Ep. 395: The Unusual Death of Melvin “Bucky” Garrison

00:00:05
Speaker 1: This is the story of the unusual death of Oklahoma game Warden Melvin Bucky Garrison, who drowned in two and a half feet of water in the Tiger Mountain area in the Deep Fork arm of Lake Ufalla in December nineteen seventy one. I’m pretty much just gonna let this story tell itself. I really doubt that you’re going to want to miss this one.

00:00:30
Speaker 2: His shotgun was missing. It’s never been found to this day, so most of the people involved immediately started thinking, you know that he probably didn’t drown in two feet of water.

00:00:53
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Knukem, and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we’ll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we’ll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f h F Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. I’m just outside of Okema, Oklahoma. A man in a cowboy hat and spurs has taking the saddle off a red Roan quarter horse. A few weeks back, I was eating at the Shonees Buffet with this man Andrew Stubbs, and he told me a story that seemed as familiar to him as a nursery rhyme, but the details were confusing. So you would have grown up hearing about Bucky Garrison.

00:02:05
Speaker 3: Yes, sir. So when we were probably eighteen nineteen years old, we started going down there to Bartlett Bottoms and hog hunting and stuff. And there were some older guys that took us and that we went with, and they, you know, would just when we would go, they would tell us about an outlaw that used to live down there and had killed a game warden. And so yeah, we you know, we heard stories from from many people, you know, as we were growing up.

00:02:31
Speaker 1: If it feels like it’s just like common knowledge in this community, would you say it’s just common knowledge that Bucky Garrison was murdered. I mean, that’s just what you grew up. You never really would have even questioned it, or would you have.

00:02:47
Speaker 3: You know, all of the older guys that that hunted in that area and that you know, was familiar with it. Yeah, that’s that’s what everybody has told us, that he was murdered down there, you know, by a guy that was you know, kind of an outlaw.

00:03:00
Speaker 1: You know, murder is a heavy word, and it’s clear the community doesn’t even question it. The story intrigued me enough that I wanted to find out more and I got connected with retired Oklahoma Wildlife Officer Ed Roodebush. But there’s a twist right off the bat.

00:03:20
Speaker 4: The first day when I went to Oklahoma City, I was delivered up there by the Tulsa County Warden and there was nine of us there and Darryl Musgrove, who was our assistant chief. He told the whole Bucky Garrison story to us, and at that time I didn’t know I’d be going there. And he told us, you know, whoever went to McIntosh County to be careful and you know, be on triple dog alure.

00:03:48
Speaker 1: So is your introduction as your intro packet to becoming a game warden? They told you this story, yes, back in nineteen eighty one. Yes, wow. In the in the what was coming from the top was that this guy had been murdered.

00:04:06
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that this guy whose name he mentioned, who was the same guy Bullet said, did it is who they suspected. I don’t think back in nineteen seventy one they could do as thorough investigation as they could today.

00:04:24
Speaker 1: And ed has just alluded to the twist. There is no actual evidence that it was murdered. It was deemed an unusual drowning, and after fifty four years, no one has ever been charged, tried, or convicted of murder. But I believe that if you pulled one hundred people in Macintosh County, Oklahoma, today, ninety nine of them would say it was a murder. This is a story about how much precision can the law have when there’s no evidence, no confessions, no video, and no witnesses. Here’s the first district Chief of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife, Officer Hank Jenks.

00:05:15
Speaker 2: So this story is around the death of a Oklahoma game warden was on December the twenty seventh, nineteen seventy one. He was recently hired in McIntosh County and worked with an older game warden by the name of Bullet Burns, who was if you were a game arden, if you were a poacher, you knew bullet Burns. I mean, he’s got quite a history. I would love to have talked to him about this, but we can’t. He’s no longer with us. I went to his funeral. So I know for a fact that he’s no longer with us. But so they’re around the area of Lake Ufalla in Oklahoma, and the north west part of that lake is a big, giant wooded bottom land, and Bullet had told him to be careful when he was in that area, that it’s notorious for poaching, no tours, for all kinds of bad actors, and had warned him to not go by himself into that area. You know that it’s just it’s just not a good place.

00:06:26
Speaker 1: Historically, Oklahoma has been a dangerous place for law men. More US Marshalls have been killed there than in any other state. Oklahoma became a state in nineteen oh seven, that’s pretty late, and for nearly a century before that, it was known as Indian Territory. As someone who grew up twenty miles from the Oklahoma border, I can tell you their reputation, at least to the east was a rough one. We knew it as a lawless place, especially known for wildlife outlaws. Here’s ed Rodebush.

00:06:58
Speaker 4: This is a very wild area. And until they built sixty nine Highway and I forty, it was kind of inaccessible. There was no jobs down here. So a lot of people lived here, lived off the land, and they didn’t really like when the lake came in because it brought tourism in. And for years there was just one warden here, and finally when the lake got going, they brought a second one on. So when I came here the game morning, his name was bullet Burns, been through World War two and Korea. He went to work in September of nineteen fifty three, and I was born in June and fifty four. So I told him, I said, the month I was conceived, you went to work, and he didn’t like that too well. But I started in September the fourteenth of nineteen eighty one and retired on October first of twenty sixteen, thirty five years, okay, And I was here the whole time in Macintosh County, Macintosh County, and when they hired me and we finally got our assignments, they told me I was coming to Macintosh County and they said, the last one thing we had killed and the last one we had shot all the pieces was in your area, and no one can get along with bullet Burns, who was my partner. So they said two years and you can transfer out. So I worked thirty five years here and it’s really a good place to work. But I mean there’s some rough customers down here. Probably a sixth of this county is underwater, and there’s places where you had to drive twenty miles just to get on the other side of the lake. But Bucky was twenty five year years old and he had two little girls, and he was from Wagner, Oklahoma. Well, I was twenty seven years old and I had a two year old and a four month old, and I was from Wagner too, And Bullet really took this heart about Bucket because Bullet had warned him not to go where he did because it was dangerous. There’s dangerous people up there, and he told him, don’t to go up there unless you’re with me. But at that time, the lake was just a few years old and all that bottom was only two to three foot deep and it was green timber, and ducks by the thousands would flog in there. So there would be hundreds of hunters up there and they would shoot, ducks, laid, they would, you know, just do everything. So Bullet had showed him that spot and had showed him told him not to ever go there. Well, the day after Christmas is listed as the day Bucky died. Some deals will say it was December twenty seven, but he was to have some friends or family come that wanted to duck hunt on the weekend. So he told Bullet he was going to be scouting over there to find a good place to take these guys. Well, he left on December twenty sixth at four pm, and it’s maybe a fifteen minute drive twenty minute drive from where he was.

00:10:38
Speaker 1: So ed became partners with Bucky Garrison’s former partner, Bullet Burns. Ed inherited the ripples from Bucky’s death, and later we’ll learn that we really don’t know exactly why Bucky was over around Tiger Mountain, whether he was patrolling or scouting for ducks. Here’s Officer Jenks.

00:11:00
Speaker 2: And it was early in the duck season, and he found his way up there by himself and kind of jumped forward a little bit. He didn’t come home that night, and someone had finally got in touch with Bullet and had told him, you know, that Bucky was missing, and he that’s the first place he thought of. I think the exit to this place. If you’ve ever been down I forty. It’s enter and around that if you’ve ever seen the Son of Tiger Mountain exit, which is just east of Henrietta on I forty. Now and big search party came together. They found his truck, found his game warden truck, and his shotgun was not in the truck.

00:11:40
Speaker 4: And Bullet drove over there and was met by the district chief and one of the biologists from Moulga came over. His name was Johnny Shelton, and Bullet took him right to Bucky’s vehicle, and of course the hood was cold.

00:11:58
Speaker 1: You could tell he’d been there a long time.

00:12:01
Speaker 4: And they got to waiting around there, and he had one of the old type six Folt flashlights and had the square battery in a plastic case and it was floating. So they waited around, and they got three or four other of the game mornings from district too to come over, and because the water would be almost blood red and it was real dark from the Oklahoma City area where that water comes from, and Bullet actually bumped into him and found him, and he was in the water core underwater, and he had on chest waiters and they were pulled plumb off of him except his feet was still stuck in and so it’d be kind of like a sock inside out, only these waiters were inside out. And they found this derringer with one shell fire. It was a two shot darringer, and they never did find a shot again. They even lowered the lake and brought metal detectors and really looked hard. But even back then, I’d say that Browning was worth four hundred dollars or so. One thing I failed to mention Bucky’s fingernails were filled with mud and debris and stuff where he had been clawing in that mud, and I don’t know how probably not even ten seconds she would have been gone. And that plus it was ice cold water too, because it’s in December. In fact, they found no wounds on him. There was no assault, evidence of assault other than he had to dirt under his fingernails and he drowned in two and a half feet of water and his chest waiters were pulled inside out. So it was ruled by the corners in accidental drowning. I mean, yeah, don’t look good, but you know, I understand why it was real dead.

00:14:04
Speaker 1: So that just didn’t From the time it happened, nobody believed that. Yeah.

00:14:10
Speaker 4: No, No, our people didn’t. The local people didn’t. Yeah, and you know, I just that don’t even make sense. Of course, if one was just shocked that that would happen. Because I don’t think we had had a warden killed, or they were called rangers back then. I don’t think we’d had one killed. You know, we had had some guys injured, but he only had seven months on so bullet took that real personal.

00:14:44
Speaker 1: Bucky Garrison’s death was ruled in accidental drowning. Now would be a good time to run through the possible scenarios in your mind, especially those of you who are duck hunters and who get in dark water with waiters. Do you think it would be possible well for a healthy, strong man to drown in two and a half feet of water? And why would the waiters be pulled down? Why would one shot be fired from his derringer? Why would there be mud all under his fingernails. Here’s Officer Jinks with a very critical piece of info. We’ve already said it, but I want to say it again.

00:15:22
Speaker 2: His shotgun was missing. It’s never been found to this day. I’ve been told that the corp of Engineers was involved. In the investigation and even lowered the lake because it’s in a real dealty area and it can you know, it can be drawn down, and it’s down a lot. But he never found the gun, and so most most of the people involved immediately started thinking, you know that he probably didn’t dround in two feet of water.

00:16:08
Speaker 1: Did Bullet just immediately think that he had been murdered.

00:16:12
Speaker 4: He did when they found him drowned with his waiters pulled off, and that’s not normal, and his browning was missing, which he thought was odd. But he knew that truck would be parked in that one spot, and I would guess they probably had a good duck hole there. But we’re talking hundreds, maybe a thousand acres of flooded forest up there at that time, and this was really the only road into it, and it had a little two tracker off of it, and he was down there. In fact, the first day I was here, Bullet took me up there and he showed me exactly where the truck was, told me the whole story, and it didn’t really scare me, but it sure put me. Like I said, said, I’d already knew that I could trust this guy if he lived through World War Two in Korea. He was a survivor. You know, Bullet was just sick about it because you know, he was kind of under his wing, you know, trying to train him and everything. And Bullet had two sons, and you know, for someone to lose a twenty five year old son with two little kids doing his job, it was just unthinkable. And I could tell it really bothered him. But it also had me intrigued too, And I think that is one reason bull and I got so close, was he had a chance to redeem himself with me. And I tell you why. He told me the same thing, don’t go up there without him. And I did not go up there without anybody until I’d been on about fifteen years. Because the guy that everyone thinks did it, and Bullet things too, he still worked that area up there. He’s still hundred and fished up there.

00:18:08
Speaker 1: Ed just told us the most twisty part of this story. They not only believed that Bucky was murdered, but they had a high level of certainty who did it, but it wasn’t from any physical evidence. As a matter of fact, on one of Ed’s first days on patrol with Bullet Burns, they bumped into the man they believe that did it. This person shall remain nameless on this podcast. I’ve actually worked pretty hard to not even Noah’s name, but it’s on the lips of just about everyone that you meet over in that part of the world. But how could they be so certain and have no evidence? I’m very interested and the person that they thought did this, Can you tell me about this suspect and why they thought it was him? How much certainty everybody had that this guy did it? What was it that was so compelling that made them believe this guy did it?

00:19:10
Speaker 4: He was the Jesse James of the poachers upon the Tiger Mountain and Deep four Bottoms, and he was a big man, and he was a mean man, and he had a reputation for fighting, drinking, killing deer, and after the late come in for selling fish. And he was actually caught selling fish. Of all the things, he did a little time on that, but he was the number one target. And on the side with all them ducks up Prayer, there was a lot of people willing to pay good money for a duck guide, and he was guiding people and he had the perfect boats for it because he had small light aluminum boats with old motors. He didn’t mind driving over a tree or through the mud with his motor. And he was just famous. He was like the boss hog of all of them up there.

00:20:06
Speaker 1: What did you think the first time you met him? You’re a young young guy with bullet you already know, you know you’re coming in with this information that they think he’s the one that did it. Yes, what was your perception of him?

00:20:18
Speaker 4: We carried a three fifty seven six shot at that time, Smith and Wesson, and I drew a mental tenoring right here on his chest, and I said, that’s where I put all six of my shots. And I’m in it. I mean, I told myself it’ll be him, it won’t be me. He was that bad of a character, Yes, And I could tell he just gave off a sense of just evilness.

00:20:49
Speaker 1: Was he just arrogant and loud? Was he like? What would you have thought if you ran into him? Not you, but a stranger met him in a gas station? Would you have been afraid of the guy or what? He just look like a normal guy.

00:21:02
Speaker 4: No, And that’s what was so evil about him. First time I met him, his exact words were, you guys, come over the house. The old lady just made a peach cobbler. And he’s the kind of guy that would patch on the back and all that stuff. And like I said, didn’t kill you. But he was a very strong, big man. You could tell that he was awesome. And the thing he was doing that day and I had never even heard of this. The lake was up two or three foot and it’s a pecan bottom that this was in, you know, lots of pecan trees, and he was smashing his boat into the pecan trees and then scooping up the pecans with nat you know, a fine mesh map. He had a literally boat full of pecans. But I just you know, my spider sins kicked in on him, and I you know, I would never get as close to him as like to me to you unless I was handcuffed me and then i’d have someone with me.

00:22:04
Speaker 1: And in your career, did you ever have that feeling quite like that with other people?

00:22:09
Speaker 4: I did a few times, but it never came to bear fruit. And it’s something just like the hair on your neck stands up, and if you have time to prepare for it, you mentally think, well, I’m going to do this. If he does this or if this happens, I will do that. And I rested him another time, me and a different partner, and he was actually selling fish to this guy and they were standing in knee deep water. And I jumped out of that truck and still kind of barely rolling, and run out there and grab the boat. And I was three foot from him at that time. And the thing was, even though he was a feeling already, we never ever found him with any kind of a fire but he had edged weapons everywhere. There was seven big butcher knife tight knives in that boat.

00:23:06
Speaker 1: So was that a sting operation? Was he selling to one of your guys?

00:23:10
Speaker 4: No, that was just you just caught him, dumb luck.

00:23:13
Speaker 1: We weren’t even looked.

00:23:15
Speaker 4: We just drove in there and saw him and before my partner could get it out of gear, you know, of course, we was barely rolling. I bailed out as soon as he got in gear. He wound up on the other side and he had shocked those fish because he had a shocking device and a small flashlight like the sixth volt I talked about, but it was one of the older ones that was metal. And I had already got some intelligence that.

00:23:41
Speaker 1: He had that.

00:23:43
Speaker 4: So when I saw that there, I noticed that the button you pushed down was missing broke, So I said, what’s that and well he just got nervous. Well, that’s the flashlight. So I had Mike handed to me across the boat and I said, where’s the switch and he said, oh, it’s broken, don’t work. And I said, why would you carry a broke flashlight in a boat? And he and I unscrewed the lid off and looked down there and I said, well, here’s why. It’s got a fish shocker in it. You can’t let’s get a light out of that. And that serious offense. That’s kind of like a regular policeman finding a murder, you know, catching the guy that did it.

00:24:26
Speaker 1: So did you did I hear you say you caught him one time with a bunch of with nets out or trot lines.

00:24:35
Speaker 4: My partner and I watched him for about three days from about half a mile away in a remote area with the spotting scopes, and I watched him, well, we both watched him run seventy five trot lines when three is your limit. And these are short trout lines that he wouldn’t bait, and he would just stick his oar down he had in that notch out of it, and if he felt that line and it was tug and he would pull it up. And most of these fish you’d run five to eight pounds, and he probably caught ten that we saw that day. I actually drew crude maps of where the trees were, where his trot lines were, because we would need to find some for evidence. You know, when we did the takedown and when he run those lines all three days, he was missing for about an hour he went out of our view, so there’s no telling how many lines he had up there. But when we actually brought some fellow game orders in and set up on him, someone in the woods watching him make sure he didn’t pull anything. Then I had another game ordered me. We went in and affected the arrest, and then that my partner and another guy were over there watching and we actually said up radio coach, because people had scanners. When my partner told me that the wind’s starting to blow out of the west, that means that he had left and went around where he couldn’t see us and we could get in position. And then he told me, he said, boy, they’re doing a lot of snagging over here. To Dan today. We were thirty thirty five miles from the dam. And then when he told me the cats in the bag, that meant he was coming in. And when he came in, I knew we had him already, so I cuffed him up. And then when everyone showed up, my partner I think he got on the radio and he said, hey, he ran a net too, which is net’s a big violation. And we wound up taking him to jail. On that actually had my district chief over there when we put him to work. He was our chauffeur. And this guy and myself sat in the back seat and told life to each other, because in my chief less is hard. I mean, he’s good intended. But he asked him how much a pound he got for these fish? Oh, I don’t sell these fish. I give him away. And there was a young girl that had been had died in a fire over by there, and he said, I took a fifty pound fish over to that family for that little girl. And he probably did, you know, he just kind of liked that. But that time I actually took leg irons to handcuff him with because his wrist were so big, and I had borrowed the leg irons from you fall a police department, and that’s a pretty big deal because when they heard us go ten fifteen, which means we were bringing a prisoner in about half a Macintosh County showed up because they wanted to see what kind of arm and I had drug in in leg irons on his frist and he got thirty days out of that and a few hundred dollars fine. And I got mad because when I checked on the cases later, I saw that he served six days, not the thirty. So I went down because it said he had worked down into National Guard armory on those six days. So I asked the head guy down there and said, what’s the deal on this? And he said, had those prisoners didn’t like to work very good? When he got down here. I think he backslapped one of them or something. He said, that’s the most work we’ve ever got out of prisoners. So he was a valued supervisors, so they gave him five for one and he just had to do six days.

00:28:41
Speaker 1: Was he in his community? Was he well liked?

00:28:45
Speaker 4: Not really here because he actually lived in Moga County. He was a lone wolf. You never saw anyone with him, you know, he always went by himself. I must have checked him or times in my career, and mostly when he’d come in, and he always brought fish in head and guts out of him. But he left a tail on because the flathead to bring more money into Blue Cat.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: So what did this guy say about being accused of this murder?

00:29:18
Speaker 4: I don’t know, because I’m sure he heard about it, and Bullet didn’t say okay. Of course, lots of people ask him about buying fish, and he he never admitted it or bragged on and he was very smart.

00:29:35
Speaker 1: As Ed’s telling me this story, I’m trying to understand his certainty. If I told you that a person was a murderer before you met him, that would be really hard to overcome. Could it have been confirmation biased? I really don’t have the right to have an opinion, but could it be possible that the biggest wildlife outlaw in that region was falsely pinned with the murder of this game warden. But I also know that the judicial systems sometimes just don’t work, and I put a lot of stock in what the people on the ground during that time believed. In full disclosure, the suspect is no longer alive today, but in the eyes of the law, he is completely innocent. You heard me ask ed if the guy was well liked in this community. I find it a trend that sometimes these old school wildlife outlaws can be charismatic, likable people in their community, even generous. And my suspicions were confirmed when a local who isn’t on this episode told me that each Christmas the suspect would go to the local grocery store and buy apples and oranges to give his gifts to people. I also heard some pretty negative stuff about the guy and his character. My intent isn’t to defend this guy. These are just questions that I have, but there are some things that we haven’t learned yet. Here’s Officer Jinks.

00:31:07
Speaker 2: So you know, we we sent in the best guys we had at the time. We really didn’t have an undercover unit at the time, but they sent in folks that to try to maybe get some intel on what could have happened. Who could have happened. The LSB, I’m sure was involved, but it was. It was eventually deemed a drowning because they just never got any They could never prove that he was you know, attacked or held underwater or and and for for years after that. We we’ve spent you know, the Department, my my agency, the Oklahoma Department a Wildlife has you know, had had sent folks in trying to infiltrate that area. They tried, you know, there there were folks that were suspected, but they could just never bee sit together and prove it. So I’ve talked to a lot of the guys that are retired but were investigators, and they it all goes back to the main investigator was at He was a game ward and his name was Haskell Moseley, and he was he was probably our best investigator. He did some uc work, you know, and this was in a time where we really didn’t have undercover, but he he from everyone that I’ve talked to, he one hundred percent believed in that there was a one suspect, but but he just was never able to piece together enough information to bring charges.

00:32:44
Speaker 1: They could never pin this guy with Bucky’s murder. There are some things that the law just can’t prove. But I’ll tell you that more than one person, none of which work for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife or were on this podcast, told me personally with the suspect quote all but admitted to the murder, and some say that he did admit to the murder, but it was never proven. They never had a wire on somebody when he said that, And I know that rumors spread easily. Maybe he didn’t say that at all. Maybe that’s just a convenient rumor that was started. All that I do know is that time has erased a lot of details. But I do want to know what the man who was actually on the crime scene believed happened. So what do you think happened? What did Bullet think happened? Like, just he was there, He found Bucky with his waiters pulled down there, one shot deringer, one bullet spent. What did he think happened?

00:33:48
Speaker 4: He thought someone was shooting late, because Bucky, if he’d have got over, say four point thirty, got out in the water, there wasn’t thirty five forty minutes the shooting time left. I mean, that’s you wanted to try and get over and set up is just a little before. And he thinks he heard him shooting late and they were probably having a great time. Bullet thinks he had someone with him and when Bucky fired that shot. Now that pistol. Bullet thinks that he shot it in the air to get their attention and probably shine that flashlight at him if it was you know, dusk, And they came over there, and Bullet thinks that one of them run the boat and the other guy grabbed him and kind of held him under and actually drove the boat away similar to water skiing. But he was hanging over the edge underwater, and that would have pulled your waiters off. But your feet are hard to get out of waiters if you’ve ever warm. It wouldn’t have taken a couple of three minutes to do that, so they didn’t come off of him, and they probably grabbed that shotgun at the same time too, because he probably grabbed the boat because that’d be the natural deal to do on something like that. And since he’s by himself, you know, he had no backup. But that scenario Bullet told me, and especially after working thirty five years, I think he was spot on. I think that was it.

00:35:19
Speaker 1: I guess it’s just hard to make sense how a healthy, twenty five year old guy trained in law enforcement competent would have drowned in two and a half feet of water.

00:35:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, see there’s no way that scenario. You know, he didn’t have a heart attack.

00:35:33
Speaker 1: But even if he’d had a heart attack, that didn’t explain waiters being pulled down to his.

00:35:39
Speaker 4: There’s no way because out in two and a half foot of water, wearing waiters, if you were going to take him off, you would go to the bank. You can’t take water, and you wouldn’t get in your sock feet in the day after Christmas in two and a half foot of water, I mean that water probably was forty degrees.

00:35:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he didn’t hypothermia. He does drowning.

00:36:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, he died. They’re drowning because what I read what the corner said in the report was that he there was no evidence of foul play.

00:36:15
Speaker 1: No evidence of foul play. Here’s Officer Jinx with an interesting point.

00:36:21
Speaker 2: If someone’s gonna hold me underwater and I’m fighting for my life, I’m gonna have some marks on me. Now you throw waiters on, you throw you know, a heavy coat on, I don’t know if those marks would be.

00:36:34
Speaker 4: There or not.

00:36:34
Speaker 1: That’s a great point. If I was decked out.

00:36:37
Speaker 2: If I looked like a duck hunter, or I was checking duck hunters, I’m gonna have so many clothes on that quite frankly, it would be easy for you know, for someone that was bigger than me and I got too close to them, or most likely more than one person, that they’re going to grab you and and and they’re gonna hold you underwater. And I don’t know if there would be any indications other than water in your lungs.

00:37:06
Speaker 1: Originally, one of my bigger questions was why wouldn’t he have shown signs of a struggle, But big clothes could have been the reason. When I look at this story, to me, the biggest piece of evidence that indicates that there was some kind of foul play, which I know is calculated into this, was that his gun. His shotgun was never found. If he was recreational duck hunting or if he was patrolling, which we really don’t know, we don’t we truly don’t know what he was doing. But he was in his company, he was in Oklahoma Wildlife truck, and in either one of those siting situations, he would have had his shotgun.

00:37:46
Speaker 2: Yes, if he was checking, you know, if he was down checking duck hunters, he may have felt like that was would have been a good cover for him. I mean I wouldn’t necessarily take a shotgun to walk out on a peninsula and check hunt it’s not.

00:37:58
Speaker 1: But he would have had it in the truck, oh absolutely, absolutely, So the fact that it’s just like gone, it’s gone.

00:38:05
Speaker 2: And and to me, you know, not to not to get you know, to be disrespectful, but you know, the body wouldn’t have traveled that far where. It’s not like something that would float for even a few feet, especially in a bottom, in a timbered bottom land. You’re gonna it’s gonna bump into trees. It’s not gonna it’s not gonna be far from that weapon if the weapon was there, and so I would I’m I agree. I think it’s the biggest it’s the most damning piece evidence that there was foul play involved the fact that it never showed up ever.

00:38:43
Speaker 1: But that’s not the full story of the gun. Jinx has been holding out on us.

00:38:50
Speaker 2: So one other aspect to this that so this this Haskell Mosley that investigated this, He dug around, he was he lived down there for a certain period of time, would go to bars and was trying to get in with some of the suspects or suspect if you will. He went to his grave saying that he had an opportunity to buy that shotgun. He had a guy come to him somewhere along the way and said he knew where the shotgun was at and was willing to sell it. But for whatever reason, and the story that I got not to talk about about my agency because I don’t know who knows what the truth was or and I can’t put my head around why they would even again this was fifty years ago, why they wouldn’t want to do that. But it never happened. But his story was that he wasn’t allowed well to say that, to go through with that, But he claims that he talked to someone who knew where it was at.

00:39:50
Speaker 1: Interesting. Wow, I could see that being a legitimate thing, just inside of the bureaucracy of any yeah, big agency, you know, the legality. I could see how it could get caught in the wires. But now it seems like a no brainer.

00:40:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, if you think about it, and again I’ve thought about this a lot. If you think about fifty years ago, I can tell you there’s probably weapons in my house that maybe I’ve had or my dad has. There’s no serial number that’s ever been logged anywhere. He bought it at a from a friend, or bought it at Walmart, And so I’m like you, I think that’s probably what it came down to, is that even if they had this, someone handed him this shotgun and he the Department provided money for him to buy it, would they really know if that was the shotgun.

00:40:41
Speaker 1: He had a chance to buy Bucky Garrison’s gun. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know all the details that Haskell Moseley knew? But maybe we can. Officer Jinks keeps giving me new information. He may have just found all the answers we’ve been looking for.

00:41:01
Speaker 2: So I got permission to delve back into the records as deep as I could, because most of the I talked to. When Clay called me, I was at a conference in Pennsylvania, and I started immediately thinking, Okay, who would know the story? And I called and they’re like, oh, there’s one hundred percent of case file somewhere. But I talked to my bosses. Neither one of them knew where that was at, if it even still existed, And they gave me permission to go and look in in an area that they thought it might be if it existed, and so I dug through a folder a file, and I’m cruising along and down about four folders. I see Bucky Garrison written on a folder and I thought, bingo, Praise the Lord, here we go.

00:41:44
Speaker 1: I hurried to it.

00:41:46
Speaker 2: It’s an empty folder and I don’t think there’s an I don’t think there’s any you know, it could have been someone was going to start a file or whatever. But it was just kind of ironic that I thought, man, I’m gonna there’s going to be some great stuff here, and it was. There was a file somewhere, but you know, we don’t keep fifty year old cases around, even though this was a big one, you know, in the history of our department. He was he died in the line of duty. But I don’t know where it’s at. And you know, I don’t think anybody stole it or anything like that. I just think it’s time has made it disappear.

00:42:21
Speaker 1: So that’s it’s not odd to you that it’s not there.

00:42:25
Speaker 2: It’s not uh, you know, I’m sure that’s a folder that that when a probably some old game warden who was maybe the guy mentioned earlier not to throw Haskell under the bus, but he probably had that case file and when he was trying to invest do his investigative work, and it may have just you know, he could have got picked up again by another game. You know, And because we’ve they’ve looked at this, I can remember, are our undercovered folks looking at this numerous times? From what I’ve been told that they’ve they’ve tried to pick it up, maybe maybe hoping that uh, you know, this suspect to talk to somebody, or that a relative or maybe someone maybe someone else was there who goes duck hunting by themselves. I don’t normally do that, and so it doesn’t it doesn’t seem that odd to me that after fifty years, it’s it got misplaced or whatever. You know, it’s a shame, because I’d love to get Ebb my hands on it to see. You know, there’s no we have no primary sources on this. There’s no one live that we that we can talk to that.

00:43:28
Speaker 3: Was there.

00:43:31
Speaker 1: An empty folder. I think there was some evidence in that case file that gave all these wardens confidence in their suspicions of foul play, but it was probably stuff that couldn’t be proven or used in court. I don’t know. I’m just speculating. But I’ve got one final question for Ed. After all your years of law enforcement, now that you’re retired, do how much faith do you have insight out of the system when it comes to specifically deaths that corners get right? Because I know how time sensitive stuff like that is. I mean, you know, you get a body and it’s everybody immediately makes assumptions and usually you know what happened. The guy’s got a bullet wound, or the guy’s laying in the water under the water, and but then it goes to the corner. I mean, are you and I’m it’s not a leading question. I mean, are you like one hundred percent confident when you hear stuff like that or just being on the scene all these years and seeing stuff or hearing about stuff, would you be like.

00:44:38
Speaker 4: Ah, back in the seventies, how it is said, Yeah, But now because of the computers and the AI and all that, I think they hit it right on the nose.

00:44:49
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:44:50
Speaker 4: So back then, didn’t you depend on if it was a new guy doing the autopsy or an old hand. Yeah, but there were to been water in these Yeah, he drowned. You know, it’s pretty easy, and you know on an autopsy, they’re looking a lot of stuff from the inside out, and there was no other wounds or anything other than the His fingers had to dirty, I mean, just caked like they were driven up in there, and that be indicative of clawing, trying to get away or stop. You know, it would have been an instinct move that anyone would have done. So to me, that call of they found no evidence of foul play made it look even more fishy to me than you know what it would have if they’d said, well, he’s been hitting the head of everything, you would have known.

00:45:47
Speaker 1: I’m struck to buy. Now, fifty years later, we’ve got this story, We’ve got this interesting story that you know, there’s so many questions of you know that that time has kind of swept away, like we just we just don’t know all the answers. But it feels like, I mean, if the crime lab says that it was a drowning, like what are you supposed to do? Because there could be there could be somebody that would be like, well if if if everybody knew that he was actually murdered, why didn’t they do more? And I think the answer is they did do more. But there’s I mean in the in the law systems. Even in a country like ours, which you know, say what you will, it’s better than others. Some other places the system can fail at times when there’s just a dead end. And then in an autopsy that says the man drowned and there’s no signs of foul play is a dead end, you know, yes, And so because I think at first blush, You’re like, well, this clearly wasn’t you know this this case, apeable, strong young man didn’t drown in three feet of water two and a half feet of water. No, something happened, and you know, how did something like this not get discovered? But the truth is too as I hear this story and have no dog in the fight other than just you know, it’s a human being. It’s hard to completely put the blame on this on this suspect when there’s no evidence that the guy did it. No, it’s it’s hard to be too sure of anything.

00:47:33
Speaker 2: Really. Our agency magazine Outdoor Oklahoma, I dug around and was curious what it said, you know, and it basically just said that he was checking on hunting activities in the Tiger Mountain area, and it said he drowned on December twenty second, in the Deep Fork arm of Let You Follow.

00:47:58
Speaker 1: There is no doubt that something on you Usual happened in the death of Melvin Bucky Garrison. Some things, many things, will remain mysteries forever, but ultimately I’d like to dedicate this episode to Melvin Bucky Garrison for his service and to his living family, but also to the law enforcement officers who serve our communities every day. If you are intrigued by this episode, you’re gonna want to stick around for the next full bear Grease episode when we talk with a warden who had to use deadly force when someone tried to drown him. I can’t thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease Brints, this country life and Lakes Backwoods University. It really is a joy and an honor to bring these stories to you guys every week. Keep the wild Places wild, because that’s where the bear left.