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Hi park enthusiasts. I'm your host Delia D'Ambra and the case I'm going to tell you about today is one that at its core involves two of the oldest motives in the book for murder, sex and drugs. It took place in 2018 and was a case that got a lot of coverage within the state of California where the crime happened. But overall I didn't see a ton of national coverage about it, which to me felt like a shame because the circumstances that led up to this crime are things that millions of people deal with every day, either with a current or former romantic partner or maybe even an acquaintance. I'M talking about stuff like out of control jealousy, stalking, manipulation, and even physical and emotional abuse. The National Park Service's website for Joshua Tree national park, where the story unfolded, dubs it as a place where two distinct desert ecosystems meet. If you've ever been there, you know that the landscape has endured hundreds, even thousands of years of violent rainstorms and blustering winds. Those events, plus volcanic activity, flash flooding, have all shaped the rocks and vegetation in the park, which are habitats to an array of animals and plant species that live in the landscape's harsh environment. Most visitors go to the park during the springtime or on holidays. Temperatures in Joshua Tree tend to vary wildly throughout the year. For example, it can get up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and sink well below freezing at night in the winter. The lives of the individuals involved in this crime were just as up and down as the well known park's climate. They were three distinct people whose lives collided in the most chaotic and violent way possible. And the young man at the center of the entire saga had so many chances to stop and think about what he was doing, to make different choices. But he didn't. And though the life he took as a result can never be brought back, the elements of Joshua Tree national park made sure he didn't get away with cold blooded murder. This is Park Predators around noon on Friday, June 1, 2018, a guy named Mark Powers was hiking alone inside Joshua Tree national park when he spotted a group of vultures circling in the air and gathered on the ground about 15ft away from him. The area where Mark was hiking wasn't that off the beaten path. In fact, it was near the intersection of Bighorn Pass Road and Park Boulevard, which are two traveled roadways in the park. I checked on Google Maps and there was even a campground nearby. So Mark assumed that maybe the vultures were picking apart a dead animal or something. I don't know exactly what was going through his mind, but I imagine that since the road was right there and it might have been common for critters to try and cross it but not make it, Mark just figured whatever the birds were after was likely a casualty of traffic. Intrigued by the sight, he decided to snap a few photos of the vultures. After a few minutes, he left and kept hiking. The next morning, Saturday, June 2, he was back with his family and doing what so many of us do after we've gone on a cool hike. He shared a few of the photos that he'd taken when his wife viewed the pictures of the Vultures. She voiced concern. I imagine she must have felt like something was just off about the carcass. The birds had been swarming around because she told Mark that he should contact the closest park ranger station and report what he'd stumbled across. So around 9:15 in the morning that same day, Mark made the call. He phoned the local NPS station and got ahold of a ranger who took his report. And then that ranger sent out another ranger to check the ground near the intersection of Bighorn Pass Road and Park Boulevard. And sure enough, when that ranger got to the spot where Mark had taken his photos, he saw what appeared to be a man's torso sticking out of the dirt. From the looks of it, the upper part was still partially buried, but the lower portion wasn't, and it had clearly undergone severe decomposition. Because of the extent of the decomp, NPS surmised that the body had likely been in the area for several days. After finding the victim, rangers immediately called the Riverside County Sheriff's Office to report what was going on. Around 1pm a deputy from that department came out to the scene and roped off the area around the remains. Shortly after that, homicide investigators from the Sheriff's office arrived with forensic techs. For a few hours, the group worked to gather clues and carefully remove the body so it could be sent off for an autopsy. By 5:15pm There was nothing more to investigate, so the sheriff's office released the scene back to the Park Service. The victim's body was sent to a local coroner's office for a full examination, but those results didn't come in until the morning of June 4th. Nearly a day and a half later, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy found several fractures on the victim's skull as well as multiple wounds to his chest neck that all appeared to have come from a sharp object, which I assume probably was either a knife or something similar. The case was quickly ruled a homicide. During the autopsy, the pathologist was able to pull a fingerprint from the man's left hand. And after law enforcement ran that print through the California ID database, they learned the victim was 54 year old Henry Allen Stange. Something deputies found interesting was that Henry was not listed as a missing person anywhere in the country, which meant no one had been looking for him or even realized he was dead in the desert. Investigators found more records for Henry and learned that he was from the city of Murrieta, which is in Riverside County. So on the evening of June 6, four days after his body had been found, the sheriff's Office went to Henry's home. When they got there and went inside the garage, they found blood spatter, streaks of blood on the floor that appeared to be drag marks, a pile of towels soaked with blood, and a large pool of blood on the ground. And when I say large pool of blood, I mean large. Police reports state that this pool was roughly 4ft by 2ft. So, yeah, no small area. After finding the scene, the Sheriff's office linked up with the Murrieta Police Department, and it was the city officers who officially began to process and investigate the scene. They found more blood spatter next to some ham radio equipment in the garage and beneath the underside of a fishing vessel that was being stored on a trailer there. This boat was reported to be kind of small, and investigators assumed that one way blood spatter could have gotten on the underside of it was if Henry, possibly his head, had also been on the ground nearby. In essence, what all the blood evidence indicated to detectives was that the garage had clearly been the actual site of Henry's murder. One detective later remarked that whatever had happened in there was not quick and said all signs pointed to a, quote, prolonged assault, end quote. Based on the fact that Henry had suffered so many blunt force injuries to his head, which the pathologist determined had collapsed a portion of his skull, investigators felt pretty confident that he'd not left his home on his own free will. They suspected he'd likely been transported away from the initial crime scene in a vehicle, then driven into the desert, where someone quickly tried to bury him. In order to prove that theory, though, Crime Scene Text processed everything of evidentiary value in the house, hopeful that something would point them in the direction of Henry's killer or killers. According to Brian Rocco's reporting for the Press enterprise and a press release by the Murrieta Police Department, it was at this point in the investigation that the case was officially taken over by the city investigators, since the crime scene was in their jurisdiction. The first major clue that stuck out to the detectives was the fact that officers had not found any signs of forced entry to Henry's house, which typically means that the suspect or suspects could have been someone the victim might have known. On the kitchen table, investigators found Henry's wallet and some cash still inside. Even more odd, nothing of value appeared to be missing from the rest of the house, which reinforced for investigators a theory that robbery most likely was not the motive. It seemed more and more like the crime was personal. When officers inspected the outside of the home, they realized Henry had a security system installed that had several cameras. However, when detectives went to the area in the garage where the DVR system for the cameras was supposed to be, they found nothing but a bunch of disconnected wires. Someone had intentionally removed the archive system. Now, this was a telltale sign to investigators that whoever had killed Henry knew where that system was kept, and they'd purposely sabotaged it to cover up or destroy video evidence of them at the murder scene. So with all this information in hand, the big question law enforcement needed to answer was why? Why had someone done this to Henry? But before they could solve that piece of the puzzle, detectives needed to learn more about their victim. Who was he? When was the last time anyone had seen him alive? These were crucial questions investigators had to follow up on. They learned that the 54 year old was a father of two and at the time of his murder, was separated from his wife, Melissa Stange. The couple hadn't been together since she filed for divorce in 2017. At the time of his death, their divorce was still pending, and Henry was only allowed to visit with their kids on a limited basis because she had full custody. Heavy.com reported that the couple's separation stemmed from allegations of domestic violence. Investigators checked out these allegations. And even though, according to police records, there were nearly two dozen past calls for service between the two of them from when they'd been together, detectives weren't too concerned. The Press Enterprise and Heavy.com reported that Melissa's mother had filed a restraining order against Henry in 2017, and so did two other people. But from what I could find in the source material, it seems like those cases were eventually dropped. It's hard to tell from the articles I found, so I don't know if this next bit of information came directly from Melissa or some of Henry's neighbors, who also spoke with police. But not long into the murder investigation, detectives learned that Henry had developed a serious addiction to prescription medication, specifically opioids meant to treat pain. According to court documents, Henry's divorce had affected him deeply. And on top of that, he'd suffered some serious injuries in a car accident while recuperating, he'd used prescription pain meds and become dependent on them. In fact, detectives investigating Henry's murder learned that on May 23, 2018, nine days before that, hiker Mark Powers had found his remains in Joshua Tree. Henry had picked up a prescription for a 120 count dosage of oxycodone at a local grocery store. Surveillance video confirmed it was Henry who'd picked up the medication. It's unclear from the source material how the authorities knew to go to this specific pharmacy and check for that video. But I assume they must have found the oxycodone prescription at Henry's home and traced it back to the name of the store that he filled it in in order to confirm he was in fact, the person who'd picked it up. But regardless of when or why he got those pills, the authorities knew that the bottom line was one, Henry was still alive on May 23rd, and two, all signs pointed to him having a poor quality of life. Shortly before his murder, they reviewed his finances, and the picture they got was even more bleak. Henry had been struggling financially for a while, and sometimes he couldn't even afford to keep the lights on at his house. So to say things were pretty rough for him is kind of an understatement. But there was one thing that made him really happy and that was operating his ham radio within a community of other ham radio hobbyists. According to police reports, signing on was something Henry did weekly, if not daily. There had been instances in the past with some disgruntled amateur radio operators who'd gotten into arguments with Henry over the airwaves, but it seemed like, by and large, the hobby was mostly a positive experience for him. And because he signed on so much, there was an online broadcast software called Broadcastify that kept a record of communication between Henry and other ham radio operators. When law enforcement investigators reviewed the radio Traffic from late May 2018, they realized that Henry had been on the airwaves during that time, or at least up until Thursday, May 24th. After that, Henry had never logged back on. According to court documents, at 3:35pm on the 24th, Henry got on his radio for about 20 minutes to talk with other operators. And in those conversations, he indicated that he was doing well. By 3:55pm he'd signed off in good spirits, saying, quote, my beautiful, lovely and smart Ashley was here. End quote. Now, obviously, law enforcement wanted to find out who this Ashley person was, and in a very short amount of time, they did. However, what they learned only gave them more questions than answers.
