The Lava Lake Murders: One of Oregon’s Oldest Unsolved Cases
A century later, answers are still elusive in this bizarre cold case
The Lava Lake Murders
In December 1923, three men—Edward Nickols, Roy Wilson, and Dewey Morris—took up residence in a small cabin in Oregon’s Deschutes National Forest, near Lava Lake. Their plan was to spend the winter fur trapping and looking after the property for owner Ed Logan.
The fur trappers were last seen alive in mid-January 1924, when a friend stopped in for a visit. Things appeared to be going well and the men were reportedly in high spirits.
Yet they would never be heard from again.
Friends Investigate
When concerned friends and family members arrived at the cabin in April, they found it unoccupied. There were no tracks around the structure to indicate any recent activity; there was only an eerie quiet.
Inside the cabin, the search party discovered little to explain the absence of the men, except the disturbing presence of a bloodstained hammer. Strangely, the table was set and there was burnt food in the pots. It was as if Nickols, Wilson, and Morris had been about to sit down for breakfast when they were abruptly distracted by something.
Upon further investigation, it became increasingly clear that something terrible had befallen the fur trappers, as the searchers stumbled upon blood, hair and a human tooth outside. All of this led to a shocking discovery: the bodies of Wilson, Nickols, and Morris floating in Lava Lake—the victims of homicide.
Who murdered Edward Nickols, Roy Wilson, and Dewey Morris?
The Fur Trappers
Roy Wilson, 35, and Dewey Morris, 25, were loggers for the Brooks-Scanlon Company. Wilson was a former Marine and Morris, an Iowa native, had moved to Oregon with his family as a child.
Edward Nickols, 50, was a fur trapper and the annual winter caretaker for a cabin owned by logging contractor Ed Logan. Nickols asked Wilson and Morris to spend the winter trapping with him and both men agreed to join him for the 1923–24 season.
Nickols’ duties included caring for five valuable foxes that Logan kept in a pen on the property.
A week before Christmas, Edward Nickols briefly returned to Bend, home to all three of the fur trappers. He was said to be “jovial” and sold a large number of expensive furs. He also spoke to locals, stating that everything was going well for them out in Deschutes National Forest. He also indicated that he intended to come back in February.
Allen Wilcoxen, a resort owner traveling to his business by snowshoe, stopped in to visit Wilson, Morris, and Nickols on January 15th. During the evening he spent there, Wilcoxen found the men to be in high spirits and echoed Nickols’ recent sentiment that things were going well. He departed for Elk Lake the following morning.
This is the last known sighting of the fur trappers alive.
Discovery of Bodies and Puzzling Crime Scene
With no word from his brother in months, Innis Morris had become worried about Dewey and wanted to check on him. Similarly, Pearl Lynnes, superintendent of Tumalo Fish Hatchery, saw that the mink traps in the area hadn’t been maintained by the fur trappers recently and was concerned.
In April, Innis and Pearl formed a search party, which included police officers, and made their way to the cabin in Deschutes National Forest. There was still snow on the ground, but the ice had finally begun to thaw.
When they arrived, they immediately noticed that there was no smoke emanating from the cabin’s chimney and no human tracks in the vicinity, indicating a lack of recent activity. This was odd enough, but the strangeness didn’t end there.
Abandoned Meal
Inside, the search party found pots filled with burned food and the table set for a meal that would never happen. Who had interrupted the men? They also found an emaciated cat trapped in the home. Sources vary as to whether the animal was still alive or not.
There were previously seven guns in the cabin—two rifles, two shotguns, a Luger automatic pistol, a .22 H&R revolver, and a .22 Colt revolver. The Colt and Luger were both missing. The sled used by the fur trappers to transport equipment and goods was gone as well.
A bloody hammer was discovered in either the cabin or a nearby storage shed, depending on the source. However, there were no signs of forced entry or a struggle within the cabin.
Outside, as the men looked around, they noticed that the fox pen was empty and soon found the carcasses of four out of five of them under a tree. Two appeared to have been expertly skinned, while the others were more sloppily done. The trapping lines, which clearly hadn’t been attended to in some time, contained the frozen remains of 12 martens, 4 foxes, and one skunk.
They also came across what appeared to be pools of blood along the lakeside trail, as well as clumps of hair and a human tooth.
When they reached Lava Lake, they located the sled, which seemed to have bloodstains on it. They also saw a hole that had been cut into the ice covering the lake. The ice had thawed enough to allow the search party to explore the lake by boat.
Bodies Found
It wasn’t long before they came upon a gruesome sight: the lifeless bodies of Edward Nickols, Roy Wilson, and Dewey Morris, floating on the surface of Lava Lake.
Sheriff Claude McCauley spoke of the unsettling task of pulling the bodies from the lake:
“Even though the weather was perfect, the clear air was impregnated with the odor of death and decomposition and it was with an undefinable spirit of awe and consternation that the little party of hardy outdoorsmen laid aside their packs, kicked off their snowshoes and prepared to tackle a grim job that was little to their liking.”
Investigation
The autopsies revealed that each of the victims had been shot. Wilson had gunshot wounds in the right shoulder and back of the head. Nickols suffered a shotgun blast to the jaw, as well as a revolver shot to his head.
Morris, who had been shot in the left arm, also sustained a skull fracture due to blunt force trauma—presumably from the bloodstained hammer that had been recovered.
Nickols had two pairs of glasses—one he wore inside and the other outside. He was wearing his indoor pair. The watch in his pocket had stopped at 9:10 (it’s unclear if that was a.m. or p.m.).
Investigators Theorize What May Have Happened
Based on the fact that the calendar in the cabin was still set to January, as well as the fact that the men were last spotted alive in mid-January, investigators surmised that the fur trappers were likely killed at some point during that month.
It appeared that the men were somehow lured away from the cabin before being murdered.
Additionally, the use of two different guns—coupled with the distinctly different skill levels being displayed by the carcasses of the skinned foxes—suggested that this brutal crime was carried out by at least two individuals. This was also the opinion of law enforcement.
Sheriff Clarence Adams believed that “two men entered the trappers’ cabin, visited for a while, then by some subterfuge induced their hosts to step outside, when they stepped to the gun rack, took down a shotgun and a revolver, and opened fire.”
Empty pistol and shotgun shells corresponding to the missing weapons were recovered outside.
It’s also worth noting that two men reportedly passed through the area during the early part of winter and broke into the home of a man named Casey Jones, who lived approximately 20 miles away from the crime scene.
No description of the perpetrators exists, as they went unseen. Their presence was only made known to Jones by the missing items in his cabin and two sets of unfamiliar tracks outside.
It was reported that another man, carrying a gun and a pack, visited a logging camp in early January, asking for directions to Lava Lake. He was said to be a tall, dark-haired foreigner, who was roughly 180 lbs.
Suspect: Charles Kimzey
Initially, law enforcement focused their attention on a woodsman and moonshiner named Indian Erickson, who was camping at nearby Cultus Lake. However, he was quickly ruled out once his alibi was verified.
Ed Logan could think of only one man who might have done this—a fur trapper named Charles Kimzey, who had been working with Nickols the previous winter. When an argument erupted between the two men over a wallet that had purportedly been stolen by Kimzey, he allegedly threatened to return and kill Nickols.
This was said to be one of the reasons why Nickols hadn’t wanted to spend the winter alone in the cabin and had invited Morris and Wilson to join him.
Kimzey had a number of aliases—including Tom Rose, Lee Collins, Harry Walker and John Doe Berry—and was known to have a violent history, lending credence to the idea that he could be responsible for the Lava Lake murders.
Violent Criminal History
Years earlier, Kimzey had robbed and attempted to murder W.O. Harrison, a stagecoach driver that Kimzey had tied up and thrown down a well.
Unbeknownst to Kimzey, Harrison managed to free himself and climb out of the well. Charles Kimzey was arrested for this offense in 1923, but escaped from an Idaho prison before the case went to trial.
A Portland traffic officer came forward to report that he was approached by a man on January 22nd, 1924, asking for directions to the nearest fur dealer. The officer directed the stranger—who identified himself as Ed Nickols and was carrying the dead man’s trapper’s license—to the Schumacher Fur Company on Third Street, where he sold his furs for $110.
It’s unclear how they reached this conclusion, but both the traffic officer and the owner of Schumacher’s believed that the unfamiliar man was none other than Charles Kimzey himself.
The authorities began to look for him in earnest, but had no luck in locating their prime suspect.
Kimzey Is Apprehended
With no other leads to pursue and a homicide suspect who had yet to be captured, the case soon went cold. That is, until a few years later when Sheriff Claude McCauley decided to reopen it.
Nearly a decade after the heinous crime had been committed, Charles Kimzey was finally apprehended in 1933. The 48-year-old had been living in Montana.
Neither the business owner nor the traffic officer could positively identify Kimzey as the man they’d seen back in 1924. Many years had gone by and Kimzey had aged considerably.
Claiming Innocence
For his part, Kimzey flatly denied any involvement in the slaying of the fur trappers, even providing an alibi:
“They think I killed those trappers, but I didn’t. I was in Colorado, working on the Moffatt tunnel at the time.”
Notably, law enforcement was able to confirm that Kimzey had, in fact, spent the winter of 1923–24 working in Colorado.
“The evidence against him was too thin. Kimzey’s story that he was employed on the Moffat tunnel when the murders occurred is airtight,” said state police officer Arthur Tuck.
Charles Kimzey was ultimately tried and convicted for the attempted murder of W.O. Harrison and sentenced to life in prison. However, he was paroled and released from Oregon State Penitentiary in 1957. The elderly man soon moved to Idaho, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died in 1976 at the age of 90.
But was Kimzey truly innocent of the triple murder? If so, who were the real culprits?
The cabin is no longer standing, and the case of the Lava Lake murders remains one of Oregon’s oldest unsolved mysteries.
In recent years, Melany Tupper, author of the 2013 book The Trapper Murders, has posited the theory that Kimzey carried out the killings with the help of an accomplice named Ray Van Buren Jackson—a possible serial killer, known to have associated with Kimzey and considered a suspect in at least a dozen unsolved homicide cases. Jackson committed suicide in 1938.
Yet a century later, definitive answers remain elusive and the murders of Edward Nickols, Roy Wilson, and Dewey Morris are still officially unsolved.
Sources
The Bulletin, April 24th, 1924
The Bulletin, April 25th, 1924
The Bulletin, February 17th, 1933
The Bulletin, March 13th, 1933
The Bulletin, August 19th, 1953
The Bulletin, August 2nd, 1961
(This article was originally published on HubPages on 01/28/24)