The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Press Conferences – a Guide

This entry has been cross-posted in “The Quest,” under the blog title IN THE LAND OF SPIDER SABICH.

Here are the facts that came out of Sheriff Roy Johnson’s second press conference the day after Brienne Cross’s death. There were now the two suspects in custody, Donny Lee Odell and Ray Arquette.  Both Odell and Arquette belonged to the same white supremacist cell in Hayden Lake, Idaho, although it had not yet been ascertained if they’d been there at the same time.

Sheriff Johnson had little else to say, although he clearly enjoyed saying it, as evidenced by his subsequent press conferences, Three-through-Five, in which he fed out new pieces of information like a trail boss doling out the last cup of water in the desert.  You could date the news conferences by the order in which Sheriff Johnson improved his appearance: Press Conference #2, he showed up brown, rested and ready, as if he’d come straight from an upscale Aspen tanning bed, Press Conference # 3, powder took the shine off his bald dome; Press Conference # 4, he’d adopted cool new aviator shades; and Press Conference # 5, Exhibits.

Exhibits: On Johnson’s right was the blown-up photo of Donny Lee’s 1979 GMC truck, which had been spotted speeding away from the scene on Castle Creek Road.  On the easel to Johnson’s left was a blown-up photo of the incriminating bumper sticker, “One Shot, One Kill,” a common-enough hunting sticker, now fraught with darker implications.  For the record, Donny Lee’s truck had the Full Redneck Package: KC lights, winch, tool box in the bed, and a gun rack containing a .30-06 Remington Model 700 rifle.  Most incriminating was Donny Lee’s menacing 10-and-a-half-inch Bowie Buck knife in a Ziplock bag, the blade gleaming menacingly in the hot light, blue and yellow seals aligned perfectly.

“The knife was wiped clean, but there is blood residue ingrained into the hilt,” Sheriff Johnson intoned.

You couldn’t blame Roy Johnson for seizing the spotlight. When the world’s most wanted serial killer, Ted Bundy, escaped from the County Courthouse Jail, there was a virtual three-ring circus of microphone-grappling politicians, minor officials, and celebrities anxious to ride Bundy’s bolt of lightning.  Another circus ensued when Andy Williams’ ex-wife and snow-vixen, Claudine Longet, was tried for shooting her lover, champion skier Spider Sabich, in his bathtub.  The sizzle has always meant more than the steak. That’s the way it is everywhere now, but Aspen and Hollywood figured it out long before anyone else did.

In this last press conference, Sheriff Roy let the other shoe drop.  An “unnamed female acquaintance of Ray Arquette” claimed Ray told her over Jello shots at the Lumberjack Bar in Leadville that he killed some people in Aspen, and if she told anyone, he’d kill her, too. This, of course, played out on the cable news channels, with which Sheriff Roy Johnson had developed a mutual affinity. He was already being lauded as the “Toughest Sheriff West of the Pecos,” mostly due to his availability.  He hinted slyly at a jailhouse confession.  There was an unsettling, serene quality to his statements, as if he were cruising at a high altitude of certainty, and no one else could join him in that rarified air.

So, the picture was filling in.  These two boys were stone-cold killers.  Their mothers didn’t raise them  good.  They fell in with bad companions. They were offended by Justin Balough’s affair with Tanya Williams—all that interracial canoodling just got under Donny’s tattooed skin.

After that, the press conferences stopped.  Donny and Ray disappeared into the County Jail. Sheriff Roy Johnson resigned from his job and played a bit part in some movie about white supremacists.

Ironically, Roy Johnson’s investigation stuttered to a stop just about the time another lead surfaced—the yellow Lamborghini.

 Link to this page

 Link to this page