Mystery at Lost Dog Road

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

From every direction, you can see them: jagged cliffs, rising up out of the desert landscape. The wind has carved their names: Kissing Rock, Castle Rock, Giant's Thumb. Tall, rugged, and, sometimes, in the light of a late afternoon sun, ominous.

They, the majestic backdrop to the scrabbling little mining town laid out at their base: Green River, Wyoming.

Roger Brauburger: Green River is small. 

Keith Morrison: Kinda a one horse town?

Roger Brauburger: Yeah, people have referred to it like that. It's pretty simple life.

Simple?  Well, in some ways, perhaps. But the story Roger Brauburger is about to tell is not the least bit simple; tears the man apart, sitting here, wondering how even he can absorb what happened on and under the cliffs of Green River, Wyoming.

Before all that, it was just fine to grow up here. Roger Brauburger and his pal Bob Duke. Funny how kids can be so different and yet get so close. They hung out at a mutual friend's house - a cop's kid named Mecham - whose dad watched Roger fall into bad behavior, while Bob stayed squeaky clean.

Mont Mecham: Pretty straight kid. I mean, I knew where he wanted to go.  He was one of those kids who have a direction.

Bob's parents were school teachers, and he was ambitious, focused, talked endlessly about going off to college after high school graduation. But Roger?  Ah, Roger.

Roger Brauburger: I quit school my-- my junior year. Everyone said, "Oh, you're not gonna go back.  You're not gonna go back."  And I don't like people telling me I'm not gonna do something.  So I went back.

But he seemed to take trouble with him.  Drinking, public brawls, marijuana, LSD, eventually cocaine.

Roger Brauburger: it makes you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof. Usually someone would show me I wasn't ten foot tall and bulletproof.

Keith Morrison: Got a few bruises along the way.

Roger Brauburger: Yeah, quite a few.

The good kid and troubled one spent weekends together off-roading in Bob’s Jeep, chasing girls, watching murder for hire movies.

Roger Brauburger: We would watch movies about hit men. There was easy money involved in-- in just a few seconds of work.

Keith Morrison: Hit men? But that’s killing someone. Was it a joke?

Roger Brauburger: It’s shooting the breeze. It's you know-- wow, you know, $50,000 for pulling a trigger. 

They imagined becoming hit men themselves. Just a joke, of course. And then, quite suddenly, life got serious for Bob. His girlfriend got pregnant.

Roger Brauburger: He didn't know what to do.  She wanted to keep it.

Her name was Liana Davidson, a high school junior, only 17.

Roger Brauburger: Long brown hair, really pretty.  She wasn't really showy.  You know, she didn't--

Keith Morrison: She was shy.

Roger Brauburger: She was shy. 

Yes, but she was intelligent, a straight A student. She was going somewhere, just like Bob. But now there were issues.

Roger Brauburger: Her parents were Mormon LDS.  And his parents were school teachers.  And there was pressure from both sides, you know, to do the right thing.

Liana, according to her sister, was scared- didn’t know how to tell her parents. Bob, however, talked to Roger.

Roger Brauburger: I think part of him wanted to--  do the responsible thing. Responsible thing for him was to marry her and support her. 

And so their high school graduation was an event with a double significance.

Roger Brauburger: We graduated at ten-- May 25th, 1991.  And he was married at two that same day. 

Keith Morrison: Happy day?

Roger Brauburger: We just graduated.  You know, what could-- what could be happier than that?

Liana, now carrying their child, had apparently adjusted to the new circumstances rather well.

Keith Morrison: Was she a radiant bride?

Roger Brauburger: Oh, yeah.  She was-- that was probably the happiest day of her life.

She was a doting wife from the beginning, says Roger, filled up the house with craft-y things: needlepoint, stenciling.

Roger Brauburger: She was all about Bob. He told me one time.  He goes, "Man, I've got it perfect.  I got-- my wife loves me.  I come home, dinner's ready.  House is clean." 

And it wasn't long before Liana and Bob were joined by baby Erik.

Roger Brauburger: Eric was cute as a bug.  Spittin' image of Bob. A gentle kid.

Keith Morrison: Who seemed to love his daddy.

Roger Brauburger: Yup.

Neighbor Karen Yoak remembers how young Erik looked up to his dad.

Karen Yoak: Bob had a trick bike and there were a lot of kids in the complex and he would go out in the parking lot and do tricks for the kids and his son Erik would love to watch his dad.

Bob had given up on college; he had a family to support. But he was smart, people liked him. And he soon built a solid business as one of Green River's premiere carpet installers.

Roger Brauburger: He always had money.  He had a nice car.  Nice Jeep, nice home.  You know?  He-- he took pretty good care of his family, financially.

Roger, meanwhile, spiraled into drug addiction, and all of its attendant failures, disappointments, and remorse.

Roger Brauburger: I did envy the fact that he had-- that he was successful. Looked like he had no worries, you know?

But the friendship survived, Bob and Roger - and now little Erik. By the time Erik turned five, liana was pushing for another baby; but Bob?

Roger Brauburger: I think he had given up on her long before that and felt trapped.

Still, no one could have prepared Bob - or Roger - for what happened then: August, 1996. It was a blustery summer afternoon.   Bob, Liana and Erik piled into Bob's Jeep and set out for a family outing. It was later when Bob recounted what happened. They'd stopped on a ridge overlooking the Flaming Gorge Reservoir; they all got out of the Jeep.  Five-year-old Erik threw rocks, chased lizards, Liana by his side. Bob went to the car to get a soda. His back was turned. And then he heard his wife scream his name.  He turned around. They were gone.

Roger's mother called him with the news.

Roger Brauburger: She told me something terrible has happened. And I said what, what’s happened? She goes, Bob’s wife and kid have fallen off a cliff and died.

By then, a sheriff's department lieutenant named Kevin Alvesteffer had arrived at the top of the cliff.  Had talked to Bob. And felt quite deeply ...puzzled.

Kevin Alvesteffer: I couldn't tell you that it was an accident.  And I certainly couldn't tell you it was a homicide.  It's just that it would be a good way to commit a homicide and have a reasonable chance of getting away with it.

Idle speculation, really. But, as we say, it's Roger Brauburger's story.  And he felt, at that moment, somehow guilty... And, terrified.

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