By Ron Brown
 
July 30, 2010
 
KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. - When Author and Historian Melany Tupper heard about the range wars of the early 20th century in Lake and Crook counties, she proceeded to devote six years to trying to solve a pair of mysteries that have haunted people for decades.
 
In March of 1904, prominent Lake County Businessman John Creed Conn disappeared. His body was found weeks later on a sandy knoll in the big ZX cattle ranch. Shortly before his disappearance, masked men slaughtered several thousand sheep in the same area. Although Conn's death was officially ruled a suicide, most people thought there was something much more sinister in the killing of Conn and the sheep.
 
"I believe, in fact, that it was a coincidence, and his death occurred in between the two largest sheep kills in Oregon... So, the first one was February 2, 1904 at Reid Rock. 900 sheep killed. The second one was April 28, 1904 at Benjamin Lake. And there were around 2,000 sheep killed there," said Tupper, author of 'The Sandy Knoll Murder, Legacy of the Sheepshooters.
 
Some thought he was killed to keep from saying who the sheep shooters were. Tupper says Conn made much of his living catering to the sheep trade, hauling wool to market. But a group of gunmen were ranging over the high desert country, trying to keep sheepmen from bringing their herds into traditional cattle rangeland.
 
"When all these sheep came in and wiped out the range, it just caused a lot of tension. So there was a lot of small incidents; firing into bands of sheep, haystacks burned, corrals burned," Tupper said.
 
That all changed with the 1904 sheep massacres and the murder of Conn. Tupper says her investigation leads her to believe the large-scale killing was by Crook County gunmen to divert attention away from a timber grab by some cattlemen.
 
"It was range terrorism. And there was a lot of corruption. Like I said, quite a few of the cattlemen took it in their own hands to protect certain parts of the range," Tupper said.
 
She says that was because the federal government did not have the manpower to enforce it's new rangeland regulations, opening the door to range terrorism.
 
"What I believe happened was that the men who were doing these big sheep kills basically claimed credit for this murder. Because they wanted the sheep shooters to appear even more ominous than they were. So not just killers of sheep, but killers of men as well. When I reviewed the details of the crime scene, I thought it really seems to be the work of a psychopath," Tupper said.
 
Tupper says a two-time ex-con named Ray Van Buren probably killed Conn. However, no one was ever prosecuted. And no one was ever held accountable for the sheep massacres either.
 
"They didn't just shoot 20 or 30 animals right through, ride through them or drive them off the range. They waited until they were in a corral in the evening and then they went out and tried to kill as many as they possibly could, and that was why the numbers were so high," Tupper said.
 
Tupper says the sheep killings mostly stopped when government investigators moved in to probe timber fraud cases in 1905. Then the U.S. Forest Service was established and began to enforce rangeland rules more effectively.
 
If you're interested in learning more about the Sandy Knoll Murder and the sheep shooters, contact Tupper at her website at www.christmasvalley.net