Chapter 4

Three days after being released they carjacked an elderly couple, pistol whipping the old man and throwing both of them onto the street, before driving their late year model Cadillac away. Driving west, twelve hours later they were in a small town two states away, they robbed an all night convenience store gas station and shot the night manager twice, he survived only because a customer had walked in five minutes after the twins had left and found the manager laying in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. He called 911 and the EMT’s were able to stop the bleeding and transport him to the hospital in time.

In a small residential part of the same town they did a home invasion, startling a middle aged man and his wife as they were going to bed. They made the husband watch as they repeatedly raped his wife, then shot them both in the head. But they had learned about DNA evidence and had worn rubbers and gloves. They stole the couple’s late model Jeep Grand Cherokee, leaving the Cadillac in their garage. The couple’s fifteen year old daughter was staying at a friend’s house for the weekend. She would discover their bodies late Sunday afternoon.

By that time they were in Albuquerque, New Mexico robbing yet another convenience store/gas station, they both raped the twenty five year old attendant, once again using condoms. They stole all the money in the till, but she didn’t know the combination to the safe, which was backed up by a sign on the safe saying the same thing. They took the security cameras footage on a blu-ray disk with them when they left. She was left laying on the floor in a storage room, naked with her legs and hands taped together. They had worn masks! Four customers came in and helped themselves to free gas before the fifth one looked for her. He was her friend.

Hours later they were ten miles east of Heber, Arizona when they ran out of gas. They were involved in a huge fight with each other inside the car over whose fault it was that they had run out of gas. When there was a tap on the driver’s window. A young man was standing there, when the window was lowered a few inches he asked,

“Do you need some help?” They were the last words he ever spoke, as the twin driving shot him in the forehead. They drug the body into the woods and searched his body, finding his keys and a wallet with one hundred twenty five dollars in it. When they came out of the woods they saw the vehicle the guy had been driving. A bright red Chevy, short bed, four wheel drive, jacked up with huge off road balloon tires, pickup truck! Not all that tall to begin with they had trouble getting into the jacked up thing. They helped on another by pushing and pulling. It wasn’t until both of them were in that they saw a three foot step ladder on the floorboard behind the driver’s seat.

Their next problem was that his feet just barely touched the pedals, adjusting the seat closer to the dash solved that. Then they found out that, like all redneck trucks, it had a standard transmission. Neither one of these guys knew how to drive a standard shift. They decided to try and learn, they had no choice anyway! The twin driving turned the key to start the engine, and nothing happened. By trial and error they finally found out that the clutch pedal had to be fully depressed and the transmission in neutral before the engine would turn over. It roared to life and by the sound of it, it was not a stock engine. The whine of a turbocharger and the lope of a three quarter race cam made sure of that. He put the transmission floor mounted stick forward into 1st gear. When he let out the clutch it didn’t stall, but no matter how deeply he pressed on the accelerator it wouldn’t go more than twelve miles per hour. Then when he shifted into second and let off the clutch the truck shot forward and sent both their heads back against the headrest with a thunk. After an hour he got more comfortable in being able to shift without jerking them both to death. He also found out that he could skip that extra low first gear and start in second gear.

Finally they drove the rest of the way into the town of Heber. They stopped and bought cheeseburgers at a hamburger joint along with fries and soft drinks. They had noticed a City Park, so they went there to eat. While sitting at a park bench in some trees they started to hear parts of a story being told by a couple of teenagers. They heard less than half of what was being said, mostly because they were only half listening. But when two words strung together hit their eardrums, all of that changed! The magic words were “gold treasure”! That caught their attention and kept it. When they heard that there were three hundred gold coins and one had sold for $94,000. They committed themselves to taking the treasure away from those kids, killing the boy and having fun with the girlfriend. They would follow them into the desert and do whatever it takes to steal that gold! They looked around the truck, there were two rifles with scopes in racks in front of the rear window. They found two boxes of twenty, 30-06 Springfield ammunition, some snacks, a large gallon sized canvas covered canteen full of water. A collapsible shovel, a blue tarp, wooden and metal stakes, a 2 1/2 pound shop hammer, and a bunch of trash. In the truck bed was a fifty gallon fuel tank with an electric pump and nozzle. And a side by side Kubota ATV with all wheel drive.

They watched the couple get on a black with metallic blue stripes, motorcycle with a backpack on the backrest. They followed it to a shop where a mechanic installed a trailer hitch. Then they attached a brand new fancy black and aluminum trailer to the hitch. They watched as the couple next went to The Market at Heber and started buying a lot of food, mason jars, salt, sugar, spices, two five gallon rectangular jugs for gasoline, a couple of straps, three gallon size cans of stove fuel. A two burner Coleman stove, a Coleman lantern, seeds, a bag of fertilizer, and lastly a twin sized mattress. All of that went into the trailer except the mattress, it was securely tied to the top. The gas’s cans were secured on a tray that was on the tongue of the wagon, with a ratchet strap. They all stopped at the gas station and filled all of the various fuel containers and tanks. The twins missed the two yellow six gallon and five gallon blue containers though, they didn’t know that to differentiate between gas and diesel the colors were different, gasoline containers are red, diesel containers are yellow, and potable water is blue.

The motorcycle and trailer pulled out first, the big red truck waited a few minutes then followed.

Larry & Wendy

Sighting in on the body mass of the gesticulating animal, La slowly squeezed the trigger, the gun going off was a surprise to Larry, but the bullet hitting the sand a foot in front of the twins was an even greater surprise to them. Larry quickly adjusted the distance calculation into the scope adding an additional four feet. Having already worked the bolt he sighted through the scope and they were both gone! Damn, double dog DAMN! That was a costly miss! He took the opportunity to place two rounds into the front of the Chevy into its radiator. It wouldn’t be going anywhere!

Larry moved down the rocks and over to the left of where he had first fired. He looked through his scope trying to find where they were hiding. He couldn’t find them. So he rapidly shot five more times into the cab of the truck, he had no way of knowing it, but he killed them with the fifth shot. They didn’t know it either but they would begin to understand in twenty four hours. His fifth shot had hit the large canvas covered canteen almost at the very bottom as it hung from the empty gun rack against the seat back.

Larry left the rock and ran to the bike and Wendy, they could hear the sound of ricocheting bullets as they struck the rocks around where he had been. He started the bike and drove on toward their canyon. They were traveling mostly on windswept solid rock, there wasn’t any trail to follow. He left them to figure out how to survive in this desolate, but strangely beautiful land.

They made it to the hidden cut, the entrance to their canyon, it had taken an hour. As he suspected the trailer was too wide to fit through the narrow space. The bike just barely did after all. They took their time and carried everything to the cave. It took them both four trips, the last one they carried the new mattress together and preserving the plastic it was wrapped in, they removed it and placed it on their bed. As Wendy put on the sheets, Larry fueled the lantern and the stove. He arranged the food and found places for the other things they had purchased. Then he walked back to the motorcycle and took the trailer to a spot not far away that would hide it from view, both overhead and at ground level. He locked it up, then rode the bike back and through the cut walls and into the canyon and the cave.

The Anglen Brothers

As soon as the bullet hit the sand and sprayed them with sand moving just a little slower than the nineteen hundred feet per second speed of the bullet when it hit the sand. But it was enough to sting them through their pants and cut any exposed skin. They ran for cover knowing they had been given a chance to survive. The follow on shots didn’t come close to them. They didn’t know what the kid shot at, but since it wasn’t at them it was good.

Of course when they found out what he had shot at, they quickly changed their opinion. They had no transportation, no way to get out of the desert. Thank God they had an almost full canteen of water, they told each other. Then they found the canteen hanging from the gun rack with a bullet hole all the way through it. There was about two inches of water below the holes, just enough for each of them one swallow. John was holding it, but Clarence grabbed it from him and gulped all of the water, leaving his brother nothing. Incensed, John hit his brother with a right uppercut to his jaw. But Clarence hit back and soon the two were fighting, neither was winning, finally totally worn out they sank to the ground in exhaustion.

For the next four days their thirst became progressively worse, their tongues became swollen, their skin became more and more wrinkled as the moisture left their bodies. They drank their own urine in a futile attempt to live longer. Then even that source dried up.

On the fifth day Clarence died, John was very close to joining him when he felt something on his chest. He struggled to open his eyes, once open he saw a buzzard standing on his chest. The very last thing he saw was the beak of the bird as it lowered down and plucked his eye from his head. He tried to scream, the pain was intense, but nothing came out. It was at that moment that his heart finally gave out. The twins were dead! Their bodies became covered with feeding buzzards a mass of gruesome birds ripping and tearing, sometimes fighting over this morsel or that. A fitting end to two despicable animals.

Dale Robertson

Dale compiled all of the photographs in the correct order, then he transcribed every sentence adding pictures the couple had taken to emphasize a point or simply to show the place as it is today, and most likely what it looked like back then. Soon all three stories became more than mere provenance, it became a very interesting book. He wouldn’t be able to finish it until Wendy and Larry returned to civilization, if they ever did.

Everything was submitted to the Auction house, they in turn submitted everything to the U.S. Mint. When their investigation couldn’t come up with a robbery or some other illegal method of obtaining the coins, they gave it back to the auction house. Their next step was to find direct descendants to the Morrison family by using the Bible. None were found, sadly that branch of the Morrison family died with them. They did find out how the family came to have that much money, Nathanial W. Morrison had owned several textile mills in Charlotte, North Carolina. One made the thread, another made the cloth and the third sewed the cloth into a variety of things, sails, tents, uniforms and clothing. It was the making of Confederate uniforms that got him in the most trouble after the war. He had been forced to sell all his holdings, including his magnificent estate. Getting only pennies on the dollar from the actual worth of these factories and his estate, he still managed to get over six thousand dollars. A princely sum after the war. They bought a wagon and joined others in heading for St. Louis on the Mississippi River. There they eventually joined a wagon train going to Southern California. Having crossed into the Arizona Territory their youngest child came down with a fever. Someone claimed it was Cholera, it wasn’t, but the word cholera panicked the other members of the wagon train and the Wagonmaster had had no choice but to expel them from the train.