Murder on Montana's Hi-Line

Capturing Montana’s Most Elusive Fugitive

During an intense spring blizzard in 1951, affable Clarence Pellett picked up a teenaged hitchhiker along Montana’s Hi-Line. Soon, blood from seven bullet holes in Pellett’s back stained the snow-covered prairie. Following a brief manhunt and confession, a heated debate ensued over capital punishment as Communist attorneys swooped in “to save this poor friendless boy.” Frank Dryman, twice sentenced to hang, escaped the noose when a sympathetic Montana Supreme Court stayed each execution. The “permanently insane and mentally deficient” killer was paroled into the custody of his brother in California after serving thirteen years of a life sentence. Eighteen months later, he vanished. Using a series of aliases, Dryman hid in plain sight for forty years despite state and federal warrants. Clem Pellett recounts the enthralling twists and turns of his hunt for his grandfather’s absconded murderer―the longest in state history.

Montana native Dr. Clem C. Pellett received his undergraduate degree from Montana State University in Bozeman and a doctor of dental surgery degree from Creighton University in Omaha and completed his residency at the Mayo Clinic’s Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. After nearly three decades, he changed careers. Inspired by his successful quest tracking down the murderer of his grandfather, he earned a certificate of private investigation from Boston University. Currently, Dr. Pellett is part of the production team for the movie Pellett, based on this true story.