The Badges (2 cases)

When a dedicated Idaho game warden vanishes into the forest, its all hands on deck to find him. Then, nearly 90 years later the mystery is finally solved. The legacy of a fallen Texas game warden endures despite a questionable conclusion in court for his killer.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia Diambra. And the stories I'm going to tell you today are two separate crimes set nearly 30 years apart, but both have similar victims and circumstances. The first case happened in the summer of 1934, so quite a long time ago. It took place in Shoshone County, Idaho, which, according to the website wallaceid.fun, is an area rich in minerals and history. It's located on the eastern portion of the state's panhandle and is heralded as a great place to live, especially if you're raising a family. Some of the better-known attractions of the region are Black Magic Canyon, which has unique volcanic lava sculptures,

• 1:52Speaker 01

  and the Mammoth Cave, which features cave drawings from previous generations of visitors and residents. The second case I'm going to cover today took place near a wildlife bayou in eastern Texas known as Cow Bayou. According to the Texas State Historical Association, this natural area was historically regarded as a source of water for irrigation canals that fed area rice farms. In the early 20th century, it was used a lot to transport barges up and down large swaths of eastern Texas. But in 1963, a Texas game warden enforcing anti-poaching laws there lost his life in a crime that profoundly rocked residents and outdoor recreationalists.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  If you take one thing from today's episode, let it be this: You never know what someone is capable of when they're cornered. For some, the act of murder is as instinctual as a bird taking flight. This is Park Predators.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  On Tuesday evening, August 28, 1934, Ms. Alma Teed was at home in Mullen, Idaho with her sons, nervously waiting for her husband to walk through their front door. 39-year-old Ellsworth was the deputy game warden of Shoshone County, and he'd left around 7:30 that morning to investigate some recent reports of people harvesting deer out of season in an area in the southern part of the county known as Boulder Gulch. But lunchtime had passed, and then dinnertime, and Ellsworth had not come home. When the couple had last spoken, he'd told Alma that he planned to return to town by 2:00 PM to attend the funeral of a teenage boy from Mullen who'd passed away recently. But Ellsworth failed to make that service despite the fact that his car, a Model A Ford

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Coupe, had been found later in the day near Mountain View Cemetery in Boulder Gulch. It's not super clear from the source material whether this cemetery was where the teenage boy's funeral was gonna be, but additional reporting by the Coeur d'Alene Press explained that where Ellsworth's car was found was actually at a trailhead that led further into the hills. So, basically, a convenient access point to the landscape. When the car was discovered, it was locked, and his lunch and coat were still inside. It kind of looked like a scuffle or something had occurred at the spot, but no one really knew what to make of the situation. Alma knew that her husband missing the funeral he'd planned to attend was out of character for him, but she remained mostly unbothered throughout the early part of the day Tuesday

• 5:01Speaker 01

  because she figured something had just probably held him up at work. Normally, Ellsworth was good about letting his wife know if an investigative trip was gonna keep him away overnight. But in this instance, he hadn't done that. He'd also left his coat and lunch behind, which was another indication that he likely intended to return to his vehicle and be home before the end of the day. By nightfall on Tuesday, Alma had worried long enough, and so she reported her husband missing to the local authorities. The following morning, Wednesday, August 29th, a formal search party consisting of 15 to 20 men, led by a deputy sheriff, Mullen's police chief, and a state highway patrolman, set out toward Boulder Gulch to look for Ellsworth. That group searched for hours but didn't find the missing game warden.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, back in Mullen, Alma was growing more and more concerned for her husband's well-being. Initially, she and her friends thought he was probably just hurt somewhere and couldn't make it back to town to get help. It was either that or something more nefarious, because they were never on board with any kind of suggestion that maybe Ellsworth had become lost or gotten disoriented in the landscape. They knew he was intimately familiar with the outskirts of Mullen and the Boulder Gulch region specifically. So getting lost or disoriented were just not viable scenarios they thought made sense considering his experience as an outdoorsman.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  In the years prior to his disappearance, Ellsworth had moved his wife and sons north to Mullen from where he was originally from in Clearwater County, Idaho. At that time, he'd been working as a silver miner. At some point, though, he decided to switch career paths and took a job as a deputy game warden. That position was somewhat of a new gig in areas of the American West like Shoshone County. Idaho's Department of Fish and Game had been around since 1899, but the agency had a difficult time filling enforcement roles over the years. So unwilling to let such an important law enforcement figure for the area be gone without a trace, the search party for Ellsworth continued their efforts Wednesday evening and again Thursday morning. The group fanned out from where his car had been found and scoured the rugged terrain

• 7:07Speaker 01

  looking for clues. During that time, additional volunteers joined in, including a local Boy Scouts troop, an airplane, and even officers from the state game department armed with bloodhounds from the state penitentiary. But the results were the same: nothing. No sign of Ellsworth. The description of him that everyone was given was that he was bald, armed with a firearm, and had been wearing light clothing. As more and more time passed with no clues as to where he was, investigators, his wife Alma, and even people in the search parties began to speculate whether he'd been attacked by the very suspected poachers he'd set out to investigate. Of course, no one wanted the worst to be true, but it was a theory that made a lot of sense.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Coverage by the Coeur d'Alene Press stated, for example, that the weekend before Ellsworth vanished, authorities had chased a pair of suspected robbers into the hills outside of Mullen after they ran from a vehicle. When officers examined the car they abandoned, they discovered it contained a lot of revolvers and rifle shells. Basically, an ammunition cache. Anyone who knew Ellsworth knew that as Shoshone County's deputy game warden, he was serious about cracking down on people who broke the law. During the Great Depression, poaching cases had increased due to so many people living off the land for survival. But Ellsworth had had enough of poachers harvesting wildlife out of season, or anglers catching fish in higher volumes than what the law permitted.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Local residents respected him for his position on the issue and would even tip him off if they found evidence of someone poaching. In the summer of 1934, Ellsworth was heralded as the tip of the spear as far as game law enforcement went. And local newspapers like the Shoshone News Press made it clear that that particular summer, he was only beginning what would become a months-long initiative to stop poachers and anglers in their tracks. For example, during the last weekend of July, Ellsworth had set up a checkpoint in a ghost town, for lack of a better description, and stopped every driver, just checking to see for illegal game harvests. The Shoshone News Press reported that he'd parked in an area of elevation above the town and waited for travelers to come by.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  In just that one weekend, he'd stopped 17 vehicles and searched them for game violations. The following week, he wrote one man a citation for harvesting pheasants and fined him $25 plus court costs. And that kind of money back in 1934 was no chump change. It would equate to more than $600 in today's currency. An article by the Associated Press explained that Ellsworth's recent reports to the game department had detailed evidence of game violations happening in his jurisdiction, particularly involving deer that were believed to have been butchered and improperly disposed of.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  So with this information in the back of everyone's mind, people couldn't help but wonder if perhaps Ellsworth had been targeted. The Associated Press reported that late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning, so roughly 30 hours into the search, some volunteers had heard the distant crack of gunshots in the region. But no one knew whether the shots were unrelated, possibly Ellsworth trying to signal for help, or something more sinister.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  By Saturday, September 1st, several days into the search, evidence was found that confirmed poachers had been operating in the mountainous region outside of town. Searchers discovered dead game birds that had been harvested illegally, as well as mangled deer carcasses that had been placed in three shallow graves. Those discoveries were ominous signs that made officials begin to lose hope that Ellsworth was even still alive. But efforts to find him didn't fall off. In fact, quite the opposite happened. The total number of people involved in the search increased to almost 1,000 volunteers. Two of Ellsworth's sons, Wallace and Ford, and Ellsworth's brother Milo, had gotten involved, as well as shortwave radio operators, miners,

• 11:04Speaker 01

  men from the Civilian Conservation Corps, and pilots from as far away as Boise and Lewiston. Coverage about this case states that the search for Ellsworth was the largest to ever happen in the Coeur d'Alene District, and the biggest to ever be conducted up until that point in all of Shoshone County. Old mines were checked, in case the missing game warden had maybe fallen into or been put down one of those. Aircrafts also continued to fly over the forest and mountains, too, but no matter how hard everyone searched, not a lot was found. Other challenges for searchers were the treacherous nature of the landscape and brutal environmental conditions. Initial coverage from the case reported that forest fire warnings were in effect during the search. High winds and lots of dust made it difficult

• 11:49Speaker 01

  for the bloodhounds to track, and August's severe temperatures put the entire region under extreme risk for forest fires. But even with all those factors taken into account, the search pressed on. According to Bison Media Company's coverage of this case, during one of the subsequent searches, trackers with scent dogs found a few suspicious items near the mouth of an old mine, including several shotgun shell casings and a handkerchief with the initial "E" on it. But unfortunately, neither of those pieces of evidence were confirmed to belong to Ellsworth. So by the Monday after he vanished, things were looking bleak. A lot of people had made up their minds that he was probably dead and would likely never be found. But some

• 12:31Speaker 01

  law enforcement officials weren't so quick to throw in the towel. The local sheriff asked a few agencies in western Montana to help him keep looking, just in case Ellsworth had tracked the poachers he was looking for into Montana's boundary. But just like all the efforts before, that endeavor led nowhere, and Ellsworth's whereabouts remained unknown. A week after the disappearance, the Shoshone County Sportsman's Association offered up a $100 reward for information, which again, considering inflation, was a decent amount of money for the time. The president of the Sportsman's Association told the press that if Ellsworth had been targeted simply because he was a game warden who was enforcing the law, that was unacceptable. He emphasized that his organization would do everything

• 13:16Speaker 01

  it could to see poachers punished for violating gaming laws. And if law enforcement ever did find Ellsworth's body and determined he'd been murdered, the president of the association said he'd see to it that the perpetrators were apprehended and turned over to authorities.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  As time dragged on, the number of people involved in searching began to dwindle, and some local investigative agencies concluded that Ellsworth had likely succumbed to an injury in the wilderness. There was a tiny glimmer of hope when a guy seen hitchhiking in Montana was suspected of possibly being Ellsworth, but it was quickly determined that man was not the missing game warden. So, in an attempt to entice anyone with information to come forward, Ellsworth's sister in Canada offered up her own $300 reward. She set a time limit on it, though, and told the press that he was only good for 30 days. Towards the end of September, other wardens from the fishing game department had made it clear that they were not giving up on solving the mystery.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  They expressed to the Spokesman Review that there were new clues in the case. And there was, kind of. Turns out, two weeks before Ellsworth vanished, he'd taken out a life insurance policy on himself worth approximately $3,000. There's no reporting that goes into a lot of detail about this, so I don't think it was side-eyed as suspicious or anything. I'd personally love to know a lot more about it, but we just don't have any further info. But what I can tell you is, in early December, nearly four months into the investigation, investigators got their biggest break yet, when a tipster came forward claiming he knew where Ellsworth was.

• 15:01Speaker 01

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• 16:21Speaker 02

  One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  According to coverage by Bison Media Company and the Shoshone News Press, an anonymous source came forward during the first week of December 1934 and told authorities that back in mid-September, so just a few weeks after the disappearance, he'd seen Ellsworth Teed walking north on a highway in Republic, Washington, headed toward the Canadian border. For reference, the city of Republic is more than 200 miles northwest of Mullen and about 35 miles south of the US-Canada border. The tipster said that he and Ellsworth had stopped and chatted briefly. Officials who took this source's word wouldn't reveal publicly who he was, or if they'd found any evidence that supported his claim, but they did state that the tipster was someone who'd been acquainted with Ellsworth

• 18:11Speaker 01

  and formerly worked with him in the mining industry. The guy had also previously lived in Mullen, but currently resided in Spokane, Washington. In response to why their source had waited so long to report this alleged sighting of Ellsworth after his disappearance, the sheriff of Shoshone County told the newspaper, "This man did not give us the information before because he thought that Teed would be arrested if found. He did not want to be a squealer." The sheriff and another deputy game warden, who were the main guys steering the investigation at that point, felt confident, based on the tipster's information, that Ellsworth was still alive and likely living in Canada somewhere.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  They said as much to reporters, but it was reported that these officials were never actually able to find any proof that Ellsworth had gone to Canada. To his loved ones, the suggestion that he'd simply abandoned his life, his family, and a career he loved to take off to Canada seemed preposterous. By all accounts, he was content with his life, and, not to mention, had left his vehicle, personal belongings, and life insurance money behind. From the content I came across, it seems like the only connection that Ellsworth had to Canada was his sister, who, like I mentioned earlier, had put up a $300 reward for information in the case. The obvious question I asked myself was, "Why would she do that if she was, per instance, aiding Ellsworth?"

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Also, "Why would she put up the funds if she suspected for any reason that her brother had come to Canada to escape his life in Idaho?" I searched for answers to these questions in the coverage, but I couldn't find anything. And that's because there was a huge lull in reporting. Almost eight years went by before the case made headlines again. On February 6, 1942, Alma, Ellsworth's widow, won a civil suit against the insurance company that held his life insurance policy. By that point, it was widely assumed that Ellsworth was dead, but the company had not paid out. According to the coverage, a judge settled the issue once and for all when he decided that Alma was owed the $3,000 that was due to her and her children.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  The judge also legally declared Ellsworth deceased at that point.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Fast forward decades later, in May 2023, the Idaho Peace Officers Memorial officially recognized Ellsworth Peed as a fallen officer. The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington DC also added him to their registry. Almost one year later, in February 2024, the 89-year-old mystery of what happened to Ellsworth was finally answered. Turns out, when the Idaho Department of Fish and Game had been in the process of getting Ellsworth's name added to the fallen officers memorials, elsewhere in the Shoshone community, people had been talking with their relatives. And they kept talking, even after his name was added to the memorials in 2023. When the agencies in charge of honoring Ellsworth

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  put out the press releases about him being memorialized, several individuals came forward and told authorities a story they'd heard passed down in their families. A story about the killing of a game warden back in the 1930s. According to an article by the Coeur d'Alene Post Falls Press, investigators with the Shoshone County Sheriff's Office looked into the claims and realized there might be some credibility to them. Authorities pulled together all of the former law enforcement reports and newspaper articles about the case and successfully connected at least three people to the crime. One of those suspects was a man named George Pentland Jr. and his teenage son, John Robert Pentland, and John's friend, fellow teenager, Oscar Downing.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  How exactly these guys knew Ellsworth or what led up to them reportedly attacking him is information that the Shoshone County Sheriff's Office admits is still a bit murky. The agency explained to the Spokesman Review that four different people had come to them and shared that they'd been told by relatives that George and the two teens had been illegally harvesting deer in Boulder Gulch back in 1934. On the day Ellsworth vanished, they'd come in contact with the game warden, and George ultimately killed him and got Oscar and John to assist him in getting rid of the body. The folks who'd provided these accounts to the sheriff's office didn't seem to know one another, so the fact that all their stories appeared to align and named the same names made their claims that much more believable to authorities.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  The Sheriff's Office emphasized in 2024 that they were confident those three guys were involved in murdering Ellsworth and then hid his body somewhere in the vast terrain south of Mullen. Law enforcement officials had even cobbled together old forest maps to try and pinpoint where his remains could be. But they opted not to expend any further resources to attempt to recover his remains. Because they realized that after nearly 90 years in the forest with animal activity, fires, and decades of weather events, things had likely shifted a lot. The Sheriff's Office's final word on this case is that it's closed, and the prime suspect, George Pentland Jr., was the person believed to have been responsible.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  I found archival records online for George, which state that both he and his son John are now deceased. George died in 1964 in his early 70s, and John died in 2002 at the age of 79. While researching this case, I came across coverage by The Idaho Statesman of a man sharing the same name. According to that reporting, in September of 1929, about five years before Ellsworth's disappearance, a George Pentland Sr. and his son George Pentland Jr. had been part of a group of men charged with conspiracy to commit robbery for allegedly beating and robbing a woman for some checks and cash. Another relative of the Pentland family in that group was charged with illegal possession

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  of beaver hides, which authorities only found while trying to recover the items that had been stolen from the woman who was robbed. In May 1930, the George Pentland Jr. in that case was sentenced to one to 14 years in prison. However, he was released early, less than a year later, when the Idaho Pardon Board commuted his sentence. So if that George Pentland Jr. is the same one from the case I've been telling you about, that would mean he was a free man when he crossed paths with Ellsworth Teed in August of 1934.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  The obituary for John Pentland in the Coeur d'Alene Press stated that, "As an adult, John went on to work as a miner and logger in Idaho, but was disabled in the late 1960s. After that, he moved to Arkansas for a while before coming home to Idaho in the 1980s. While I was digging into old newspaper archives, I also found a man who shared the same name in an article by the Post-Register. That piece reported that in 1939, a John Pentland had been charged with petty larceny for taking a rifle and belongings from a cabin owned by a miner who died. For that offense, he was only given a 90-day sentence, which was suspended. I was unable to find much of anything that discussed what became of Oscar Downing,

• 25:15Speaker 01

  the third suspected accomplice in Ellsworth Teed's murder. But what I can tell you is that when law enforcement announced that those men were believed to be behind his disappearance and death, Ellsworth's descendants were glad to finally have some closure. When he vanished, his kids were young, the youngest being eight years old. Sadly, none of them were still around in 2024 to learn the news, but a family member named Melissa Sellers Teed expressed that the update was a welcome relief for later generations. She told the Spokesman Review, "It was heartbreaking. The family was ruined from losing him. It was a sad story for years." She later continued, "His son, in his 80s, was tearing up and crying,

• 25:59Speaker 01

  wishing he knew what happened to his father before he died. They never had that closure. We do." End quote.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms, with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  The couple that lived there had 21 kids.

• 26:32Speaker 03

  It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  I'm Ava Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  The next case I'm going to share with you all is the one I mentioned in the intro of this episode, which happened in southeast Texas.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Around dusk on Sunday, December 8, 1963, a game warden in Jasper County, Texas, named John, also known as J.D. Murfree, was patrolling a wooded bayou about five miles north of the community of Mauriceville when he heard the distinct sound of a shotgun blast ring out.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  In the direction of the sound, he noticed what appeared to be a few people hunting ducks from inside a hunting blind. J.D. knew that the hours for which duck hunting was approved had already ended for the day, so he approached the blind to investigate and, I assume, prepared to write whoever was responsible for the gunfire a citation for the offense. He'd spent most of that day stopping waterfowl hunters in the area and checking their licenses, approving their duck stamps, and ensuring that they hadn't killed more birds than the law permitted. So this trip was nothing out of the norm. But when he got closer to the area where he believed the after-hours gunshots had come from, he realized there were at least three or four guys inside the structure. And when he announced that he was a game warden, the group inside quickly took off.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  As the offenders were splintering away, one of them, a 16-year-old boy, fired a shotgun two times in J.D.'s direction at fairly close range. The round struck the game warden in his stomach and the back of his head, killing him instantly. He was left in about 18 inches of water. But not long after the shooting, an older man who'd been in the hunting group pulled JD's body from the water and reconvened with the others. The group discussed the shooting, and the older man decided to leave the area and report what had happened to the Orange County authorities. Shortly after that, investigators from that agency notified JD's wife, Ilora Murfree, who was at the couple's home in the nearby community of Mauriceville, Texas.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Her reaction was what you'd expect: devastated. JD was just 33 years old when he was killed, and the couple shared three young children together, one of whom was just preschool age. They'd been married for about 13 years and had spent the morning of December 8th together discussing their kids' schooling and the upcoming Christmas holiday. JD was the main income provider for the household, and from what I read in the available source material, his role as a Texas game warden didn't pay a lot. Carlton Wilson reported for The United Press International that in 1963, there were only about 250 game wardens employed by the state of Texas, and their starting pay was $350 per month. JD earned $384 a month due to the fact that he'd worked

• 29:56Speaker 01

  as a game warden for about eight years. But still, it's safe to say it was not a lucrative job by any means. So to keep his family's budget as lean as possible, JD had forewent getting life insurance for himself. According to the coverage I found in this case, he didn't have a policy through his employer or a private insurance provider, which meant his wife and children were left in a really rough spot financially after he was killed. An article by Leo Heeler explained that the state planned to pay Ilora one month's worth of JD's salary, which equated to about $4,600. But that was it as far as money from his employer went. It wasn't going to be a faucet that stayed open forever. So philanthropic individuals and an organization associated

• 30:40Speaker 01

  with an outdoor magazine publication planned to help support the Murfree family to supplement their loss of income. There was also a fund established at a local bank branch for community members to make donations to. By nighttime on the day of the crime, authorities had identified the person who'd shot JD as 16-year-old Henry Edward Morse, who was from the nearby city of Vider, Texas, which is about 10 miles southwest of Mauriceville. Henry admitted to the sheriff's office that he was responsible for JD's death, but he claimed it wasn't what it looked like. His version of the story was that when JD had discovered him and his friends illegally duck hunting, he'd gotten frightened, and in the group's haste to flee, he'd tripped

• 31:23Speaker 01

  and fallen in the marsh and his shotgun had gone off accidentally. Henry signed a confession asserting to this sequence of events and named one of his companions as 18-year-old Robert Harder. There were at least five other people in the hunting group with Robert and Henry during the incident, but only two were named in the coverage I could find. Those individuals were Bill Stanley II and his son, Bill Stanley III, who went by the nickname Poncho. At the defendant's first appearance in court the day after the shooting, Henry was held on a $20,000 bond for the charge of murder, and Robert, who was deemed a material witness in the case, was held under $15,000 bond. He was charged with game law violations of hunting without a license, shooting after

• 32:08Speaker 01

  hours, and using unplugged guns. It seems that the two other people from Mauriceville were also kept in custody and faced charges for game law violations as well. Now, the news of what had happened made many people who were part of the outdoors community in southeast Texas or involved in hunting culture in the region at all really angry. JD was far from the first game warden to be attacked violently in the Lone Star State. For example, in 1951, a state wildlife biologist named Gus Engling, who was investigating illegal duck poachers, was murdered and hidden in a game preserve in Anderson County, Texas. I covered his case in depth in a previous episode of Park Predators titled "The Biologist." But there was an even more recent case that had gotten the press's attention.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  You see, eight days before JD's murder, just a few hours southwest from where he was slain, four hunters illegally poaching deer at night with a spotlight had shot at two game wardens. One of those wardens was injured in the eye but survived, and the offenders were quickly arrested and charged with assault with intent to murder. So to say attacks on game wardens were becoming more and more frequent is kind of an understatement. Henry's claim that what had happened to JD had been the result of an accident was a theory some people were split on. The author of a piece in the Victoria Advocate noted that it felt like a bit of a convenient claim for Henry to make. At a minimum, the writer explained that after all was said and done, Henry should probably never be allowed

• 33:39Speaker 01

  to hunt or use a firearm again. About a week after the murder, JD's loved ones held his funeral in Center, Texas, and he was later laid to rest in a cemetery there. Three months after the crime, in March of 1964, Henry's defense attorney petitioned the court to release the teenager pending trial because he claimed that the bond that the court had previously set was done so illegally. Basically, as I understand it from reading the coverage, when Henry's bond was first issued, the district attorney told the court that the state intended to try Henry as an adult. But Henry wasn't even going to turn 17 until September of 1964. So since he was a juvenile

• 34:23Speaker 01

  at the time of his arrest and arraignment, a judge granted the defense's request to have him released until his eventual trial. More than a year after that, in late September 1964, the case went before a grand jury, and Henry was formally indicted for the crime. His trial didn't get underway right away, though. Another year would pass before he'd see the inside of a courtroom. According to reporting by Pete Collins for The Orange Leader, the trial was originally scheduled for early September 1965. But it got delayed because Jasper County's deputy sheriff, who'd first identified JD's body and was considered a really important witness for the prosecution, had suffered a heart attack and been hospitalized. That same article by Pete Collins

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  also explained that the state announced it didn't intend to seek the death penalty against Henry. Prosecutors noted that his status as a minor at the time of the crime was a factor in their decision to not pursue capital punishment.

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  When Henry's murder trial finally began, though, in early January 1966, 48 potential jurors were pulled to compile the final 12-member panel. The prosecution called nine witnesses to testify, including JD's widow, Elora, and Henry's friend, Robert Harder, who told the court that after the incident, he'd talked with Henry, and Henry confessed to killing JD. Another witness who testified was the deputy sheriff who'd recovered from his heart attack. He told jurors that after examining the crime scene, collecting several shotgun shells and pellets, and conducting tests with Henry's 12-gauge shotgun, he'd concluded that the teenager "had shot at JD three times." First, from about nine feet away, which was a shot that had hit the warden in his stomach

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  area, and then the second shot had hit JD's hat but not injured him. Finally, the third shot had struck JD in the top of his head. That one had been fired from about seven feet away. The deputy sheriff who testified said that the reason the third round had hit JD in the top of his head was because he was bent over in pain from having sustained the first gunshot wound. A ballistics expert also took the stand and testified that some of the shells found at the crime scene had come from Henry's weapon. When it was the defense's turn to present its case, they called 16 witnesses to testify, including Henry's mother, who told jurors that her son had always been "easily excited and frightened."

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  She said that growing up, he had never liked the dark and was always afraid of being left by himself. She explained that Henry had an unusually nervous disposition and could not read well. She detailed an incident when he was four years old where he fell down a flight of stairs, and after that, he'd never quite been the same. He'd started to stutter and struggled academically. After seeking advice from a family guidance service to figure out ways to help her son, his mother said she'd been told that getting him a firearm and having him spend more time with male friends would be beneficial for him. So, following that advice, she'd bought Henry a shotgun and encouraged him to go hunting with other young boys and men.

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  Henry's defense attorney also spent a considerable amount of time examining witnesses who described J.D. Murfree as a "trigger-happy game warden who carried extra firepower on his person," just because. But that testimony contradicted J.D.'s widow's testimony that her husband only carried one gun on his person while at work. The defense also claimed that J.D. had fired at Henry and his companions first, which, again, contradicted testimony from previous witnesses who claimed that when J.D.'s body was found, his gun was still in its holster. However, testimony that supported the defense's "J.D. shot first" version of events came from two of the other guys who were with Henry and Robert Harder at the time of the

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  shooting: Bill Stanley II and Bill's son, Poncho. The Stanleys told the court that they both remembered hearing the sound of a pistol or rifle go off before any shotgun blast rang out. The defense also managed to track down another hunter who'd been in the area at the time of the crime, and he testified that he also remembered hearing a pistol or rifle go off before several shotgun blasts, as well as what he believed was someone saying, quote, "Bill, I think I shot someone," end quote. On the fourth day of the trial, Henry himself took the witness stand in his own defense and told the court that he'd never intended to kill J.D. He admitted to having interacted with the game warden in the past and said that was

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  one of the reasons he was so afraid of him on the day of the shooting. Henry claimed that J.D. had issued a stern warning to him about a year before the shooting, and at that time, J.D. had said something to the effect of, "He'd take Henry to jail if he caught him in the woods again." Henry told jurors that when he encountered J.D. on the day of the murder, he'd been retrieving two ducks he shot, and when he went to pick them up, he heard J.D.'s voice say, quote, "Now I've got you," end quote. So instinctively, Henry said he ran from J.D., and that's when he heard J.D. shoot in his direction with a pistol. Startled by the realization that J.D. was shooting at him, Henry said he tripped and fell twice and ultimately landed in a ditch.

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  When he turned around, he saw J.D. getting closer to him, and that's when he said he panicked and shot at the game warden. When questioned about how many times he fired his own gun, Henry stated he didn't have any memories of doing so. When the trial came to an end on January 14th, 1966, jurors found Henry guilty of murder, but only sentenced him to two years in prison. After that, I couldn't find much else about what happened to Henry. One of JD's friends and the minister of the Murfrees local church wrote in an online article that after Henry got out of prison, he visited him at church and apologized for killing JD. According to the minister, Henry claimed that he'd become a Christian while incarcerated and was trying to live a better life.

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  The minister said the young man cried in front of him and asked if he'd preside over his wedding ceremony the following week, which the minister agreed to. After that, though, he never saw Henry again. Online records show that Henry eventually died in October 1999 at the age of 52. He's buried in a cemetery in Jasper County, Texas. It seems JD Murfree's name and legacy took center stage in the follow-up reporting over the years. For example, in 1992, at the East Texas Police Academy, his name was added to a memorial marker for 41 police officers who'd been killed in the line of duty over the years. Gus Ingling's name, that wildlife biologist I mentioned earlier,

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  was also inscribed on that memorial. After JD's death, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department named a patch of land in the area, the JD Murfree Wildlife Management Area. It still exists today and is located in Port Arthur, Texas. With the proper permits, visitors can watch animals there or take pictures, as well as participate in seasonal hunts for hogs, alligators, and waterfowl. It's still considered a critical nursery habitat for a variety of duck species and other migratory birds, and is a key breeding ground for the American alligator and wetland mammals like the swamp rabbit, muskrat, eastern cotton-tail rabbit, coyote, armadillo, and bobcat. I have to think that if JD were still alive,

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  he'd be proud to know that the land he tried to protect on the day of his death has gone on to thrive and become a place of refuge for wildlife and outdoor enthusiasts.

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  Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. You can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @ParkPredators.

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  I think Chuck would approve.

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  In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling new tales, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.