On the evening of June 25, 1980, Vicki Durian, a 26-year-old White woman from Wellman, Iowa, was traveling through rural West Virginia with her friend Nancy Santomero. The two had been hitchhiking east with plans to attend the Rainbow Family Gathering in the Monongahela National Forest. They never reached the gathering. At about 9 p.m., a college student walking toward a lean-to where he was staying on Briery Knob, near Droop Mountain Park in Pocahontas County, discovered the two lying in a
secluded clearing. Both had been shot at close range. The coroner estimated that they had been dead no more than several hours, and investigators found no evidence that either had been sexually assaulted. Neither carried identification, leaving authorities initially unable to determine who they were. Santomero was identified after her sister saw newspaper photographs of the victims, and that identification ultimately led investigators to Durian's family.
The isolation of Briery Knob immediately shaped the investigation. Authorities believed the person responsible might have known the remote mountain roads well enough to take the travelers somewhere they would not easily be seen. Physical evidence was limited, and for years there was no reliable eyewitness account of the killings. Suspicion gradually settled on several local residents, but the investigation repeatedly became entangled in contradictory statements, changing stories and disagreements over what had actually happened. One of the men who eventually became a major focus was Jacob Beard, a Pocahontas County native who attracted police attention in 1982 after making telephone calls to Durian's parents. Beard said he had called because he felt sympathy for the family and believed local investigators were mishandling the case.
The investigation took another unusual turn in 1983 when Lee Morrison told authorities that he and Gerald Brown had picked up Durian and Santomero. Morrison initially alleged that Brown killed both travelers and that he helped move their bodies. At a preliminary hearing, however, Morrison withdrew the accusation and claimed Beard had pressured him into making the story up, allegedly threatening that something could happen to Morrison's family if he refused. The murder charges against Brown were consequently dismissed. Other witnesses and potential suspects surfaced over the following years, but investigators still lacked a case strong enough to prosecute.
Authorities renewed the investigation in earnest around 1991. Witnesses began describing a group of local men and a van that they claimed had been in the area on the day of the killings. On April 16, 1992, first-degree murder charges were brought against Jacob Beard, William McCoy, Richard Fowler, Gerald Brown, Arnold Cutlip, Winters "Pee Wee" Walton and Johnnie Lewis. Lewis and Walton implicated Beard as the shooter. The prosecution's case soon developed serious problems, however. Walton alleged that he had been physically threatened by police during questioning, while Lewis had repeatedly recanted his identification of Beard. In July 1992, all of the charges were dismissed without prejudice because of concerns about witness credibility and the conduct of the investigation.
Five of the original defendants—Beard, McCoy, Fowler, Brown and Cutlip—were indicted again in January 1993. Lewis and Walton were not indicted because they had received immunity in exchange for their cooperation. Beard was arrested in Florida that April and ultimately became the only defendant brought to trial. Prosecutors presented testimony that Durian and Santomero had entered Fowler's van and traveled with several of the men before being taken toward Briery Knob. Walton testified that the travelers became frightened when they realized they were not being taken where they expected to go and that, after the group was joined by other men, Beard opened fire. Lewis also testified that Beard was responsible. The defense attacked the reliability of the witnesses and presented evidence supporting Beard's claim that he had been working during part of the day and later attended a school board meeting with his wife.
There was already another potential suspect whose story would eventually transform the case. Before Beard's first trial, his attorneys learned that convicted serial killer and White supremacist Joseph Paul Franklin had claimed responsibility for the murders. In 1984, Franklin told a Wisconsin law-enforcement official that he had killed two travelers in West Virginia and reportedly drew a map showing the location associated with the crime. He subsequently gave a similar account to federal authorities. When West Virginia investigators interviewed him, however, Franklin initially denied involvement, then admitted responsibility before abruptly refusing to continue discussing it. Because of those inconsistencies, the trial judge considered his statements unreliable and refused to allow Beard's defense to present the confession to the jury.
On June 4, 1993, the jury found Beard guilty of both murders. He received two concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole. After his conviction, prosecutors dismissed the charges against the remaining defendants, and none of them was subsequently prosecuted for the killings. Beard continued fighting the verdict. In 1995, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ordered additional proceedings to determine whether prosecutors had improperly used information obtained after Beard had previously been given limited immunity. A lower court ultimately found the prosecution evidence had been obtained independently, and that ruling survived another appeal in 1998.
Franklin's confession nevertheless became increasingly important. Beard's attorneys eventually obtained a sworn deposition in which Franklin again claimed that he had murdered Durian and Santomero. They also produced testimony from Arnold Cutlip challenging portions of the prosecution's original eyewitness account. In January 1999, a judge vacated Beard's convictions and granted him a new trial. Beard was released on bond and faced a second jury in May 2000, this time in Braxton County because of the extensive publicity surrounding the case. The defense was able to present Franklin's confession along with Beard's alibi and evidence contradicting prosecution witnesses. On May 31, 2000, after deliberating for less than three hours, the jury acquitted Beard of both murders. His original conviction therefore no longer stands. Beard later pursued a wrongful-conviction lawsuit, which resulted in a settlement of approximately $2 million in 2003.
Franklin gave a chilling explanation for his own alleged involvement. During later questioning, he said he had picked up Durian and Santomero while they were hitchhiking and began discussing interracial relationships with them. Franklin, whose violent crimes were driven in significant part by racist and White-supremacist beliefs, said the conversation led him to decide to kill them after learning that they were willing to date Black men. He described shooting the travelers with a handgun and provided details that caused Beard's defense attorneys to argue that he, rather than Beard, was the true killer. Franklin's credibility remained disputed because he had confessed, withdrawn his account and then confessed again, and some West Virginia investigators continued to question whether he was telling the truth.
Franklin was never convicted of killing Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero. He remained imprisoned for other murders and was executed in Missouri in November 2013 for an unrelated killing. With Beard acquitted and the cases against the other local defendants dismissed, no one currently stands convicted of the June 25, 1980 killings. Franklin's confession remains the most significant alternative explanation for what happened on Briery Knob, but because it was never tested in a criminal trial for these particular murders, the deaths remain officially unresolved despite the extensive investigation, arrests, prosecution and decades of litigation that followed.
