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- [00:00]
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The world is full of tours.
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But you don't choose a Toyota truck.
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To follow the beaten path. You choose it to find the places.
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In between the detours where each adventure pulls you toward the next.
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And wrong turns turn out right.
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So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour?
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Toyota trucks.
- [00:31]
B
If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why, hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. It was around dark on Dec. 3, 2020, when Hood County Sheriff's Lt. Johnny Rose got the call. Two of his deputies had found a body in rural Lipan, Texas. Well, it was way out in the woods. It took a while just to get out there to the scene. The body they found was Christopher Whiteley, the guy we told you all about in the last episode. He was 28 years old, the father of two kids. He'd just gotten out of prison and his family said he was doing a lot better now. He was dead in the woods. He'd been there for a day and a half, just 80 yards from the house where he'd been staying with his girlfriend, Tyler. Right away, there were some details about the kill site that would send this case in an unprecedented direction. Christopher's body was underneath a lot of heavy brush and he was curled up in the fetal position and wasn't wearing a shirt shirt. When investigators rolled Christopher over, they saw that he had blood on his jeans and on the top of his boots, but not on his abdomen, which told them that he was probably wearing a shirt when he was attacked. Now that shirt was nowhere to be seen. Investigators also noticed that Christopher was wearing black shorts under his jeans, but someone or something had pulled those shorts through the zipper of his jeans. To them, it looked like something maybe was trying to drag him away. And then you couldn't miss the enormous jagged gash across his throat. In his report, one investigator would later write that it looked like a wild animal had been chewing at Christopher's neck. I'd never seen that type of wound in that place. I don't see how a human could.
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Have done that with an instrument.
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If not a human, then what? They quickly ruled out smaller animals. The gash looked way too big for a dog bite or a feral hog or a coyote. And there are no wolves or bears in that part of Texas. There's no other obvious reason or explanation on what happened to that the way his wound was. Also, why was Christopher underneath all that brush? They wondered if something had covered him up there like they were hiding him for later. The only thing that Johnny and the others could figure was that Christopher had been attacked and killed by a mountain lion. There had never been a fatal mountain lion attack on a human in all of Texas known history. They said Christopher was the first. It would quickly become an incredibly controversial claim, pitting one small town sheriff's office against many others who saw the same evidence and reached an entirely different conclusion about the death of Christopher Whiteley. From Free Range Productions with the Dallas Morning News, this is season four of the Unforgotten Killsite. I'm your host, Wes Ferguson, and this is episode two, the Ghost. When I was a kid sitting around a campfire at night, my Uncle Bob used to tell stories about this panther that supposedly prowled the family ranch in Oklahoma. I still remember sitting there in the dark, nothing between me and the woods but a barbed wire fence, convinced a mountain lion was watching us from the shadows. My Uncle Bob said she screamed just like a woman. That was a long time ago, and I'm still waiting to see my first mountain lion in the wild. Mountain lions, also known as panthers, pumas, cougars and catamounts, once ranged across the whole United States. But they prey on cattle and sheep, and so we've killed them off nearly everywhere east of the Rockies. Some people call them ghost cats because you almost never see them, even when they're right there. But mountain lions do pop up in unexpected places from time to time, far from their normal range, and they are capable of taking down a human. I can't imagine being hunted by one right in your own backyard.
- [05:29]
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Mountain lions are a stalking predator. They detect prey. They walk in, try to get as close as they can undetected, and then launch an attack. Just like a house cat if you were teasing it with a little piece of yarn.
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This is federal mountain lion trapper Michael Bodenchuk.
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For 34 years, I worked for USDA Wildlife Services as a biologist and a state director.
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Mike has studied thousands of mountain lion kills of lots of different kinds of prey.
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Cats hunt with their eyes. They'll walk until they have to crawl. They'll crawl until they can't get any closer, and then they're going to run at their prey and try and Grab it, spear their prey with their face. They jump up and grab it with their feet, their claws, and pull it into their mouth.
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Given their killing prowess, it's no wonder these ghosts of the wild have a unique hold on our imagination. In Hood county, where Christopher Whiteley died, there have been stories of mountain lion sightings over the years. But the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has been keeping track of sightings since 1982. And there has never been a confirmed mountain lion report in all of Hood County. And that goes for the mountain lion that supposedly killed Christopher Whiteley. On the night that Christopher's body was discovered. Justice of the Peace Kathy Gwynn reached the kill site around 8pm it was.
- [06:59]
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After dark, I think. I went out about 8 o' clock and it was very cold because I had on, you know, a down jacket and I had gloves and hats and boots on.
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Charlie Scudder interviewed Judge Gwynn for the Dallas Morning News. He's the reporter you heard from in the last episode. What was the first suggestion that it might have been an animal? Was that something that was kind of already on the investigators minds when you got there?
- [07:26]
A
It was discussed a little bit. One thing that was not discussed in my presence was that it was a mountain lion. That discussion, I believe came up later.
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Judge Gwynn declared Christopher dead at 8pm she also ordered an autopsy.
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A
It was just such an unusual kind of way that we found him. If I cannot determine what the immediate cause of death is, I have to make that call whether to send them to the medical examiner or not.
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By now it was pretty late. The sheriff's deputies who found Christopher offered to stay there with his body. But the sheriff's chief investigator, George Zamaron, dropped a pin on the location and told him they could go home for the night. This is really hard for me to believe, but according to the sheriff's official incident report, they left Christopher's body out there unsecured in the woods with a panther supposedly on the loose. If that's true, it would have been the next morning before Christopher's body was moved.
- [08:27]
A
We had to get him out of where he was first though, you know, and it wasn't going to be an easy track because it's just a funeral home that come and transport the body for us. So, you know, sheriff's deputies and I believe fire department personnel helped with getting him from that location to where he could be picked up.
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Hood county is too small to have its own medical examiner. So Christopher was driven to Fort Worth to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office for an autopsy. Meanwhile, Sheriff's Lt. Johnny Rose was calling around trying to find wildlife experts who could track down this killer cat. Johnny's phone calls led him to the local game warden, which led him to Mike Bodenchuk, the trapper and wildlife biologist you heard from earlier in the episode. So I assume that you've killed some mountain lions.
- [09:19]
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I've shot mountain lions.
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So you're not just like a mountain lion lover?
- [09:24]
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I love mountain lions. I think they're one of the most fascinating predators on earth. But I have done my job in managing mountain lion population.
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Mike tracked his first mountain lion when he was in College in 1979.
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My master's project was on how to estimate mountain lion populations without capturing mountain lions, without putting radio collars on them.
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After he went to work for the federal government, Mike confirmed the first calves ever killed by a mountain lion in Nebraska. In over a century. In Utah, he designed projects to protect sheep from mountain lions.
- [10:03]
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We've looked at thousands of kills. As a rule, the average number of kills per incident when I was there was 9.7. When a lion finds a herd of sheep, it's gotta be fun. They just grab and bite and grab and bite. I remember one incident with 102 sheep in a single night. Whoa.
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And do you think that was one mountain lion that didn't.
- [10:26]
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I think it was two, but it didn't matter to the sheep guy.
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B
Right. Do you remember where you were, what you were doing when you heard about Christopher Whiteley?
- [10:36]
A
I was at my house and I got a text from the game warden in Hood county. And he reached out to me and said, would I be willing to look at some photos? He sent me a couple of the, I'll call them crime scene photos and said, do these look like a mountain lion kill?
- [10:54]
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Mike studied the photos of Christopher, and to him, the evidence pointed in another direction.
- [10:59]
A
I looked at them as close as I could on my phone. Right. And I told him that I did not think that was mountain lion kill. From the photos he was showing me that the things I would look for in a mountain lion attack on a human were missing. I urged caution in coming to that conclusion.
- [11:17]
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It was too late to hit the road that night, so Mike offered to meet with the sheriff's investigators in Hood county first thing the next morning. He lives outside San Antonio, about a four hour drive from Hood County. You hit the road at like three in the morning or something?
- [11:30]
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Yeah, we, we had arranged to meet with that investigator when he first showed up.
- [11:34]
B
So it's a big deal.
- [11:35]
A
Human fatality is a big deal. Absolutely. You hear that? That's not just a Toyota truck. That's the sound of no crowds, no.
- [11:55]
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Alerts, no distractions, and no telling what you'll find next.
- [12:03]
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You know, like a detour.
- [12:05]
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So why would you ever take a.
- [12:07]
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Tour when you could take a detour? Toyota trucks.
- [12:14]
B
You know, you don't have to let big wireless and your overpriced phone bill suck the joy out of the holidays this year, because right now all of Mint Mobile's Unlimited plans are 50% off. You can get 3, 6 or 12 months of unlimited premium wireless for 15 bucks a month. It's their best deal of the year and makes it real easy for you to give your expensive wireless bill the Scrooge treatment. I recently switched to Mint Mobile and it's all going great. I have great sound quality, great reception, no complaints. Turn your expensive wireless present into a huge wireless savings future by switching to Mint Shop. Mint unlimited plans@mintmobile.com unforgotten that's mintmobile.com unforgotten limited time offer upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term Only greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com Mike Bodenchuk arrived in Hood county early the next morning.
- [13:33]
A
We sat in the investigator's office and looked at more photos and he gave me a description of what they saw and I told them what I would expect to see and what I was not seeing. And they asked if I would go to the scene. So we caravanned out to the scene, parked on a county road and had to walk in. And they described how they found the body.
- [14:00]
B
One of the people with them that day was a Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist named Sam Kieschnik. Sam recorded several videos that day, so you can actually hear them when they're at the kill site looking for clues.
- [14:13]
A
Trail coming in. And this is where the backpack was found at that blood spot. The body was located right there.
- [14:28]
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A small dry creek ran through the woods. Christopher had actually crossed that creek before he died.
- [14:35]
A
So here's more of the creek bed. Quite a few tracks, small coyote or dog tracks, seems like most of them. Maybe a little bobcat there. No large tracks or anything like that that we've seen. Quite a bit of coyote activity, some smaller ones, perhaps some bobcats. So as expected Little wildlife trail.
- [15:06]
B
Lots of small tracks. Coyotes, a hog, maybe bobcats. No big tracks though. No mountain lion. Not even in the soft sand of the creek bed where a lion would have preferred to walk.
- [15:19]
A
But it sounds quite a bit like consensus is probably not a wildlife incident.
- [15:25]
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Sam found the pool of blood where Christopher was attacked.
- [15:29]
A
So this looks like the kill site here or where a lot of blood is from this spot. He would walk over here. Again, there's not much activity around here. Not much wildlife activity.
- [15:47]
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There wasn't much wildlife activity, but there were a ton of human footprints, most from the sheriff's office and the fire department, the first responders. But there were other footprints too. Here's Mike again.
- [16:01]
A
But there were a lot of human tracks right there. From the discovery and the recovery of his body on the way in. I was looking for lion sign there, but I looked for alternative signs and worked my way out away from the site after we had a description.
- [16:22]
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Mike wasn't just looking for signs of a mountain lion attack. He was also looking for anything else that might explain what happened to Christopher.
- [16:30]
A
Were there dog tracks there? Were there other people tracks that didn't match the boot prints from the sheriff's office? Was there a deer stand nearby? There was some conversation with the family that he had been walking through this little patch of woods on a daily basis to catch a ride to go into a job somewhere else. And so I was looking for indications that he had been using a particular trail multiple days in a row, those kind of things that would help put the whole picture together. So I was looking for everything.
- [17:09]
B
For what it's worth, Mike didn't find any kind of well worn trail through the woods that day. Also, it didn't make any sense that Christopher would have cut through the woods to catch a ride to work. Because the road was in a different direction from the house. It would have made more sense to walk straight to the road where his dad was going to pick him up instead of going out of his way to navigate through a bunch of dense brush 20 or 30 yards northeast of the kill site, kind of back toward the house. Mike discovered two sets of human footprints walking side by side. One set was a pair of cowboy boots like Christopher had been wearing. And the other was a pair of hiking or tactical boots that belonged to someone who hadn't been identified. This seemed like an important clue, something the sheriff's office had overlooked during their own investigation. Was Christopher walking with another person? Maybe it was one of the people Christopher's dad had heard on the phone the morning that christopher disappeared.
- [18:05]
A
I did find a couple other sets of boot tracks that were not associated with the covery. I didn't know what boots he was wearing, so I didn't know if those were his boots or somebody else's body boots. I saw two different sets of dog tracks. One set of tracks was fairly recent. One looked like the same dog, but it was older. It was several days old.
- [18:27]
B
But none of that told mike whether a predator had attacked christopher. For that, he had to look for signs on the body, the kinds of things that always show up in a mountain lion kill.
- [18:37]
A
What we're looking for is not just puncture wounds, but subcutaneous hemorrhage. Right.
- [18:43]
B
Subcutaneous hemorrhage just means bleeding under the skin.
- [18:47]
A
There's also going to be subcutaneous hemorrhage Associated with the claws where they grabbed that animal. And those claws got through the skin. And so those are actually in a pattern. You can see where the four toes actually grabbed and made smaller little bruises. So those are the indications that I look for.
- [19:09]
B
Christopher's body didn't have any of those bruises Mike would have been looking for also, and I apologize if this is gruesome to think about, but there was no evidence that any creature had tried to eat christopher at all.
- [19:22]
A
There's patterns of feeding that you want to look for that would indicate what predator it is. On deer or domestic sheep, they'll pull the rumen out the stomach outside of the carcass to get to the organ meat above it, the liver and the lungs and the heart. So there's a particular way that a predator feeds on a kill that also aids in the forensics.
- [19:46]
B
So did I read this correctly? A mountain lion will often remove the entrails and then eat the heart and liver right away, and then cover it up or something and then come back later. This is an important question. Because the sheriff's office had found christopher Underneath all that heavy brush, Investigators thought a big cat must have covered up the body so it could come back and eat him later. Mike says no.
- [20:11]
A
The studies that have been done on mountain lions have been all over the place. And in the northern latitudes, they cover their kills very, very often. In the southern latitudes, they don't cover them as frequently because they don't come back to them. And part of this has to do with the heat. They don't like eating rotten meat. Cats are pretty particular about what they eat. If it's a hot day, and they know that from the last several times They've killed something that it's going to rot before they get there. They don't bother to cover it. A lion can eat a lot in one sitting. I've seen where lions killed a wild horse and eaten 20 pounds of wild horse meat.
- [20:55]
B
All that to say Mike wasn't convinced that a mountain lion would have covered up Christopher to eat later. And despite his best efforts, he still hadn't found a single mountain lion track. In fact, he didn't see anything at the scene that pointed to a mountain lion attack at all. But there was something else that caught his eye.
- [21:14]
A
There were some. Also some particular pieces of, I'll say, evidence to me, what were evidentiary that were instrumental in some of my thoughts. Where he bled. There was a pool of blood, a dry blood. It was on the south side of a juniper and perhaps 15ft from where his body was found. Between those two locations, there was a small sapling, a very thin piece of juniper that had blood on it about my eye height. And to me, that indicated that he had stumbled that direction. That blood got on that tree. I later learned that his jugular vein had been severed. And jugular veins don't squirt blood. Arteries squirt blood. Veins leak. It didn't squirt blood into the bushes. It didn't squirt blood up high. He stumbled across that and it swiped on his face or on his neck.
- [22:23]
B
So why wouldn't that be?
- [22:25]
A
A mountain lion by itself doesn't make sense at all. I mean, a lion bites, a lion attacks from the back whenever it can. They don't spear with their face. They don't run to the jugular and grab the jugular first. They grab with their claws and pull in. And indications that he'd been grabbed with claws were not in the photos that I saw. There was no bruising that was associated with claw marks. There was none of that. A torn jugular is not consistent with, or torn throat is not consistent with a lion. A lion is going to bite and hold. He's a grown man. And that's not the preferred prey of mountain lions. Mountain lions, when they do attack humans, it's very, very rare. But it's always small children or. Or small petite women. And a mountain lion almost never defensively attacks, unless you're closer than you and I are sitting right now. So, you know, I've been within feet of mountain lions that showed no aggression whatsoever. They'll try and hide first. And that location, if a lion had been there, he would have crawled off into that juniper rather than come out. So there's no sign of lines. It's not mountain lion range. The bite marks to the front of the throat are inconsistent with a lion attack. No claw marks on the body that I could tell from the photos it was.
- [24:01]
B
And no signs because you said, you know, if it takes minutes, sure. No signs of a struggle.
- [24:06]
A
No, no.
- [24:10]
B
Am I the only one who's horrified by the number of chemicals and cleaning products these days? I started looking into what I was actually using around the house, and it turns out my laundry detergent wasn't nearly as clean as I thought. Turns out it's full of harsh chemicals like UV brighteners, dyes and preservatives, which can wreck your skin, trigger allergic reactions, and even disrupt your hormones. That's why I switched to Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. Just toss a sheet into the washer with your clothes and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no plastic jug. My laundry comes out fresh, soft and clean without the unnecessary chemicals. And right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com unforgotten that's earthbreeze.com unforgotten to get up to 40% off with FREE gifts on your first order. When it comes to holiday gift giving, I want to give things people really love. Beautiful, timeless pieces they'll wear for years. That's why I'm going with Quince. From Mongolian cashmere sweaters to Italian wool coats, everything is premium quality at a price that actually makes sense. Quince has something for everyone. Soft Mongolian cashmere sweaters for $50 that look and feel like designer pieces. Silk tops and skirts for dressing up, perfectly cut denim for everyday wear and outerwear that actually keeps you warm. We just had our first little cold front in Texas, so I broke out my quint sweater and it's so soft I can't get enough of it. And I know it's about to get a lot more use with the holidays right around the corner. Find gifts so good you'll want to keep them with Quince. Go to quints.comUnforgotten for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.comUnforgotten to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quence.comUnforgotten this is a very important point. When a mountain lion takes down large prey, it stalks from behind, jumps and grabs it with their claws, and then clamps down on the neck, they don't slash the throat, and the animal does not die right away.
- [26:39]
A
Usually there is a bite to the neck, and they don't crush the vertebra. They sever or tear the muscles that attach the neck to the skull. And then they can break the neck either with a twist of the head, they grab the nose with their claws, or if it's a big, mature animal and they can't do that, they'll actually work their way around to the jugular area where the jawbone meets the throat and grab there and crush the trachea and hold it closed. That's a wild ride for a lion. It takes a while for that deer to run out of air. And so they're holding the throat closed. The deer's kicking at them with the front feet. 3, 4 minutes were an animal's fighting for its life and another one's fighting for its meal.
- [27:29]
B
If a mountain lion had attacked Christopher, there would have been evidence of chaos. Broken branches, leaves, and dirt scattered everywhere. But there was nothing like that.
- [27:43]
A
Again, it's the absence of everything. If I'd have seen one mountain lion track, I'd have said, yeah, possibly. But there was just nothing there that would support that.
- [27:57]
B
Remember, while Mike and the other wildlife officials were investigating the scene of Christopher's death, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office was also performing Christopher's autopsy. The Examiner's name was Dr. Susan Rowe, a forensic pathologist. In the photos I've seen of her, she wears glasses and she has noticeably curly hair down to her shoulders. Dr. Susan Rowe examined Christopher's body and found that it was cold to the touch. She measured him at 5 foot 6, 146 pounds, and said that he was a normally developed, normally nourished Caucasian male with wavy brown hair. Dr. Rowe also measured the wound to Christopher's neck. He had multiple punctures and tears, the largest being up to 4 inches long. His right jugular vein was severed, and he'd lost a lot of blood. Christopher didn't have any other major wounds, but he did have superficial scratches all over his body. Dr. Rowe sent over her preliminary autopsy report to the Hood County Sheriff's Office. Christopher, she said, had been killed by a wild animal, possibly a mountain lion. Hood County Sheriff's Lt. Johnny Rose issued a news release on Facebook titled mountain lion attack leaves man dead.
- [29:15]
A
We were actually on the scene when a Facebook post was posted by the sheriff's office. We were telling him why it wasn't a mountain lion, and they. They released that Facebook Post.
- [29:25]
B
So, yeah, the announcement lit up the Internet. It made news around the world. Our top story tonight, a mountain lion suspected of mauling a man to death in Hood County. This is a clip From CBS Channel 11 in Dallas, one of the news organizations that interviewed Roger Deeds, the Hood county sheriff.
- [29:46]
A
We've been out all day today with a trapper looking for signs and looking for the animal just to see what we can find because we have had the sightings in the recent past. He could have been surprised.
- [30:00]
B
We don't really know.
- [30:01]
A
I just unfortunately found his remains after the fact.
- [30:05]
B
The media coverage all came with intense warnings for the public. Hood county authorities are urging families to keep children and pets indoors at night.
- [30:14]
A
And be wary of the woods.
- [30:16]
B
No doubt it could happen anywhere, not.
- [30:19]
A
Just in the mountains, but here in North Texas.
- [30:22]
B
This being Texas, Sheriff Deeds also had to ask that hunter stay away for their own safety instead of trying to be the first to bag the trophy cat. I mean, they definitively said, mountain lion attack leaves man dead. What are you thinking at that point?
- [30:37]
A
I thought it was a hasty conclusion. It certainly wasn't supported by my experience.
- [30:43]
B
Mike wasn't the only one who thought so. Some were quietly starting to ask if Christopher had been murdered. The mystery of Christopher Whiteley's death was about to deepen and it would pit rival investigations against each other in a very public way. That's next. Time on the Unforgotten. Most of the wildlife experts believed this is certainly not a wildlife attack. Therefore, without saying it directly, it has to be human. This has to be murder. Thank you for listening to the Unforgotten. To dig deeper into the story and see photos, case files and more, check out our newsletter@unforgottenpod.com the Unforgotten is a free range production. Season 4 Killsight was produced here at Free Range in association with the Dallas Morning News. Editing by Aislin Gaddis Sound design and audio engineering from Austin Sisler with Eastside Studios. Charlie Scudder and I are executive producers. Special thanks to Morgan O'. Hanlon. Don't forget on forgottenpod.com see you soon.
- [32:01]
A
I'm here on the job site with.
- [32:02]
B
Dale, who's a framing contractor.
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A
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A
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B
Look at me.
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A
Take a deep breath. I'm good. So good.
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B
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And see how much you could save.
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B
Get more with geico. If you haven't signed up for it yet, head on over to unforgottenpod.com to sign up for our newsletter. We have a totally free version where we share links to each episode along with photos, case files, and more. We also have a premium version where you can get episodes early and ad free. That's unforgottenpod.com.