In early 2000, the body of a 38-year-old white male, Frank Chaminade Hoebich, was discovered in a desolate stretch of the Mojave Desert, 67 miles west of Las Vegas. A Bureau of Land Management officer happened upon a rolled-up carpet on January 9, 2000, and upon unfurling it, found Hoebich's remains. An autopsy would later reveal that he had been shot twice, once in the chest and once in the upper left arm, with a 9mm bullet and had likely been deceased for at least a week before his
discovery.
Originally from New Jersey, where he ran his own advertising business, Hoebich had relocated to Lakewood, Colorado, in March of 1999. He was drawn to the West by a business opportunity, taking on a sales and marketing role for a company called 'LectraLite,' which sold battery-operated lighters. His partners in this venture were Grant Rankin Anderson and James 'Tex' Stansberry. The business, which had amassed approximately $1.3 million from investors, was reportedly troubled by financial irregularities, including overlapping loans taken out against the same inventory. Despite securing a significant loan to establish a factory in Nebraska, the trio operated out of a rental house in Lakewood, assembling the lighters themselves.
The last time anyone saw Frank Hoebich alive was on New Year's Eve, December 31, 1999, in the company of Anderson and Stansberry at two different bars in Lakewood. Following the discovery of his body, the investigation naturally turned towards his business partners. A considerable amount of circumstantial evidence pointed in their direction. Size 13 shoe prints found near the carpet in the desert were eventually matched to shoes found in Stansberry's car. Furthermore, dusty prints of the same size were found on Hoebich's abandoned rental van, suggesting someone had braced themselves on the vehicle to remove something or someone from it. A tag on the carpet indicated it had been purchased from a Carpet Exchange in Denver on either January 3rd or 5th, 2000.
Despite the evidence presented to a grand jury, neither Anderson nor Stansberry were indicted for Hoebich's murder. Years later, in 2008, a breakthrough came when the Colorado Bureau of Investigation matched DNA from the shoes found in Stansberry's car to Stansberry himself, directly linking him to the dump site in the Mojave Desert. However, as of recent reports, the case remains unsolved and officially open. It has been suggested that Anderson has since disappeared. The murder of Frank Hoebich continues to be a cold case, leaving behind a trail of unanswered questions and a story of a promising new chapter that ended in a desert grave.
