Jeanette Margene Davis Judge, a 24-year-old Caucasian woman, was tragically murdered on August 9, 1978, near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. She and her husband, James Judge, were on their honeymoon, having been married for only four days, when their lives were cut short. Their paths fatefully crossed with Randy Greenawalt, a convicted murderer who had escaped from an Arizona prison just ten days earlier.
Greenawalt was not alone; he had broken out of the Arizona State Prison in Florence on
July 30, 1978, with fellow inmate Gary Tison and Tison's three sons. This group, known as the Tison gang, had already left a trail of violence, including the murder of a family of four in Arizona, before they made their way to Colorado. It was there that they abducted the newlywed Judges. The couple was killed, and their van was stolen by the fugitives.
Although authorities were confident that Greenawalt and the Tison gang were responsible for the murders of Margene and James Judge, the case was never formally prosecuted. The gang's crime spree came to an end on August 11, 1978, in Arizona, when they were apprehended in the Judges' stolen van. A confrontation with law enforcement resulted in the death of one of Tison's sons. Gary Tison managed to escape into the desert but ultimately succumbed to exposure. Greenawalt and the two remaining Tison sons, Raymond and Ricky, were captured. They were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. However, in 1992, the death sentences for the Tison brothers were overturned by the Arizona Supreme Court, and they were resentenced to life in prison. Randy Greenawalt remained on death row for 18 years and was executed by lethal injection on January 23, 1997.
