The Dead Priest of Sedona

by Charles Williamson

  Rose was at the office already, and she’d made some strange flavored coffee that smelled of vanilla. After I asked Rose to let me know if she saw Alicia Magnus drive up in her light blue Nissan Maxima, I took the non-coffee and headed for my little cube to read about the disappearances

  I started with the disappearance of Curt Franklin from the Flagstaff Safeway parking lot on October 31, 1972. This was the first case that former Sheriff George Cook had directly investigated. Sheriff Cook had been a meticulous and careful investigator, and this one report had forty-two typewritten pages. The stack of reports provided by Sheriff Taylor was two feet high, maybe eight hundred pages. There was no way I could read it all by this afternoon. Sheriff Cook’s report was very convincing; Curt Franklin had been abducted. He was never located. I continued moving forward in time reading each year’s case. I left the oldest reports, before 1972, for another time.

  After about an hour, I had an idea that might help fill in the blanks. Six of the years between 1986 and 2000 had no abductions from Coconino County on Halloween. I went into Chad’s cube and said good morning. I was surprised to find he had a black eye. Chad claimed it was from an accident, but I knew he was still getting into an occasional bar fight. Chad is a nice guy, but he could turn nasty when he drank too much. I kidded a little about the shiner, and then I asked him to check the computer files for any disappearances that occurred on or about October 31 anywhere in northern Arizona, eastern California, or southern Utah.

  The crime records from before 1986 had not been added to the computer database. It would require more legwork to check the early paper records. I explained the pattern of disappearances that Sheriff Taylor had discovered. I wanted to see if we could fill in the missing years by looking in other counties or nearby states. I explained that Sheriff Taylor was going to call about the case this afternoon. I hoped we could add some information by then.

  Rose stuck her head around the wall of Chad’s cubicle and said that she had seen Alicia Magnus drive up. I decided to buy her a cup of coffee and learn more about local pagans. The bookstore owner made me uncomfortable, but if she wanted to help, it could save me a lot of legwork.

  Alicia smiled when she saw me in the parking lot and said, “Mike, I was hoping that you would come by today. I saw your press conference yesterday, and I would be happy to do anything to help with your case.”

  “Can I buy you a cup of coffee at the Brew with a View while we talk?”

  “Sure Mike, I’ll have a cup of tea with you.”

  We walked the three blocks to the coffee shop talking about Sedona and about the weather. When we had our coffee and herbal tea, we sat in the sun on the deck. I started the conversation. “Alicia, I think you know a lot about what goes on in Sedona. Do you have any perspective on Father Sean’s murder that you can share?”

  “I am absolutely certain that the local adherents of Wicca had nothing to do with it,” she said. “Wiccans wish you well in your investigation, and they’ll certainly help you. However, this murder may have some connection to the ancient traditions of Druidry.”

  I was not certain that Alicia was being honest with me, but I decided to listen objectively. Ravens pecked around the patio for scraps of muffins. I wondered if these same birds had disfigured Father Sean’s body.

  “I’m aware of three of the old earth-centered religions here in Arizona,” she said. “The religion that has been in Arizona the longest is the Sacred Way of the Native Americans. Their shamans’ traditions form an uninterrupted link to their pre-Columbian past. They have customs that are directly connected with their Stone Age ancestors who crossed the land bridge from Asia after the last glaciations. The Hopi and Navajo traditions are relatively uncorrupted by pollution from the patriarchal Judaic-Christian earth-conquering monotheistic religions.”

  I took out my note cards to record her politically correct lecture. “The Native Americans have suffered a four-century assault on their culture and religion,” she said. “Many tribes have been completely destroyed. Others had their culture stripped from them through forced attendance at Christian boarding schools. In one generation, some tribes lost both their language and religion. Only the most insulated and protective native people have seen their culture and religion survive. The Hopi are one of the few tribes that survived the repeated Christian assaults on their culture with their religious traditions intact. Their ways are ancient. They have mastered many of the mysteries of the earth and live in exquisite harmony with it. Many Navajo have also retained knowledge of their ancient Sacred Way. They have marvelous powers of healing and restoring harmony with the world.”

  I was skeptical of Alicia’s explanation, but I wanted to hear her out. “There’s no indication that Father Sean had any connection to Arizona’s Native Americans. Neither his Jesuit superiors nor Father Antonio, who shared the Sedona parish with him, mentioned any effort to convert Native Americans. Anyway, Sedona is not an area with a lot of Indians. Father Sean’s boss in the Society of Jesus said he was trying to save those who have been baptized but left the Christian faith. What about the other two groups of pagans?” I said.

  “There are damn few Native Americans in Sedona because they were forcefully removed to a barren reservation east of Phoenix over a hundred years ago. The early settlers took this land from them with the help of the U. S. Army at Camp Verde.”

  A hundred years ago counted as ancient history to me.

  “I know that the second group had nothing to do with the murder,” she said. “The Wicca tradition is incredibly ancient. Some people call us witches, but I prefer Wiccans. Wicca is a direct unbroken path from that oldest human religion, the worship of the Great Mother. The oldest religious artifacts found by the world’s archaeologists are images of the Great Mother. She is the incarnation of the power of the natural world. Wicca is a religion from a period in which humans honored their environment and lived in the world rather than tried to rule over nature. It was the earliest religion of almost all ancient cultures. Wicca draws its power from the other plane of the spirit because it’s in touch with nature in a way that the later patriarchal earth-hating religions are not.”

  I wasn’t pleased that she considered my Christian beliefs earth-hating. I belonged to the Nature Conservancy.

  “The Christians, notably including the revolting Jesuits, have persecuted and murdered inoffensive Wicca believers for nearly two thousand years. Most of the murdered were poor old women who were good at using herbal medicines and potions to help folks. They’d learned the lore of nature and the Old Way from an unbroken line to the first Europeans. Thousands of adherents of the Wicca order have been burnt to death in monstrous and horrible suffering for rejecting the destructive Judaic-Christian-Islamic religions. These vile crimes against Wiccans include many murders here in this country in addition to the infamous Salem burnings. There’s no recorded case of a Wiccan ever burning a Christian. Most Wicca adherents work only for good, but even those few who follow the dark path would never kill in the manner you found on that plateau above the West Fork. If Father Sean had died of leprosy, AIDS, or bone cancer, then it might have been a Wiccan’s spell. Death by fire in a cage is just impossible for the Wicca tradition.”

  I was slightly intimidated by her intensity. Those deaths of witches occurred many generations ago. She clearly had her own agenda, and I began to doubt the value of any help she might give. “Alicia, I can see that you know a lot about Wicca. Do you think it might be the third group that you mentioned?”

  I kicked at a raven to shoo it away from my feet where it a found a morsel of muffin. The squawking flock took flight, soaring above Oak Creek and circling.

  Alicia continued her long explanation of the Sedona pagans. “Mike, the third group is the one you have already identified from your reading. The Druids did use death by fire in their ancient rituals. Wicca is a moon-centered religion, but Druidry is sun-centered. Fire is important in their rituals. They have traditionally used a sacred grove as their worship p
lace. However, the little I know about the religion is from reading about it. I know of no active Druid Grove here in Sedona, but you might want to check with Professor Harvey Stone up at Northern Arizona University. He’s a history professor who sometimes lectures about Druids at conferences. Sedona attracts many people who are sensitive to natural things, and there might be secret Druids here.”

  Secret Druids in Sedona was exactly the subject that I had wanted to talk about before being harangued about Native Americans and witches. A raven landed on the metal railing nearby and bobbed its head at me. Maybe the whole subject of magic was effecting my imagination, but I thought the raven was watching me.

  “I consider Modern Druidry a reconstruction,” she said, “unlike the unbroken traditions of Wicca. The Medieval Christians ruthlessly wiped out the primordial Druid traditions. The ancient line of sacred knowledge and prehistoric lore was broken. The old Celtic Druids occupied most of Europe and all of the British Isles. They were attacked by the Romans and then attacked even more ruthlessly by the vicious Christians. The last vestiges of their prehistoric understanding of nature were lost to the world. There is a three hundred-year gap in the Druid customs between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Modern Druidry was revived in the Apple Tree Tavern in Covent Gardens, England in 1717. It was reconstructed from the very sketchy written records regarding the religion. The ancient Druid priests believed that it was sacrilegious to write down any of their rituals, so all written sources come from non-Druids. The Druids have fragmented a number of times since the modern tradition was founded, and there is not one central religious organization,” she said.

  “Could the Druids be here in Sedona?” I asked. I wanted specifics.

  “I do know that there are Druids in America, but I still think of it as a religion of the British Isles in places like Stonehenge. Most Druids are committed environmentalists. They revere the sacredness of all life. They teach that if we are to survive as a species, we must learn to live in nature rather than to try to subdue it. Modern earth-conquering religions like Christianity and Islam have lost their connection to the source of knowledge. They debate over the static written words rather than know the truth through being directly in touch with the source of truth in the other plane of existence. However, modern Druids have coexisted with Christians for the past three hundred years. There is no reason to believe that they would be so frightened by contact with a Catholic priest that they would commit a murder. Most Druids and Wiccans were once Christians. They would not fear a crusading Jesuit. The days of the Christians having the power to execute us for holding to our ancient faith are past, at least in this country.”

  It was going to take a little more research before I would accept Alicia’s view of the Sedona pagans as regular people who were actually environmentalists. I wondered how serious the founders of Druidry were if they restarted an ancient religion at the local pub. I’d read enough reports this morning to be certain that something evil was afoot up on Pagan Point above the West Fork. At least twenty-five people had disappeared from the Sedona/Flagstaff area on Halloween over the past three decades. The murder scene was straight out of The Golden Bough. It was the manner of sacrifice used by ancient Druids to honor their most sacred day Samhain, October 31. During the three days of Samhain, the Druids believed the spirits of the dead are free to return to earth. The spirits could only be placated by ritual sacrifice.

  I thanked Alicia for the information and suggested that she call me if she thought of anything that might help with the Secret Mountain Wilderness case. As we walked back together, I told her she had made an excellent case that Wiccans were not involved, but I was not ready to discard them from the suspect list yet.

  CHAPTER 16

  Back at the office, I noticed that Chad’s car was gone. I was a little surprised because I was hoping he was busy with the computer search that I had asked him to do. As I entered the office, Rose said, “Well Mike, you forgot your cell phone again. When I called, I heard it ring on your desk.” She was right. I had forgotten to take it with me, and I had not told Rose where I was going. I was in hot water with her. “Chad covered for you. There’s been a hit and run on Highway 89A, just below the viewpoint parking lot at the top of the switchbacks.”

  “Sorry Rose, I should have let you know where I was going. I had coffee with the witch from our neighborhood bookstore. I’ll take my cell phone if I leave again.” Rose frowned, taking my comment as sarcasm. I said, “Chad can handle the hit and run. He’ll call if he needs me.” I went back to my office to continue my review of the files the sheriff had brought yesterday.

  The pattern of the disappearances was fairly clear in retrospect; however, each individual missing person was not very notable. They were people without many local connections: drug uses, drifters, migrant workers, and one European tourist who had been hitchhiking through the area.

  Often their disappearances had not been reported for several days. Many of the investigations began at least one week after Halloween. The young German man was not investigated as missing until almost a month after he disappeared from the youth hostel in downtown Flagstaff on October 31, 1994. Since Chad was out on another investigation, I decided to try my hand at a computer search for Halloween abductions in the missing years. I made no real progress, and it was almost noon when Chad called.

  His tone of voice was not normal. “Mike,” there was a longer than normal pause, “a bike rider was hit by an SUV at the top of the switchbacks on 89A. The biker was thrown off the cliff face and tumbled down into Pumphouse Wash.”

  “Christ,” I said, “That must be a thousand foot drop.” It was one of the only places in the area where the road got that close to such a precipice. I knew the exact spot because it had given me the willies the first few times I had driven back to Sedona from Flagstaff in bad weather.

  “The thing is,” he said, “the bike was stopped by the retaining wall, and only the rider went over. It’s the bike I borrowed when I went to Canyonlands. I’m sure that it’s your bike Mike.”

  Even before Chad finished saying it, I remembered that Kevin had said he wanted to challenge himself by taking on the difficult bike climb up to the plateau from Oak Creek. A huge knot formed in my throat and my stomach churned.

  “We haven’t recovered the body yet, but there’s no hope of survival in a fall of that distance. Do you think it was Kevin Riker?” Chad said.

  I choked slightly. “Yes. It was Kevin. I’m sure. Was it a hit and run?”

  “Yes. We have a lot of witnesses. It occurred in plain sight of the observation viewpoint at the top of the canyon. The Flagstaff office has four men here questioning witnesses, and we’ve sealed both ends of Oak Creek Canyon. The driver must be trapped between our roadblocks. Mike, the witnesses report that it was a large black SUV. Several of them think it was a Lincoln Navigator.”

  My mind raced. I recalled the erroneous mention in the local paper that Kevin had witnessed the murder at Pagan Point. “I’m on my way. Treat this as a first-degree homicide. I’ll call and attempt to get a warrant to search every garage of every cabin in Oak Creek Canyon. It may be a long shot to get any judge to approve that, but the sheriff can help by explaining the thirty-year history of disappearances. We didn’t find the bastard when he ran us off the road. He must have a house or cabin with a garage to hide the Navigator. That’s the only way that I can think of that would have let him escape from us last time.”

  I called Sheriff Taylor as I drove toward the crime scene. He thought that it would be impossible to get a search warrant that broad, but he was willing to try. He had some favors he would try to call upon. There was a roadblock by Grasshopper Point just past Midgley Bridge as I entered the Oak Creek Canyon. It was manned by four uniformed Sedona police officers. They’d received a cell phone call from a tourist within a minute of the hit and run. They set up the roadblock less then ten minutes after the crime. There was no way any black SUV had passed. The driver must still be somewhere in the
twelve mile stretch of the canyon between the roadblock and the switchbacks.

  Since there was also a roadblock on the Flagstaff end of the canyon, I made good time driving sixty on the empty highway towards the crime scene. About half way to Pumphouse Wash, I saw dense smoke near the Banjo Bill Picnic Area. It was too black and too large of a plume to be from a campfire. In November, this picnic area was closed for the season anyway.

  When I pulled into the small parking area located in the thick woods of the canyon bottomland, I saw that the fire was coming from something in the creek. I drove past the stand of sycamore trees with their autumn yellow leaves hiding Oak Creek from view. The vehicle had been driven into the creek and set on fire. Flames leaped from the open driver’s door and raced along the roof blasting through the open sunroof. Although the color was no longer obvious, the shape was that of a large Ford SUV. It had to be the Navigator. From the intensity of the fire and the rapid destruction, I thought we would find that the vehicle had been doused with gasoline and set alight. The flames were most intense in the vehicle’s interior. It was destroying fingerprint and DNA evidence.

  There was no one else present to witness the blaze in the closed picnic area. I called for a search party to look for someone on foot. I also called for the fire department. It was too late to find much physical evidence in the scorched vehicle, but I checked the ground for footprints while I was waiting for the search parties to arrive. There was a track that led from the creek straight to the paved road. The footprints were small. They looked like running shoes for a woman or boy. I secured the area with yellow police tape before the other units arrived.