A woman falls to her death in one of America's most beautiful national parks.

Her husband says it was an accident, a slip, a moment of bad footing on a mountain trail.

But when rangers arrive, something doesn't feel right.

The fall is further than he claimed.

The location, nowhere near the trail.

And photographs taken just minutes before

show him standing alone at the edge of a cliff. Then investigators learn something else.

This wasn't the first time one of his wives had died. There are a million conspiracy theories

about people missing or turning up dead in our national parks and on other public lands.

But in reality, those incidents occur at roughly the same rate as they do everywhere else.

After all, the National Park Service manages an enormous amount of land.

If you combine it all, the National Park System would rank as the 14th largest state in the country.

So with that in mind, it's not unreasonable to understand that disappearances, murders,

and most commonly accidental deaths do happen within park boundaries.

As parks fill during the busy summer months,

and as the rangers who protect those places are stretched thin across vast landscapes,

it becomes even more important for visitors to take precautions.

But even then, tragedy still happens.

And every once in a while, an incident that looks like a terrible accident turns out not to be one at all.

I'm Jason Epperson, and today on Parkography, the tragic death of a hiker in Rocky Mountain

National Park, a case that would shock investigators, divide a family, and ultimately lead to one

of the most significant murder convictions in National Park Service history.

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