Heath led Sergeant White through the house to a freezer on the back porch. She opened it and pointed to a large frozen salmon inside.
“That’s what he used to beat me with,” Heath said.
“That must’ve hurt,” said White, as he noticed a meat saw hanging from the wall.
“Hell, yes, it hurt!” replied Heath. “How would you like ta get hit in the head with a ten-pound frozen fish?”
A closer look revealed fresh blood and tissue on the blade of the meat saw. It was also covered with hair, which White—an avid hunter—recognized as deer.
“This ain’t the first time he hit me,” said Heath.
“This looks like deer hair,” mumbled White, not paying attention to Heath’s ceaseless blabbering.
“That’s from that doe that Alvis brought home the other night. He skinned it out and butchered it on the patio in back.”
“Is this venison here in the freezer?”
“That’s all from the same deer.”
Sergeant White radioed his dispatcher and asked her to contact Warden Szody. Szody happened to be on patrol in the area and responded to Heath’s Rio Dell residence within minutes. Mary Heath and Sergeant White met Szody at the front door. “I think we have something you might be interested in,” said White.
White and Heath led Szody to the back porch, where he examined the meat saw and identified the deer hair. Sergeant White then pointed out the deer meat in the freezer and led Szody to the backyard, where someone had recently skinned out a deer. In addition to the homemade gambrel—a frame used to hang game by the legs during the butchering process—there were scattered bits and pieces of deer hide, tissue, dried blood and hair.
“I’ll start bagging this stuff up if you want to put out a BOLO (be on the lookout) on Musser,” said Szody.
“You got it,” replied White.
Just as Sergeant White and Warden Szody were leaving the Heath residence, Alvis Musser came driving up the street. Right behind Musser was a Rio Dell police unit that had responded to the BOLO and recognized Musser’s rusted-out old pickup. The officer, assisted by White and Szody, dropped Musser face down on the pavement and applied the cuffs without incident. Musser was charged with assault with a deadly weapon (ADW)—not a gun this time, but a frozen salmon.
Musser, still on parole, was sent back to prison for a minimum of ten years and never heard from again.
Chapter Twelve
Big Night at Bull Creek
Sometime during the fall of 1982, Warden Dave Szody planned an all-night stakeout for deer poachers on Bull Creek Road, in Humboldt County. He was accompanied by his friend, off-duty Rio Dell Police Sergeant Pat White.
On this particular evening, Warden Szody picked up Sergeant White at the Rio Dell Police Station, just after White had finished his eight-hour shift. Pat was still wearing his police uniform when he climbed into Szody’s patrol truck. The county road that Szody decided to stake out that night was in a remote area of Petrolia, near the Mattole River. It was commonly used by poachers and internationally known for illegal marijuana cultivation.
About 11:00 p.m., the officers found a suitable place to hide their patrol vehicle, just off a logging road, behind some dense vegetation. The truck came to a stop on a downhill grade, far enough from Bull Creek so the rushing water wouldn’t drown out the sound of possible gunshots. Planning on a long night, Szody and White had brought along plenty of coffee and a giant-sized bag of unshelled peanuts. They kept awake during the first couple of hours by talking about many of the cases they had been involved in. When it came to police work, Pat White had a photographic memory: he could provide the name and physical description of every person he had ever arrested.
By 2:00 a.m., all traffic on the road had ceased, the floorboard of the patrol truck was covered with peanut shells and both officers were ready to head for home and a soft bed.
“Let’s give it five more minutes and get the hell out of here,” said Szody, as he stifled a yawn. Pat, whose eyes had been closed, was temporarily startled by Szody’s voice.
“That sounds good to me,” White replied.
Just then a loud report from a high-powered rifle echoed from the hill just above the two officers. “That was close!” said White. “It came from right behind us.”
The shot had actually come from a half mile away, but the sound was amplified in the quiet night air. A few minutes later, a pickup drove past the hidden patrol vehicle, headed downhill on the county road. With lights blacked out, Warden Szody put his green Dodge Power Wagon in gear and inched onto the county road behind the suspect vehicle. There was just enough moonlight to prevent the sleepy warden from driving off the road and crashing into a redwood tree.
Szody and White followed the vehicle for about a mile before deciding to stop the suspected deer poachers and avoid any possibility of their getting away with an illegal deer. Szody activated his red spotlight and lit up the back of their pickup with an overhead light that was mounted on the roof of his patrol truck. The suspects rolled for another quarter mile before finally pulling over to the right side of the road.
Through the rear cab window, Warden Szody and Sergeant White could see three heads. There were two rifles visible in the gun rack mounted to the inside of the cab. Szody radioed the stop to dispatch and White waited for him at the right front bumper of the patrol vehicle. They made their careful approach. White stopped at the right side of the tailgate and Szody focused on the driver from the westbound lane. Although both officers had done this many times before, there was always an element of anxiety—not knowing what to expect.
Sergeant White saw that the bed of the suspects’ pickup was filled with freshly harvested marijuana plants and advised Warden Szody by loudly calling out, “11357.” Section 11357 of the California Health and Safety Code provided criminal sanctions for the unlawful possession of marijuana.
The scene had turned into a felony stop. Warden Szody drew the .357 Magnum revolver from his holster. With a flashlight in his other hand, he ordered the driver out of the truck. As the driver stepped out of the pickup, hands in the air, Szody could see a rifle resting on the driver’s seat with the barrel pointed toward the floorboard.
“There’s a rifle. Cover me!” Szody said.
White provided cover while Szody cuffed the driver and instructed him to sit on the ground at the side of the road. When the driver was secured, White directed his attention to the passenger in the right-front seat. “You, on the passenger side of the pickup, come out with your hands in the air where I can see them!” shouted White. The man did as he was told. White cuffed him and ordered him to sit at the side of the road, next to the driver.
Both officers turned their attention to the man still sitting in the middle of the cab. In spite of all the noise and confusion, he appeared to be asleep or passed out. They had one more concern—this man was huge. They guessed the giant Samoan’s weight at well over three hundred pounds and, unless he had unusually short legs, he was at least six feet six inches tall.
Nothing is easy, thought Szody, as he pondered what to do next. This guy could very well be faking and waiting to grab one of us.
The behemoth was slumped over in the seat and snoring loudly, so Szody took a chance and poked him with his baton. Like a bear roused from its lair, the man grunted and opened his eyes. Without turning his head, he directed his eyes toward the uniformed officer who was standing in the doorway, a baton in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
Szody motioned with his finger for the man to slide across the seat and step out of the truck. Without a word, the man followed Warden Szody’s instructions; he was so stoned he could barely function. Somehow the officers managed to get him seated on the ground next to his buddies. The man’s wrists were so large that traditional handcuffs would not fit. Luckily, Szody kept plastic flex cuffs in a box behind his seat. They would have to do.
With all three of the suspects sitting on the ground between the two trucks, Warden Szody and Serg
eant White began searching their vehicle. They started with the pickup bed, where White had already identified a large number of marijuana plants. A very large four point buck was lying between the side wall and a muddy ATV. It was warm to the touch and still oozing blood. This deer had been the target of the recent shot Szody and White had heard.
“You guys have been busy,” said Szody, as he discovered two more freshly killed bucks lying under some camping gear and a mountain of marijuana stalks. “Pat, I’ll keep an eye on these guys if you want to search the cab.”
“Whoa!” exclaimed White, as he stuck his head inside the cab. Even with both doors wide open, the overwhelming stench of marijuana permeated the truck’s interior. “No wonder these guys are messed up.”
Sergeant White removed three fully loaded rifles, with live rounds in all three chambers. He gingerly unloaded the weapons and placed them inside the Fish and Game patrol truck. Returning to the deer poachers’ pickup, he looked under and behind the bench seat. “Looks like we’ve got some bud here,” said White, as he uncovered another forty pounds of marijuana. A spotlight, which had obviously been used to take the three deer, was still hot to the touch and lying on the floorboard.
When all the evidence had been inventoried, Szody and White shook their heads in disbelief.
“All three of ’em are stoned,” Sergeant White said. “That big guy must have smoked pounds of the stuff to be as messed up as he is.”
Warden Szody radioed dispatch and requested that a caged sheriff’s unit join them to transport the three suspects to the county jail in Eureka. A tow truck was also dispatched to transport the poachers’ pickup to the Fish and Game yard for storage and further inventory.
By the time Szody and White headed home, it was almost daylight. Both officers were exhausted, but adrenaline still coursed through their veins. “You know what those idiots did?” said White, as he began analyzing the situation. “They were out poaching deer when they stumbled onto someone else’s marijuana grove. After dark, they came back to steal the plants. I wouldn’t be surprised if they broke into a cabin or a barn to get at the dried stuff.”
Their conversation continued until daylight, when Szody and White reached the Rio Dell Police Department. Szody dropped White off in the parking lot, where his personal pickup was still sitting. “Good thing you’re off today,” said Szody. “Be careful going home and thanks for everything.”
The next morning, Warden Szody filed formal criminal complaints against the three deer poachers. They were charged with felony possession of marijuana, unlawful take and possession of three deer and having loaded rifles in their vehicle while on a public thoroughfare. No one ever reported a cabin break-in, for obvious reasons.
Because the subjects did not have prior criminal records, their sentences were minimal. One of them received a year in the county jail and the other two did six months.
Apparently the driver, Ronald James Limacher, liked jail so much that he wanted to go back. A year or so later, he saw Pat White driving through town in the Whites’ family car— took several shots at him—hitting the car several times. The off-duty policeman wheeled around and chased after Limacher, who fled the scene in his pickup. Although Limacher escaped at the time, he was eventually arrested, convicted in court and sent to state prison.
Chapter Thirteen
Night Patrol on Lake Shasta
Having spent a few years in the damp, marijuana-infested forests of Humboldt County, Warden Dave Szody saw an opening and took it. He applied for a recently vacated warden’s position in my lieutenant’s district. Szody’s new patrol district would cover the mountainous southeast portion of Shasta County, fulfilling a lifelong dream he and his wife had of living in the mountains. They moved to the small mountain community of Shingletown in September of 1983.
It had been almost five years since Warden Szody and I had worked together. We took up our friendship where it had left off, although I was now officially Szody’s supervisor. One warm fall evening we hopped into the Shasta Lake patrol boat and headed east on California’s largest reservoir. This mammoth body of water is fed by three major rivers—the Sacramento, the McCloud and the Pit. Several smaller year-round streams and hundreds of ephemeral streams also flow into the lake.
Deer season was open and it was not uncommon for someone to go out in a boat and spotlight a nice buck. Deer were all over the shore and they had become accustomed to house-boaters feeding them everything from peanut butter sandwiches to ice cream bars.
Szody and I managed to patrol the Dry Creek arm and a portion of the main lake before dark. We contacted a few fishermen, but saw no one who had killed a deer or looked as if they intended to. By the time we reached the confluence of the Pit River and Squaw Creek, the sunlight had disappeared and a partial moon peeked over the treetops. The lights of Jones Valley Marina were visible to the south, and we saw nothing but a half mile of glassy smooth water in all other directions. I cut the engine and we came to a stop in the middle of the lake. With all lights turned off, Szody and I would sit and wait for the telltale sound of gunshots in the distance. On a still night such as this one, the slightest sound would carry across the water and be heard for miles.
All we heard during the first two hours of our all-night stakeout were our own voices. It was about 11:00 p.m., when we noticed the running lights of a small skiff coming out of Jones Valley Marina. Instead of heading up the Pit River or the Squaw Creek arm of the lake, the boat came to a stop about two hundred yards from the south shore—a good half mile from where we were sitting. The operator of the boat cut the motor; the silence was interrupted by the splash of an anchor being dropped over the side.
Bored from the inactivity, Szody and I focused our binoculars on these recent arrivals. That particular night, we did not have a night vision scope, which turned out to be a good thing. The brilliant beam of an overhead lantern suddenly lit up the distant skiff. Anyone watching with a night scope could have sustained serious eye damage.
“It looks like four people are on board,” whispered Szody. “They’re getting ready to do some fishing.” Although the boat was lit up like a Christmas tree, the occupants would not be able to see anything outside the immediate glow of the lantern. We were looking for deer poachers, but watching these fishermen would at least keep us awake until something more exciting came along.
Szody and I continued to watch the four fishermen. Based on the high pitch of some of the voices we heard and all the giggling, we guessed that two of them were women. As midnight approached, a slight breeze caused our boat to drift ever closer. The only sounds on the entire lake seemed to be raucous laughter coming from the lit-up skiff. When we drifted within a hundred yards, their voices came through loud and clear. Szody and I were finally ten yards outside the beam of their lantern when we heard one of the women say, “You know Nancy and I don’t have fishing licenses. What happens if a game warden catches us?”
“You think a game warden is going to be out here at this time of night?” replied the man sitting next to her, laughing.
“The game wardens are all home in bed,” offered the man at the opposite end of the skiff.
“I hope you’re right,” said Nancy.
All four subjects were holding fishing rods, with lines in the water, as we finally drifted into the beam of their overhead lantern. The man in the stern of the boat was in the middle of a joke when he noticed the two uniformed officers watching him from ten feet away. His jaw dropped as Warden Szody said, “How is everybody doing?”
No one responded. The men stared in disbelief and the women directed angry looks at their respective boyfriends.
“Do you all have your fishing licenses?” asked Szody. Of course he already knew the answer to that question. As expected, the two men produced current licenses and the two women just sat there, eyes flashing daggers. The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife, when a distant shot rang out. The resonating report of a high powered rifle echoed across the water.
> Szody and I swiveled our necks toward the Pit Arm of the lake, where the shot had come from. “I hope you folks have learned your lesson,” I said. “Game wardens never sleep.” I turned the ignition key and dropped the patrol boat into gear. In seconds we were headed east and out of sight.
The shot seemed to have originated in Clickapudi Inlet, a half mile up the Pit Arm of Shasta Lake. As we approached the mouth of the inlet, I cut the motor. From that point forward, we would black out and drop the running speed to a barely audible level. It was 1:00 a.m. and a half moon lit the way, preventing the patrol boat from running aground or hitting one of the many tree snags that filled the inlet at low water.
For the first quarter mile, there was no sign of activity. We rounded the second bend and still saw no light and no other boat. I was concerned that we had misread the direction of the shot and wasted valuable time investigating the wrong inlet. Just then, Szody tapped me on the shoulder and whispered that he heard something up ahead. I maintained the boat’s current speed for a few more yards and completely cut the engine. Our forward momentum carried us toward the east shore.
Szody and I climbed out of the boat and quietly tied the bow to a nearby snag. On foot, we crept toward a point overlooking the end of the cove. As I had done many times before, I cautioned Szody to step carefully and watch out for snakes. It was still warm enough for rattlers and the driftwood that littered the shoreline made ideal habitat.
A man’s voice resounded in the quiet night air. “Bring me a rag.”
I directed my binoculars toward the voice and could barely make out a human figure at the water’s edge. About thirty yards to the right, the beam of a flashlight moved in the direction of the human figure. “I think that guy is gutting a deer,” I whispered. We decided to be patient and let things play out.
Twenty minutes went by and the man at the water’s edge began washing his hands. Both subjects grabbed whatever it was that they had been working on and dragged it across the ground in a westerly direction. I suspected it was a deer, but it could have been a pig, a young elk or even a mountain lion. I had recently arrested three men for shooting a mountain lion on Backbone Ridge, about a mile to the south. “One, two, three,” commanded a voice in the darkness. We heard the thud of a heavy object landing on the deck of a boat. “Throw that tarp over it,” said the same voice.
Badges, Bears, and Eagles Page 13
