The Ugly

Yuba City, California

Murder in a Campground

Several years back, there was a manic running loose in Yuba City, California.  He killed a woman with a machete as she played cards in a tent.  Then he chased after other campers and injured a few more people.  One of the campers took a shot at him, but missed.  The story was covered extensively in the media. During this time, we had a family camping trip scheduled for Yosemite Valley.  Yosemite reservations are difficult come by, so we held to our plans.  Because we left home late Friday, I had decided to layover, for the night, in a primitive campground South West of Yosemite.  You can imagine that both my wife and I were really jumpy.  I parked our station wagon along side a small river and camped there for the night.  I made sure we camped near other people.  We planned not to pitch our large tent it was way too much trouble.  My wife and our two youngest kids slept in the station wagon.  My oldest son and I were to sleep on the ground.  I set up an intrusion alarm system with a couple of ropes surrounding our sleeping bags with pots and pans tied to the rope.  If the killer stumbled into our alarm we were ready for him.  I was armed with a small hatchet.  And that night I didn’t get much sleep.  Years later I laugh about this trip and how naïve I was to think a small hatch would protect us.  Weeks later they caught the killer trying to escape across the border from Texas into Mexico.