The Hermit Of Grand Lake
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2024
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 445 is the tale of a pair of simple-minded lumberjack cousins who go to extreme and cruel measures to exact revenge against a mountain recluse. But what price will they pay?
Culled from the historic pages of the Denver Post and other newspapers of the era.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular.com |
| 0:07.0 | Grand Lake Colorado, July 26th, 1926. |
| 0:14.0 | Mystery as deep as any conjured up in fiction is baffling Grand County Monday |
| 0:22.7 | as the disappearance five days ago of Fred N. Salak, the hermit of Grand Lake, |
| 0:30.8 | 65-year-old recluse moneylender, reputed worth one-half million dollars. |
| 0:36.3 | From his lonely cabin three miles down the Colorado River from the lake, |
| 0:42.2 | remains unsolved. Only two facts are known beyond doubt. Salak is missing and apparently has been since last Wednesday evening. |
| 0:54.8 | His cabin was virtually wrecked with an axe and boot, |
| 0:59.0 | supposedly by unknown persons who swooped down upon him |
| 1:03.2 | as he started to open his door on his return home the evening of his disappearance. |
| 1:09.8 | Other than that, Sheriff Mark Fletcher of Grand County, |
| 1:13.6 | Deputy Sheriff Charles Jenny, and citizens of the Mountain Village admit they have nothing but a host of |
| 1:20.6 | conjectures to work on. Meanwhile, possees are skirting the willows of the river, combing the wooded plateau lands and threading through the rugged canyons of the mountain country around the lake in search for Selah. |
| 1:37.3 | The search began Sunday afternoon, and now the circle swept by the mounted posseys has been widened to include a large block of the county. |
| 1:49.3 | As the case stands, at least three and possibly many more forms of catastrophe may have overtaken the solitary money lender. |
| 2:00.0 | He may have been killed outright by marauders who secreted his body and then returned |
| 2:05.6 | to ransack the house in search of his purported treasure. |
| 2:10.6 | He may have been seized and overpowered by his abductors who rushed him into the hills, |
| 2:15.6 | perhaps to torture him until he either revealed |
| 2:19.4 | the hiding place of his money, if the rumors of his gold hoard are true, or agreed to pay |
| 2:25.6 | over a large sum. |
| 2:29.4 | He may have been beset by enemies who sought revenge for some real or fancied wrong in a moneyed transaction. |
... |
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