Crater Lake Murders

When two General Motors executives drove into Crater Lake National Park in July 1952, no one could have predicted they would be dead within an hour-not even their killers. It was a crime of opportunity, a botched robbery during the middle of summer in a crowded national park. When Albert Jones and Charles Culhane were found shot to death two days later, the story became a national obsession. The FBI used every resource and available agent but, as time wore on, the investigation ran out of steam. A lack of evidence worked to the killers' advantage. They had committed a perfect crime.

The FBI tried hard to solve the case. Their 2,000+ page report details a staggeringly complex, multi-agency effort: 200 ballistics tests, 1,000 interviews, 466 license plate identifications. The man-hours were beyond calculation and yielded valuable information. Buried within the individual reports of the FBI, Oregon State Police, and local other agencies were many clues to the nature and identity of the perpetrators.

The FBI file had rarely been seen by anyone outside the bureau until December 2015 when the author received it on two discs, satisfying a Freedom of Information Act request submitted three years before. This book summarizes all that information and adds to the research: the FBI file, Oregon State Police reports, fresh research and interviews, county records, rare firsthand accounts, reaction from one victim's family, and an obscure college thesis that first named the killer.

The Crater Lake Murders tells the true narrative: four men with nothing in common until the day they met-an encounter from which only two of them walked away. The details of the double murder remained a deadly secret kept and held by an unlucky few for seventy years.

Add to this the personal account of a man to whom the killer once confessed. On the day he died in 1966, the confessor reminded his wife about "the things that nobody talks about," and as a final wish, implored her to contact the local sheriff with the information, which she did. The details of that report have never been revealed. Until now.