Trail of Shadows: The Unsolved Murders of Prohibition Agents Dale Kearney and Ray Sutton - Softcover

Hornung, Chuck; Charlton, B. Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476677565 ISBN 13: 9781476677569

Publisher: McFarland, 2019

Synopsis

In the summer of 1930, two federal prohibition agents were murdered. The first died in a hail of buckshot on a dark street in Aguilar, Colorado. Six weeks later, the second agent and his vehicle disappeared on a sunny afternoon along a New Mexico state highway south of Raton. These events occurred during the era when the government legislated a ban on alcohol manufacture, distribution, and sales within the United States. During their 50-year search, the authors sought answers to why no one was ever prosecuted for these crimes. This is the first book to correlate the two murders, identify how and why they occurred, name the parties involved and the roles they played. The authors interviewed many individuals associated with the events and discovered a trove of National Archives files containing incident reports, suspect interview notes, the dead agents' daily activity logs and their personnel files. Building upon this base, they located the remaining documents generated by state and local law enforcement officers and additionally data mined private and public contemporary newspaper collections. The shadows along the trail lift as the light of truth is shown upon this mystery. Two federal agents can now rest in peace.

About this title

About the Author

Chuck Hornung was a member of the founding board of directors and vice president of the Wild West History Association. He is a member of the Historical Society of New Mexico, the English Westerners Society, the Western Writers of America, past president of the Western Outlaw-Lawman History Association and president of the New Mexico Mounted Police Historical Society. B. Lee Charlton is retired after five decades of law enforcement with local, state, and federal agencies. He was a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a senior intelligence specialist with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: McFarland
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1476677565
• ISBN 13: 9781476677569
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 245