dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

>>4979199

The Mojave Desert announces itself amid a sea of Joshua trees and roadside billboards for fast food in various desert towns.

It is, in fact, the only place on Earth that the Joshua tree survives. But some aren't so lucky. After all, this is where the bodies get dumped in pretty much every R-rated Las Vegas film. From The Hangover to Casino: The trunk goes up, the body comes out, the trunk goes down, the car drives away.

The culture of crime here traces back to the Wild West, when cowboys and outlaws passed hot days with moonshine, shotguns, and the "last great manhunt" of a young Native American called Willie Boy. In many ways, the communities developed in its harsh, barren landscape haven't put their dukes down since. And so it calls those who don't want to be bothered, or caught. As Deanne Stillman, author of Mojave true crime book Twentynine Palms, emailed me, "Anything goes there—there are few checks or balances, other than your own compass."

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department's cold case records, available online back to 1970, tell a grim tale. Consider Sandra Rhodes, a 19-year-old found stabbed to death and partially nude, dumped in Twentynine Palms, California in 1981. Or Carol Simonson, a US Army private found strangled and beaten to death near the 15 freeway in Barstow in 1984. Or Maria Terrasas, dumped in the desert near Phelan, California in 1989. These murders remain unsolved, as do the cases of the three still-unidentified bodies found in San Bernardino County in the 1970s and 1980s: Nipton Jane Doe (1976), found shot and dumped in a mine shaft; San Bernardino County John Doe (1983), a teen found inside a gondola car at the Southern Pacific Railroad yards near Bloomington, California; and San Bernardino County Jane Doe (1987), shot and dumped in Colton, California.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8x9dqb/murder-in-the-mojave-homicides-and-body-dumps-in-the-california-desert