A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Mullendore murder case and how it was unsolved. I found another book about the prime suspect in the murder. His name was Damon “Chub” Anderson. The murder occurred in 1970.
I also read a transcript of an interview with the sheriff of Osage county. He said in his mind it was fairly simple, two guys were in the house at the time of the murder, EC Mullendore and Chub. EC was beaten and shot, so naturally Chub was the prime suspect.
The sheriff said Chub was known to have a bad temper, he figured the two men got into it and Chub beat him then shot him to keep him from talking.
After the Mullendore murder Chub started raising marijuana just across the state line in Kansas. Kansas authorities were about to lock him up for several years, so he disappeared.
The story gets really interesting when Chub disappears. He was in hiding for sixteen years. The book I read, Footprints in the Dew, was written by a local reporter that spent countless hours with Chub. That reporter tracked down every tiny detail Chub told him about the case.
When Chub first disappeared he went to Mexico, but he didn’t speak Spanish, so he got to thinking about a tiny town in Montana where he went elk hunting with a man named Wolf Shipley. When I lived in the Nowata area I became good friends with Wolf. We hunted and fished together on several occasions. Wolf only mentioned he knew Chub after Chub was returned to Kansas for growing marijuana. It was sixteen years later. Chub was on dialysis and not in good health.
The state of Kansas put Chub in prison for a short while. The reporter interviewed Chub in prison several times. He even travelled to the small town in Montana to get some of Chub’s possessions and interview people there.
After Chub was released from prison the interviews became more frequent and the two men became friends of sort. One day they went for a drive and Chub drove him to the spot where he tossed the murder weapon in a creek. A lake was constructed on that sight a couple of years after the murder, so the murder weapon was likely buried several feet deep in mud.
As best I could tell reading the book, Chub never outright admitted he killed EC Mullendore, but he gave several hints and made several statements that alluded that he did.
The book mentions that Wolf knew the entire time that he knew Chub was in Montana and never told a soul. Chub had a dog sent to him in Montana. He used that dog to hunt mountain lions and bears. I would bet a week’s pay that Wolf sent the dog to him. Wolf knew good hunting dogs.
This story intrigues me on so many levels. I knew some of the people mentioned in the book. I’ve also been all around the Mullendore ranch, but never to the headquarters. Osage county Oklahoma has so much history. The murders of the Osage Indians, the Mullendore murder and the stories of boom and bust in the oil fields of Osage county. It’s one of the last vestiges of the American west. Cowboys, Indians, riches and murder. They could make a dozen movies about Osage county and still not scratch the surface of its history.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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