Some additional possibilities.
Rickey Lemich, 51, was a transient. Police say he was a "victim of homicidal violence."Police say that
Michael Atwood, 51, is the suspect in the homicide and was apprehended minutes after the Lemich was found. Atwood is also a transient.
Joseph Henry Burgess - see link below
Wanted for 1972 Tofino, B.C., slayings, Joseph Henry Burgess shot dead in New Mexico after killing police officer
www.theglobeandmail.com
This article was published more than 14 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.
This undated surveillance photo provided by New Mexico State Police shows 62-year-old Joseph Henry Burgess of New Jersey. Burgess is the man police say shot and killed Sandoval County Sheriff's deputy Sgt. Joe Harris last Thursday. Burgess was also killed in the shootout with police at a cabin in the Jemez Mountains of central New Mexico. Canadian authorities say Burgess was wanted in the 1972 killings of two Vancouver campers, Leis Carlsson and Ann Durrant, who were found shot to death in their tent.
Joseph Henry Burgess could have passed for a street preacher. Lean, with shaggy hair and a beard, he ended many of his sentences with the word "amen." At times he went by the name Job, after the biblical figure tested by God.
Seeking to evade the draft during the Vietnam War, Mr. Burgess made his way to Tofino on Vancouver Island, where he was remembered as something of a "Jesus freak" by the community of hippies, back-to-nature devotees and fellow draft dodgers that had established itself in the remote coastal village. He did, in fact, know his Bible; he'd attended a Jesuit college in New Jersey and had occasionally taught religion classes.
That Mr. Burgess was a religious zealot figured in the aftermath of the 1972 slaying of a young couple on a Tofino beach. Though sharing a tent, Leif Carlsson, an exchange student from Sweden, and Ann Durrant, a student at the University of British Columbia, were not married - a fact police believe offended Mr. Burgess's perverted religious sensibility. Police say he killed them with a .22-calibre rifle, shooting them both point blank in the head as they slept.
Leaving behind a fingerprint matched to one taken when he was arrested for failing to report for duty with the U.S. Marine Corps, Mr. Burgess quickly became the prime suspect in the killing, but by then he'd vanished. For nearly four decades, he remained out of sight, one of Canada's most-wanted criminals, his case featured on the television show
America's Most Wanted, his name on an Interpol watch list.
He is believed to have murdered at least one other young couple in circumstances remarkably similar to the Tofino slayings before he was finally run to ground in New Mexico last week, shot dead in a gun battle with police while breaking in to a cabin to steal food.
At the age of 62, Mr. Burgess had apparently been living rough in the Jemez Mountains near Albuquerque and was suspected of a years-long string of robberies. Thefts of food, clothing and other supplies from rural properties led to him being dubbed the "Cookie Bandit." Confronted by police on a stakeout last Thursday, he killed Sergeant Joe Harris, a Sandoval County sheriff's deputy, and was himself shot dead.
Since his death, inquiries have been flooding in from other law-enforcement agencies, Lieutenant Eric Garcia of the New Mexico State Police said Tuesday. While the Cookie Bandit crimes suggest Mr. Burgess had been in New Mexico for at least eight years, the period from before that running back to 1972 remains murky. Mr. Burgess's possible links with numerous other crimes, including several homicides, are being probed in jurisdictions as far afield as New York and Oregon.
What is known is that Mr. Burgess vanished from Tofino's beach scene so abruptly he left behind everything, including his shaving gear and prescription glasses. "He took on a whole new identity," said retired RCMP investigator Dan Creally, who recalls the case as the only one of his career that remained unsolved. "We never could find him."
Although known for his religious fervour, Mr. Burgess had apparently been conflicted in the lead-up to the crime that sent him on the run. Mr. Creally told of him making an awkward and unsuccessful pass at a nude swimmer, all the while quoting to her from the Old Testament. An old photo shows him flashing a peace sign, looking every inch the free-love hippie, but he told the skinny-dipping woman that he did not approve of unmarried people sharing a tent.
Under those contradictions lurked the hard edge of his interpretation of theology. Mr. Burgess would talk about the "wrath of God" and was apparently willing to administer it to Mr. Carlsson, 20, and Ms. Durrant, 21.
Investigators in Sonoma County, Calif., believe Mr. Burgess is also responsible for the slayings of Jason Allen, 26, and Lindsay Cutshall, 22, whose bodies were found in a tent at the mouth of the Russian River in August, 2004. Like Mr. Carlsson and Ms. Durrant, they were young and unmarried. Like the slain couple in Canada, both had been shot in the head, this time with a .45-calibre rifle.
Though he may have played the part of a preacher, police in the United States and Canada believe Mr. Burgess was a cold-blooded killer who used a twisted interpretation of religion to justify his crimes.
"I know my husband didn't die in vain by someone who stole groceries or clothing," Tonia Harris, the slain deputy's widow, told KOAT 7, an ABC affiliate in Albuquerque.
"People kept telling him, you know, 'Why are you going after this guy? He steals groceries! Why are you trying so hard?' And he kept saying, 'I'm going to get him; there's something about this guy. He needs to be gotten. There's something about him.'
"And he was right."
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m, Labor day. Video shows him walking across the parking lot, no one following him, & no one would have been able to find him where he was, so had to be one of those two people."Back in February a reporter from NBC Dateline (Eric Mason) called me. I have been sending flyers to business near where Troy was, sent out a hundred sent out 25 more in just this last week, asking poeple to post them in their windows. Erick Mason saw one & picked it up and called me. He also called Dave Lewis sister (Linda Lewis).