In the winter of 1923-1924, 50-year-old Edward Nickols, a male fur trapper, was working in the Deschutes National Forest in Oregon alongside his partners, Roy Wilson, 35, and Dewey Morris, 25. The men were reportedly having a successful season, with Nickols visiting the nearby town of Bend just before Christmas in good spirits, having sold a large number of valuable furs. The last known sighting of the three men alive was on January 16, 1924, when a resort owner named Allen Wilcoxen spent the evening at their cabin and departed the following morning, noting that they were all in high spirits.
As the weeks turned into months with no word from the trappers, concern grew. In April 1924, a search party ventured to their cabin near Little Lava Lake. They discovered a chilling scene: the cabin was deserted, a meal had been left on the table, and food was burnt on the stove. Outside, a fox pen that should have contained valuable animals was empty, and a blood-stained hammer was found nearby. The searchers also noticed that a sled was missing and that the men's traps had not been tended to in some time. A grim trail from the cabin led to a hole cut in the ice of the frozen lake.
The gruesome discovery was made when the bodies of Nickols, Wilson, and Morris were found beneath the ice of Little Lava Lake. Autopsies revealed the brutal nature of their deaths; all three had suffered from both gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma. Nickols had been shot in the jaw with a shotgun and also had a revolver wound to his head. Wilson had been shot in the shoulder and the back of the head, while Morris had a gunshot wound to his arm and a fractured skull, likely from the hammer found at the cabin. It was believed the men were killed at their cabin and their bodies then transported to the lake for disposal.
The investigation into the triple homicide pointed towards a primary suspect, a man named Charles Kimzey, who had previously been a partner of Nickols. It was reported that Kimzey and Nickols had a falling out, and Kimzey had allegedly threatened to get his revenge. Further suspicion was cast on Kimzey when a man matching his description sold furs in Portland using Nickols' trapping license on January 22, 1924. Despite being a prime suspect, and even being arrested years later for a different crime for which he was sentenced to life in prison, Charles Kimzey was never convicted for the murders of Edward Nickols, Roy Wilson, and Dewey Morris. The case remains one of Oregon's oldest unsolved murders.
