Lost Skeletons in the Desert: Heberer and Lorius


The disappearance of the Heberer and Lorius couples is one of New Mexico’s oldest cold cases. In 1935, George Lorius, Laura Lorius, Albert Heberer, and Tillie Heberer all left their home in Illinois for the vacation of a lifetime. They intended to visit the Hoover Dam, then called the Boulder Dam, which was newly built and considered the engineering marvel of the century. After seeing the dam, they planned to hit the World’s Fair in San Diego. They decided to follow Route 66 and see the Southwest on their way. They undertook their journey in a 1929 Nash. 

The four never made it to Boulder Dam or the World’s Fair. In fact, the last place they were seen alive was a small restaurant in Vaughn, NM, where they had breakfast on May 21, 1935. What happened after that is unclear, but these four people have never been heard from since.

However, their car was found wrecked and abandoned in Dallas on May 29. Some of their luggage was found along the highway near El Paso. Some other luggage was found in what is now Nob Hill or Albuquerque, burned and scattered across the sand. This evidence doesn’t bode well for the two couples. They are presumed to be murder victims. 

While their case has never been solved, many eyewitness reports of the same dark-skinned and tattooed man driving their car and cashing their forged checks have surfaced over the years. Some think that this was an outlaw named Chester Comer. Comer was later killed in a gunfight with an Oklahoma marshall and was never arrested for the crime. 

Let’s dig in a little deeper into their story. 

The Disappearance

Heberer and Lorius were both wealthy businessmen. George Lorius was the executive of a coal and ice company in St. Louis. Albert Heberer owned a successful barbershop and was involved in the meat business. They and their wives were in their later years. They knew this trip to the Boulder Dam would likely be one of their last vacations and they wanted to make the best of it. Leaving behind many loved ones, they embarked on what should have been the adventure of a lifetime before interstate travel was commonplace. Instead, it proved to be the end of their lives.

George and Laura Lorius left; Albert and Tillie Heberer right

The four people stayed at the now-defunct Vaughn Hotel in Vaughn on May 21 and had breakfast in the morning of the 22. They sent a postcard to family saying as much. They were supposed to meet a nurse who lived in Vaughn and was friends with George Lorius. It is unknown if they actually met this person. I haven’t seen any mention of her name or whether or not she was interrogated. 

Next, they sent a postcard that was postmarked from Albuquerque and dated May 22. They said they were now rushing to get to Gallup before dark. This would place their route along Route 66, which Interstate 40 now roughly follows the path of. A woman later confirmed that they had stayed in her hotel in Albuquerque for a few hours to shower but her statement is questionable due to her outlandish claims that the couples got involved with Doc Noss’s dubious gold treasure in Victorio Peak. 

On May 29, the families of the victims were informed that the 1929 Nash had been found in Dallas. It had apparently been wrecked. There was no sign of life in the car. Not even blood. There were two gas receipts in the car – one from Socorro, and one that was handwritten and dated May 23. Soon, their scattered luggage was found along the highway in El Paso, and more was found burned in Albuquerque. This was all the police had to go on. 

The case immediately became a national sensation. People became terrified of New Mexico, and tourism to places like the Carlsbad Caverns dropped considerably. This hurt the New Mexico economy, which was already crunched by the Depression, so the New Mexico government took solving the case very seriously. The FBI soon got involved. Even Clyde Tingley, the governor of New Mexico, set up headquarters in the Albuquerque Hilton Hotel and dedicated lots of time into the case. The FBI apparently amassed a file on the case that was at least six feet tall. Yet no one has ever cracked the case or found the bodies.

The Quemado Connection

The police managed to track the handwritten receipt found in the Nash to a small gas station in Quemado. The gas station owner identified the handwriting as his own and also correctly identified the car and said he recognized a photograph of the couples inside it. It is unknown if police got handwriting samples from this man. 

I wish they had, because this story makes little sense, considering the couples said they were headed to Gallup on Route 66. Quemado is pretty far from Route 66 and from Gallup. The way you would reach it from Vaughn would be following Highway 60 to a little ways north of Socorro, then taking it south through Socorro on what is now I25, and finally rejoining Hwy 60 in Socorro to go west through Magdalena, Datil, Pie Town, and finally Quemado. Hwy 60 was built in 1926 so it was in existence then, but it would have been a dirt and gravel road. That means that this journey from Vaughn to Quemado would have taken even longer than the approximately 4 hours it would take today. Either way, that’s quite out of the way from the couple’s stated route through Albuquerque and Gallup. It does not jibe with the post card they sent postmarked from Albuquerque, saying they were rushing to make it to Gallup before dark. Did they change their mind and decide to visit Quemado instead of Gallup? Did someone abduct them and force them to take this route? And if so, why didn’t they appeal to the Quemado gas station owner for help? He did not state he saw a fifth person with them. 

Since the couples were interested in seeing New Mexico, it is possible they elected to go to Quemado instead of Gallup at the last minute. Having traveled both routes myself, I think the way through Quemado is much prettier than the way between Albuquerque and Gallup. There are many cool rock formations and a glimpse of the Malpais on the way to Gallup, but mostly the area features flat grass plains. The route through Quemado on Highway 60 features the San Augustine Plains (now home to the VLA but that was after 1976), the Cibola Forest and Datil Mountains, the interesting lumpy Sawtooth Mountains between Datil and Pie Town, Pie Town itself, and interesting sandstone peaks near Quemado. Once you cross the Arizona state line, you also get treated to red desert, many interesting rock formations, and views of the imposing Escudilla Mountain and the White Mountains. From Springerville, you can take a pretty drive to Show Low and enter the Tonto National Forest and drive along the majestic Mogollon Rim. Alternatively, you can take a route through St. John’s to access the Painted Desert, the Petrified Forest, and even the Grand Canyon. From either route, you could make your way to the Boulder Dam. So if they chose to change their route, it makes a lot of sense from a tourism perspective. It just seems that since they were so diligent about communication with family, they would have sent a postcard informing them of their altered itinerary. 

The following map shows the route one would take from Vaughn to Quemado following Hwy 60:

Part of a 1928 road map that shows Route 66 from Albuquerque to Gallup – where the couples said they were headed.
A view of Route 66 on the eastern side of the state, where the couples had come from. Santa Rosa is near Vaughn where the couples were last seen alive.

Many people think that Quemado is where the two couples were killed and their bodies are probably about twenty-five miles outside of Quemado. The area between Quemado and Springerville is quite desolate and populated mostly by cattle. Burying people in this area could theoretically “disappear them” forever. Investigators think they are located within 25 miles of Quemado because there were about fifty odometer miles on the Nash that were unaccounted for, suggesting that the couples may have driven about twenty-five miles out of Quemado toward the Arizona state line after filling up gas, before being attacked. Then their attacker drove the car back to Quemado for a total of 50 miles, before he went on to Socorro. 

We know he went to Socorro because the car was first wrecked into a ditch in Socorro and towed into the town. People report the person driving it was a man with “uneven ears and tattoos on his left arm and very uneven ears.” That fits the description of Chester Comer, who killed many other people in 1935. More on him later. This man cashed cashier’s checks belonging to the couple along a route from Socorro to El Paso and then Dallas. He wrecked one more time outside of El Paso and then spent the night there. This is also where the rest of the couples’ luggage was found, dumped on the side of the highway. Why did he wreck so many times? He may have been driving fast to get as far away as possible from the horrific quadruple murder he had just committed. 

Finally, it appeared this man abandoned the car in Dallas. This whole time, there was no sign of the couples at any of his wreck sites and no sign of them around the abandoned car. It is believed that he killed them before taking their car, and therefore their remains may be within a twenty-five-mile radius of Quemado.

There is also talk of a shot-up car found near Quemado. When I lived in Pie Town as a teenager, I heard people talking about the shot-up car and how it was abandoned near Largo Creek, on the way to Quemado Lake. Quemado Lake is about twenty miles south of Quemado, along Highway 36, and may have been a side destination for the couples. It may have been in this area that they were ambushed. Decades later, this story is still a sensation in the area, which can be rather boring and deprived of news. However, I never found any actual evidence of this car. I’m not sure if the FBI investigated it or not. 

If it is related to the case, maybe Lorius and Heberer had guns for their protection, which was common back then. Perhaps they got into a gunfight with an attacker. That theory seems unlikely due to the lack of bullet holes in Lorius’s car, however. Another possibility is that maybe the outlaw who killed them had been involved in some sort of crime involving a shootout in his car and he had to abandon his getaway vehicle and find a new ride. The couples from Illinois just happened to be the first easy targets he encountered in his quest for a new ride. 

However, this shot-up car could also be entirely unrelated to the case. Even when I lived in Quemado, lots of people were bored and enjoyed going out shooting things. Some bored kids back then could have found an abandoned car and shot it up. I’m assuming this car was not found by the FBI as they likely would have traced it back to its owner and cleared up what happened to it. So does this car even really exist? Or was it more of a campfire tale that has grown and distorted over the decades since?

There is also a theory that maybe the Heberer and Lorius couples split up at some point. They may have felt cramped in their two-door Nash. So one couple rented or purchased another car. This car was the shot-up one, after the couples were ambushed by someone or a group of people. The Nash was unscathed and therefore it was the one stolen by the man who strongly resembled Chester Comer. 

The Albuquerque Connection

A woman in Albuquerque later came forward and stated that the couples stayed for a few hours at an establishment she owned. They took showers and then planned to leave before they heard about Doc Noss’s gold treasure in Victorio Peak from another guest at her hotel. Three of them left to investigate the treasure while one woman stayed behind. The three went to Hot Springs, NM, where they found the treasure and were killed for it. The killers returned, killed the woman who stayed behind, and disposed of her body and luggage in a remote area outside of Albuquerque. 

There is just no evidence supporting this, however. On top of that, why would they stop in Albuquerque for a shower? They had just spent the night in Vaughn and could have taken showers there. Albuquerque is only a few hours from Vaughn, even back then on unpaved roads. It seems they would have just driven through Albuquerque, maybe stopping for a meal and gas, before showering at a hotel in Gallup, their stated destination in the postcards they sent. 

Some cowboys riding near Albuquerque found some burned luggage in what is now Nob Hill. Among the items was a business card belonging to George Lorius. This is the only evidence that the couple may have been in Albuquerque. That, or someone took their luggage there as a diversion. Since Albuquerque is rather out of the way from the route the killer took in the Nash from Quemado to Socorro, El Paso, and finally Dallas, this is a suggestion that maybe there was an accomplice in the murders. The accomplice went to Albuquerque and the man driving their car went to Dallas. 

I wonder if there were any bank robberies or big heists not long before the murders. It could explain the shot-up vehicle near Largo Creek as well as the fact there were at least two people involved in the murders who split up afterward. It could help pinpoint some suspects. 

State Police Agent Rhoades, who worked the case, believed that the couples took Route 66 to Las Vegas and into Albuquerque and then on to Los Lunas, which was the highway’s old route. There, they were headed west to Gallup when they met their murderer somehow. They were killed and buried in the desert somewhere along the old Route 66. There is a lot of desolation along this old highway and bodies could easily be hidden in the desert, never to be found. 

While this theory certainly is supported by the post cards the couples sent, it doesn’t explain the receipt that places them in Quemado. Quemado is a good 150 miles from Los Lunas and on gravel roads back then, it would have taken them even longer to get there than the 2 and a half hours it would take today. 

Buried Under a Building in Vaughn?

Others believe that the couples were killed in Vaughn. This is supported only by the fact they were last seen there – and a waitress in Belen came forward in 1963, saying she witnessed their murders. She claimed they were killed in a basement in Vaughn and put in concrete underneath a building. She included this information in a letter she wrote to Walter Duke, a real estate entrepreneur and great uncle to Laura Lorius’s great aunt Barbara. Walter Duke and Barbara worked hard on the case together, trying to complete the job that the FBI and the NM State Police could not. 

Oddly, on May 22, 1935, Laura’s sister had an eerie dream where Laura told her, “I’ve been murdered and put in concrete. You will have a hard time finding me.” This was before anyone even knew the couples were missing. Only when the Nash was found in Dallas, did it become clear that the couples had met a bad end. So this dream is definitely weird, if it really happened, and I have no reason to believe Laura’s sister was lying. I believe spirits are real and they communicate with us sometimes. 

I always thought this was the creepiest part of the story. Because ultimately, the family has never found the couples’ bodies. And it is entirely possible they were murdered and put in concrete. Finding them in a slab of concrete in Vaughn would be difficult, if not impossible. Vaughn is a shell of what it was once was. In the Depression era, prior to interstate highways, Vaughn was a bustling railroad town where crews often laid over. It was a busy place with many people coming and going, and many hotels and restaurants. There used to be many buildings that are no longer there. For instance, the Vaughn Hotel where the couple stayed no longer stands. Concrete slabs abound and some have become so buried in dirt and prickly desert vegetation that they are completely hidden and forgotten about. Finding every single concrete slab and excavating them to find hidden remains would be quite a feat. 

I do think that George’s nurse friend was a viable lead. She may have been the last person to see them alive beyond gas station owners. Maybe she knew something about what happened to them or what their travel plans were. Or maybe they met her somewhere in Vaughn and after she left, their robber accosted them. Therefore, knowing where they met this acquaintance could help pinpoint the basement where they were supposedly killed, according to the waitress. The couples undoubtedly stood out. They had money, something that was scarce in the Depression. Plus, they were clearly not local. This could have attracted a robber who killed them to gain access to their nice car and other possessions. 

I also want to know more about this waitress in Belen. It is not clear who she is or if the FBI determined her tip to be credible. It sounds like she may have just been a gossip, injecting herself into the case 28 years after the fact for drama and attention. Sort of like the Pintada Kid now. More on him below. 

The problem I have with the theory of the couples being killed in Vaughn is the fact they got gas in Socorro and then Quemado on May 23, and the Quemado gas station owner correctly identified their car from memory and recognized them in a photo. This makes it most probable that they spent the night somewhere on the 22 (likely in Socorro, where they had fueled up) and then made it to Quemado on the 23. Based on odometer readings, they probably died within twenty-five miles of Quemado, though whether it was on Hwy 60 or not is up for debate. They appear to have left Vaughn alive. So I don’t think they are buried there. 

The Pintada Kid

This story wouldn’t be complete without mention of the Pintada Kid. This man is actually named Guadalupe Esquibel and he is very active on online forums in regards to the case. He claims he has solved it but never has announced his solution. While I would dismiss him as a lunatic, I think his dogged interest in the case is interesting. He is a bit of a troublemaker online, and many people think he is full of it. 

He does have some cool stories. He writes about how his parents were killed when he was very young, so he moved to the mountains with his grandparents and learned how to use native herbs for remedies. While waiting for his mother and sisters to come for him, he taught himself to play guitar and violin. When the strings would snap, he would fix them with bailing wire. His stories can be rambling and confusing, yet they are entrancing, as well. I haven’t read very many stories that are so profoundly New Mexican. They offer a rare glimpse into an old, closed world that is rapidly evaporating from the face of the earth with modernization and globalization. In the sources list below, I included links to some of the forums where the Pintada Kid shares his life story, his theories on the Heberer Lorius case, and his bizarre rants and comically ireful interactions with other forum users. 

One story that Pintada Kid tells is of exploring some rocky outcroppings and caves near Vaughn. He claims that he knows the bodies were stashed in this area. It is here that he claims he saw the ghost of a man trying to point toward something. But the ghost could not lift his arms; it was as if they were weighed down or broken. Pintada Kid thinks the bodies are hidden where the ghost was trying to gesture. It does seem like this would be a convenient area for the couples to be stashed if they were killed in Vaughn. 

However, I don’t think this man solved the case all these years later. I’m sure he has a viable theory, but that’s it. Many people have viable theories about this case; in the vacuum left by the four missing bodies, all people can do is engage in speculation and conjecture. The Pintada Kid claims that he solved the case and gave it to the State Police and they have ignored him due to an elaborate cover-up. But honestly, I think if he had really solved the case, he would be interested in sharing more details and proving that he solved it. Instead, he fiercely guards what he “knows” because he doesn’t want someone to take credit for his work. This seems like it is driven out of ego and not genuine interest in helping the victims’ families get closure in this very old, moldy case. 

Chester Comer

Chester Comer was a serial killer with five known victims and possibly more that have never been identified. His first known murder was his wife, Elizabeth Childers. He married her and then shot her five times in August of 1934 in Oklahoma. He buried her in a field in Oklahoma. It is not clear if he knew she was pregnant – but she was carrying his child when she died. When her body was found, it was so decomposed that it took many months to identify her. 

In December 1934, just four months after killing Childers, he met Charles Stevens while working on an oil pipeline. Stevens invited him to live with the family and that’s how Comer met twelve-year-old Lucille Stevens. Charles Stevens said he liked Comer and figured he was as good as Lucille could find, so he allowed them to marry. Though Lucille was only twelve, you have to remember that child marriages like that were not uncommon in those days in poor rural communities. To a struggling rural family, Lucille Stevens was just another mouth to feed, and marrying her off to an oil field worker may have seemed like a good move for everyone’s sake. Comer appeared to be likable and good to Lucille early in their marriage. He even gave Lucille a bunch of dresses and purses, claiming they were from his deceased sister, but really they were from Elizabeth Childers. The Stevens family did not know he had been married before. He finally shot Lucille and set her naked body on fire in 1935 in Edmond, OK. When he visited Charles Stevens after this, he lied that Lucille had run away to Oklahoma City and he was going to go find her. 

 After this, Chester Comer went on his infamous killing spree. On November 19, 1935, he killed a man named Ray Evans and stole Evans’s vehicle. Ray Evans was an attorney in Shawnee, OK, and liked to give hitchhikers rides. This was how he crossed paths with the man who took his life. Someone spotted Comer fixing a flat tire on Evans’s car while there was a body slumped inside the vehicle. Comer had a gun on his person according to this witness. 

Then, on November 20, he kidnapped a farm family in Evans’s car. He drove them around, holding them for a ransom of $3. When they paid up, he let them go, alive thankfully. Also somewhere around this time he attempted to offer someone a few hundred dollar bills and Evans’s car in exchange for a new one. The person he was attempting to purchase the new car from grew suspicious, especially since hundred dollar bills were a rare sight in the Great Depression. He called the car’s plates in. 

On November 23, people found Evans’s vehicle, abandoned with his bloody clothes inside. That same day, Comer killed a farmer named Lester Simpson and his fourteen-year-old son, Warren Simpson. Their bodies have never been found. He stole a Chevy from Simpson. Simpson family knew something was wrong when Lester and Warren didn’t come home that night, so they reported them missing. Now Comer was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list and people everywhere were watching for this boogeyman. 

Comer was driving the Simpsons’ Chevy when someone saw it and called in the plates. That’s when Blanchard town marshall, Oscar Morgan, spotted the vehicle and caught up to Comer on November 25, 1935, after a high-speed chase. Comer wrecked into a ditch and then shots were exchanged. Comer was shot in the head by Morgan. The bullet splintered into five fragments inside his brain and he was taken to the hospital in Oklahoma City, where he was treated for his injuries and questioned relentlessly by police. Stanley, the officer driving Comer to the hospital, noticed that he seemed to come to in the backseat and reach for his pocket, which contained a gun. Fortunately, Comer was not able to shoot. 

In the hospital, many people came to speak to Comer. Even his mother came to speak with him, but he would not tell her anything coherent. He confessed to killing Evans and the Simpsons, but not his former wives. He refused to tell his father-in-law Charles Stevens where Lucille’s body was located and he would not tell Elizabeth Childers’s family members where he had buried her. He incoherently rambled that he had buried Ray Evans somewhere near Fittstown. There was also something about a pipeline and a ditch. He had three firearms in his possession that he stole from victims and a black purse that had belonged to Elizabeth Childers. In the car he had stolen from the Simpsons, there was a shirt and trousers. Investigators initially thought it had belonged to Warren Simpson, but Mrs. Simpson revealed that her son had been wearing something else. This raised the question that Comer may have had more victims than previously thought. 

Oscar Morgan was also shot in the gunfight, but he was so invested in catching Comer and finding out where he had hidden the bodies of the Simpsons and Evans, that he didn’t make a big deal about it. After he had the bullet removed from his arm, he went to see Comer in the hospital and pressed him for answers about where he had stashed the bodies of his victims. Apparently, he shook Comer’s hand with his wounded arm and declared that it was just a little wound. Morgan became quite famous after this shoot-out and was even taken to New York City to be interviewed on radio and to Washington, D.C. to meet the president. 

Comer was only 25 when he died but he had led a very active and violent life. It is believed that he may have committed other robberies in the past, though none as violent as his spree in Oklahoma in the fall of 1935; it is also believed he may have had other victims, due to the shirt and trousers found in his car that did not belong to any of his known victims. He was an oil field worker who moved from job to job and used the aliases Jack Armstrong and George Jones. His mother reported that his brother, Arnold, was in an asylum for the criminally insane after killing four people. Violence appeared to run in the family for some reason. 

If you are as curious as I was, here’s some background into Arnold Comer. Arnold ran away from the family farm in Arkansas in 1925, when he was fourteen, because he didn’t want to do his chores. He found an innocent family and killed them all. He killed the woman, Sarah Boyd, because “I was afraid she wouldn’t give me food.” Then he killed Charles Moore because “I was afraid he would send me back and make me do my chores.” Finally, he beat their infant to death with a rock to “make her stop crying.”

Next, he went to a farmer’s house in the mountains. This farmer was named Ira Robinette. Arnold held a gun to Robinette’s head and demanded to be given a bed to sleep in and some food. Robinette complied, then sent his brother to get the sheriff while Arnold was sleeping like a baby. The sheriff and his posse arrested Arnold, who was found sane by a doctor.

However, Arnold’s father said that he always knew there was something wrong with Arnold. Arnold was sent to prison for 21 years. He was slated to get out early on good behavior when he beat another inmate’s head to a pulp on January 12, 1933. That’s what got him sent to solitary confinement. He never went to an insane asylum as his mother claimed. His mother had a tough time accepting that two of her sons turned out to be murderous maniacs. Maybe there was something in their genes, but I don’t want to know what their childhoods must have been like. 

Now back to Chester Comer. This spree killing may not have been Chester Comer’s first. Some people think that Comer matches the description given of the robber and murderer of the Heberer and Lorius couples. After all, he was dark-skinned from working outside on oil rigs. He had lots of tattoos. Some think the composite of the man seen driving the Lorius’s 1929 Nash and cashing forged checks in George Lorius’s name bears a strong resemblance to Chester Comer. It is not clear from my research if Comer had “uneven ears.” 

 Comer was in New Mexico for some time before his spree in Oklahoma. He worked on oil rigs and roads in the state. One of his former co-workers stated that Comer was obsessed with the lava tubes in the Malpais near Grants, particularly “Owl Cave.” That is why this area was searched heavily for the bodies of George and Laura Lorius and Albert and Tillie Heberer – to no avail. 

But I find no proof that Comer was in New Mexico in May 1935. There is also no proof that he was in Dallas in May 1935, the final location of the abandoned Nash. I wish his whereabouts during this time frame could be confirmed but it appears that they cannot. Though Comer was named a suspect, he faded out of consciousness before he could be questioned on the matter. His handwriting from a note found on his person was compared to the forged signatures on George Lorius’s checks, for inconclusive results. 

The Heberer and Lorius murders certainly fit Comer’s MO. But that doesn’t mean he committed the crimes. It could be that people remembered this man and his crimes so vividly that they tried to match him to the Heberer and Lorius case. However, it could have been an entirely different outlaw who killed the couples and stole their vehicle. In the Depression, there were a lot of desperate people and a lot of drifters who went from place to place. Two couples that looked rich and had a nice vehicle would have stood out like a beacon on a dark night to many people at that time. 

Bob Lowry

Bob Lowry was another suspect arrested in Sedalia, Missouri, after causing a ruckus at a filling station. The gas station owner called him in to the police because he perfectly matched the description of the person who was spotted driving the Lorius’s Nash and cashing forged checks in George Lorius’s name. Bob Lowry was twenty-seven and transient, with red hair, uneven ears, tattoos on his left arm, and a “slow manner of speech.” He apparently was the same height and had the same way of flipping his hair back, too. 

He was arrested and questioned. But evidently nothing came of this interrogation because he was not charged with the crime. I wonder if he is the same man that the Pintada Kid calls “Ding Dong Bob.” Ding Dong Bob was a known tattooed and slow-speaking criminal in New Mexico that many local people believed was the person driving the car and cashing the forged checks. He was notorious in Vaughn, NM, in the 1930s. So it could be that Bob Lowry was Ding Dong Bob and he committed or played a big role in the crime, which locals knew, but he was never convicted and he never revealed where the bodies were. He likely didn’t act alone due to the second piece of luggage being in Albuquerque and the fact it takes a lot to subdue four people by one’s self.

Conclusion

This case is now 88 years old. If it hasn’t been solved yet, it probably never will be. Nevertheless, the families of the victims still have not given up. Some family members are still searching for answers in the New Mexico desert, working on differing theories of what happened to the four missing people. I hope one day they find what they are looking for. 

Sources

On the case:

http://kidnappingmurderandmayhem.blogspot.com/2013/06/secrets-in-desert.html

http://daflikkers.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-mexico-mystery-75-years-ago.html

https://socorro-history.org/HISTORY/PH_History/200806_cold_case2.pdf

https://www.patreon.com/posts/and-they-simply-17321504

On Chester Comer and Bob Lowry:

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21653904/bob-lowry-questioned-in-lorius/

https://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/comer-chester.htm

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/crime/2007/02/25/maniac-terrorized-oklahoma-in-1935/61810168007/

https://genealogytrails.com/oka/mcclain/comer2.html

https://www.nydailynews.com/true-crime-justice-story/ny-killing-comer-brothers-20220424-3xuu34xdtnevbfglmoxdvqr6wm-story.html

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/21653904/bob-lowry-questioned-in-lorius/

The Pintada Kid:

https://zeesgowest.blogspot.com/p/pintada-kid-stories.html

https://nm.general.narkive.com/7HCTe703/pintada-kid-on-heberer-lorius-case-the-truth-kid

https://groups.google.com/g/nm.general/c/FOApWFdPxrs?pli=1

https://nm.general.narkive.com/cZh5FJc1/pintada-kid-on-how-to-kill-a-rattlesnake

One response

  1. […] had murdered his two children there, though I have never been able to substantiate this story. The Heberer and Lorius bodies are thought to be buried somewhere within 25 miles of the town, and their quadruple homicide […]