My name is Carl Houseman. I’m a deputy sheriff in Nation County, Iowa. I’m also the department’s senior investigator, and senior officer, to boot. I’m getting a little sensitive about senior and elder being interchangeable terms. I turned fifty, recently. It’s gotten to the point that people ask me whether AARP sells cut-rate ammunition to older cops. Anyway, I’d like to tell you about the killings we had in our county in the summer of ’96, and the subsequent investigation that stood the whole state on its ear. This is my version of what happened. It’s the right one.

It all started for me on June 19, 1996, about 1500 hours. I had pretty much assigned myself as pickup car for a team of two officers who were conducting surveillance on a cultivated marijuana patch we’d located in Basil State Park. Basil’s a large park, about twenty-five square miles, in steep hills, and just about completely covered with thick woods.

At 0458, Special Agent Bill Kellerman, Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement, and our Deputy Ken Johansen had been inserted into the park, being dropped off by one of the night cars. The patch itself was located some distance from the road, in a little valley. I’d never been there, but I knew the general location. I’d done surveillance on patches in the past, and was very glad not to have to do this one. It was hot, it was dull, and it was seldom successful. Bill and Ken were good officers, although they both had only a couple of years dope experience, and were pretty anxious to bust this patch. The cultivated area had been observed during a fly-over by a Huey helicopter provided by the Iowa National Guard, under a marijuana eradication program. Ken had been in the chopper when they first discovered the patch wedged in a deep valley, and reported the event to Bill, the Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement agent assigned to work undercover in the area. They’d gone in, discovered over a hundred plants, and decided to go for the bust.