Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Dillia Diambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about

today takes place near Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest. According to the U.S.

Department of Agriculture's website, Black Hills is 1.2 million acres in size and covers parts

of Northeast Wyoming and Western South Dakota. When you look across this landscape, the hills and mountains appear very dark, thus the name

Black Hills. To soak in the scenery, most people travel on Iron Mountain Road, which is known

for having one-lane tunnels and what are referred to as the pigtail bridges. For those of you who

don't know what that is, basically, it's a uniquely

engineered wooden bridge that allows the roadway to curve or circle around on itself in order

for drivers to easily ascend or descend in elevation. There's a picture of what the pigtail

bridges look like on the blog post for this episode if you want a point of reference. I'm not going to spend too much

time geeking out over bridge architecture with you, even though I do find it fascinating. But in a way,

the design of these iconic bridges mirrors some of the realities of the criminal investigation

that took place in today's story. The phrase, what goes around comes back around, comes to mind when I think about how this case played out.

It may have taken a while, but in the end, the violent path this story's perpetrator was blazing for himself, caught back up with him.

And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't outmaneuver or evade the truth about himself any longer.

This is Park Predators.

Music I'm I'm I'm I'm

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I'm On Thursday, August 22, 2013, a woman named Nancy Herman, who lived in Custer, South Dakota, was in her car when she came

across her friend, 38-year-old Michelle Will. Nancy had met Michelle about six months earlier when

Michelle came into a women's shelter that Nancy used to work for, called women escaping a violent

environment. Michelle regularly volunteered at the facility, over time she and Nancy had grown close.

...