversation that Eddie Hertel has with someone, and then from there wants to take him to the sheriff because he has heard Eddie under a lie tell us about this occurrence.
Urtail's a friend that he was living on the same property with Leo. Noak drove down to North Fork find out what's going on. He finds it out that Eddie hadn't been working that night and that it was obviously he'd listened to Hertel lie to the deputy about what had gone on. So he goes home, grabs her Tail, brings him back to north Fork, the center of this activity, and brings him forth to Deputy Slaven and says, you've
got to tell you got to tell slave in the truth. Well, Deputy Slaven puts him in his truck and finds out now that ed Hurteil has changed his story and said, I didn't work last night, and yes, I was the River's fork In drinking Margarita's until it closed. And then he said he drove around till four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning and read a book for a little while, and all during this storm that was just going crazy. It was eight inches the fresh no that night.
So how do they sort of trying to counter the police forensically, what kind of luck do they have in terms of the usual prince hair, fiber, blood spatter and searches of his vehicle? How do they progress with that any luck? And he clues any leads.
Well, that was a main major problem with that investigation is there was other than looking around the North Fork in the Rivers fork In, there was nothing really done. It wasn't lockdown or anything like that. It was a major regret of the sheriff. And after that second interview where Slaven finds out the Hertel had been over at the end, he grabs another depth and they go up and they do a kind of a cursory look at Hertel's car and come up with more or less nothing
other than some knives and a hatchet. But they didn't notice any blood or anything or any other signs that card been associated with a crime.
Now, many of these stories that I've read and I've featured on the program have involved people coming forward and those namely being psychics. And as you write, the police are obliged to follow up the leads that would be generated from these. Whatever the psychics report.
They absolutely are. And the reason they're obliged to follow up, whether they believe in any possibility of that paranormal or whatever, is that you don't know that a person doesn't call in and say I know where body is because I've had this vision, and in reality they know where the body is because their husband told them where it is, or something along that line. But there were numerous psychics that called in, contacted the Sheriff's office, and they chased
them down. They had to chase them down.
Now, tell our audience how you come to be involved inextricably in this case. What are the conditions and the situation where you find yourself tasks to go talk to Ed Hotel.
Well, on that morning, I was up chasing wildlife. I was up patrolling for elk hunters, looking for somebody that maybe had gone across the line and broken a law. And I keep hearing on the radio something about some activity at North Fork, and I originally thought it was probably a car wreck, and then I heard the word search come across my radio. So at that point in time, I thought it was a lost hunter, which made sense
because of the storm. Hunters get lost in that country, and I always felt it was part of my job to go help with those searches. So I come off the mountain and come down to the local volunteer fire department where they'd set up a command post. And that's when I was told that Anti Cummings a person I knew, certainly knew Cliff comings. I knew that she was missing. In fact, I lived less than a mile away from
where it happened. And that's when I sat down with Depth diy Shlavean and Brett Barshall, and they requested my assistance.
So why did they think they thought you might have a rapport with him, because you had spoke to him a couple of times.
So tell us about the interaction itself.
Well, you know, as I've said, north Fork is an extremely small place, so I knew who ed hurtail was I knew who Lee know it was, even though they'd only been there five months and a couple of times while I'd been in the North Fork Cafe having breakfast or dinner or whatever it was ed hotel that worked
there as a dishwasher, and janetor that approached me. We're in my fishing game uniform, and on two different occasions asked me the same question about recovering the road kill animals for food, and I gave him the same answer. At the time it wasn't legal, and he didn't like
the answer, but that was the way it was. And so Sheriff Barcelow and his deputy slave and were just grasping at straws and they were hoping I had some kind of rapport with this guy, which I didn't consider that I did, But they asked me to go interview guy. And by this time it was it was dark, and I grabbed a US four service officer and went over and found him, and he was in the kitchen at the time. We asked to talk to him, and he's got this big bag of garbage over us back, big
garbage sect. We go outside. He throws the garbage into this big open dumpster and I told him that we were looking for information about Nancy and she was missing and all that, and we'd heard he'd been over at the end, and he instantly got defensive. I hadn't accused him anything, far from it, and that set up a big red flag and he got all nervous and it
just didn't make sense. Now I didn't know this guy had met him the two times, so I didn't know if this was a normal reaction he had with officers or what. But it just didn't make sense. And I kept trying to drag him back to ED help us out here, you know, what was going on there, And he said there was a bunch of cowboys in there. And we're going along and he keeps getting defensive, and he says, I didn't do nothing to her, you know, we're not accusing him of any harm. And so I'm
just really scratching my head on this thing. And I see some headlights bobbing in the back ground in the darkness, and pretty soon a gal brings a dog up, and the dog's got an orange vest on, and she's wearing an orange vest and I knew they had search dogs, cadaver dogs working out back along the river down there, and the next thing I know, that cadaver dog came up, stuck his nose in ed Hortail's crotch, and sat down.
And I was just stunned because I'd worked around a lot of drug dogs, but I'd never worked around a cadaver dog. And I was just so stunned because I thought maybe this dog had just alerted on this guy. And then her tail turns to me and says, these are the same clothes I had on last night. He looks away into the darkness. He looks back and says, and she touched my but she didn't get in. Then another dog handler comes up, talks to this first dog handler, puts his dog up there, and that dog does the
same damn thing. Sixty snows and Edgertail's crotch sits down. And at some point in time this conversation, Ortel blurted out this biblical thing about a pale horse. And I didn't understand what the heck that was until later. But in the Bible there's there's some reference to death writing a pale horse, and I still scratch my head on
all that. But so I'm getting basically nowhere with this interview other than his paranoia and his claims that he didn't do anything to this person that we don't know had been armed. And I began to realize that this guy knew a lot more about what had happened. That's my belief at this point in time, than what he was saying or what we knew. And the problem I had with this was a Miranda issue, and Miranda falls into it comes up comes into play when you've got
two things going. Number one, you're questioning a suspect about a crime, and two he feels he's in custody right now. Under normal circumstances in the back of the outside a building like this, this court would not determine that this was a custodial environment. But the guy, the way the guy was acting, he just didn't seem all there, didn't seem like his gears were quite meshing. You'd ask him a question, there'd be a long pause, and it wasn't like he was trying to make up an answer. I
think his things just weren't clipping for him. So I seriously doubted whether he had a normal IQ. And I realized that I felt that as if he if we got any real inculpatory statement from him that he admitted to it or could fast or whatever, it wouldn't hold up in court. And I realized that if I read him his miranda right there and he didn't understand Dan his miranda again, whatever he said would not hold up
in court. So I backed off. And that's one of my career regrets, is not reaching into his guts and pulling a confession out. Because the guy was with author John Perry. He thought her Tail was about ready to confess, and so instead I walked away, And it's one of my career regrets. It was a tough thing to do.
So you decide to go get Chief Deputy Slavin and let him handle it. So how does he handle it?
Verta?
Well? I went back, We went back and briefed Barcelona's lavin about this whole thing, and the next day they still focused on trying to find the body. I mean, they definitely thought her Tail was as culpable as I thought he was. And within a few days they brought in Idle State Police Bureau of Investigations to do a polygraph on hotel, and during that interview, Hertel became so nervous. A polygraph wasn't going to work. He got too emotional.
At one point in time, he went in the bathroom where this interview was taking place and started throwing up.
He was that disturbed. And when he finally came back in, the detective Stimpson asking him, led, tell me what you think happened here, And after a long time, maybe a minute, he came up with his story that he'd been driving on the highway and he looked over at the north fork in the Rivers Fork in and he saw Cliff's truck backed up to this door ninety degrees to his view, and saw Cliff pulling her body into the pickup truck,
wrapped in a sheet. So the whole investigation shift at that point in time.
Yeah, it does, you right though, that there is another interview, the fourth interview, and again it looks very very promising. In fact, they think again that he's ready to confess, and then his sister comes in and then what happens.
Yeah, So that was done the day before this polygraph had been set up, and that was with Deputy Nan Coolis, a female officer, and Barcelo felt that maybe he'd be more willing to talk to a female officer and things were going real good there on That thing wasn't getting in a lot of different information, but she got even to talk about worry driven that night and several other details. And then his sister comes shows up from Colorado. She wants to talk to Ed. They talking there for a bit.
Then she comes out and says, Ed needs to talk to you about something, and the deputy thought, well, maybe this is it. Maybe he's going to give it up. Well she walks in and Ed says, I want an attorney. So right there that interview was done.
Yeah, now this is November twenty. First, you talk about a John Staffer. He's camping at neil and Ranch site, about three quarters of a mile from North Fork in tell us what happens, what he discovers.
Ironically, we call that neck of the woods down there dead water. He was camped down there and his friend were doing a little trapping in the area, and he decides he wants to walk back the North Fork a quarter mile whatever it is, to call his wife let her know what's going on. And he's walking on the on the on the roads more or less a county type road for service road, but he's walking along and it's it's dark, and a vehicle comes driving by and
it starts to night blind him. So he looks away, and the headlights flash on something pink in the rocks, and so Stopford walks over, lets his night vision come back. It looks like there's something covered in rocks there, and so as the light comes back and there's this is the day after a full two weeks into a full moon. He picks up a rock and there it is a woman's foot with a sock on it. Now you know
a small town like this. John Staffer knew exactly who he was looking at, but he just couldn't accept that he was looking at a frozen dead body. And after a while and will never know because he doesn't know, he said. He stood there for a long time, staring with his mouth of gape. He took off at a dead run and ran into the nearest building, which is a forest service residence about a quarter of a mile away. Knocked on the door here it is dark outside, it's cold.
Knocks on this door and the for service ranger opens the door, sees this wild and crazy looking guy that's all upset. He's almost yelling, and John Stofford yells at the ranger I found her. The ranger knew exactly what he was talking about. He knew he knew that he'd found Nancy's body. So they jump in the car, run down there, and then they stand there and stare at this makeshift grave for who knows how long, just letting
it just kind of a soak into their souls. Then he drove back, called the Sheriff's office and as much as is available and leve my Canning rolls out there. Slavin rolled out there. The sheriff, another deputy and dispatch called me up to go assist, and we got out there and started doing what we needed to do.
Do police gain any knowledge forensically from the finding of Nancy's body? And if not, how do they proceed in investigating their main suspect at Hotel.
Well that night, what was done was mainly just photographic evidence. You know, After each rock was picked up, Barcelo would take two separate cameras to make sure I was back in the days of film, to make sure that they got it. Each Each time he picked a rock up, he grabbed both cameras and take pictures until she was fully uncovered, and she was only just covered with big rocks.
And once that happened, we put her in a body bag and sent her away with a corner And the next day she was shipped off to do an autopsy in Pocatel, three hours away and idled State police investigators came up and at that point in time, this is two weeks after the murder, did a comprehensive forensic search of the River's fork In and the only thing that was found on Nancy's body she was wearing a pink nightgown. She's wearing socks that were pulled down, and she had
a watch on it was still running. She had a silver cross around her neck. She still had that wedding ring that Cliff had given her fifty seven years ago. And she was missing her panties, and her daughter said she always wore panties except when she was taken a bath. So that was a real suspect thing. And then at the River's fork In, the scene was clean. It had literally been cleaned by the relatives of Nancy. And you know,
like in hindsight, it just digs on barshlow. They didn't lock that thing down that first morning, But in reality, even if you pulled the CSI crew out at the TV show put it in the end that morning. Even if you come up with her tail's fingerprints, if he'd come up, you know, this is pretty much pre DNA. Even if you had his DNA there, all that would prove he was there, and that was already anknown so forensically there was nothing. Now in the autopsy, they did recover a hair.
Let's talk about Eddie Hortel's past and especially his history in mental institutions and also police talk to a person named Britt, and Britt tells him a few things that he claims that ed Heurtel mentioned that are a very big interest to police considering.
Yeah, so ed Hortel had been in and out of mental institutions. It seems like every time he did something bad, he'd get stuck in a mental institution. He tried to commit suicide and he gets stuck in a mental institution for a little while. He'd been in and out of those things. But one of his co workers, this Brit, that he worked the same shift with her. She was a cook. He was the janitor do all laborer type and her tail thought that she was an American Indian
and she wasn't. But it doesn't make any difference. She still had dark hair, her skin was a little dark, and he was suspicious that she was a minority. And several times she caught him to where he thought she thought he was stalking her. He hated Jews, he hated blacks, any buddy of color. So the other thing that Britt caught him doing one night, but she went outside and here's Eddie her tail with a cat under his arm
and he's strangling the cat. She confronts him, She's upset, what are you doing, Ed And he says, I'm just giving it a little love. And so that's kind of ed her tail right there. He admitted to Brit that during a full moon he did weird things. Well, the night Nancy disappeared, it was a full moon.
Now he moves back to Grand Junction and he's in and out of mental institutions. Tell us on the circumstances in which the police feel that they have to make a move. He's in the institution and how.
They do this.
So there was a real concern that hotel was going to disappear into the wind, just like the dark side of the moon. He was going to disappear. I mean, he owned very little. He had a house he'd bought for eight thousand dollars two years after he graduated from high school, which I thought was rather amazing, but he had that. Other than that, he really didn't have much.
And the heat sold that before he'd moved id O faull or moved Idahole, so he had his car, and they felt that as the heat started to come on, and I get the sense that he knew the heat was coming on, he was just going to disappear. But he'd tried to commit suicide by drinking, if I recall,
a pint of vodka and some aspirin. And so he was put in on a metal hold, and they were concerned that as soon as he got out of that thing he was going to flee, and so they managed to get a warrant for his arrest second degree murder, and they were planning to pick him up the day he walked out of that thing, but unfortunately he walked out disappeared, and for three days the Grand Junction police search for him, and finally they found him at his
dad's place and he was arrested. He was arrested and he was held there for a couple of weeks and refused extradition, and then there was a governor's warrant and after two or three weeks he was flown to the Salmon, Idaho.
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the inevitable trial. Tell us about the characters in terms of prosecution and defense, and a little bit about anticipation for this in terms of what kind of case this actually was.
So it was pretty clear that this case was marginal at best. It was an entirely circumstantial case, but there were three evidentiary items that held some hope. When the state police went back to the death scene where the body had been hidden, they found two different things there. They found a pair of bowl a sunglasses laying nearby. They also found a photograph of a Civil War era cannon, I think reproduction cannon laying there. And they found that
hair that I mentioned during the autopsy. And so the first big issue was what is that hair? Whose hair was that? And Barcela was hoping that would be the key to the golden goose, something that tie her tail to the body. And so that was forensically and before that they went ahead and got a judge's order to take hair from her tail, and so it was it was a forensic comparison. And the first thing they compared that mystery hair to was Nancy's hair, and that came
back negative. It didn't match. And then they examined that hair with hair that was taken from various places, including pubic hair from her tail, and it came back negative again, and so that that had no evidentiary value. And so the big thing was the photograph and this bull at sunglasses, and of course they were dustin't for Prince. The everything on there was smudges, and Barcelo felt that both items had fallen out of Hertail's car when he dumped the body.
I believe that's true. And Hertel he was really into guns and that sort of thing, and he'd been previously arrested for possession of explosives and he had quite a bit of black powder and safety fuse, maybe five years before he moved to Idaho, and he said at that during that investigation that he used the black powder and cannon for a black powder infused for a cannon he owned, but he'd blown the cannon up and hauled it to dump and so Barcelow and the state investigators really looked
hard trying to connect that photograph to Hortail. They were interviews done by the Grand Junction Police Department with cannon people in Grand Junction seeing if they'd ever had contact with her Tail and a cannon, if this was Hertail's cannon. They showed that photograph to his coworkers, hoping that her Tail had shown them the cannon he once don't. Unfortunately, they came up with nothing. Nobody had seen that photograph. Nobody in Grand Junction had seen Hertail's cannon. There they were.
They were sitting there with absolutely no physical evidence.
So they proceed to trial and they attempt to at least negate the defense which tries to point the finger at Cliff and his and his sons or his sons at least, and they try to obviously attributed that he has not the mental capacity to be able to have done this. So what are the finding factors and what happens in terms of verdict?
Well, obviously Hertel's attorney, which coincidentally is the same attorney as representing Lori Davell in the murder of her two kids. Interesting, he made the big push that Hertel was not adept to understand mirandize Miranda when it was done by Stimpson and the female deputy, and that none of that stuff should have been put in play. He made the push that since I hadn't mirandized him, any of his statements during that contact with canine dogs shouldn't be allowed in
the court. And the judge assigned two different psychologists to examine him, and both agreed that Hertel was intelligent enough to understand Miranda, intelligent enough to read Miranda and understand and so his male capacity at that point in time was not a legal issue, which kind of grabs back at my guts for not pushing him into saying something
incultatory that dark night on the backstep to the Northfolk Cafe. Anyway, his attorney definitely did go after Cliff, just to give the jury just a little bit of doubt that perhaps Cliff killed his own wife. And it was not a happy time for Cliff. And so the jury was only out for two hours, and there was no question in my mind what they were going to find They found him not guilty, and he walked out of the courtroom that day.
So you say it really divided the community and obviously obviously no closure for anyone. And you write about worrying about Cliff being so close to Eddie Hurtel in that courtroom and what he might do, because he did have an outburst in court testifying at one point. What does Eddie Hurtel do? Where does he go and what happens now this story.
Well, Hertel left with his sister back to Grand Junction that day, and he goes went back to the same old ways. He went back to his Christian Identity movement people, his militia contacts back there. And in that movement he'd known of a woman by the name of Jerry mcavee, and Jerry had heard he'd been arrested in Idaho and she had that group pray for him during his trial. Must have worked, so he and Jerry start some kind of friendly relationship that slowly turned into a romantic relationship.
And five months after he walked out of that clertinom in Idaho, Jerry turned up missing and Grand Junction police department started that opened a missing person case, and within three days they realized it was something much worse than a missing person, that Jerry mcavee just hadn't gone on vacation, and they opened up a homicide investigation, even though there again they didn't have a body.
Tell us what.
Some of the things that in this investigation they find are commonalities. Interestingly enough, between McKelvey and at Hotel Well.
Both women, Nancy Cummings Jerry mccabee were older. In fact, they even though Jerry wasn't as old as Nancy, they looked the same. They both had wore glasses with chains like a librarian, and they both looked about the same age. They both looked to be in their fifties, and they were both about the same size. And obviously her tail was attracted to Nancy Cummings. He had the hots for it, That's what he told several people, which is an odd thing to have a hats for somebody that's thirty years
a year older. And then even with Jerry McAfee, she was twenty years as older. And somewhere in the mix of that he ran into his old babysitter it was ten years older than him. That way back when he was ten years old. He'd had a sexual relationship with somebody might call that an affair, but it was legally it was non consensual rate that went on for some time. That's what caused him to have is he even admitted it. That's what caused him to have his sexual interest in
older women. That's what he was attracted to and both Nancy had. That's what he went to the Rivers Fork in that night was to have sex with Nancy, and of course she shut him down, and that's why he killed her, in my humble opinion. And then with Jerry he had this relationship and the belief is that that day, on the fourteenth of April, I believe it was she shut him down and says I don't want to see anymore, and that's when he killed her. And that's why this is a chronicle of an unrequited killer.
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Now let's talk about the investigation to bring him to justice over this McKelvey, this woman he killed. Tell us what happens and the arrest.
Well, the Grand Junction Police department is quite the opposite of the lam High County Sheriff's office. Grand Junction has a serious investigative branch. They have a serious forensic branch. They do a lot of murders. And the lead investigator was a guy named George Barley. And George starts focusing in on her tail. Within about three days. He came up with hotel's name phone number in a diary or I guess a notebook of Jerry macvie's was the first flag.
And he well knew of hertel's history in Idaho, and he well knew that Sheriff Marshbow, without a doubt, still believed, even though he'd been found not guilty, had killed Nancy Cummings, so that was a huge red flag for Barley. The other thing that they found in mcavee's house was a hand a mirror, an antique can mirror, and it turned
out that mirror had Hertel's fingerprints on it. So they start watching Hertel's house and they realized that at one point in time, I think was day three of Jerry being missing, Jerry calls her sister up and starts asking
questions that didn't sound right. They had planned to acupuncture session together and Jerry was asking when and where, and her sister knew that she knew these questions that didn't need to be answered, and in the background, she heard some kids playing outside, and so Barley early on recognized the fact that at Hertel's house that is dad owned, there was right next to a school across the street
with a yard where the kids played. And so the focus starts going in on her Tail, and within a two weeks they located Jerry's car within a few blocks of her Tail's house. Now, they never did come up with Hertael's fingerprints in that car, but Jerry had been a meticulous records keeper and she documented when she filled up for gas and the mileage, and it was right
before she went over to edit her Tail's palace. Miley said that anyway, and then the mileage log showed that you could drive that car to ed her Tail's house and then over to where it was dumped. And so that was a significant part in this investigation.
So they realize they have a guy that maybe a safety risk, and she's staying with his grandma, So they devise a way to safely be able to execute this arrest. Tell us about that, and again the.
Journey, they knew that Vertail had said that if two or more officers show up my door, they'll be gunplay something that effect. He was living in this duplex of that his dad owned, and this neighbor guy living on the other side of the duplex kept smelling something bad, something rotting, and he confronted ed with that, and Ed said some cacid diyt in the crawl space and he did clean him up, which of course the smell never went away. That was another big thing about what was
going on here. But Hertail was heavy into guns. He had thousands of rams of ammunition. He'd been investigated in a pipe bombing thing. I mentioned that with that cannon thing and get charged with explosives, and so they were concerned that he had bombs in that house. They're concerned that he didn't have a weapon on him and that sort of thing. So they wanted to get him stopped and somewhat in custody or at least question him at that point in time before they hit the house with
a search warrant. They had a search warrant for the house, and they had one for his car, and so Detective Barley and another detective set up on his mother's house because they knew they were aware that he was staying with his mother. She was sick. And finally, at eleven o'clock that morning, Urtill gets in his car, drives by them and gives them the NOD recognized that he was
being watched. It was an unmarked car. They were not in uniform, but he was that pinked up, and they finally got him pulled over and he jumped out of his car. They get out of their car. He didn't have any weapons, and they told him what was going on. There was a search warrant going on in his house, there was impounding his car for a search warrant, and he never asked what they were looking for.
Now you have him, were getting ready for trial here, and the preliminary is there's enough evidence to obviously proceed to trial. While he's in custody. During a preliminary an interesting exchange happens based on the idea that they feel he may be suicidal. So they call a nurse, Kathy, and she is concerned for her safety, so she has an officer accompanied them, and they and he has a she has an interview with hertel tell us about this crucial conversation.
Absolutely, and so, uh, let me step back for a minute. At that search warrant, they find Jerry mcavie's body under that house, in the crawl space, rotting away, buried in about a foot of dirt. And so in the sense that there's the smoking gun, it's hard to explain your dead girlfriend's body in your house. And so that was
that was the big deal. Now. He was arrested that night on first degree murder, and at some point in time he got wigged out and one of the correctional officers was worried that he was a suicidal risk, so he brought in a nurse to interviewing, and she was very afraid to be with this accused murderer in the same room, and so she asked for a deputy to end. So the deputy's standing nearby, I'm sure he had his arms crossed. I'm sure he's watching this guy for any movement,
and Ed Hurtel says, I killed my girlfriend. I killed Jerry mcavee. Now, the interview between the nurse and her tail would be privileged information that nurse could not testify, but with the deputy overhearing that confession, that was admissible. So Ed Hurtail was facing the death penalty in Colorado, and it was a case made out of steel. As I put it in the book, here's this rotting body under the floorboards, here's this confession in front of a
correctional officer. And at one point in time, his attorney in Colorado tried to point the finger at Nancy Cummings's sons that went over there, killed Jerry McFee and put the body under his house to frame him, which was I'm sure that the steam coming out of that magic bottle drifted to the line rather quickly, but so anyway,
there it was. And once again Urtaeil's attorney tried to use the insanity defense and other Colorado It did not work, and so eventually ed Heardtel pled guilty to second degree murder.
What was the sentence for him? And as you write, when's his mandatory release date?
The sentence was the maximum. The judge gave him forty years the maximum for a second degree homicide, and she mentioned his how dangerous he was in society to society and mentioned how much he hated Blacks and Jews as part of that sentence. And so he got that forty years. He'll be out in twenty thirty seven. He'll be seventy years old.
He was asked, you write just interestingly why he killed Jerry and his reasoning for that.
He justified it to that nurse that the cops were always putting the heat on him and they kind of were nothing unjustly, but he blamed it on the cops. That's why he killed Jerry McBee. He's never, to my knowledge, admitted to killing Nancy Cummings. You know, there was an alleged jailhouse confession here in sam And while he was being held here, but I don't put much weight in that. It could have been happened. It could just been another convict trying to get some kind of reduced sentence for
coming up with a story. But he I think it's I think he doesn't even want to admit to himself that he killed Nancy Cummings.
Yeah, you write in the epilogue before the end, you write that you did about fifty interviews and you attempted to speak to Enter Tel.
He wished you would have been able to speak the Cliff.
I'll just tell us about some of the people that you would have liked to have spoken to and the most profound things that you heard during this entire project.
Well, I spoke to Nancy and Cliff's kids, and that really grabbed at me, because you know, this is this murder happened twenty seven years ago, and here I've talked to an adult people that males, males are not supposed to be too emotional, twenty seven years after the fact, and they're hold one of them's crying. Everyone is trying to hold back from crying, and to this day it
just bothers them deeply. And it really struck me that there's no blocks to put the fact that your mother, your wife, your grandmother was murdered over sex or lack of sex and dumped beside a road and covered in rocks. To this day, those people, it really grinds on them that it happened. I mean, it's just it's been eating them for decades. And I would have loved to have ed Heartel's father talk to me, but he's deceased and I doubt you would have talked to me. He didn't
believe ed had killed Nancy Cummings. And then on the night of the search horn, at ten o'clock at night, he turns the news on and sees that Jerry mcabee's body has been found in the cross base of his house where his kid is living. And he drove over to the guy who still working the scene and said he had me fooled. So in all these interviews there was forty six interviews, some of them were really a gut wrenching stories. You know, a murder just doesn't, as
I say, doesn't end at sentencing. That murder story just goes on and just eats the people in Northfark, Idaho. To this day, the place has not been the same. There hasn't been another murder in twenty seven years. People locked their doors, people have pistols sitting beside their beds. It's all because of Ed Hortel and the killing of Nancy Cummings.
Yes, I want to thank you very much Tony H.
Latham for coming on and talking about Under a Cold Moon, a Chronicle of an Unrequited Killer. It's been fascinating for those that might want to take a look, get more information. Is there somewhere where they might take a look and tell us when this book was released.
It was published last month in May, and it's availed plug in the Amazon Jungle of course, both in print and candle, and sometime wipe this fall, I'll have it as an audiobook and I'm going to go ahead and narrate this one myself.
Oh that'd be great. Thank you very much, Tony H.
Latham.
Under a Cold Moon, a Chronicle of an Unrequited Killer.
Thank you very much, and you have a great evening. Good night.
Thanks so much, Dan for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Thank you. Good night,