The Slayings of Don & Boston Tate at Big Bend

Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Vincent Strange

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In July of 1991 26-year-old Don Tate took his 5-year-old daughter Boston on a camping trip to Big Bend National Park in Brewster County, Texas. The day after they were supposed to have returned but had not, Boston’s mother and Don’s ex-wife asked Rangers at the park to issue a request to locate. Don and Boston never came out of Big Bend, not alive. Later that day, Don’s brutalized body was found. A few days after that, Boston’s burned remains were discovered in her father’s van. Investigators scrounged to find evidence and a motive, while park visitors and villagers across the Rio Grande in Mexico spoke of the involvement of drug smugglers. Later that year, in December, a scandal in neighboring Presidio County involving the son of a prominent rancher and a drug warrior sheriff further fueled the talk of traffickers executing Boston and Don.

If you have any information about the murders of Boston Michelle and Donald William Tate, please contact the National Park Service Tip Line at 888-653-0009 or submit a tip using their online form: nps.gov/orgs/1563/submit-a-tip.htm

If you’re in the market for Girl Scout Cookies, you can help Alice reach her goal by using the following link. Alice says, “thanks for supporting the Girl Scouts!” digitalcookie.girlscouts.org/scout/alice241168?fbclid=IwAR0pOJNsnaxTejVAWjcDXe6kGZifKEwA8wYpbCjQf6i059Muo_Oalire0k0

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Sources: The New York Times, Texas Standard, The Big Bend Sentinel, The Odessa American, One Ranger: A Memoir by H. Joaquin Jackson, National Park Service Ranger Morning Reports, and Death in Big Bend by Laurence Parent

#JusticeForBostonAndDonTate #BigBend #BrewsterCountyTX #PresidioCountyTX #MarfaTX #Murder #Texas #TX #TexasTrueCrime #GoneCold #GoneColdPodcast #ColdCase #UnsolvedMurder #Homicide #UnsolvedMysteries #TrueCrime #TrueCrimePodcast #Podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0	As I'm sure you know it's Girl Scout Cookie Season.
0:03.5	Hi, I'm Alice. I'm trying to sell enough Girl Scout cookies to go to Devicim this year.
0:08.7	I met that goal last year and I want to thank y'all for helping me. If you can help me again this year I'd really appreciate it.
0:16.0	If you're in the market for some Girl Scout cookies please consider clicking the
0:21.5	link in the episode, Show Notes,
0:24.2	and thank you for supporting the Girl Scouts.
0:27.8	The Gone Coal Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
0:31.7	Listener discretion is advised.
0:35.6	Nearly 1 million acres make up Big Bend National Park, located in southwest Texas
0:41.9	on the Rio Grande River's most dramatic and biggest bend, hence the name.
0:48.4	From the high peaks of the Chisos mountain range to resilient plants like flowering yucca and prickly pear.
0:55.7	Big Ben's landscape is incomparably beautiful, but also rugged and unforgiving.
1:01.6	The National Parks Desert Expans rugged and unfulgiving.
1:02.7	The National Parks, Desert Expances, canyons, forest-topped mountains, and rocky boulderous terrain
1:10.5	is largely unscathed by humanity's sometimes mundane and almost always destructive touch.
1:19.0	Among the United States largest protected lands, much of the park is secluded and desolate.
1:26.6	The nearest big city, in fact, is El Paso 280 miles to the northwest, and there isn't a whole hell of a lot in between.
1:36.4	As magnificent and perhaps soul-mending as Big Bend is, there are dangers there far beyond the obvious peril presented by Mojave rattlesnakes and black widow spiders.
1:49.0	Finding bodies at Big Bend National Park isn't common, but it isn't necessarily a rarity either.
1:57.8	The rocky, steep, and barren desert mountains, the normity of the park itself, the lack of people, and the beating Texas sun, after all, are a dangerous mixture.
2:10.0	Mother Nature has remorselessly taken plenty of hikers and campers there to admire Her Majesty.
2:17.0	Und documented folks crossing the border from Mexico are particularly vulnerable, and many have attempted the trek through Big Bend,
	...

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