[ad_1]
As days turned into years, American Brett Woolley came to accept that his father’s murderer would never be found, and that his family’s private tragedy had become a Wild West legend, the kind of thing that people shared when they had too many drinks. .
Forty years ago, Dan Woolley was shot in the parking lot of a small town bar. The shooter crossed the street to the other tavern in town, ordered a drink and declared: “I just killed a man.”
And then it disappeared.
Until last year, when it emerged that the man who shot Woolley lived in Texas under a false name.
READ MORE:
* America’s deadliest serial killer was caught, charged, and tried, but he continued to murder
* How America’s Deadliest Serial Killer went undetected for over 40 years
* Reward of up to $ 100,000 offered for information on the death of 88 years
Brett didn’t want to hear it. “He didn’t want to be found. I was fine with that, ”he said that November, his voice muffled. “It’s like it just happened yesterday, again.”
Rebecca Bone / AP
Brett Woolley and his girlfriend Alison Steen.
When the story of the accused shooter came to light, along with rumors about the rodeo circuit and a reputed Las Vegas casino crime boss, it became clear that the legend of Dan Woolley’s death would only grow.
The night of the shooting
The small town of Clayton sits in a remote Idaho canyon along the Salmon River. When Brett Woolley was growing up in the early 1970s, the poor town was thriving thanks to a local silver mine. Brett worked from a young age to help support the family. His father expected hard work, but allowed him a lot of freedom in return.
On September 22, 1980, 52-year-old Dan Woolley had finished working on the family property and invited 19-year-old Brett for a beer. Brett, who was recovering from a motorcycle accident, refused.
“I felt quite insignificant because I had never missed the opportunity to go to town and have a beer with Dad, never,” she said. “That has always bothered me.”
Brett settled in for the night, only to be interrupted a few hours later by a visitor with news: his father had been shot and killed by a man he had called a friend.
The legend
The story of what happened at the Sport Club bar has evolved over the years.
In most versions, some details remain constant: a couple of guys from Montana who worked in the mines were at the bar. In some versions, they flirted with a woman there; in others, they were offended when the woman’s boyfriend broke in and beat her. In most accounts, a fight broke out between the Montana boys and the man, identified by witnesses as a former professional rodeo cowboy named Walter Mason.
When the fight spread to the parking lot, the bartender and Dan Woolley intervened, perhaps trying to break things up or help Mason. Then, witnesses said, Mason broke free and ran to his truck.
Police reports say Mason returned with a pistol and fired twice, hitting one of the Montana boys in the arm and Dan Woolley in the face.
The man named Mason
Mason came to Idaho a few years earlier. He was recognizable (a horse had stepped on his face years before) and developed a reputation due to his fondness for fights and an alleged connection to the Las Vegas mobster and casino owner Benny Binion.
Mason “had a sad upbringing if the story I received was true,” said Brenda Michael, Binion’s daughter. He heard that his parents died when he was about 8 years old, and Mason ended up living “with a farmer who paired him in fistfights.”
Michael’s first husband, Bert France, met Mason at a rodeo in Arizona, and Mason lived with the France family for a time.
“He always thought he was tough, he always had the personality of a bully,” Michael said.
Michael, a rodeo supporter and rancher in Amarillo, Texas, lost contact with Mason around 1963. Despite the rumor, she doesn’t believe Mason ever worked for Binion.
However, they did know each other. “The Horseshoe had cheap drinks, cheap food and everyone flocked there,” Michael said.
Books, articles, and historians offer conflicting accounts of Binion. Some call him a cold-blooded criminal. Others call him the patron saint of rodeo, recounting his habit of paying for cowboys’ tickets to the National Finals Rodeo.
Some suspected that Binion had an ulterior motive. The rodeo riders are strong, and if the cowboys owed Binion a favor, he may have called it in muscle form.
Binion, who died in 1989, “loved cowboys and often hired them,” said Doug Swanson, a journalist and author of the book. Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker.
“And he had a whole house of two-bit thugs,” Swanson said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Benny had a friend who was a professional rodeo competitor and at the same time a killer and a bully.”
It was unclear to the people of Idaho what brought Mason to their city. Some speculated that he had paid his entrance fee through crime and was on the run.
After the murder, law enforcement officers patrolled the highways looking for Mason. But he left.
Brett Woolley believes his father’s shooter was rescued by Binion’s gang. Binion’s daughter, Michael, believes that people on the rodeo circuit likely helped Mason escape.
Almost four decades later, a woman in Texas came across a Facebook post on a page dedicated to unsolved crimes in Idaho. The suspect looked very much like his mother’s husband in fact, but under a different name. He approached Brett Woolley and the authorities.
Mason, who lives under the name Walter Allison, was arrested on October 10, 2019 at his home in East County, Texas.
When police arrived, “Mason admitted he shot Mr. Woolley,” Custer County Prosecutor Justin Oleson said. “I think it’s interesting that Mason told the officers that it was in self-defense that Woolley was trying to get rid of these guys from Montana.”
Rebecca Bone / AP
Brett Woolley has once again had to come to terms with the fact that he will not get answers about his father’s death.
An uncertain future
A trial would bring answers, but it seems unlikely.
Mason returned to Idaho, pleaded not guilty, and the case stalled. Now 87, Mason has “all kinds of medical problems that the elderly have,” Oleson said.
He has since been found unfit for trial and transferred to a long-term care facility, Mason’s public defender David Cannon said.
Brett Woolley has come back to accept the fact that Mason will likely never face a jury.
He is making plans to preserve his father’s legacy, lest he be overcome by the shadow of his death. Sawtooth Valley is now a tourist hotspot, and Woolley fears that his father’s way of life will be lost to history. He dreams of opening a kind of “friend’s farm”, where the children of the city can learn to milk a cow or drive a tractor.
If people don’t remember anything about their father, but the day he died, Brett calculates, at least his lessons will be broadcast.
