The Meadow

0:00Every case on Park Predators has a twist, but Chameleon takes deception to a whole new level. Hosted by journalist Josh Dean, Chameleon digs into the real stories of people who reinvent themselves through lies, cons, and double lives. If you're ready to explore the world of scam artists and little white lies that spiral into unforgettable scandals, listen to Chameleon, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi Park enthusiasts, I'm your host, Dillia DeAmbra. In the case I'm going to tell you about today, takes place in California's Yosemite National Park. If you've ever been to this part of North America, then you know just how iconic and popular it is. Yosemite Valley, Bridal Veil Fall, and the Granite Rock Face, El Capitan are some of the more well-known attractions in the park. But there are also a ton of other scenic spots in Yosemite's roughly 1200 square mile boundary. I went there a few years ago and really found myself drawn to the wilderness areas and numerous meadows.

1:02Summit Meadow, where today's story takes place, is right along a roadway called Glacier Point Road. During the winter months, that route closes to the public, but in the spring and summertime lots of folks drive it to get to Summit Meadow, which is known for being a place you can stretch out, picnic, hike, and take pictures if you're into photography. In late June 1983, visitors to this recreation space discovered something unsettling, a human hand. And that discovery led National Park Service investigators into a bizarre mystery, that to this day is as vexing as the day it began. It's my hope that some of you who may recognize any of the places, dates, or names in this episode will give authorities more clues. Clues that might just explain how a woman's hand ended up in one of the most beautiful places in Yosemite National Park. This is Park Predators.

2:15On Tuesday, June 28, 1983, family and friends visiting Summit Meadow in Yosemite National Park were hanging out and having a picnic. On Tuesday, June 28, 1983, family and friends visiting Summit Meadow in Yosemite National Park were hanging out and having a picnic when a man in the group, this guy named Tom Day, and one of his friend's sons, walked off to explore on their own. But not long after leaving the larger group, Tom and the boy came across something suspicious in the ground. They dug at it a little bit and suddenly realized it was a human hand. According to the TV series Wild Crime, which produced a four-part mini-series about this case, the area of the Meadow that Tom and his friend's son found the remains and was kind of muddy and near some running water. Horrified by the discovery, Tom and his group quickly contacted the authorities and in short order, an NPS ranger named Don Quelo arrived on scene.

3:23Don's normal patrol jurisdiction covered Summit Meadow, so that's why he was the first ranger in the area. When he took a look at the hand, he realized he needed to request some backup. So he radioed for another ranger to get to the scene, and one of those folks who came was Kim Tucker, another ranger who worked as a criminal investigator. At the time, the NPS didn't have what is now known as its investigative services branch or ISP. If it had, Kim Tucker would have worked in that division. Anyway, investigator Tucker processed the scene for evidence and determined that the hand in the mud wasn't just a hand. It was actually a hand and part of a forearm. According to Wild Crime's coverage, there was a band-aid touching one of the fingers and from the looks of it, the remains appeared to have been there for quite some time. They weren't skeletonized, but they did show signs of having undergone the process of being frozen and then thought, likely from enduring seasonal changes in the park. Investigator's goal in 1983 was to try and get a quality hair or blood sample from the tissues to figure out who the hand and forearm belonged to.

4:27At a minimum, they wanted to know what the person's race or ethnicity was and what their sex was. While those efforts were underway, investigator Tucker and other rangers and volunteers combed Summit Meadow. At that point, all they had was the hand and part of the forearm and they suspected the rest of the person might be elsewhere in the area. So a meticulous search got underway, but unfortunately, no other bones or human remains were recovered. The terrain itself wasn't easy to search, likely because weather conditions had changed the topography over time. Not to mention, when Tom Day and his friend's son found the forearm in hand, they'd had to dig in the ground a little bit to actually unearth it. So unless searchers were doing some light excavation while they scoured the meadow, it's not necessarily surprising to me that they didn't find any other body parts. Anyway, with the search party coming up empty, investigator Kim Tucker set her sights on learning more about the anthropological findings of who the remains belong to. On July 7th, nine days into the investigation, she took the forearm in hand to a forensic anthropologist who concluded that they'd likely come from a small framed woman who was about 25 years old.

5:35The anthropologist also estimated the woman weighed about 110 pounds and had died within the last year or so. Curiously, there were no marks on the arm or the bones themselves that indicated they'd been intentionally cut. So that detail plus the fact that the rest of the woman's remains were unaccounted for, meant that no cause of death could be determined. Even more frustrating for NPS investigators was the fact that there were no missing persons reports that specifically matched the characteristics for the woman whose hand and forearm had been found. So for the next few months, investigator Kim Tucker and park rangers like Don Cuello continued to work the case diligently, but they routinely hit dead end after dead end. By the fall of 1983, the weather had changed and upcoming winter snowfall predictions meant that authorities could no longer physically search summit meadow for clues. And unfortunately, the case languished for several more months after that. But things picked up again in the late spring of 1984.

6:36That's when Kim Tucker and Don Cuello learn from folks with the California Department of Justice that the infamous serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who'd been convicted in Texas for seven murders, was claiming to have carried out numerous killings, including more than a dozen murders in California. Now obviously the NPS took this tip seriously, and Kim Tucker investigated if Lucas could be connected to the summit meadow Jane Doe. Former park ranger Don Cuello, who was her counterpart, told producers for Wild Crime that because summit meadow is covered by so much foliage and has a lot of wildlife activity, it would have been an ideal place for a serial killer like Lucas to dispose of human remains. For a period of time, investigator Tucker reviewed reports from another law enforcement agency about Lucas's documented movements and his associates during the 1980s. What she learned was that he'd been in California cities in the spring and summer of 1982. But those places weren't super close to Yosemite National Park.

7:36According to Tucker's interview with Wild Crime, Lucas was connected to the cities of Hemett and Needles, California, which are both several hundred miles southeast of summit meadow, so not close at all. Still, Kim Tucker and Don Cuello wanted to speak with Henry Lee Lucas. So in the fall of 1984, after California's Department of Justice extradited him from Texas, the two investigators interviewed him at the Sacramento County Jail. Over the course of several conversations, he told them that he'd been to Yosemite National Park before at least once, but he pronounced the name of the park wrong, which investigator Tucker thought was odd, but nevertheless, she and her counterpart continued to question him. According to what they told producers for Wild Crime, Lucas's story went like this. He'd picked up a young female hitchhiker some 25 miles from an area town outside of the park, then he'd had some fried chicken and beer, they'd had sexual relations, and afterwards, he'd stabbed her and thrown her body into some brush.

8:39He described his victim as white with straight hair, about 110 pounds, maybe 17 or 18 years old, and around five feet to inches tall. He claimed she might have had blonde hair, but he wasn't certain. When investigators showed him a map of the park, he reportedly pointed to the roadway he claimed he'd picked the woman up on, and then he became sort of uncooperative. But two key details that Kim Tucker and Don Cuelo noticed had changed during Lucas's admissions had to do with how he'd said he'd killed his victim, and where he'd dumped her body. At first, he'd said he'd stabbed her and tossed her out of his car near a paved road, but in subsequent tellings, he said he'd strangled her and then dumped her in some brush. In another version of his story, he stated that hand the woman had picked Nick together in a field area before he killed her. He specifically told investigators that after the murder, he'd left behind a piece of a green jacket, a canteen, and some trash. He said he remembered they'd stopped somewhere off of Polof near an open field where there were trees that had signs nailed to them.

9:42He even drew a rudimentary map of where he said he and his victim had been, and sure enough, investigator Kim Tucker realized that the area Henry Lee Lucas had described could be some at meadow. Because it loosely fit the details on his map, and there were backcountry ski signs nailed to trees there that were similar to the ones he described. With this information in hand, Tucker and Quailo went back to summit meadow on November 1, 1984, and when you know it, just a little ways up a creek bed just pass some trees, they discovered a tinfoil food wrapper, several beer cans, a piece of a green jacket, and a canteen that they suspected might be the item's Lucas had been referring to in his confession. But just as it seemed that lead might have been worth pursuing further, investigator Tucker and park ranger Quailo got blindsided by their own employer. According to information presented in that TV series I've mentioned a few times called Wild Crime, as well as a social media post by the NPS's Investigative Services Branch.

10:54In November 1984, right as investigator Kim Tucker and park ranger Don Quailo were making some progress with Henry Lee Lucas regarding the summit meadow Jane Doe. Kim was taken off the case, and her position as a criminal investigator was eliminated. And I should mention, it wasn't just her position that went away. All criminal investigator roles were shuttered. The source material isn't super clear on what these folks did after that, but what I do know is that a few months later in 1985, Kim Tucker accepted a position as a concessions management specialist for the NPS. According to her interview with Wild Crime, the pay and benefits packages that the NPS offered criminal investigators in the 1980s were different from the benefits packages that were offered to park rangers. She said that at the time her bosses didn't want to deal with a lot of folks likely rangers rushing to switch to federal law enforcement officer positions just so they could get better compensation. So for the time being, the NPS just did away with the criminal investigator role entirely.

11:55However, years later the position was brought back, and in 2003 the agency formally created its Investigative Services Branch, also known as the ISB. Now, not long after Tucker took her new job with concessions management in 1985, her counterpart, Don Quelo, left the NPS and went to work for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. And so, with the two of them no longer in charge of the Summit Meadow Jane Do case, the investigation essentially came to a standstill. And of course, over time it became apparent to California authorities as well as many other law enforcement agencies who had been investigating Henry Lee Lucas in relation to their unsolved cases. That his confessions weren't always legit. Kim Tucker and Don Quelo later told Wild Crime that they suspected some crimes aside from the Summit Meadow case that Henry Lee Lucas had talked to them about likely hadn't even happened. For the next several years, things went quiet. That is, until May 1988.

12:56That spring, hikers walking near Summit Meadow on the opposite side of Glacier Point Road from where the hand had been found nearly five years earlier, stumbled across a human skull. A park ranger named Mike Durr came to the scene and arranged for the skull to be sent to a doctor at Fresno State University for further examination. The doctor later determined that whoever the skull belonged to hadn't been decapitated because there was no physical evidence that showed it had been purposely detached from the spinal column. Now, to be clear, there wasn't a spine actually found with the skull, or any other remains for that matter. But I guess from whatever this doctor at Fresno State could see, he felt confident the individual had not been decapitated. Another interesting detail the doctor noted was that the skull was missing the lower jawbone, but other than that, it was still in pretty good condition considering the circumstances. Based on some of the skull's characteristics, it was believed to have belonged to a woman, but as far as what her race or ethnicity was, that wasn't something that could be determined definitively with the information they had.

13:58Initially, the NPS labeled her ethnicity as Hispanic and assumed she'd had dark hair. And by the 1990s, that was still the thought process, when an ISB special agent named Jeff Sullivan took on the investigation. After he came on board, Sullivan decided that the NPS should get a facial reconstruction made for the skull by developing a clay model. When that was completed, images of the bus were presented to the media. Because the agency's assumption at that point was that the woman was Hispanic, the clay model was dressed in a dark colored wig. However, a source published later described the victim as white. Somewhere between 17 and 25 years old, she could have been somewhat bucktoothed and had a long narrow face with light brown or blonde hair. Unfortunately, though, nothing materialized from the reconstruction efforts, and for several more years, the summit met O'Jane Doe case languished in the NPS's cold case pile. In 1999, the agency's attention and resources were appropriately pulled to investigate a series of gruesome murders that occurred in Yosemite, which, quite literally, shocked the world.

15:02These crimes included the kidnapping and murder of a park environmentalist named Joey Armstrong and the abductions and murders of three tourists. Those victims were a mother, Carol Sund, her daughter Julie Sund, and Julie's teenage friend, Sylvina Paloso. I covered their cases and Joey's in depth in a prior episode of Park Predator's titled The Predator, so definitely go back and listen to that episode, because these victim's stories and legacies are very much worth listening to. But to make sure I stay on track regarding the summit met O'Jane Doe case, which is the focus of this episode, I'll just tell you that eventually one man was found to be responsible for Joey, Carol, Julie, and Sylvina's murders. His name is Carrie Stainer. He was later convicted and sentenced in 2002 and incarcerated in California's death row, where he remains to this day. Like Henry Lee Lucas, Carrie was a suspect in other murders besides the ones he was convicted for. However, without the benefit of advancements in DNA technology when he was arrested in 1999, plus the fact that the NPS still didn't know the identity of the summit met O'Jane Doe.

16:08Pursuing him as a possible suspect in her case was challenging. Back in June 1983, when the hand was first discovered, Carrie would have been about 21 years old, so definitely old enough to have committed the crime. But without anything else connecting him to summit met O'Jane Doe, other than the fact that he'd later kill four women elsewhere in Yosemite National Park. The case against him was, I imagine, just kind of thin. It wasn't until 2009 that the next major development occurred in the summit met O'Kase. That year, the NPS had DNA testing done on the hand and skull to figure out if they belonged to the same person. And sure enough, when the results came in, the findings proved the remains were for sure from the same woman. Unfortunately, though, that's sort of where things stopped. Authorities got no hits in codis with the victims DNA, and in 2012, the NPS once again suspended its investigation due to lack of lead. Five long years passed with no new updates in the case, but then a familiar name was assigned to spearhead the investigation.

17:11Someone who was a special agent with the NPS, and whose last name was Tucker. But no, it's not the Tucker you'd expect. According to the TV program Wild Crime, in 2017 former NPS criminal investigator Kim Tucker proudly saw her son, special agent Colin Tucker, take over the summit met O'Jane Doe case for the NPS. Jim Sullivan, the guy who'd had the facial reconstruction clay model done back in the 1990s, had appointed Colin to pick things back up. Now, because Colin and his mom both have the same last name, I'm going to refer to him as Colin, from this point forward, and her as Kim. Anyway, Colin's first move was to basically start back at square one and go through the hard copy case reports in the file that were still sitting in binders undigitized. Because the case had hit so many dead ends over the years, there wasn't a ton of material to sort through, but once that part of the work was done, he then contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploded Children.

18:11His goal for working with that entity was to develop a more detailed image of the woman's features, based on her skull. So he had a cat scan done on the skull and sent that image to Nick Mix so they could create, ideally, a more accurate picture of her. But as we all know, nothing happens overnight, and it would be another few years before Colin could get anywhere with the case. During that time, he learned a lot about how people were solving cold case homicides and identifying Jane and John Doe's, thanks to breakthroughs in the field of investigative genetic genealogy. One of the leading labs in that space at the time was Parabond Nano Labs. So in the summer of 2020, Colin got in touch with them, and in short order, the lab staff informed him that the remains he had in the Summit Meadow Jane Doe case were good candidates for whole genome sequencing, which is a process that analyzes DNA and then creates a genetic profile for a person based on things like eye color, ethnicity, race, hair color, and so forth. After analyzing the Summit Meadow Jane Doe remains, Parabond determined the woman was white with blonde hair and blue eyes, so definitely not Hispanic with dark hair, which is the description the clay reconstruction from the 90s had reported.

19:22Anyway, a forensic artist then used the information from the lab to develop a picture of what the young woman would have looked like. Shortly after that, an investigative genetic genealogist at Parabond uploaded the raw DNA profile into a public DNA database. For those of you unfamiliar with this process, and I get really into it, so I kind of geek out about it, because law enforcement cases can't be uploaded into consumer DNA databases like Ancestry or 23 and Me. IgG practitioners upload these DNA profiles into smaller databases where people willingly upload their DNA, such as Jed Match and Family Tree DNA. Anyway, getting back to that genealogist, she began to analyze all the people who shared DNA with Summit Meadow Jane Doe and built out their family trees to see how they connected to one another and also to the unidentified woman. That process was tedious and time consuming, but eventually she found a family with a couple in it whose daughter looked a lot like the latest reconstruction image, and her genealogy fit nicely with the DNA matches to Jane Doe.

20:25Also, as it turned out, that young woman hadn't been heard from since 1982. On January 4, 2021, NPS Special Agent Colin Tucker learned from Parabond Nano Labs that the Summit Meadow Jane Doe, whose remains his mom had initially investigated, and who he'd spent years trying to identify, was likely a woman named Patricia Hicks Dahlstrom. 28-year-old Patricia, who it seems often went by the nickname Patty, was originally from Spokane, Washington. She'd grown up there with her parents Edwin and Tilla and her two older siblings. Her brother, Edwin Hicks Jr., who she was reportedly very close with, died by suicide in 1971 while serving in the US Coast Guard. At that time, Patty was a junior in high school, and according to some of her friends who spoke with producers for wild crime, the sudden loss of her brother deeply affected Patty.

21:28She got very into spirituality, became inwardly contemplative, and lost what one of her friends described as her zest for life. According to an obituary I found in the Spokane Chronicle, her dad died just a few years after her brother did. By that time, though, Patty had been out of high school for a while and had married and then divorced a former classmate of hers named Edward Dahlstrom. Their marriage had fizzled after less than two years, and by 1980 she was living in Merced, California, which is only about 100 miles west of where Summit Meadow is in Yosemite. One of her friends who'd seen her not long before she went to live in California told producers for wild crime that, in her opinion, Patty had become involved in a cult of some sort in the late 1970s. This friend said that Patty had become very involved in meditation, had shaved her head, and lived with little to no belongings. After she was formally identified as the Summit Meadow Jane Doe, everyone who'd previously worked on Patty's case, including Colin's mom Kim Tucker and former park ranger Don Quaylo, were notified.

22:30Naturally, those folks were elated to learn the news that she'd been identified, but then reality said it, because there was still a ton of work to do to figure out how Patty had died. So, starting in April 2021, Colin interviewed several of Patty's relatives and friends, as well as people associated with the address she lived at in Merced. He told her relatives that as far as the MPS was concerned, her death was considered a homicide, and he was investigating it as such. Unfortunately, though, because Patty had little to no contact with her family after she'd moved to California, neither her surviving sister or her friends could help Colin pin down specific details of the last few years. Her sister told authorities that the last communication she'd received from Patty was in September 1982, and it was a picture of her at a beach. Thankfully, though, a woman who still lived at Patty's former address in Merced was more helpful to investigators, at least initially. That woman told Colin that back in the late 1970s and early 80s, she and Patty had lived together at the residence in Merced, and they'd both been members of a cult run by a man who was a real man.

23:38That cult run by a man named Donald Eugene Gibson. That last bit of information was interesting, because as it turns out, Donald Gibson was a very sketchy dude. According to an article in the Merced Sun Star, in mid-December 1980, undercover law enforcement officers had arrested 31-year-old Donald for charges of sawdemy, child molestation, possession of LSD, and furnishing LSD to a minor. At that time, he was the leader of a religious type group that called themselves the San Ande Apostolic Church. Donald was said to have referred to himself as God and usually wore a long lavender-colored gown that had gold trim on it. Some of his extended relatives told producers for Wild Crime that he had a lot of charisma and tended to surround himself with people who gravitated to him for some reason. His former sister-in-law told the documentary that he often befriended young men by enticing them with drugs and sex. According to the Merced Sun star, his group had been on law enforcement's radar for more than a year prior to the December 1980 bust.

24:45When he was arrested at that time, two of his associates were nabbed as well, and one of those folks was Patty. After law enforcement searched the home Donald had been staying at, they found what was described as evidence of bizarre sexual practices and records of cult finances. According to the coverage, the group's followers had a mass nearly $80,000 in donations and lived between at least three separate residents which were tied to Donald. His charges for child molestation and sawdemy stemmed from information police had learned from sources in which alleged miners, specifically young boys, had been encouraged to meet up with Donald. Activities suspected of having taken place during those meet-ups included drug use and sexual abuse that Donald or other group members claimed were a part of religious rituals. After he was arrested, he was taken to the Merced County jail and held on a $6,000 bail. About nine months later, in September 1981, his trial for the molestation and sawdemy charges began in Merced County Superior Court.

25:49By that time, the state had been forced to drop the drug charges against him after his defense attorney won a motion to suppress evidence. So prosecutors were only able to move forward with multiple counts relating to the sexual abuse they alleged Donald had perpetrated against young boys between 1979 and 1980. During his trial, Donald himself took the witness stand, and several of his followers, including Patty, also testified in his defense. An interesting fact I saw reported in the Wild Crime Docky series was that one of the people who attended Donald's trial was Carrie Stainer. Yes, the same Carrie Stainer who would go on to commit those four heinous murders in Yosemite National Park in 1999. Turns out, the Stainer family and the Gibson family knew one another quite well. So it's not only conceivable, but actually likely, that Carrie could have known who Patty was since he was close with Donald's family and would have likely seen her testify for the defense at Donald's trial in 1981.

26:50Wild, I know. Anyway, after several weeks of trial, Donald's jury found him guilty of four charges from the sexual abuse he inflicted upon the boys, and he was expected to be sentenced to anywhere from six to eight years per charge. News coverage from the time states that his prison terms would likely be served concurrently, meaning he'd served those six to eight years per charge simultaneously and then be released. However, when his pre-sentencing hearing rolled around in November 1981, Donald was a no-show, and his attorney couldn't get in touch with him. The former district attorney who prosecuted the case told Wild Crime that he'd initially asked the judge to put Donald in jail as soon as he was convicted, but the court decided to grant him release in between his trial ending and his pre-sentencing hearing. So it was during that gap that he fled. The prosecution learned through an anonymous tip that Donald had reportedly high-tailed it to Mexico, and to this day, he remains a fugitive.

27:50One of Patty's friends told producers for Wild Crime that about a month after Donald fled, Patty decided she no longer wanted to live in Merced. This friend claimed that she'd taken her to a bus station, but Patty never said where she was going. Her friend though assumed that she was likely headed to Yosemite. Whatever happened after that is a mystery. Looking at the timeline, there's clearly a big gap in Patty's life after she reportedly got on that bus and left Merced. If what her friend claimed is true, that would mean Patty likely left Merced sometime in November or December 1981. Yet her sister told NPS Investigator Colin Tucker years later that the last communication she'd received from Patty was in September 1982. And since we know Patty was dead by June 1983 when her forearm and hand are found. The question I have is, where was she and what was she doing for the remainder of 1982 and early 1983? Investigator Colin Tucker and other members of the NPS seemed to have asked that same question, and likely more.

28:56Did she ever bump into Donald Gibson again? Did she go searching for him? Or did she encounter Carrie Stainer? Could she have been unfortunate enough to just randomly come in contact with Henry Lee Lucas? All of those scenarios are possible given the facts we know. Former Park Ranger Don Quayla, investigator Colin Tucker and his mom retired NPS Criminal Investigator Kim Tucker, told Wild Crime that they believe Henry Lee Lucas is the person who killed Patty. They point to some of the specific details in his confession as proof that he'd been to the specific area in Summit Meadow that Patty's remains were later found in. Colin even went as far as having the beer cans that his mom and Don had found in the woods back in 1984 tested for DNA. However, at the conclusion of Wild Crimes coverage in October 2022, those results were still pending. And I've not been able to find any recent updates from the NPS about this particular detail. For what it's worth, Patty's friend who lived with her in Merced back in the late 1970s and was part of the group led by Donald Gibson, shared with Wild Crime producers that,

30:03in her opinion, she doesn't think Henry Lee Lucas' confession is legit. For one, she said Patty was a committed vegetarian who abstained from alcohol. So Lucas is claimed that he'd gone picknicking with a woman and drank beer and had fried chicken just didn't seem to align with the Patty she knew. To date, Patty's death remains unsolved. No one has been charged in relation to what happened to her, but as far as the NPS' cold case website states, her death is considered a homicide. Donald Gibson, the leader of the group Patty was a part of, remains a fugitive from justice. And if he is still alive today, he'd be in his upper 70s. Henry Lee Lucas, a one-time suspect in this case, died in prison in 2001. And like I mentioned earlier, serial killer Carrie Stainer is still sitting on California's death row. He has never been charged in relation to this case. If you're listening to this story and think you may have known or interacted with Patricia Patty Hicks' dollstrom in the late 1970s or early 1980s,

31:05please contact Special Agents with the National Park Services Investigative Services Branch. You can visit their website, which is linked in the show notes and blog post for this episode. Or you can submit a tip online via email or by calling 888-653-0009. Park Predators is an audio-check 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. I think Chuck would approve.