For three weeks forensic experts gave contradictory testimony about whether Patricia would have or could have stumbled and fallen over the edge of the switchback, and how she might have tumbled down the steep rock face. A professor of exercise science insisted that if Patricia had slipped or tripped, she would have fallen forward instead of sideways. A forensic engineer said that a wide range of issues, from vertigo to physical exhaustion, could have swayed Patricia as much as forty-five degrees in any direction. The prosecution pushed for claims that Patricia’s fear of heights would have made her avoid the edge, while the defense showed photos of Patricia rappelling down a rock face, implying that the prosecution exaggerated Patricia’s phobia—if she had one at all.
Blood spatter experts disagreed on whether the bloodstains found at the scene could tell them whether Patricia had slipped and fallen down the canyon wall, or whether she had been pushed and had fallen through the air. One said that she was already bleeding before she fell, and that four bloodstains in an elliptical pattern showed that she was “vaulted out” over the edge of the cliff. Another said that the patterns were consistent with a tumble after slipping and falling, and abrasions on Patricia’s hands were consistent with testimony that she simply slipped and fell. This disagreement became a central focus of the case for the defense: “How she fell I don’t know, and [prosecutors] don’t know,” Yengich said in his closing statement. “There’s reasonable doubt there. This is about a tragedy that occurred in a world that does not exist in blacks and whites. There are shades of gray, and accidents do happen.”
James Bottarini concurred, testifying on his own behalf on the last two days of the trial. “I did not kill my wife,” he said, his eyes filled with tears. “There’s no possible way that I would want my wife dead.”
On Tuesday, November 26, 2002, after ten hours of deliberation, jurors in the case handed down their verdict: They acquitted James Bottarini of all the charges against him. One of the jurors told the media that the acquittals were the “result of a misunderstanding rather than an overwhelming sense of Bottarini’s innocence,” reporter Angie Welling wrote in the Deseret News on December 4. The juror told Welling that the jury misread the lengthy instructions they were given by the judge and believed that “their inability to come to a unanimous verdict of guilt had to result in a default acquittal.” Ten of the twelve jurors believed that Bottarini killed his wife, the juror said, but still found him not guilty because they believed they were not permitted to let the trial end with a hung jury.
The juror’s statement to the media opened the door to additional speculation and ways to find a court that would rule that Bottarini was guilty. Civil lawsuits from Patricia’s family, the insurance company, and the guardian appointed to see to the children’s financial affairs continued to follow Bottarini for years following his acquittal, both to prevent him from receiving any benefits from his wife’s death and to attempt to find him responsible for the death in the less stringent forum of a civil court, where a majority of jurors—rather than a unanimous jury—could find him guilty.
I contacted the Superior Court of California and obtained a copy of the February 10, 2005 decision in the case brought by TOBO Investment Partnership, the real estate company owned by Patricia’s family, against James Bottarini, and the cross-complaint Bottarini filed against TOBO Investments. The cross-complaint also named David H. Dougan III, the guardian ad litem appointed by the court to represent the Bottarinis’ two sons.
In the settlement agreement, James Bottarini dropped his countersuit against Dougan, and Dougan waived the boys’ rights to the property owned by Patricia’s family. Most significant, however, is item 4 in the terms of the agreement: “Each party hereto agrees that the promises, covenants, and releases contained herein are not, and are not to be deemed or constructed as, an admission of any misconduct or fault of any kind whatsoever; but are to be constructed strictly as a compromise and settlement of all disputes between the parties for the purpose of avoiding further controversy, litigation, and expense.”
So the civil court did not retry Bottarini for his wife’s death, and he and his sons received no proceeds from his wife’s family’s business interests. And that, apparently, was the end of that.
A Tent in the River
When twenty-three-year-old Arizona State University senior John Goebel and his friend Sarah Toler embarked on a spring break camping trip to Zion National Park in 2004, they probably planned a quiet week of hiking and exploring throughout the magnificent park.
On the evening of March 15, however, two campers from Alaska heard the friends arguing in their campsite near the Virgin River, just outside the park. They kept an eye on the situation, and around midnight they determined that Goebel was not entirely in control of himself. They “helped Goebel into his tent,” they would later explain to authorities, and bedded down in their own tent for the night.
“When they woke up, his tent was gone,” Washington County sheriff’s chief deputy Rob Tersigni told the media days later. “They figured he had gone hiking or something.”
Thirty-six hours passed, but Goebel did not return. Toler finally reported to authorities that he was missing at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 17. She apparently left the park soon after, perhaps believing that her friend had deserted her in the park.
The next morning, police found a zipped-up tent lying in the Virgin River, pressed up against a large rock. Goebel’s body was inside.
Toler turned up in a bus station in Las Vegas, where police took her into custody and questioned her. She told them that Goebel had been drinking heavily on the evening of March 15, and tried to pressure her into having “more of a relationship.” She assured him she was not interested in this. She enlisted the two men from Alaska to help her get Goebel into his sleeping bag, and went to sleep in her own. None of them saw Goebel again.
A medical examination determined that Goebel had water in his lungs, but the medical examiner did not say conclusively that he had drowned. Authorities believe he died sometime on Tuesday, March 16.
Toler was released and was “not considered a suspect,” according to Tersigni.
Goebel did not appear to have any significant trauma on his body, so the medical examiner proceeded with toxicology tests. While the Utah medical examiner does not share results with the media, the sheriff’s office in Springdale did inform me that based on the medical examiner’s report, the death was ruled an accident.
Chapter 8
On the Road: Vehicular Deaths
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in August 1937, twenty-two-year-old Clair L. Hirschi of Rockville, Utah, chose to enjoy the day with a motorcycle ride through Zion National Park.
When he reached the turn onto the Virgin River bridge at the intersection of the canyon highway and the Zion–Mt. Carmel Tunnel road, he failed to negotiate the turn. Hirschi and his motorcycle plunged over the embankment and fell into the canyon at machine speed.
People who saw the accident acted quickly to summon help, but when emergency personnel arrived and transported Hirschi to Zion Lodge, the nurse in charge there had no choice but to pronounce him dead. The staff summoned Dr. E. Clark McIntyre from Hurricane to make the final diagnosis: Hirschi had died on impact of a broken neck, apparently because he was not experienced in riding and handling this particular vehicle.
The story of a young man dying needlessly on a summer day would be sad enough, but on closer examination, the Hirschi story dives to unusual lows. Clair Hirschi left behind a young wife and a two-month-old baby. Ten days earlier, his father, Heber, had attended a baseball game at a tournament in nearby Hurricane, and found himself in the path of a fly ball that struck the side of his head, leaving him with a severe injury. And a day after that, Clair’s younger brother Arden “was badly injured by a runaway team at Grafton,” the Washington County News reported. Another media source said that Arden died of his injuries as well.
; Fortunately, young Mrs. Hirschi’s parents arrived from California for the funeral (along with many other out-of-town relatives, friends, and even staff members of the local paper, at what was reported to be a very well-attended event), and we can hope that they were ready to look after the young bride and her baby thereafter.
While motor vehicle accidents are not uncommon in Zion—motorists staring at magnificent views instead of at the road find themselves in fender benders and minor mishaps along the park’s scenic drives—I could find only three that actually resulted in a death in the park. This does not include the ones that took place in the Zion–Mt. Carmel Tunnel (detailed in chapter 6), although these still add only five deaths to the list.
Those who met their end in a motor vehicle include assistant chief ranger Fred E. Bergemeyer, a thirty-nine-year-old firefighter on his way to do his valuable and courageous job in the park on August 23, 1952. While rushing to “a fire reportedly burning high on the east rim of the canyon” at about 4:30 p.m. on a rugged park trail used only for firefighting, the weapons carrier he was driving hit a patch of mud. He lost control and the rig flipped over and rolled, killing Bergemeyer instantly.
Through a miraculous stroke of good fortune, park ranger Joseph Romberg, who was also in the vehicle, was not injured in the accident. He ran to an emergency telephone and called park headquarters for assistance, but nothing could be done for the assistant ranger. Bergemeyer grew up in Nora Springs, Iowa, graduated from Iowa State College at Ames, and had been a forest ranger ever since. He left behind his wife, Diane, and their two sons: Jerry, who was seven, and five-year-old Michael.
Mystery Rollovers
Not every accident has a clear cause, and investigations do not always reveal answers. This was the case on July 23, 1967, when a family from Columbus, Ohio, suddenly veered off Utah Route 15 two miles inside Zion National Park and plummeted seventy feet to the bottom of a ravine.
In the front seat, Jean Helen Newman, who was thirty-seven years old, died at the scene of the accident. Her husband, John William Newman, was driving the vehicle and died two hours later in a hospital in Kanab. Their twelve-year-old son, John, survived the crash with only minor injuries, but United Press International reported that his younger brother Thomas, who was ten, was in critical condition the following day.
The media tells us no more about this family, and any record of a continuing investigation has long been lost.
An accident of a similar kind in 2013, however, made national news as the first of its kind in American history. On July 26 the Model T Ford Club International held its annual driving tour in Zion National Park, and saw its first-ever accident with a fatality.
A 1915 Ford Model T, driven by a nineteen-year-old from Minnesota, pulled to the side of Utah Route 9 at about 10:20 a.m. to allow faster traffic to pass it on its way into the park. When the driver tried to get the vehicle back onto the pavement, investigators said, he “didn’t negotiate the small dirt slope properly, and the added weight and stress on the tires caused the wooden spokes on the right front wheel to collapse.”
Then “the vehicle flipped,” the Utah Highway Patrol reported to the Associated Press. Sergeant LaMar Heaton said to the Deseret News, “A modern car with the safety features . . . it wouldn’t have had any problem getting back on the road.”
The Model T did not have seat belts, but this may have been irrelevant, Model T experts interviewed by the AP said. “Restraints are of little use in the soft-top vehicle that typically travels at no more than 30 mph,” according to the article. Added Andy Loso, vice president of the Minnesota T-Totalers club, “There’s no rollover protection.”
Four people were in the antique automobile, which had a soft top that was crushed in the accident. All four were ejected from the vehicle, and fifty-one-year-old Karen Johnson, president of the T-Totalers car club in Minnesota, was seriously injured. Paramedics worked for an hour to try to revive her at the scene, but she did not regain consciousness.
Johnson’s husband, Tim, was in another antique car some distance ahead, trooper Jalaine Hawkes reported to the Deseret News. He came back to find her and learned the news of the accident, and he was at her side as she was airlifted to the nearest hospital, where she passed away.
The other passengers included the Johnsons’ son and twelve-year-old granddaughter, as well as the driver. They all suffered injuries but survived the incident.
Tour chairman Russ Furstnow said that the club members—many of whom were in attendance and driving the 170 Model T Fords in the tour—were “extremely upset about the whole thing.” He said the club, which has members all over the world, is “a family,” and there had never been an accident on one of its tours.
That summer, the club had driven along the Grand Canyon and on the seventeen-mile driving route in Bryce Canyon National Park. “The Model T is just a social medium,” he said. “It brings people together that have a love for these old cars. We have these summer reunions and it’s almost like an extended family.”
Karen Johnson was “outgoing, caring, just a wonderful lady—a definite sparkplug,” Furstnow told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which reaches the Johnsons’ hometown of Owatonna, Minnesota.
Loso noted that the Johnsons worked together restoring cars, and that they did an excellent job maintaining their vehicles. “Karen was always in the garage working on things, getting dirty. She’d grab the other women and bring them in and try to teach them stuff.”
Wreckage on a Rainy Night
In a Friday night rainstorm on the northeast boundary of Zion’s northernmost unit, Kolob Canyon, the pilot of a single-engine Cessna 172RG reported that the plane was “taking on ice.”
The message came through to the Los Angeles Flight Control Center at 7:56 p.m. on November 6, 1987, just before the plane disappeared from radar. The pilot, twenty-four-year-old Brad Woolsey, also radioed that clouds now obscured his vision. He abruptly descended from 10,500 feet to 8,500 feet, bringing the plane into direct line with the terrain on the canyon edge.
The plane had left Prescott, Arizona, for a flight to Rexburg, Idaho, with passengers Glen Campbell, who was twenty-three, and twenty-four-year-old Michelle Keller. Before takeoff the pilot was briefed about light to moderate rime icing in the clouds and precipitation, and he learned that the freezing level was forecast to be at about seven thousand to nine thousand feet in the Prescott area—and lower as the plane traveled north. Woolsey maintained regular contact with flight control, gathered additional weather information, and finally indicated that he would head to Cedar City rather than continue to Idaho that night.
“At 1962 MST, the pilot inquired about the distance to Cedar City and was told it was at his one o’clock position at 23 miles,” the NTSB transcript reads (I’ve spelled out the abbreviations in this transcript). “He acknowledged and this was his last known transmission.”
A search on Monday, November 9, used the “computer footprints” created by the Cessna’s altitude and coding transponder and sent to the Flight Control Center in Los Angeles as it entered the park. A pilot from the Civil Air Patrol in Salt Lake City and an army helicopter from Dugway Proving Ground, ninety miles southwest of Salt Lake City, followed these signals to the crash site in the canyon.
“We had a pilot flying these precise footprints as it entered the park,” said Lieutenant Robert Smith of the Civil Air Patrol to the Arizona Republic. “Then he flew the plane wherever it would go after reaching that last point.” The lower-flying helicopter assisted the pilot and ground crews—including search and rescue personnel on horseback and in all-terrain vehicles—in locating the wreckage. Working together, the Washington County search teams found the crashed plane at about 2:00 p.m., and reached it by 3:00 p.m. The pilot and the two passengers had died in the crash.
“It collided with trees on wooded terrain at an elevation of about 8050',” the NTSB transcript concluded. “No pre-impact mechanic
al problem was found.”
A dark night, high terrain, adverse weather, a low cloud ceiling, and the trees were all factors in bringing this plane down on the edge of Zion’s high country, according to the NTSB report.
Chapter 9
Unclassified: Deaths by Unusual Causes
Back before Zion became a national park, the canyon served as a cornucopia of natural resources for the handful of hardy souls who chose to settle there. It provided fresh water for growing food and hydrating livestock, stone for solid foundations of homes, and trees that could become lumber for building shelters, barns, and fences to allow settlers to establish homesteads in this gorgeous landscape. The new arrivals in the late 1890s and early 1900s chose this rugged place despite the potential hardships of drought, rock slides, intense summer heat, and difficulty in obtaining goods and materials that made living easier in America at the turn of the twentieth century. They wanted a different kind of life, and they were not afraid of the hard physical labor required to achieve it.
One of the tools the settlers created was the cable works, a mechanism to convey lumber from the vast yellow pine forest at the top of the canyon down to the burgeoning town below. David Flanigan, one of the residents, built a sawmill at the mountaintop, but he needed a way to bring his freshly hewn lumber down to the waiting families in Springdale and beyond. He came up with the idea for a cable transport system that used a pulley at the top to allow loads to travel smoothly downward at a controlled pace.
The first structure, according to the history book Zion National Park by Tiffany Taylor, “contained a 12-foot-high by 8.5-foot-wide cribbing of sawn, squared timbers—each measuring 10 inches in diameter. This cribbing was joined together by dowels and contained a pulley over which the cable wire ran. The pulley had two tracks for the wire, and a braking mechanism was located about 30 feet to the side of the structure.”
Death in Zion National Park Page 13
