day added to my concern. He wrote:
The camp is located about 200 yards off Brushy Ridge Trail, about 4 1/4 miles from Divide Road. When we arrived we were met by Deputy Patrick who was there taking the report and doing interviews. I could see that there were two tents to the rear of the vehicles, off in the oak brush. The tents belonged to a Marshall, Texas man and his hunting partner. About 160 feet to the north of these tents were two vehicles. One vehicle was a VW camper van and just to the rear of that was a red and white Ford Bronco. These vehicles belonged to the shooting victim and his wife. I could see that there was a pair of blue denim bib overalls hanging from the passenger side mirror of the van. The bottom twelve inches of the pant legs were muddy. There was a pair of woman’s hiking shoes on the ground next to the pants. They were covered with mud. The sliding side door of the van was open and the pop-up roof was up. There was a green Coleman-type camp stove stowed in a recessed area above the cab of the van, held down with bungee cords. The Ford Bronco was about ten feet behind the van and the tailgate was lowered. There were various items in both vehicles that would normally be found on a hunting/camping trip.
Investigator Armand showed Deputy Poste and me the crime scene, located about 175 yards to the north of the van in a small clearing near a barbed wire fence. There, lying on the ground about 20 feet to the south of the fence, was the body of a man. There were several wires with plastic flags in the ground noting the location of various pieces of evidence. One of the wooden fence posts was flagged and I could see that it had a hole through it that appeared to have been made by a bullet. The south side of the post was blown out, indicating that the bullet was coming from the opposite side of the post from where the body was found. There were several Division of Wildlife officers and Forest Service officers on the scene. Investigator Armand had everyone go on the other side of the fence where we formed a search line and walked through the area where the shot was thought to have come from. We were searching for a cartridge casing that may have been ejected in the area by the shooter. We searched for several minutes, but we didn’t find anything.
After finishing with the collection of the evidence that was flagged, we assisted the deputy coroner with the recovery of the body and helped to load it into his vehicle for transport. We then went back to the camp area. Investigator Armand and Deputy Patrick were talking to the victim’s wife and Brent Branchwater, the hunter from the adjacent camp. Investigator Armand was examining the rifle in the back of the Bronco and he put that rifle in a case for collection as evidence. The victim’s wife, Janice, had been sitting in Mr. Branchwater’s camp during our time there. She became very distraught and we felt she was going into shock. I noticed that she didn’t start shaking real bad and acting shocky until Investigator Armand got in the back of the Bronco and started looking at the rifle. Until then she was pretty calm. Captain Smith felt that Janice was going into shock and he asked that I start up my unit and place her in it with the heater going. As we started to switch vehicles, Janice passed out. Captain Smith had Air Life respond to transport her to Saint Mary’s Hospital for medical treatment. I drove up to the landing zone and we transferred Janice to the helicopter. After the helicopter left, Deputy Poste and I went to several campsites along Brushy Ridge Trail. We contacted the hunters in those camps and asked for information and checked identifications. We covered about six or seven hunting camps. We drove back to Grand Junction and made plans to return the next day.
On October 16, 1995 at about 10:20 A.M., we returned to the shooting scene with representatives of the Mesa County Search and Rescue Team, Palisade Police Chief Rory Clark, Division of Wildlife and Forest Service officers, and several Sheriff’s Department officers. Chief Clark had come with a metal detector to aid in locating any spent rifle cartridges or other metallic evidence. The Search and Rescue Team members were there to conduct a ground search for footprints, spent cartridges, and any other evidence that might be found in the area. I started to search the vehicles for ammunition that would go with the weapons found in the vehicle and at the shooting scene. I started with the VW Van. When I got to the rear of the van, I found a tan paper bag with a Gibson’s Discount Store logo on it. This bag was on the passenger side of the rear storage area. I looked in the bag and found two boxes of Federal brand rifle ammunition. One of the boxes was a box of twenty 7 mm magnum, 165 grain boat tail, soft-point ammo that contained 15 live rounds. The other was a box of twenty-four .243-caliber 100 grain, Hi-Shock soft-point ammo that contained 20 live and one spent cartridges. I collected these boxes of ammo as evidence. I also collected the muddy boots and the overalls from the van.
While I was searching the vehicles, Chief Clark found a shell casing in the area that the shot was thought to have come from. I put on gloves and picked up the casing noting that it was a .308-caliber rifle cartridge casing. I placed it into a small brown paper bag and labeled the bag as evidence. Deputy Poste and I used a tape measure to document the location of the casing in relation to the fence. We also measured the distance from the post with the hole in it to the VW van and the distance from the van to Mr. Branchwater’s tents. I talked to Captain Branchwater who told me he remembered a few things he forgot to tell Deputy Patrick. He told me that while he was helping to keep Janice away from her husband’s body she started talking about Bruce’s dad. She said he had been an executive with R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and that he had bought a lot of stock when he worked there. She said that he left a lot of insurance money to Bruce’s mother as well as the stock. She said that Bruce’s mom would send them as much as $10,000.00 every so often as a gift just to get rid of some of the money. She said that she met Bruce’s mom and that Bruce had told her that his mom liked her more than she liked him. She also mentioned that Bruce didn’t want to come hunting and that she told him she was going hunting with or without him.
I was told that some footprints had been found and was instructed to make castings for evidence. I took a camera and casting materials to some footprints located about fifty yards from the fence and about one hundred yards northwest of where the body was found. After taking photos of the prints, I then made casts which I collected when dry. Later I made diagrams from my notes and sketches.
Each insight and report about Janice Dodson added to the questions about her. She seemed agitated at one moment, exceptionally poised the next. A loving wife? A devious planner? Which was the real Janice Dodson?
On the afternoon of October 15, the day of Bruce Dodson’s death, numerous officers spread out to contact as many hunters in the area as possible. Because hunting camps are so transitory, this had to be done right away. One of the officers involved was Harvey James, a Division of Wildlife officer. Harvey is the strong silent type, right out of an old western movie. He even has a slow, western drawl. He has been the game warden assigned to the Uncompahgre Plateau for the past twenty years and he knows it as well as anyone. During hunting season, he would be checking hunting camps routinely anyway, so this just added a few questions and a higher level of concern. About five miles down Brushy Ridge Trail from the crime scene, Harvey located a camp of Texas hunters. He checked their licenses and asked them the same set of questions he was asking everyone that afternoon, “Where have you been hunting? Have you seen anything unusual or suspicious? Do you know Janice Dodson and Bruce Dodson?” and so on. Well, it turned out that two of the hunters in this camp did know Janice and they knew her quite well. These two hunters were Terence Morgan and his wife Carla. They lived in the town of Pollock in East Texas. Not only did they know Janice, Terence told Harvey, but Janice’s ex-husband, Mark Morgan was Terence’s brother, was also hunting in the area.
“Can you tell me the location of Mark’s camp?”
Terence nodded, “Its about five miles back down Brushy Ridge Trail and on the jeep road about a mile past the intersection where the trail takes a sharp turn to the west after you round Snipe Mountain, down over the hill, and off to the east in a grove of aspen near a stock pond.”
Harvey immediately knew the camp from the description. When Harvey returned to the crime scene that evening, he turned all of his contact information over to Captain Smith and made sure to point out this information. He thought it was a bit coincidental.
At
