Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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And today's episode is a unique one. I'm going to tell you about two different cases, which are both more than 100 years old. But they share something crucial in common. Well, more like a crucial question in common. And that is, are they accidents or are they murders? The first case I'm going to dive into is the death of a man named William McMullen, who met his demise in Minnesota's Itasca State Park.
It happened in the fall of 1898, so more than 125 years ago. But I became obsessed with his case after reading a book by author John Dobie called The Itasca Story. For those of you who aren't as familiar with this recreation space or may never read Dobie's book, Itasca State Park is Minnesota's oldest state park.
Located in the northwest part of the state, its roughly 32,000 acres are home to more than 200 campsites, a historic lodge and other cabins, as well as a wilderness sanctuary. It was officially established as a state park in 1891, so seven years before William McMullen's death. And let's just say, back in the late 19th century, things looked a little differently than they do now.
The second case I'm going to dive into is the mysterious death of a man named Jasper Mellinger, who met his untimely end in the early 1900s in what is now known as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. Great Smoky Mountains is a park that prides itself on prioritizing the preservation of historic artifacts and stories. And Jasper Mellinger's tale is no exception.
While researching this episode, I got in touch with a librarian and archivist for the National Park Service who provided me with a handful of historic documents and writings from the park's collections preservation center. Reading these archives was like traveling back in time. It was amazing. And thanks to NPS's diligent record keeping, I'm able to provide you with so much more information on a case that might just be hiding a devil in the details.
This is Park Predators. On October 30th, 1898, a 57-year-old man named Nelson Rust was hunting in some woods along the west side of Lake Itasca with one of his friends, William McMullen.
The pair had been tracking a bear, though some sources say it was a deer, through the forest and after a while had managed to corner the animal into a thicket. William got the idea to approach the creature from a different location in order to startle it and hopefully drive it into the open where Nelson would be waiting to shoot it. This required William to separate from Nelson for a short period of time and sort of go up and around his partner's position, basically putting him a little further ahead of Nelson.
I read at least one source that said the men were about 50 feet apart. Whatever the exact distance was, when William did his thing, there was a noticeable rustling in the dense cluster of trees the men had trained their attention on. And then something emerged. As soon as Nelson clocked the movement, he aimed his firearm in the direction of the figure and fired. Unfortunately, he hadn't hit a deer or a bear or any other kind of animal. He'd shot William.
Some sources say in the back, piercing him in the heart, killing him instantly. Like, there was no surviving such a catastrophic gunshot. Just boom, and then William was gone. Initially, his death was viewed as a tragic hunting accident, and the people living in the region didn't really question that conclusion. According to news coverage at the time, Nelson was really upset by the incident, and he said he'd mistaken William's white necktie for the coloring of a deer.
Apparently, the two men were close friends, so I imagine he would have been wrecked with guilt over the situation. Following the shooting, William was buried in Pioneer Cemetery in the state park. And that was seemingly the end of the story. I mean, we are talking about the late 19th century here. Life was tough and death was a common thing. I imagine most people just moved on with their lives because they didn't have time to dwell on something that seemed so cut and dry.
A lot of people who'd settled in the Itasca region were homesteaders who farmed or lived on forest land that lumber companies would later purchase. There were also a handful of folks who presumably weren't as inclined to roughing it, who had dreams of developing properties along the shorelines of the area's various lakes to one day sell for a lot of money. In 1898, there weren't many roads that led to the Itasca Basin, but if you were lucky enough to find one, it was less of a roadway and more of a well-worn dirt trail.
Sometimes it took several days to make a trip just to replenish your supplies. Residents were also reported to have lived under constant threat of forest fires and attacks from neighboring Native American tribes and wild animals. The first person who settled in the area was a man named Peter Turnbull. Peter was Canadian and had worked as a civil engineer and surveyor.
In September 1883, a few years before William's death, he built a home along the east shore of Lake Itasca and seemed to be the guy who opened the door for other folks to move to the area. By 1889, William had settled in the region and built a house on the north end of the lake.
Author John Dobie wrote in his book that historians consider William the first permanent resident of the basin because technically he was the only person living in the area when Itasca Park was officially established as a state park in 1891. Several years earlier, Peter Turnbull had relocated about 25 miles south to the city of Park Rapids, Minnesota, which kind of gave William the claim to fame as the first permanent resident. When William died, he was in his late 30s, unmarried with no children.
He worked as a ranch operator for a small property in the basin, and many people who ventured up to the lake would stay at his cabin. So over time, it seems like that's how a lot of people became familiar with him. It appears less was known about Nelson Rust. According to an article published by the Duluth News Tribune, a few weeks after William's death, he ended up in Monroe, Wisconsin, some eight and a half hours southeast of Itasca.
He was obviously significantly older than William, too, but according to author John Doby, the men had gotten to know one another after Nelson purchased some land from William when he first moved to Lake Itasca. You see, Nelson had initially settled in the western section of the park, but then moved when he was able to purchase three acres of land from William. At his homestead, he erected a barn and a house and eventually went back to William to buy more land. But it appears William didn't agree to that.
Nelson was also reported to be part of the same hunting group that William was part of on the day of the shooting. It's just that he and William had broken off from the rest of their companions. Other members of that group were said to be from Iowa, but who exactly they were and where they were when the shooting happened are questions I can't answer. There's just not enough information out there about those kinds of details.
It's also mentioned in some of the source material that the state park technically functioned as a game refuge at that time. So why any of the hunters, including Nelson and William, were even there at all is a bit of a mystery. I have to assume they either had pre-approved permission to conduct their activities or their hunting expedition was just kind of a gray area, since the park itself hadn't been around that long and so hunting wasn't monitored as strictly.
What I can tell you, though, is that according to that Duluth News Tribune article I mentioned a minute ago, a few weeks after William died, two of his brothers, Sam and Ben McMullen, started to question the circumstances of the shooting and said they no longer believed Nelson's version of events. Nelson was described by one settler as a quick, impetuous man, which I think implies he wasn't the kind of person who put a lot of thought into his actions, and he often made rash decisions.
According to John Dobie's book, he admitted to being careless with his gun and for shooting so suddenly in William's direction, but he was adamant that he never intended to harm his friend. The coroner in William's case had not held a formal inquest into how he died, and Sam and Ben McMullen were not happy about that. So at some point after their brother's burial, the pair asked the county attorney to straight up issue a warrant for Nelson's arrest.
But the county attorney declined to do so. Instead, he launched his own probe into the matter to try and get to the bottom of what really happened. While that investigation was going on, things got even more tense between Sam and Ben and Nelson. At one point, the brothers reportedly threatened Nelson's life, and as a result, Nelson managed to get both of them arrested and thrown in jail. They only spent one night behind bars, but you know that was more than enough time for the brothers' disdain for Nelson to grow even stronger.
After they were released, their attorney and the county attorney met, and everyone agreed to cool off and go home until the county attorney's investigation concluded. Meanwhile, Nelson's wife and daughter told anyone who would listen how innocent Nelson was, almost to the point where it got kind of suspicious. Like, apparently the women advocated so much for Nelson in such a public way that it came off as a little bit over the top.
Eventually, by early December, the county attorney determined that, at a minimum, Nelson seemed to have committed criminal negligence for shooting and killing William. He issued a warrant for Nelson's arrest, which charged the 57-year-old with manslaughter. Right after that document was written up, the local sheriff traveled to Wisconsin and brought Nelson back to Minnesota to stand trial. He was housed at a jail in the city of Bemidji, which is about 45 minutes northeast of Itasca State Park.
At an examination hearing a few days after the arrest, the prosecution displayed a photo of the area in the forest where William had been killed in an effort to clearly show the court that Nelson should have been able to see unobstructed what was in his path when he fired his gun.
But when Nelson's defense attorney, a guy named L.H. Bailey, studied the photo, he was able to successfully prove that a couple of trees had been removed from the shooting location after the incident happened, but before the photo was taken, essentially making it moot evidence against Nelson.
Furthering Nelson's defense was the fact that his wife had reportedly tied a scarf around William's neck before the hunting group set off into the woods to ensure he could be seen from a distance by his companions and not mistaken for an animal. Also, this scarf, which I think some of the older coverage refers to interchangeably as William's necktie, served another purpose of keeping William warm because apparently he'd had a cold leading up to the hunting expedition.
But an alleged declaration that Nelson was said to have uttered not long after the shooting didn't do his defense any favors and caused some people to turn their heads and doubt everything about his version of events.
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According to John Dobie's book, shortly after William was killed, several of his friends overheard Nelson talking about the incident, and not in a mournful way. Nelson was reported to have stated, quote, I plugged him. It was a center shot, end quote, which seems to suggest that Nelson had been aware he was shooting a living person, not a deer or a bear.
But who exactly claimed to hear him make those statements and what the full context of the conversation was is unclear from the available coverage and records in this case. The story did, however, support the prosecution's argument from the start, which was that Nelson was capable of distinguishing his friend from a deer, which meant the only alternative reason for Nelson doing what he did was because he must have had some other reason for wanting William dead.
Maybe it was a secret grudge or a vendetta, which, in my opinion, is more of an argument for premeditated murder than manslaughter, but whatever. And despite getting the opportunity to present such a narrative during the examination hearing, the county attorney just kind of left a lot to be desired when it came to details about why Nelson would have wanted to harm William. Reading between the lines amongst all the source material, it seems like it was suggested that Nelson may have wanted more of William's land or something.
And that could have been his potential motive for the shooting. But again, nothing states that specifically, so we'll never really know. And when the proceeding concluded on December 30th, it was decided that Nelson's case would not go to a grand jury because the evidence against him was too insufficient. However, that didn't mean tensions between people in the community who viewed Nelson's culpability very differently dissipated.
In fact, the following year, in November 1899, the Minneapolis Journal reported that a grand jury in Beltrami County did end up reviewing the case and ultimately decided to indict Nelson for murder. Once again, it was Williams' brothers who'd spearheaded the effort to prosecute Nelson and get the case this far. However, the trial ended with an acquittal, which reportedly contributed to Nelson's wife suffering from a stroke right there in court.
but not one that was severe enough to kill her. According to one settler who did an interview with author John Doby, Nelson lived the rest of his life as a free man and moved to the northern end of the state park where he stayed until his death in November 1912 at the age of 71. Nelson maintained that he never intended to kill William and he considered himself wrongfully accused of the crime.
But Nelson's acquittal carved a deep divide between members of the Rust family and William McMullen's associates and loved ones, literally for decades. In the 1930s, which was a long time after the shooting, Nelson's son-in-law, Martin Heinzelman, was living in Texas for the winter and sent a delivery of grapefruit to one of William's old friends up in Minnesota. The gift was apparently a gesture of goodwill and sort of a means of burying the hatchet, I guess.
Initially, William's friend was really touched by the gift and was even reported to have become emotional when he opened it. But then, after he pulled himself together, he was overheard saying, quote, end quote. Which just goes to show you how quickly folks who supported the McMullen family were used to reverting back to thinking the worst of people who supported the Rust family.
The man who'd received the citrus fruit had been a game warden in Itasca State Park for some time in the early 1900s. He'd busted dozens of poachers for illegally killing animals in and around the park, and on one occasion had even investigated Martin for that suspected crime. According to John Doby's book, at some point between 1909 and 1913, while Martin was working as the park's commissioner, he was suspected of owning illegal animal traps and placing them in the park.
Now, just to refresh your memory, Martin is Nelson Rust's son-in-law, and likely a person who was Team Rust and not Team McMullen in the ongoing feud between the families over the deadly shooting in 1898. Anyway, one day when the game warden who governed the park discovered that a fox had been poached using an illegal trap, which he suspected was one of Martin's traps, he paid money to the guy who'd harvested the pelt and set his sights on building a case to catch Martin when he came looking for the fur.
But Martin figured out what this game warden was up to and interfered with his investigation. Basically, Martin traveled some three hours and 45 minutes south to St. Paul, Minnesota at the last minute to purchase a trapping permit before he went to the game warden's office to collect the pelt. So when the warden saw Martin come in and thought he had everything he needed to bust him, Martin produced his very recently obtained trapping permit and the game warden's plan fell apart.
No arrest and no consequences for Martin. But you know what's kind of wild? I found some obscure Texas newspaper clippings from the mid-1940s which detail that Martin himself and his wife Nellie, who was Nelson Russ' daughter, experienced a series of unfortunate events in the latter part of their lives that are very random but also kind of interesting.
For example, in early January 1946, Martin, who was 79 years old, was hit by a car while walking on the side of a road and killed instantly. The driver of the vehicle that struck him claimed he'd been blinded by the glare of oncoming headlights and was unable to stop before he hit Martin. It doesn't appear any criminal charges were ever filed.
Then, a few months later, in August 1946, while Nellie, his widow, was in the hospital, her home was burglarized by a trio of thieves. About three months later, Nellie died. Now, I'm not someone who puts a lot of stock in generational curses or bad luck or whatever you want to call it, but I'm not going to lie. All of these details and stories I found kind of made me have second thoughts for a minute.
Today, the one undisputed truth in the events from 1898 is that William McMullen lost his life in a violent way. A wooden pole still stands in Itasca State Park, marking the spot where he's buried. It reads, W.M. McMullen, 1861-1898. Pioneer, shot October 30th, while hunting at Itasca Lake. Peace and memory.
Was he a victim of a tragic hunting accident? We'll likely never know. Was he a victim of murder? Only Nelson Rust could answer that question, and he can no longer tell. The next case I'm going to tell you all about happened just a few short years after William McMullen's death, but all the way in eastern Tennessee.
Sometime in the winter of 1901, or some sources say 1903, a man who was in his 60s named Jasper Mellinger set out from his home along the roaring Fort Creek near modern-day Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to travel on foot through the Great Smoky Mountains and into western North Carolina. Jasper and his wife Martha's children were all grown up, so it was just the two of them and their animals living on the family farms.
The couple's only means of income was selling their crops and Jasper's trade skill as a blacksmith. But in the wintertime, with no harvest on the horizon for a while and demand for metalwork in Roaring Fork not super high that time of year, Jasper decided to take a trip across the border because he'd learned that there might be more work for blacksmiths in North Carolina.
And his assumption was right because there were a handful of small mining communities in and around the Hazel Creek area that regularly needed blacksmith services. So before departing his house, Jasper tucked a little bit of money into a purse, slung his rifle around him, grabbed his pocket watch and whatever other provisions he needed and set out in the direction of Hazel Creek. He told Martha that he would return as soon as he was able to.
Now, I don't know what the terrain or route was like back in the early 1900s, but if you look on Google Maps today and input that you want to walk from Roaring Fork to Hazel Creek, it estimates it should take you about a day. In his book, Death in the Great Smoky Mountains, author Michael Bradley explained that when Jasper made this trip, he would have trekked the backbone of the Great Smoky Mountains in the direction of the Elkmont, Tennessee area and Cherokee, North Carolina.
which would have put him on trails he was familiar with and lessened the amount of elevation he had to climb. Basically, it allowed him to cross the high peaks of the Smokies and be on a more direct path toward Hazel Creek. One of the first farms he stopped at to rest and get out of the snowy weather was owned by the Owenby family, who was known for taking in travelers. Jasper stayed the night there, got a good meal, and caught everyone up there on the latest news from back in town.
The next morning, he left the Owenby's and made his way further up into the mountains, likely following a number of streams toward Hazel Creek. Meanwhile, back in Roaring Fork, Martha waited patiently for her husband to return and went about her normal daily activities on their farm. When Jasper failed to return after a few days, Martha began to worry. More time went by and she continued to grow concerned that something wasn't right. Then months passed, but Jasper never came home.
And other people who'd been to and from Hazel Creek informed her that he wasn't there. Never had been. When Martha learned that information, that's when she knew something was very wrong. So a search party of people from Roaring Fork was dispatched to follow Jasper's route through the mountains. But the group only made it about 20 miles to a place called Miry Ridge before losing his tracks. It was like he'd just disappeared into thin air.
Years passed with no updates on her husband's whereabouts. Martha and her children had to eventually accept the fact that something untoward had likely befallen him, but they had no idea what or even when exactly such an event would have occurred. Martha suspected that Jasper had likely never made it to Hazel Creek or else someone would have reported seeing him there. But without his body or any sign of him, like his belongings, to prove that theory, she was just left with more questions than answers.
That is, until two men from the Owenby family took a hunting trip in the woods and stumbled upon a gruesome discovery.
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According to author Michael Bradley's book, in September of 1905, two men named Baus and Stuart Owenby, yes, members of the same Owenby family that Jasper Mellinger had stayed with, were on a hunting trip in the Great Smoky Mountains when they stopped at a natural pool they suspected game animals were using as a source of water. While walking along the edge of the pool searching for animal tracks to follow, they discovered something unexpected.
a bear trap, and several bones. And not just any kind of bones, human bones. On the ground near the remains and steel trap was a pair of eyeglasses, a knife, a pocket watch, a few dollars in coins, and a rifle that had the initials JM etched into the side of it. After making this unsettling discovery, the Owenbys alerted the Sevier County Sheriff, and an officer was dispatched to the scene to investigate.
Unfortunately, due to the state of the remains, it was impossible to ascertain exactly how the person had died. But one thing was clear. Whoever the person was, they appeared to have stepped into the bear trap unknowingly and shattered one of their leg bones. Now, naturally, folks in Roaring Fork suspected the human remains belonged to Jasper Mellinger, especially considering the fact that the rifle which had been found near the bones bore his initials.
But without the luxury of DNA confirmation, which was close to 90 years away still, the identity of the remains were a mystery. Eventually though, the gun, pocket watch, and money were brought down from the mountains and given to Martha, who identified them as belonging to her husband. After that, the Sevier County coroner held a formal inquest into the matter and determined that Jasper's right leg had been broken above the ankle.
But other than that, nothing else super substantial came out of the inquest, and authorities decided not to present the case to a grand jury for further review. The widely accepted version of events at that time was that Jasper had mistakenly stepped into a bear trap, which had severely damaged his leg. And then he'd slowly died of exposure and starvation because he'd been unable to walk or get help.
According to historical documents, that scenario seemed the most likely because a snowstorm had descended on the mountains right after Jasper left for his trip, making it highly unlikely he could have survived the elements while lying injured on the cold ground. After the coroner's inquest concluded, the Mellinger family laid Jasper's remains to rest at their family burial plot and put up a tombstone there marking it as his official grave.
In the aftermath of losing her husband, Martha was unable to keep their farm afloat and wound up having to abandon the property and move to what is stated to be the Sevier County Poor Farm, basically a place where impoverished residents could live who had nowhere else to go. Sources state that she stayed there for about 20 years until her death in 1925. Before she passed away, though, there were a handful of significant developments in her husband's case that got the community fairly riled up.
According to news coverage and a handful of historical documents from the National Park Service, about four years after Jasper's death, a young man from Wears Cove, Tennessee, which is about 20 miles west of Roaring Fork, came forward and confessed to having a hand in Jasper's death. This young man's first name is unknown, but his last name was Beasley. So that's what I'll refer to him by.
Anyway, turns out Beasley had become very ill and was literally on his deathbed. And before things got too bad, he announced that he wanted to make a confession to his family and minister. He said that several years earlier, he and his father, John Beasley, had been illegally hunting and trapping bears in the Great Smoky Mountains. They'd set a number of traps on trails that weren't frequently traveled and would periodically go back and check them like every other day or so.
During one of those trips, the younger Beasley said that he and his dad had returned to a device they'd set along a less-traveled trail, but discovered a barely conscious man caught in it, and one of his legs had been crushed. The younger Beasley said that his father instructed him to bludgeon the wounded man to death with a blunt object. Some sources differ on whether it was a club, a log, or a rock.
And the younger Beasley was supposed to do this in order to get the man from reporting their illegal hunting activities to authorities and as an act of mercy to put him out of his misery. The son didn't want to at first, but eventually relented to his father's commands. Reports vary as to whether the Beasleys then threw their victim off a cliff or buried him in a shallow grave.
But whatever the case was, it was clear to everyone listening to the younger Beasley story that the situation he was talking about was related to Jasper Mellinger. Eventually, after the younger Beasley recovered from his illness, his father was arrested for the crime but later acquitted of any wrongdoing due to lack of evidence. The source material doesn't specifically say if the son was prosecuted or not, or like what any outcome of potential proceedings were for him.
But during this time, there were people who said they doubted the legitimacy of the son's confession, stating that, in their opinion, it didn't totally align with the physical evidence. In addition to those folks' doubts, there were other people who alleged an entirely different theory, that a local resident and trapper named Art Husky was actually the responsible party.
I couldn't find much out there about Art, though, or why his name came into the picture in the Mellinger case, other than author Michael Bradley stating in his book that he was just one of those people in town who seemed to have a lot of enemies that wanted to take him down. I did find another source that claimed Art and his son were later tried for the crime and acquitted, but I was unable to find anything else that corroborates that account. And that's the tricky thing when it comes to researching cases like this that are so old.
When you try to distill fact from fiction, details start to get kind of muddy. The brass tacks of it is, some people felt strongly that Jasper Mellinger was murdered, while others remained convinced he was a victim of the elements. No foul play whatsoever. The fact of the matter is, the terrain he was hiking in from Roaring Fork toward Hazel Creek wasn't for the faint of heart.
Author Michael Bradley explains in his book that there were sheer rock faces, slopes, gulches, and even waterfalls along that route, none of which were particularly safe. There were also many ridges that required a person to hike up and down on, so theoretically Jasper could have gotten stuck in any number of trappers' devices in terrain like that.
Something that stands out to me, though, is that Jasper was reportedly supposed to be a fearless and strong man, who by all accounts was very familiar with the trails he was walking. So the suggestion that he succumbed to the elements without doing everything in his power to signal for help, or free himself from the trap and get home, doesn't quite align with the most common characterizations of him. Then again, anything can happen in the woods, even to the best of us.
Many years after his death, the state of Tennessee passed two laws that banned the use of steel traps. Interestingly, when she was still alive, this was legislation that Martha Mellinger had hoped would eventually come to fruition. In the early 1940s, the National Park Service and U.S. Department of the Interior officially recognized the area where Jasper's remains were found as Mellinger Death Ridge. That title is what the landmark is called to this day.
And in my opinion, it's an appropriate name. One that I imagine has likely made many people pause before taking their next steps upward. Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at Park Predators. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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