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On the warm sunny morning of June 11th, 1934, four persons stood around an automobile,

which was parked beside a spring on a prosperous ranch near the Pedro Mountains of central Wyoming.

Slumped over the car's steering wheel was the lifeless body of Sewell Stanley Combs, the ranch's owner.

Coroner Hall told Carbon County Sheriff John McPherson in a matter-of-fact voice, it couldn't be suicide

because he was shot from behind. It's murder. Although the sheriff had not known Combs personally,

he knew that he had been an attorney and had held important positions both in industry

and with the city of Casper, Wyoming.

According to Siever, a strongly built man in his early 30s, Combs had bought the ranch a few years previously and had spent the past two summers there.

He and his wife had recently arrived for the summer, having driven from Nacomis, Illinois, after visiting there.

Seaver said that those living on the ranch, besides Mr. Mrs. Combs, were his mother, Mrs. Martha Seaver, two young children of his sister, Joe Ludwitz, and himself.

All five adults, he said, had been sitting at the house

talking the previous evening until about 11 o'clock. Then Joe Ludwitz had said that he was sleepy

and had left for his shack, which was beside a creek into which the spring flowed, about an eight-minute

walk from the ranch house.

About 15 minutes after Ludwitz's departure, Combs had remembered that he wanted to give

Joe further instructions about the morning's work and had said that he was going to drive

down to his shack.

He said that he thought he'd get a bottle of beer from the spring a little more than halfway to the shack where he kept a supply to cool.

When he had gone, everyone else started for bed.

McPherson asked,

Wasn't Mrs. Combs worried when her husband didn't return?

...