The Strange Story of Jack Harelson

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Outside Magazine October 2004

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The Killing Bones (cont.)

The Ex-Wife's Tale
IN JANUARY 1995, Oregon State Police trooper Walt Markee was just settling in to his new job. After working drug cases for a number of years, the 33-year-old officer had recently transferred to the OSP's wildlife crimes unit, the division responsible for investigating major poaching and smuggling operations. His first case arrived with a call from the county district attorney, who had been tipped off about a fellow in Grants Pass who reportedly had Indian remains buried behind his house. The DA gave Markee the number of Bob Olds, owner of a local auto-wrecking yard and brother of former judge Lloyd Olds.

Bob Olds was eager to talk, weaving a tale of friendship gone sour. A few years earlier, he told Markee, he and a buddy had gone in on a fishing boat, 50-50. Only it seemed like the friend used the boat 80-20. But, hey, no worries. Until the previous year, 1994, when the friend got into a fight with Lloyd Olds.

Markee wrote down the friend's name: Jack Harelson.

As much as Pam wanted revenge against Jack, she'd had enough trouble, and she also had a house full of incriminating arrowheads. "If I can get immunity," she told the police, "then I'll talk."

In 1989, Harelson had invested in an opal mine co-owned by Lloyd Olds. Bob had advised his brother not to take Harelson's money. He liked Jack, but he'd seen flashes of his dark side. The man had a vindictive streak, Bob thought; he couldn't let go of a grudge. "Jack's going to cause problems," Bob said to his brother.

And he did. A few years after buying in, Harelson charged Lloyd Olds with mismanagement and tried to take control of the mine. The Bonanza Opal Mine was never meant to be a commercial moneymaker; it was run as a private campground for fun-loving rock hounds and their families. But Harelson had found some valuable opals, and he wanted to sell thousands more shares. When Olds didn't bite, Harelson tried to foment a shareholder rebellion.

Lawsuits ensued (all were eventually thrown out of court), as did the end of Bob's friendship with Jack. By 1995, Bob decided that Jack had caused him and his brother so much grief that it was time to give Jack a little right back. Bob told Walt Markee everything he knew about Jack's artifact collection, including the Indian kids buried in his yard.

To Markee, it sounded like an ARPA violation. But ARPA cases were rare and tough to make. Unless you caught the bad guys red-handed, it was almost impossible to prove where the artifacts came from. Mounting a serious investigation usually required dealing with a web of jurisdictions—those of federal agencies like the BLM, the Forest Service, and the Park Service; tribal officials; state police; and county sheriffs—each with their own protocols and turf.

Then Bob Olds said the phrase every cop loves to hear: "You should talk to Jack's ex-wife," he told Markee.

Markee visited Pam on the evening of January 26, 1995. Pam was wary. Since her split with Jack in 1986, she'd remarried, changed her name to Pam Ralph, and built a nice life for herself in Grants Pass. As much as Pam wanted revenge against Jack, she'd had enough trouble, and she also had a house full of incriminating arrowheads.

"If I can get immunity," she told Markee, "then I'll talk."

They struck a deal: Their first conversation would be off the record. Over the next week, Markee negotiated immunity agreements for Pam with state, federal, and tribal officials—all the agencies connected to the case. With her immunity in place, Pam sang.

In interviews with Walt Markee, and later with Outside, Pam recounted an unsettling story: She said that in 1981, Pam's daughter, Laurie, told her grandmother—Pam's mother—that Jack had molested her. Grandma told Pam, who confronted Jack at gunpoint. According to Pam, Jack admitted it and swore to never lay a hand on the girl again. Harelson later denied the allegation in a conversation with Markee.

Was Pam telling the truth about Jack? She never pressed charges, and she stuck with the marriage, even after a tragic event deepened the rift between them. In January 1982, Jack, Laurie, and some family friends went on a hunting trip along the Sprague River near Klamath Falls. Pam stayed behind. During the trip, Laurie ventured onto the frozen river to flush some geese. Nobody actually witnessed what happened next, but tracks found by Jack and the others indicated that Laurie slid off the riverbank, crashed through thin ice, and drowned in the cold, rushing water.

To this day, Pam believes it was an accidental tragedy. Her friends on the trip back up Jack's account, she said, and they have no reason to cover for him. "There was no foul play there," said Jim Stone, a family friend who was on the trip. "Jack was with us the whole time." The Klamath County Sheriff's office investigated and closed the file as an accident.

Still, Laurie's death was devastating, and it fueled Pam's growing resentment toward Jack. During one trip to the Black Rock Desert, she trained her hunting rifle on him when he wasn't looking. "I put the crosshairs on him," she later recalled, "but could never pull the trigger." It was four more years before Pam filed for divorce, in 1986. She gathered her artifacts, Jack gathered his, and they went their separate ways. Jack kept his house, with the bones in the backyard. Neither said a word about them.

Markee listened to Pam's tale, wondering how much of it would bear out in court. Finally, he asked if she had any pictures of their cave digs.

"Jack's got the photos," Pam said. "But I kept the negatives."

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