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Hi park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia d'. Ambra. And the case I'm going to share with you today is from a long, long time ago. 1896 to be exact. And it's a doozy. It takes place near White Sands national park in New Mexico during a time when, to put it mildly, the western American frontier was pretty wild and lawlessness was rampant. A great book I read which expands even more about this characterization of the time period is is Murder on the White the Disappearance of Albert and Henry Fountain, which was written by author Corey Recco. His novel provided a wealth of information about this case, so I highly recommend ordering a copy for yourself. If you want to dig even further into the details of this mystery and for accuracy, it should be noted that the park itself wasn't formally established until 2019. Before then, it had been a national monument since 1933. And before that, when this story takes place, there were a lot of unincorporated communities around what is now the parkland. The National Park Service's website for White Sands national park has given it the moniker like no place else on earth. And from the pictures I've seen of its beautiful gypsum dune fields, I 100% agree with that description. It's stunning. One unique feature of the park is that it wasn't always a desert. At one point in time, there were grasslands teeming with life. There are millennia old fossilized footprints from animals and humans still visible on Lake Otero. In fact, the park has the largest collection of human footprints according to the National Park Service. And it's these fossils that tell us a lot about how people interacted with the environment there, as well as extinct animals like giant sloths, mammoths, and so forth. Traces of the past are vitally important to understanding the depth of this area's historic and cultural significance. Being able to read about this landscape and mine clues from it about how humans behaved is a task that's still happening today. But it's also a task lawmen in the late 1890s found themselves faced with when a prominent reporter turned attorney vanished into the iconic white sand dunes with his young son and was never seen alive again. This is Park Predators. On Sunday morning, February 2, 1896, a woman named Mariana Fountain was at home in Mesilla, New Mexico territory with her children eagerly waiting and watching for her husband, 57 year old Albert Fountain, and their youngest son Henry to ride up. Several weeks earlier, on January 12, Albert and 8 year old Henry had left the family's home to travel roughly 150 miles northeast to the town of Lincoln, New Mexico. Mariana had not been the biggest fan of her husband making the trip because there had been a lot going on politically in Albert's career as an investigator and attorney, and she was very worried about his safety. Nonetheless, though, Albert had promised his wife that everything would be okay and encouraged her not to worry too much. To try and put her mind at ease. Mariana convinced Albert to take their youngest son, Henry, with him because she figured that her husband would likely be safer from any potential enemies if one of their children was accompanying him. I think the implication there was that Mariana felt if someone had a bone to pick with Albert, they would be less likely to attack him in the presence of an innocent child. Basically, little Henry was acting as a deterrent, for lack of a better term. Anyway, the first night the duo was on their journey, something unusual happened. The horses that the father and son had taken with them showed back up at the family's property in Mesilla, running loose by themselves. A note later came from Albert that explained to his wife that the animals had run off the first night. Not long after receiving that note, the family's eldest son and Mariana's father rode the horses back out to Albert and Henry so the pair could continue on with their trip to Lincoln. Documents published in author Corey Recco's book Murder on the White Sands show that Albert and Henry stayed in Lincoln until January 30th. Albert did work at the courthouse there, and when that wrapped up, the pair left. Witnesses who'd interacted with them on that day as well as Friday, January 31, confirmed that the father and son had stayed overnight with two different acquaintances, and on Saturday morning had started their final leg home, which required them to to go near or possibly through the desert, which is adjacent to what is now known as White Sands National Park. At the time of that journey, the weather was reported to be very cold and windy. But Albert really wanted to get home to his wife and other children by Saturday night. So he and Henry declined an invitation to join a mail carrier who they'd bumped into that afternoon, and they continued on their way. By the evening of Sunday, February 2, though, with still no sign of Albert and Henry, Mariana was considerably worried. And her anxiety only got worse when the mail carrier who'd bumped into Albert and Henry the previous day arrived at her doorstep with a disturbing story. This man told the Fountain family that between 3 and 4pm on Saturday afternoon, he'd spoken with Albert and Henry. And during that conversation, Albert had mentioned that he believed he and his son were Being followed by three unknown men on horseback. The mail carrier told Mariana that as a precaution, he'd tried to get Albert and Henry to get off the roadway and spend the evening with him. But Albert had declined because he wanted to get home by dinner time. The mail carrier explained to the fountain family that on Sunday morning, he'd return to the road where he'd bumped into Albert and Henry. And about five miles past that spot, he saw wheel tracks and horse hoof prints that he recognized as belonging to Albert's carriage and horses. However, something about the scene seemed off to him. The tracks, which were in an area of the landscape known as chalk hill, suddenly veered from the roadway onto a path, and after about 30 to 40 yards, they were joined by tracks from three different horses. Nowhere in sight was Albert, Henry, or their four wheeled carriage. Now, this discovery had concerned the mail carrier enough since he knew Albert and had just spoken with him about the mysterious strangers on horseback. So he felt compelled to travel to the fountain's home to figure out what was going on and to see if Albert and Henry had made it back safely. But as the family was alarmingly aware, at that point, the father and son had not come home. So right away, two of the Fountain's sons and Mariana's father got on their horses and organized a small search party to go out to the spot in the desert where the mail carrier said he'd seen the worrisome tracks. Not long after that, a more official search party of about 25 people, which included a former sheriff and police captain, joined the Fountain's family, family members, and friends at the Chalk hill area in the desert. Searchers discovered two empty firearm cartridges, cigarette papers, shoe prints, and, of course, the wildly swerving carriage tracks. They also found impressions in the ground behind a bush that appeared to be where someone had knelt down. Roughly 12 miles away from all that stuff, searchers stumbled upon Albert and Henry's carriage, which appeared to be ransacked and pillaged. Horse tracks and boot impressions were left in the ground all around it, and investigators took rudimentary measurements of those tracks. Searchers also noted that there was an indentation in the ground that kind of looked like an area where someone had laid down a blanket and then placed a heavy object onto it. Within days of the discovery, word spread quickly that Albert and Henry had vanished. Local newspapers in the region started reporting on the story and quickly ran articles that suggested Albert and Henry were not just missing, but dead. The available source material I found stated that between seven to 10 days after the pair Vanished. Additional searchers returned to the area near Chalk Hill and found even more evidence that indicated something untoward had happened in the desert. Sleet, which had previously been on the ground and obscured some of the landscape from view, had thawed and revealed blood spatter and a pool of blood a little more than a foot wide near the section of the roadway where Albert and Henry's carriage had veered off course. Also in that area was another impression of a blanket, a nickel and dime that had what appeared to be traces of powder burns on them, and a blood soaked handkerchief. Now, the nickel and dime discovery was, I imagine, particularly interesting to authorities and searchers because witnesses who'd housed Albert and Henry on the Friday before they vanished said that Albert had given Henry a quarter to use at a local store. According to accounts captured in Cory Reco's book, Henry spent 10 cents of that money on candy and received exactly 15 cents in change in the form of a nickel and dime, which he was said to have then tied up in a handkerchief that belonged to him. So I imagine because a bloody handkerchief and a powder burned nickel and dime were found at the suspected crime scene, that probably signaled to authorities that something nefarious had happened to Henry. An initial theory that developed was that Albert had likely been shot from a distance while operating the carriage, and that caused the craft and horses to veer off the roadway. Then Albert fell off the carriage, and when he landed, his blood had spattered and pooled on the ground. What exactly happened to Henry, though, no one knew for sure. But his hat was found in a small suitcase left behind in the carriage, which might make one assume that he'd been taken in a hurry after the initial attack. But the question you're probably asking yourself, though, is who would have wanted to do something like that? Well, in order to get to that answer, I need to provide you with some important background information about Albert Fountain leading up to February 1896. Albert was originally from New York and as a young man had worked as a newspaper reporter. He traveled far and wide for his stories and at one point even went to Central America, where he uncovered an American expedition leader doing unauthorized colonizing. Presumably because of what he learned and intended to publish about that situation, Albert was arrested and scheduled to be executed, but he managed to evade his captors by disguising himself as a woman and boarded a steamship out of the country. In the early 1860s, he became an attorney, but forewent actively practicing law at that time to enlist in the military. He got injured during the American Civil War and After a few years, was officially discharged. During that time, he met and married his wife, Mariana, who he would go on to have 10 children with six boys and four girls. Little Henry was the youngest. Albert's impressive career included serving as a majority leader for the Texas State Senate and pushed for legislation that sought to protect more of the American frontier with law enforcement officers like the Texas Rangers. And it seems that as a result of all this work, he garnered a reputation among outlaws as someone who needed to go away. For example, in 1870, he was ambushed and nearly fatally shot in a saloon by an angry citizen. But somehow the bullets that had flown his way had only managed to scathe his head and pierce through his forearm. One of the rounds hit his pocket watch and several papers which were tucked into his coat in such a way that they were able to stop the bullet. In the 1870s, Albert and his family settled for good in Mesilla, and he founded an English and Spanish newspaper called the Mesilla Valley Independent. It was also around this time that he took up practicing law full time. One of his most well known clients was the infamous American outlaw, Billy the Kid. Billy was eventually linked to multiple homicides, including the killing of a sheriff. But after representing Billy, Albert went on to become an Assistant United States District Attorney. And it seems that it was at that point in his life when he became more focused on cracking down on suspected criminals, disrupting people's way of life in New Mexico. About two years before his disappearance, Albert had started working as the chief investigator and prosecutor for an entity called the Southeastern New Mexico Stock Growers association, which was a collection of ranch owners and cattle companies that had come together to put a stop to cattle wrestling, AKA theft. Illegal cattle rustlers were greatly affecting businesses in the region. So Albert decided he wanted to conduct investigations that would identify and stop these sorts of criminals. He managed to identify a handful of men he suspected were involved in this kind of illegal activity, and many of them would eventually take plea deals and go to prison. Albert also began to investigate a prominent man in the region named Albert Fall. Albert Fall and Albert Fountain's history went way back, and it wasn't the greatest. According to author Corey Recco, about eight years before Albert Fountain disappeared, he and Albert Fall had gone head to head in an election for the New Mexico Territorial legislature, and Albert Fountain had won. Then, two years later, they ran against one another again. But this time, Albert Fall took the victory. Just like Albert Fountain, Albert Fall had risen the ranks from serving in the military to eventually becoming a lawyer and establishing his own local newspaper in New Mexico. Albert Fall was a staunch Democrat and Albert Fountain was a Republican. During the 1890s, there were several high profile elections in which the men's feud festered. Disputes over ballot box tampering and rigged recounts boiled over. And coincidentally, an appeal for one of those disputes, which involved Albert Fountain alleging that the sheriff's election had been conducted fraudulently by Albert Fall, was still pending when Albert Fountain and his son Henry vanished. In addition to that, Albert Fall also had close connections to three men from the region named Oliver Lee, James Gilliland and William McNew. That trio of guys had been in Albert Fall's orbit and at his beck and call since at least the early 1890s. In the early 1890s, Albert Fall became a district judge and quickly gave Oliver James and William positions of U.S. deputy Marshals. Thanks in part to Albert Fountain's relentless pursuit to root out suspected abuses of power and corruption, Albert Fall was eventually forced to resign from his position as a district judge, which meant Oliver, James and William also lost their jobs as US Deputy Marshals. However, they were eventually awarded positions as sheriff's deputies, thanks to the most recently elected sheriff being a Democrat who seemed to be connected to Albert Fall. Interestingly, Oliver Lee was a member of the Southeastern New Mexico Stock Growers association, which was the very same entity that Albert Fountain worked for as a chief investigator and prosecutor. So Albert Fountain would have likely been very familiar with Oliver, William and James connection to his arch nemesis, Albert Fall. From what I gathered reading the source material, Oliver Lee's reputation was that of a charming cowboy sharpshooter from Texas who'd grown up around horses and owned several ranches. James and William were also native Texans who'd found work at Oliver's ranch in southern New Mexico. And by default, the men had formed what some of the source material describes as a gang. And it was this group of sheriff's deputies, ranch hands, plus Albert Fall that Albert Fountain had begun to suspect were the real string pullers behind some of the cattle thefts that had been happening in the region. According to letters Albert Fountain wrote during this time frame, which author Corey Reco published in his book, Fountain stated that thanks to various informants, he'd discovered that Oliver Lee and the other men associated with Albert Fall were involved in stealing cattle, altering brands on those animals, and then delivering the cattle to a butcher, who, seemingly unbeknownst to anyone but authorities, had agreed to testify in court. These witnesses revealed to Albert Fountain that more than 100 animals had been slaughtered in the wrestling scheme by October 1895. So just a few months before Albert Fountain and his son vanished, word had spread that Albert Fountain intended to deliver all of the damning evidence he'd gathered to a grand jury in Lincoln. And he was confident that indictments against the men who were believed to be involved would quickly follow. Author Corey Recco wrote in his book that when Albert and Henry were In Lincoln in January 1896, Albert helped prosecutors in Dona Ana county successfully secure 32 indictments against 23 men, which included Oliver Lee and William McNew. Their charges were for larceny of cattle and defacing brands. In the weeks prior to that happening, Albert had forecasted that trouble would likely come his way as a result of what he'd been working on. He'd received death threats, and one of his colleagues who worked as a deputy was even nearly fatally shot in the street, seemingly at random, by none other than Albert Fall, one of his brother in laws, and a third unidentified man. Another concerning incident that preceded the grand jury events in Lincoln involved two cowboys who were assisting Albert Fountain with the cattle rustling investigation. Those men had killed and skinned a steer they suspected was stolen so they could examine it and prove that its brand had been intentionally altered. But shortly after doing that, they were arrested by Oliver Lee, James Gilliland and William McNeugh for charges related to unlawful killing and skinning a steer. All this turmoil and allegations of corruption in law enforcement were what had made Mariana Fountain nervous and fearful for her husband's safety prior to him leaving on January 12. But despite his wife's worries, Albert Fountain had remained determined to fulfill his duties and help see justice served, regardless of how many hindrances got in his way prior to his disappearance. He wrote about this time in his life in a letter which read, quote, I should not be deterred thereby from performing my whole duty. Public opinion here is with us and the present condition of affairs and cannot long exist. Nevertheless, I anticipate a hard contest won, perhaps to the death, end quote. And if those words weren't ominous enough.