Medford, Oregon
July 21, 2002
By DANI DODGE
Was it a mob hit? A robbery? The mystery, 50 years old today, is far from forgotten
On July 21, 1952, a trail crew discovered the bodies of two General Motors executives murdered in the woods of Crater Lake National Park. The men had been shot in the head execution style. Their mouths were gagged with their own neckties. Their shoes had been removed from their feet, and one pair had been stolen...
Fifty years later, FBI agents still haven’t identified the killer. One man insists, though, that if the FBI had taken him seriously then — or even if his story came out today — the crime could be solved.
A 24-year-old truck driver for the Crater Lake Lodge at the time, Lincoln Linse believes FBI investigators discounted his eyewitness account after branding him a smart aleck.
“I feel for these two guys that lost their lives, and I also feel the follow-up of the murder case should have transpired a lot different,” said Linse, now a retired accountant living in Portland. “I don’t feel like they got justice, and that hits me right between the eyes.”
Linse says he was driving canned goods to the lodge July 19, 1952, when he saw two men in work clothes taking two “white-collar types” into the woods where the executives’ bodies were later found. As he continued driving slowly to the lodge, he heard two bangs that sounded like firecrackers.
Later that day and the next, Linse was followed and harassed by two scruffy-looking men. He’s come to believe those two men were the killers.
The older one was the most distinctive. He wore a beaded belt that appeared to spell out “Ralph.” He had a tattoo of a bikini-clad female on his right forearm. He was missing a finger.
Linse, coincidentally, also is missing a finger.
Asked if he murdered the businessmen, Linse replied Friday — the 50th anniversary of the actual shooting — “Absolutely not. But I’d sure like to find out who did.”...
On July 19, 1952, two out-of-town executives from United Motor Service, a General Motors subsidiary, decided to do a little sightseeing at Crater Lake.
Charles Patrick Culhane, 53, of Detroit was the national sales manager for the company. Albert Marston Jones, 56, was the manager of the San Francisco zone office. The two men were touring Jones’ sales area, but it was Saturday, and they didn’t have another meeting until Monday. They left Klamath Falls at 11:30 a.m. It was 71 degrees and the sky was clear.
The men expected to meet up with business associates Frank Eberlein and John Vaughn, operators of a Klamath Falls auto parts firm, later in the day at Union Creek, a popular fishing spot.
Vaughn, Eberlein and Eberlein’s 13-year-old son, Alan, left for Union Creek after closing the shop at noon.
The locals passed the old south park entrance at 2:45 p.m. A few miles on, they saw Culhane and Jones’ green ’51 Pontiac sedan sitting by the side of the Highway 62 at the Annie Creek Canyon viewpoint. The right front door was open. The keys were in the ignition. The luggage and Baby Brownie camera were still in the car.
“I reached my hand in the grill and put it on the radiator,” Alan Eberlein said this week. “It was hot enough so I yanked my hand off it. The car hadn’t been there too long.”...
LINK:
The Crater Lake murders and the 9-fingered man – July 21, 2002