Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from coast to coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Stand Just so people understand that you aren't chasing ghost
Speaker 2: stories in Bigfoot all the time, I'd like you to
Speaker 2: sort of give us a broad scope of what the
Speaker 2: challenges of the job were.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: Navajo Nation, of course, is gigantic. I mean it's enormous.
Speaker 2: You have the same kind of crimes out there and
Speaker 2: law enforcement duties that cops would have in a big city,
Speaker 2: but also special challenges given how big the area is,
Speaker 2: how desolate it is, how few rangers there were to
Speaker 2: cover it all. Tell me about the nature of that
Speaker 2: challenge about and maybe as an example, that very serious
Speaker 2: hunt you did for these murderers, these militia fugitives who
Speaker 2: gunned down a cop in broad daylight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's hard for people to realize that
Speaker 3: this size of the Naba Reservation is twenty seven thousand
Speaker 3: square miles. That's not acres, it's miles. And this is
Speaker 3: the size of the state of West Virginia. And you're
Speaker 3: trying to provide enforcement over and protections over all the
Speaker 3: natural resources. You know, your timber, your wildlife, your archaeological
Speaker 3: resources which are spread throughout the reservation and you're trying
Speaker 3: to do that with eight commissioned law enforcement officers. At
Speaker 3: the time that I left, there was eight rangers remaining.
Speaker 3: These are federally commissioned law enforcement officers, and it's just
Speaker 3: not enough personnel to do that job. As a ranger,
Speaker 3: you had to be a standalone officer. You know, you're
Speaker 3: out there on your own. You know, in the city
Speaker 3: you might have a backup partner or you know, on calls,
Speaker 3: your backup is less than minutes away, you know, if that.
Speaker 3: On the reservation. As a law enforcement officer, your backup
Speaker 3: maybe well over an hour hour and a half away
Speaker 3: if that. So you had to be highly trained. And
Speaker 3: Jonathan and I were federal firearms instructors, so we taught firearms.
Speaker 3: We conducted the qualification courses, you know, several times a
Speaker 3: year with the pistol, rifle and shotgun. But yeah, you
Speaker 3: had to be able to stand on your own two feet.
Speaker 3: You didn't have somebody standing there holding your hand, so
Speaker 3: to speak, as you did your job.
Speaker 2: You have all the same kind of crimes, but also
Speaker 2: a lot of special challenges. I mean, Monument Valley you
Speaker 2: got all kinds of tourists coming through there. As you
Speaker 2: note in the book, Mom and Pop driving an RV
Speaker 2: at twenty miles an hour, not paying attention, Hollywood celebrity
Speaker 2: types driving a Maserati at one hundred and fifty bus
Speaker 2: an hour, drunken locals, crazy visitors from all over the world.
Speaker 3: Right, very true. You do have the challenges that you
Speaker 3: have in the bigger cities. For the navamation. Let's say,
Speaker 3: in the summertime, a lot of the youth will will
Speaker 3: travel to the inner cities and spend time with their
Speaker 3: cousins during their summer break, and they end up bringing back,
Speaker 3: you know, at a time, they brought back the gang
Speaker 3: activity that you would see like let's say in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles or some of these other metropolitan areas, and they
Speaker 3: bring that gang activity back to the reservation and it
Speaker 3: ends up being a serious problem. You have homicides, you
Speaker 3: have drug trafficking, human trafficking, all of these problems that
Speaker 3: you see in the inner city.
Speaker 2: These militia guys so three bad own brace they are
Speaker 2: pulled over and stolen water truck and they gunned down
Speaker 2: a cop right one morning, and then take off and
Speaker 2: you're part of the You're right in the thick of
Speaker 2: this pursuit tell us about that story.
Speaker 3: That's very true. It was only days that I actually
Speaker 3: completed the Federal Police Academy and I was asked to
Speaker 3: bring some watercraft up to the scene where they had
Speaker 3: staged the operations following the death of the Cortes police
Speaker 3: officer Dale Claxton, and there was a man ensued where
Speaker 3: there were officers that had been injured and shot by
Speaker 3: these militia and they took off out into the desert,
Speaker 3: and so that asked for my assistance, and I quickly volunteered.
Speaker 3: Once I got on seeing one of the commanders knew me,
Speaker 3: and he asked if I wanted to participate in the operations,
Speaker 3: go out with his swat team, so to speak. And
Speaker 3: I told him, you know, if we get the permission
Speaker 3: by my commanders and the Chief Ranger, that I would
Speaker 3: happily be a part of that. And that's what I did.
Speaker 3: So I spent the next month out there crawling in
Speaker 3: the river bottoms in the San Juan River basin and
Speaker 3: learning what it meant to be a technical officer technical operator.
Speaker 2: And there were some tense moments that you describe in
Speaker 2: the book, and you got close to them a couple
Speaker 2: of times but didn't catch them, and eventually at least
Speaker 2: the remains of two of them were found all over
Speaker 2: the place, right.
Speaker 3: That's very true. One of the there was, so there
Speaker 3: was three militia personnel, and one of them ended up
Speaker 3: committing suicide early on in the very beginning of that event,
Speaker 3: and the other two eluded capture for a long time
Speaker 3: after that. People would have sightings in and around that
Speaker 3: particular region. These individuals grew up in that particular area,
Speaker 3: having worked in the oil fields of that area and
Speaker 3: being a part of militia, and they knew that area
Speaker 3: like the back of their hands, and they had already
Speaker 3: staged food stuff, that staged ammunition and other supplies in
Speaker 3: areas that led up to that event on what was
Speaker 3: known as Y two k. You know, there was a
Speaker 3: preparation by certain individuals that there was going to be
Speaker 3: a financial collapse and society would collapse, and these individuals
Speaker 3: were firm believers in that. That's what they were what
Speaker 3: they were banking on, is that that this was going
Speaker 3: to occur at the change of the year two thousand
Speaker 3: and so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Livestock are an important part of the novel economy,
Speaker 2: as you note and as a young officer, that's part
Speaker 2: of your duties is livestock inspections correct and that that
Speaker 2: eventually leads you to these dead sheep. This rapport on
Speaker 2: dead sheep that before you're a ranger, you go out
Speaker 2: to a very strange case. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Actually I was already a commissioned ranger, but that was
Speaker 3: one of my early cases, and so I was dispatched
Speaker 3: to respond to a situation where there were twenty six
Speaker 3: head of sheep that were discovered dead by a family
Speaker 3: on the reservation. They woke up one morning and there
Speaker 3: was no indicator that night that there was any type
Speaker 3: of disturbance with these animals. Typically, if there was a
Speaker 3: predator that got into the sheep crowd, the dogs would
Speaker 3: be the sheep. Dogs would be carrying on and you
Speaker 3: would immediately be awakened by something. But in this situation,
Speaker 3: there wasn't. That didn't happen. They woke up and they
Speaker 3: discovered that all of their sheep, twenty six were dead,
Speaker 3: and the sheep aron there was already a veterinarian from
Speaker 3: the nomination that was onseen and I arrived there and
Speaker 3: this guy was wide eyed and he just shrugged his shoulder.
Speaker 3: He didn't know what had caught the death of these
Speaker 3: twenty six sheep. You know, I grew up around livestock
Speaker 3: in Oklahoma, and so I get there and immediately the
Speaker 3: sheep dogs wouldn't come near the corral, which usually on Navajo,
Speaker 3: your sheep dogs are the ones that are providing protection
Speaker 3: for these your flock, and so I get in there,
Speaker 3: I didn't look into the corral. All of these sheep
Speaker 3: are dead, but you don't see the telltale evidence of
Speaker 3: a predatory kill. If a bear or a mountain lion
Speaker 3: or bobcat gets into a corral and kills some animals,
Speaker 3: there's obvious evidence, so that you have entrails and blood
Speaker 3: and a lot of myths really within that coral, and
Speaker 3: you didn't have that with this particular situation. All of
Speaker 3: the animals were dead, but there was no blood within
Speaker 3: the corral. And these sheep were slid open from their
Speaker 3: neck area all the way down to their growing And
Speaker 3: it's a pretty tough feat to be able to cut
Speaker 3: through a sheep's wool with standard scissors or shears or
Speaker 3: something of that nature. It's not that easy. And all
Speaker 3: of these were slit in a precise straight line from
Speaker 3: the neck to the groin, and again there was no
Speaker 3: blood within the corral, so it was very odd. There
Speaker 3: was an obvious stinch in the air as you approached
Speaker 3: a corral that was not normal. It was it. I
Speaker 3: describe it similar to that of a petroleum smell, like
Speaker 3: what you smell in the oil fields or something like that.
Speaker 3: And it was just really odd and really nauseating smelling this,
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was just a really odd case that
Speaker 3: I investigated.
Speaker 2: Yet, I mean, what what would have done that? You know,
Speaker 2: the dogs should have heard something and that would have
Speaker 2: blurted the people, but nobody heard anything. There's no blood
Speaker 2: on the ground. Something carved these sheep up in that way.
Speaker 2: What did they use to do it? How did they
Speaker 2: do it without getting detected? What are your thoughts that?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I've never seen anything like it, and I don't think
Speaker 3: the bed and Aaron had ever seen anything like it either.
Speaker 3: He was just kind of shocked by the whole thing
Speaker 3: because typically when you do have livestock killed, you know
Speaker 3: you're going to see the evidence of what killed. Either
Speaker 3: you'll have bear tracks or mountain lion tracks in the soil.
Speaker 3: And there was there was nothing like that to support
Speaker 3: this particular caste. And the daughter was the middle aged
Speaker 3: daughter was extremely upset because her parents were crying and
Speaker 3: upset and she wanted answers, but we didn't. We didn't
Speaker 3: have any answers. I mean, it didn't follow the normal
Speaker 3: fill till signs that you have with predatory keels.
Speaker 2: Well, gosh, I guess we would be upset. Number One,
Speaker 2: that's an incredible investment for them. That's like they're life
Speaker 2: savings in those sheep. And two whatever, did it could
Speaker 2: come from people for people the next time?
Speaker 3: Well, that's that's that's very possible. Did we didn't know
Speaker 3: the source of what it is that caused this action?
Speaker 2: So does that seem like it's comparable to cattle mutilation
Speaker 2: cases that are elsewhere around the world? And did you
Speaker 2: ever see anything like that elsewhere where on the Novajo Nation?
Speaker 3: Well, there were lives thuff cattle mutilations. You know, I've
Speaker 3: read and I had met with Linda molten how at times,
Speaker 3: and the research she's done in regards to cattle mutilations,
Speaker 3: it's very fascinating. And I do you know, in looking
Speaker 3: at that particular case at that time, I think it
Speaker 3: would fall under that particular umbrella of cattle mutilation.
Speaker 2: One other question, no blood, but was anything taken out
Speaker 2: of the animals, any organs or anything, or just sliced,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: I inquired that to the veterinarian, and to my knowledge,
Speaker 3: there weren't. There weren't any internal organs that that were missing.
Speaker 3: But because of the unknown, uh, something of that nature,
Speaker 3: you're you don't nor know the source of this is,
Speaker 3: is there is there some type of disease. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's kind of far fits as far as the disease involved,
Speaker 3: but you don't. It's a big unknown, and you've got
Speaker 3: to be really careful whatever cause the death of these animals,
Speaker 3: You certainly don't want to be on the receiving end
Speaker 3: of something like that, you know. So I think at
Speaker 3: that time the there was a large trench that was
Speaker 3: dug and the animals were disposed in there and and
Speaker 3: and burned and then after they were in semon, you know,
Speaker 3: burned up and they were covered up.
Speaker 2: You know. So you mentioned earlier we touched on briefly
Speaker 2: about the first call you went out with on with
Speaker 2: John Dover is because these two other cops had sort
Speaker 2: of sloughed off this lady's report about a bigfoot. You
Speaker 2: guys go out there, take it seriously, you calm her down,
Speaker 2: and you start investigating. Share with us what did you find, what,
Speaker 2: if anything, you found.
Speaker 3: Well, in those particular cases, a challenge is a lot
Speaker 3: of times people will report these kind of incidents, let's say,
Speaker 3: a siding of what people were commonly referred to as
Speaker 3: a bigfoot or sasquatch. They may report it days later
Speaker 3: and out here on the reservation because the arid environment,
Speaker 3: you know, the evidence a lot of times that's left
Speaker 3: is going to be degraded. In criminal investigation, when you
Speaker 3: get let's say a homicide, do you want to get
Speaker 3: there as soon as you can so you can start
Speaker 3: documenting and collecting evidence before it degrades. And in this situation,
Speaker 3: sometimes you would have somebody reporting an incident that may
Speaker 3: have actually occurred months earlier or sometimes even years later.
Speaker 3: You know, you would get to talking to them and
Speaker 3: it actually occurred a year earlier or something like that,
Speaker 3: which doesn't leave the investigator with any let's say, credible
Speaker 3: evidence to be able to work with. So, yeah, it
Speaker 3: can be a challenge.
Speaker 2: Did you find tracks in that case? I think I
Speaker 2: remember from that part of your book that you didn't
Speaker 2: find any.
Speaker 3: Tracks in that particular case. I know, in and around
Speaker 3: the sheep Corral there was there was nothing tangible that
Speaker 3: could be recorded in that as far as like being
Speaker 3: able to cast something or photograph some type of tracks
Speaker 3: or tractive.
Speaker 2: You had a lot of other big foot cases though,
Speaker 2: that you took seriously and you think there there are
Speaker 2: indications that something really was going on. The smell definitely, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Definitely, there's you know, commonly in big foot cases there's
Speaker 3: often associated a certain smell and over the years, you know,
Speaker 3: I did experience that in some of these cases where
Speaker 3: you have this odd wet dog smell. Sometimes it can
Speaker 3: be more leaning more to a the foul odor involved
Speaker 3: with like an eggs ful free eggs smell, and it
Speaker 3: can be it can range to something that smells like
Speaker 3: like something dead. And so yeah, there's there's often odors
Speaker 3: that are they can be associated with those events.
Speaker 2: And I know you did find tracks here and there,
Speaker 2: you made tracks, so you know, people would think, all right, Bigfoot,
Speaker 2: he's up in Washington, Oregon, up in the big trees.
Speaker 2: What's he doing out there in Monument Valley or Novo Nation?
Speaker 2: What do you say that right?
Speaker 3: Well, you know the case that I mentioned earlier involving
Speaker 3: the coin of Ports. Again, that phenomenon made me realize
Speaker 3: that they're like with the coins, the coins had to
Speaker 3: be materializing from somewhere else, from some other plane of existence.
Speaker 3: They did I mean, I mean I witnessed the coins
Speaker 3: fall out of thin air. And so if the points
Speaker 3: the coins were traveling from point A to point B
Speaker 3: to the floor of an office building there in winter up,
Speaker 3: they had to originate from somewhere else. So I began
Speaker 3: to look at this these different phenomena like like the Bigfoot,
Speaker 3: like the UFOs, and realize that these things are coming
Speaker 3: into existence into our physical world from some somewhere else.
Speaker 3: And you know, John and I never followed this idea
Speaker 3: that bigfoot were migrating from one location to another across
Speaker 3: North North American continent or something like that. We lived
Speaker 3: out in the woods and we didn't see the evidence
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: They just pop into our reality and then pop back
Speaker 2: out exactly.
Speaker 3: I think the witchcraft up the shape shifters to use
Speaker 3: the same same technique and going in and out. I
Speaker 3: think at times you're experiencing naturally occurring what people refer
Speaker 3: to as vortics, where there's a crossing between one plane
Speaker 3: of existence and to another. UFOs I feel do the
Speaker 3: same kind of thing, but I think that's the commonalities
Speaker 3: dimensions or you know what people referred to, there's dimensions.
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