Curtis Huntzinger 14, [REMAINS FOUND/KILLER SENTENCED] Arcada CA

[sarahhod]

Missing teen's remains found after 18 years

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_11183886

Sean Garmire/The Times-Standard
Posted: 12/10/2008 01:30:19 AM PST

The remains of Curtis Huntzinger, a 14-year-old teen missing since 1990, were unearthed Monday night from a shallow grave on the outskirts of Blue Lake, just off the old State Route 299.

The discovery came less than a week after Humboldt County District Attorney investigators arrested 53-year-old Blue Lake resident Stephen Daniel Hash on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter in connection with Huntzinger's death. At his Dec. 5 arraignment, Hash admitted guilt before a judge and the Huntzinger family.

On Monday afternoon, around 2 p.m., the boy's skeleton was located, entangled in a ball of roots under less than two feet of soil. The grave, which was dug about 35 yards from the road, was surrounded by a dense stand of young redwoods, and blanketed by a thick mat of leaf litter and poison oak.

But in 1990, when Huntzinger is presumed to have been buried, that grave site looked very different.

Chief DA Investigator Mike Hislop said when Hash allegedly dumped the body, the area looked like a “moonscape,” as a result of heavy logging and burning activity.

Despite those major changes to the landscape, Hash was reportedly able to recall the location of the grave well enough to lead investigators within 25 feet of where the body was found, said DA investigator Wayne Cox.

”It must be a vivid memory that's permanently imbedded in his (Hash's) hard drive,” he said.

The same tract of land was searched in 1999 by teams
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using cadaver dogs, but authorities came up empty. This time, Cox said investigators deployed new methods.

According to Hislop, the body was found by a volunteer who canvassed the area using a high-end metal detector loaned by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The grave was located when the metal detector picked up a faint signal from a small piece of metal on Huntzinger's remains -- possibly a zipper or a coin.

Members of the Huntzinger family were immediately notified, and brought to the site before the body was exhumed, said District Attorney Paul Gallegos.

As the redwoods grew back after the logging, they lifted nutrients from Huntzinger's grave, entwining the remains in roots. According to Deputy Coroner Roy Horton, the search team excavated the approximately 400-pound root ball, which contains Huntzinger's remains.

Now the Coroner's Office is tasked with the painstaking removal of those remains from the root encasement.

Horton said that while they have not been able to positively identify the remains through DNA or dental records, there are other signs it is Huntzinger. The clothing found around the skeleton -- a black jacket and tennis shoes -- are consistent with the outfit Huntzinger was last seen wearing. And there appear to be signs of blunt force trauma to the skull, Horton said.

Although Gallegos and the DA investigators have declined to release the cause of Huntzinger's death, a criminal complaint in Hash's court file charges him with using a barbell to kill the 14-year-old.

The body was found unbound, and Horton said he believes Huntzinger was dead before he was buried.

Horton said Nancy Huntzinger, Curtis' mother, has called the Coroner's Office frequently over the past 18 years, to inquire about her son whenever there was a new John Doe found in Humboldt County.

”We are just so happy the body was recovered, for her sake,” Horton said. “It finally gives some closure to the family.”

During Hash's Dec. 5 arraignment he asked to plead guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter with a deadly weapon -- a crime that carries a maximum 12-year sentence. Judge Bruce Watson declined the plea, and advised him to speak with council before deciding to make such an admission in court.

Hash is expected to return to court today to discuss a possible disposition before a judge. That hearing will be closed to the public.

Sean Garmire can be reached at 441-0514 or sgarmire@times-standard.com.

A timeline of the Curtis Huntzinger case

May 19, 1990 -- Huntzinger, an Arcata High School freshman, is last seen walking home from his sister's home and is reported missing later in the month. It is initially believed that Huntzinger, who had some trouble in school and a recent brush with the law, ran away from home. Then Blue Lake Police Chief Don Trumble said at the time he was confident that Huntzinger was not a victim of foul play.

April 1999 -- Thomas Michael Fox, who was serving life in prison for the killing of 11-year old Danny Williams of Eureka, reportedly confesses to having killed Huntzinger. As a part of the confession, Fox reportedly admitted to shooting Huntzinger and fingered the accomplices who he said helped him bury the boy.

April 24, 1999 -- During a confrontation with Huntzinger's mom, Nancy, family acquaintance Stephen Daniel Hash reportedly admits to killing Curtis Huntzinger, even taking Nancy Huntzinger to her son's burial site. Hash, however, refuses to talk to law enforcement about the case.

Over the ensuing weeks, police investigators search Hash's property, even removing the floor boards of his house and sending its carpets to the Department of Justice Crime Lab for testing. The area where Hash claimed to have buried Huntzinger is scoured by dozens of members of the California Conservation Corps, police and the Huntzinger family. Several bones, including a vertebrae, are found, and believed to be those of Curtis Huntzinger. “This could be over in a few weeks,” then Blue Lake Police Chief Floyd Stokes said. The bones are later determined to be animal remains, and the case goes dormant.

May 2008 -- The Blue Lake Police Department is disbanded after the arrest of Police Chief, David Gundersen, and the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office quickly picks up the Huntzinger case.

Dec. 3, 2008 -- Hash is arrested on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter by District Attorney's Office investigators after reportedly giving a “complete confession” and showing them where Huntzinger was buried.

Dec. 9, 2008 -- Investigators find a body believed to be Huntzinger's located off old State Route 299 between Blue Lake and Korbel in the location Hash had led them to. The body is sent to the Humboldt County Coroner for an autopsy.

[Nut44x4]

Eureka Times Standard (California)

December 27, 2008 Saturday

A momentous find for a metal detector

For 18 years, the body of Curtis Huntzinger lay buried beneath a stand of young sequoias on the outskirts of Blue Lake. In that time, hundreds of people searched for the missing boy across the county.

But early this month, the body was finally discovered in a shallow grave about 35 yards from a road -- an area law enforcement had searched before -- by Danny Walker, a soft-spoken metal detecting hobbyist from McKinleyville.

"Why me? I don't know. It was just time, I guess," Walker said.

The Huntzinger murder has been one of the most prominent missing persons cases in Humboldt County over the last two decades, and as a life-long Humboldtian, Walker has been aware of the case since the week the 14-year old boy disappeared in May 1990.

Officials with the Blue Lake Police Department began the initial search, but were unsuccessful. As the years went by, new leads and information would bring investigators back to the site.

In 1999, during a confrontation between Huntzinger's mother and Stephen Hash -- the man who has since pleaded guilty to Huntzinger's murder -- Hash reportedly confessed to the murder and took Huntzinger's mother to the burial site.

Over the ensuing weeks, police investigators searched the site with metal detectors and corpse-sniffing dogs. District Attorney's Office Chief Investigator Mike Hislop said even the Huntzinger family, frustrated by the failure to find their loved one, traveled to the site and began digging holes. But despite their efforts, the searchers came up empty handed.

After the Blue Lake Police Department was disbanded in 2008, district attorney investigators began a concerted effort to elicit a confession from Hash. On Dec. 3, those investigators were successful, as Hash reportedly gave a complete confession and brought investigators to the site of Huntzinger's burial.

Hislop began to assemble a search team, and called an acquaintance whom he knew had skills as a metal detector: Walker.

Walker owns a number of metal detectors, which he uses to comb the hills for metallic tidbits like gold nuggets.

"It's not very much (gold)," he said laughing. "It's more of an exercise than an income."

It was not the first time Walker's talents had been sought by area search agencies, but in the past Walker opted out, saying "it wasn't my thing; I didn't want to find bodies."

"This time was different though," Walker said.

Walker agreed to help out in the search, and he headed out early on Dec. 3 to the suspected burial site located in an old logging area between Blue Lake and Korbel, off the old State Route 299.

He was one of dozens that day, using a variety of methods to search the area for traces of Huntzinger's grave.

Walker began the task of waving his detector across the search area -- a large swath of new-growth timber, padded with poison ivy and brambles. Whenever the detector buzzed, Walker dug a hole. By the end of the day, he had dug more than 30 holes and acquired a sizable pile of spent bullet casings and saw blade files.

Then, as he walked across a soft spot, near the road, he heard a faint buzz.

"I dug into the ground, and I knew right then and there that this was it," he said.

The shovel struck something tangled in a ball of roots. Walker scraped the top layer of dirt away, and found what appeared to be a human femur.

"I had to talk myself into it," he said. "I just couldn't believe it."

As he continued to remove the top layer of soil, Walker found part of an old, weathered black jacket. He could no longer suppress his disbelief. The metal detector had pinpointed Huntzinger's calculator watch, still circling the boy's wrist.

The skeletal remains, which had become entangled in the roots of redwoods starved for nutrients in the heavily logged tract, were later removed and transported to the Humboldt County Coroner's Office. There, coroners and volunteers with Humboldt State University's anthropology department completed the painstaking task of disentangling the mass of roots that encased the bones, said Deputy Coroner Charlie Comer.

Using dental records, the coroners were able to positively identify the bones as Huntzinger's, Comer said.

Although he said he is happy the find may give some closure to the Huntzinger family, Walker maintains if he hadn't found the body, someone else would have.

"In a way it was gratifying to know we accomplished what we set out to do, but it wasn't pleasant," he said. "Now, at least, the family has some knowledge of where their son was buried."
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100020825&docId=l:903858244&start=2

[packy]

R.I.P now, Curtis

[Nut44x4]

Curtis is featured in Soul Asylums'- "Runaway Train" (1993) music video
2:18 - 22 into the video


click here to watch. Embedding disabled by request
http://tinyurl.com/8tzq4b

May this handsome young boy RIP ... He is now home at last......

[TigressPen]

Curtis can now have the proper burial he deserves. Rest peacefully, Curtis.

[Nut44x4]

What a handsome young lad :1187603408.CR.Mothe

[Nut44x4]

Okay...let's try it this way>>
Curtis is featured in one version of Soul Asylums'- "Runaway Train" (1993) music video
2:18 - 22 into the video

http://www.dailymotion.com/related/x95j9_soul-asylum-runaway-train_music/video/x1ik1a_soul-asylum-runaway-train_fun

After playing a series of acoustic shows in the early 1990s they were picked up by Columbia Records. In 1992 they released Grave Dancers Union, which became their most popular album. On January 20, 1993, the group performed at the first inauguration of United States President Bill Clinton. The next year, Soul Asylum received the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song for "Runaway Train." The music video for "Runaway Train" featured photographs and names of missing children in a public service video style. At the end of the video, Pirner appears and says "If you've seen one of these kids, or you are one of them, please call this number" before a missing children telephone helpline number appeared. For use outside the USA, the video was edited to include photos and names of missing children from the area the video would be used. The video was instrumental in reuniting several children with their families.

[annalyzer]

Has it been said how this young man ended up with the perp to be killed in the first place? Or even why he was killed?

[Nut44x4]

Hash pleads guilty to manslaughter
Sean Garmire/The Times-Standard
Posted: 12/06/2008 01:27:17 AM PST
Nancy Huntzinger sat with her family in a Humboldt County courtroom on Friday, and watched as Stephen Daniel Hash, wearing shackles and an orange jail jumpsuit, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of her teenage son 18 years ago.

Judge Bruce Watson declined the plea, and advised Hash to speak with an attorney to discuss the ramifications of such an admission. The court then entered a plea of not guilty on Hash's behalf.

That move was anticipated by prosecuting Assistant District Attorney Wes Keat, who said it is typical for a judge to direct a defendant to speak with counsel before issuing a plea in a manslaughter case.

”It's a reasonable step and it's what I expected,” Keat said. “That doesn't mean it's going to be the result.”

Hash will wait in the Humboldt County jail for his next court appearance, scheduled for Dec. 10.

District Attorney Paul Gallegos said after the 53-year-old Hash was arrested Wednesday, he has been completely cooperative with investigators and has “expressed a great deal of remorse” for the murder of 14-year-old Curtis Huntzinger, who disappeared in May 1990.

His “absolute” cooperation is what led the District Attorney's Office to charge Hash with voluntary manslaughter with a deadly weapon, rather than murder, Gallegos said.

According to the California Penal Code, the charge of manslaughter can carry a sentence of 3, 6 or 11 years in prison. The weapons

enhancement allows a maximum sentence of 12 years.
Hash, Gallegos said, submitted to a polygraph test Friday morning, and showed investigators the scene where authorities now believe the body was buried.

The remains of Curtis Huntzinger, however, have not yet been found, Gallegos said Friday afternoon.

Investigators searched an area on the outskirts of Blue Lake, near Korbel, throughout the day Friday. But Gallegos said the task of finding the body after 18 years and 7 months is a difficult one.

”It's been a long time,” he said. “Finding a body in a remote area after a long period of time is difficult to say the least.”

Hash has long been a suspect in the murder of Curtis Huntzinger.

Early in the investigation, Nancy Huntzinger reportedly told authorities Hash had confessed to the killing after she confronted him in his home. In that confrontation, Hash reportedly told Nancy Huntzinger where the boy's body was buried. Investigators searched that area -- the same general location search teams combed Friday -- but were unable to find the remains.

Wayne Cox, an investigator for the DA's Office, said as years went by he saw interest in Curtis Huntzinger's disappearance taper off. About two years ago, he decided to take on the case.

”This case could have been solved a long time ago -- it simply wasn't,” Gallegos said. “There were leads that were not followed up that we merely followed up with.”

Hash's admission has brought some amount of closure to the Huntzinger family, Gallegos said.

The family, including Nancy Huntzinger and Curtis Huntzinger's sister, Sarah, attended the Friday arraignment.

Nancy Huntzinger said it is still too early to comment on her feelings about Hash's confession, but she looks forward to the outcome.

”I'm on pins and needles right now,” she said. “It's gone on too long.”
http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_11155086

Interesting comments at the topix forum>
http://www.topix.com/forum/source/eureka-times-standard/TT6T26UA3IAL9O0DM

[sarahhod]

Metal detector find leads to body of 14-year-old missing since 1990

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11325200

By Sean Garmire

Eureka Times Standard
Posted: 12/28/2008 12:57:26 PM PST

For 18 years, the body of Curtis Huntzinger lay buried beneath a stand of young sequoias on the outskirts of Blue Lake. In that time, hundreds of people searched for the missing boy across the county.

But early this month, the body was finally discovered in a shallow grave about 35 yards from a road— an area law enforcement had searched before — by Danny Walker, a soft-spoken metal detecting hobbyist from McKinleyville.

"Why me? I don't know. It was just time, I guess," Walker said.

The Huntzinger murder has been one of the most prominent missing persons cases in Humboldt County during the past two decades, and as a life-long Humboldtian, Walker has been aware of the case since the week the 14-year old boy disappeared in May 1990.

Officials with the Blue Lake Police Department began the initial search, but were unsuccessful. As the years went by, new leads and information would bring investigators back to the site.

In 1999, during a confrontation between Huntzinger's mother and Stephen Hash — the man who has since pleaded guilty to Huntzinger's murder — Hash reportedly confessed to the murder and took Huntzinger's mother to the burial site.

Over the ensuing weeks, police investigators searched the site with metal detectors and corpse-sniffing dogs. District Attorney's Office Chief Investigator Mike Hislop said even the Huntzinger family, frustrated by the failure to find their loved one, traveled to the site and began digging holes. But despite their efforts, the searchers came up empty handed.

After the Blue Lake Police Department was disbanded in 2008, district attorney investigators began a concerted effort to elicit a confession from Hash. On Dec. 3, those investigators were successful, as Hash reportedly gave a complete confession and brought investigators to the site of Huntzinger's burial.

Hislop began to assemble a search team, and called an acquaintance whom he knew had skills as a metal detector: Walker.

Walker owns a number of metal detectors, which he uses to comb the hills for metallic tidbits like gold nuggets.

"It's not very much (gold)," he said laughing. "It's more of an exercise than an income."

It was not the first time Walker's talents had been sought by area search agencies, but in the past Walker opted out, saying "it wasn't my thing; I didn't want to find bodies."

"This time was different though," Walker said.

Walker agreed to help out in the search, and he headed out early on Dec. 3 to the suspected burial site located in an old logging area between Blue Lake and Korbel, off the old State Route 299.

He was one of dozens that day, using a variety of methods to search the area for traces of Huntzinger's grave.

Walker began the task of waving his detector across the search area — a large swath of new-growth timber, padded with poison ivy and brambles. Whenever the detector buzzed, Walker dug a hole. By the end of the day, he had dug more than 30 holes and acquired a sizable pile of spent bullet casings and saw blade files.

Then, as he walked across a soft spot, near the road, he heard a faint buzz.

"I dug into the ground, and I knew right then and there that this was it," he said.

The shovel struck something tangled in a ball of roots. Walker scraped the top layer of dirt away, and found what appeared to be a human femur.

"I had to talk myself into it," he said. "I just couldn't believe it."

As he continued to remove the top layer of soil, Walker found part of an old, weathered black jacket. He could no longer suppress his disbelief. The metal detector had pinpointed Huntzinger's calculator watch, still circling the boy's wrist.

The skeletal remains, which had become entangled in the roots of redwoods starved for nutrients in the heavily logged tract, were later removed and transported to the Humboldt County Coroner's Office.

There, coroners and volunteers with Humboldt State University's anthropology department completed the painstaking task of disentangling the mass of roots that encased the bones, said Deputy Coroner Charlie Comer.

Using dental records, the coroners were able to positively identify the bones as Huntzinger's, Comer said.

Although he said he is happy the find may give some closure to the Huntzinger family, Walker maintains if he hadn't found the body, someone else would have.

"In a way it was gratifying to know we accomplished what we set out to do, but it wasn't pleasant," he said. "Now, at least, the family has some knowledge of where their son was buried."

[Nut44x4]

http://www.ktvu.com/news/18405682/detail.html
Man Sentenced To 11 Years For Teen's Death 19 Years Ago
Saturday, January 3, 2009

EUREKA, Calif. -- A North Coast man has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for murdering a teenage boy who went missing in 1990.

Stephen Daniel Hash, 53, pleaded guilty Friday to manslaughter in the death of Curtis Huntzinger.

Huntzinger disappeared in 1990. He was 14 and living in Blue Lake.

Authorities unearthed Huntzinger's body last month in a shallow grave near Blue Lake after Hash confessed to police.

In 1999, a San Quentin prison inmate claimed he shot the boy at Hash's home. Police searched, but made no arrests. Hash was a family acquaintance of the Huntzingers.

[grammybears]

I just cannot even comprehend how this family has dealt with all of this. 18 years is such a long time for a child to be missing and not know where he was. How heartbreaking this must have been for his family. 11 years in prison just does not seem long enough for the death of this teenager and not nearly long enough for what he put this family through.
May his family have some sort of closure now that they know where Curtis was. There is never complete closure but hopefully it will be a start. May the good Lord love and protect this dear family.

jmoo

[Nut44x4]

Nice post grammy. I so agree. I do not use that word 'closure' very often. Somehow, it never seems to fit in cases such as this. Usually I use the word 'Peace' to replace it. It works for me.

[sarahhod]

'The persistence of a mother': The Huntzinger family's fight to find Curtis, and the toll it took

Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard
Posted: 05/10/2009 01:30:27 AM PDT


Editor's note: This is the first in a three-part series looking at the disappearance of Curtis Huntzinger and his family's decades-long journey to find him in advance of a May 19 memorial service to celebrate his life. Monday's installment looks at the first years after Curtis went missing and how a series of investigations led no where.


It wasn't until the gun appeared that things began to make sense. It was also the beginning of the end.
Charles and Nancy Huntzinger were sitting around a table in the living room of their small Blue Lake home in early May 1990, chatting with longtime family acquaintance Stephen Hash, who lived nearby and had befriended one of the Huntzinger's 14 children, Curtis.
At first, Charles Huntzinger wasn't sure what he was looking at, thinking maybe it was a broomstick poking through the window. But, looking closer, he realized it was actually a rifle, held by 14-year-old Curtis.
Confronted by his parents, Curtis said he had tried to shoot Hash, but the rifle didn't fire, according to court documents. When asked what was wrong, Curtis only said, “It's Steve, mom. It's Steve.”
Nancy Huntzinger said she then took the rifle from her son and ordered Hash to leave her home immediately. When she talked to Curtis, a pain-filled picture came into focus.
It suddenly made sense why his smile seemed to have dimmed over the last 18 months, why his jokes came fewer and further between, why his grades had started http://us.bc.yahoo.com/b?P=f85d7c9c-3d41-11de-9d87-27333bd76ebd&T=19gv1o9vi%2fX%3d1241946441%2fE%3d2022775853%2fR% 3dncnwsloc%2fK%3d5%2fV%3d8.1%2fW%3d0%2fY%3dPARTNER _US%2fF%3d1895727538%2fH%3dYWx0c3BpZD0iOTY3MjgzMTU 0IiBzZXJ2ZUlkPSJmODVkN2M5Yy0zZDQxLTExZGUtOWQ4Ny0yN zMzM2JkNzZlYmQiIHNpdGVJZD0iNzkwMDUxIiB0U3RtcD0iMTI 0MTk0NjQ0MTY3MzI3OSIgdGFyZ2V0PSJfYmxhbmsiIA--%2fQ%3d-1%2fS%3d1%2fJ%3dE18D0D4C&U=13ust6pau%2fN%3dsUdwAEwNb2g-%2fC%3d600135744.600139515.402468777.402468777%2fD %3dLREC%2fB%3d1728590235276247576%2fV%3d2slipping and why he'd started to get into trouble, first stealing a bag of tortilla chips off a delivery truck, then vandalizing a window and finally being caught with a gun. That May night, Nancy Huntzinger says her son told her that Hash had been molesting him for the last year and a half, that the 35-year-old man the family had befriended and trusted had done terrible things.
Within two weeks, Curtis Huntzinger went missing, only to be found dead almost two decades later, buried in a shallow grave just miles from the family's home, his skull crushed by a barbell wielded by Hash.
The 18 years between Curtis' disappearance and his discovery were a roller coaster of pain, hope and despair for the Huntzinger family as they watched a series of police chiefs and law enforcement agencies take an interest in the case and make promises -- promises they say were never fulfilled.
Some say it was a matter of incompetence, others say it was just an apathetic response to a family some considered undesirable. Others say it was the result of Hash, the case's prime suspect almost from the beginning, being an exceptional liar. Whatever the reason, for more than 18 years no law enforcement agency found Curtis, and for long periods it appeared they didn't even try.
But, over the years, the Huntzinger family, through all its trials and tribulations, never gave up hope as its matriarch tirelessly fought for her son, pushing city government, law enforcement, the media and anyone else who would listen to find her “beautiful boy with the razor-sharp wit.”
”Nobody wanted to hear about Curtis, but I was never going to stop looking for him,” Nancy Huntzinger said recently, sitting in the lunchroom of Blue Lake Elementary School. “I was not going to stop until I found him. You pray, and you pray, and you pray and you want to give up, but you can't. It's the persistence of a mother.”
The anguish begins
Curtis was last seen by his family the night of May 18, 1990, at his sister's Blue Lake home.
In the days after Curtis took aim with that rifle and told his parents of Hash molesting him, Nancy Huntzinger reported the matter to United Indian Health Services, against her son's wishes. When contacted by law enforcement, Curtis vehemently denied the allegations, reportedly telling one official he wasn't “gay.”
The family then noticed another change in Curtis. He stayed close to home, seemed scared and wasn't even a shadow of his old jovial self.
Curtis' sister, Cindy Lee Devore, was 16 when her brother disappeared, and was the last member of his family to see him alive. She said she still recalls the moment vividly -- he was sitting on her couch, seemingly alone in a room full of people.
”I remember leaving to go somewhere and looking back just before I shut the door,” Devore said in an e-mail to the Times-Standard. “Our eyes met. His face was sad, his countenance dim. There was no clown, no silliness or light in his eyes.
”I've regretted shutting that door for 19 years,” Devore wrote. “He was killed that night. On May 19, we realized Curtis was gone.”
A tragedy
takes hold
Nancy Huntzinger reported Curtis missing almost immediately after arriving at Devore's home on the morning of May 19, 1990. Her son wasn't there.
”I knew,” she said. “I knew that none of my kids would run away. I knew something bad happened to Curtis.”
Other members of the Huntzinger family said the same, but the Blue Lake Police Department didn't seem to see things the same way. It reported Curtis as a likely runaway, according to then-Police Chief Donald Trumble.
Trumble said some months later he came to believe Curtis hadn't simply run away from home, but that he couldn't figure out what had happened to him. Huntzinger's family, however, contends that Trumble never tried, and never cared.
Over the next few years, Curtis' family plastered the county with missing person's posters, spoke out at city council meetings and pleaded with agencies to find Curtis. But, according to court records and family members' accounts, the Blue Lake Police Department didn't do much.
The stress of the situation soon took its toll on the Huntzinger family. According to Devore, the family began to divide, facing a situation that dwarfed all of them.
”We were walking in frustration and inside all of us was a permanent ache,” she said. “Life as we knew it was over. There were no more big holiday festivities, no more big family picnics. If there was a gathering that was meant to be happy, it was marred by the fact that one of us was missing.
”Finding Curtis became life's quest ... what a lot of people do not understand is that Steve Hash did not only kill Curtis, he also destroyed an entire family.”
Nancy Huntzinger pored herself into that quest perhaps more than anyone. Looking back on the last 19 years of her life, she expressed regret, saying if she'd been able to devote more time to her other children, maybe she could have helped bridge some of those divides, maybe she could have helped keep some of her children from the trouble that would come to plague them.
”I feel like a lot of it's my fault because everything was always about Curtis,” she said. “I was obsessed with Curtis. They had to listen to all that for 18 years.”
But, giving up on Curtis was never an option.
Throughout the years, while Nancy Huntzinger often turned her grief and rage outward, Charles Huntzinger did the opposite.
”I watched my dad sink into despair over the loss of Curtis,” Devore said. “I watched him deal with his powerlessness to change what was happening to our family.”
Desperation
Perceiving law enforcement to be flailing on the case, having watched a task force form and disband in less than three months without gathering a shred of evidence, Nancy Huntzinger was fed up.
Late one night, she took the family's handgun, put it in her pocket and went for a walk, soon finding herself standing in front of Stephen Hash's home.
”I was going to shoot him,” she said.
But, just as Nancy Huntzinger was preparing to walk to Hash's door, a car pulled into his driveway. Nancy Huntzinger said she simply turned, and walked home. When she awoke the next day, she reconsidered.
”That's how desperate we were,” she said.
The desperation also manifested itself in other ways.
Nancy Huntzinger said she spent countless hours writing letters to the district attorney's office, true-life television crime shows, missing children's organizations and anybody else she could think of. She even consulted psychics.
”I paid one man to walk across a bed of hot coals,” she said. “He told me Curtis was in Yuma (Ariz.). ... I went for anything -- anything and everybody -- who could tell me where Curtis was.”
Confronting a killer
It was a convicted felon's false confession that drove Nancy Huntzinger to confront the man she had always suspected of killing her son.
In 1997, Thomas Michael Fox was arrested for killing an 11-year-old boy by overdosing him with chloroform in order to take naked pictures of him. The case uncovered Fox's alleged business of rendering young boys unconscious with the drug, photographing them and selling the pictures.
Fox sent law enforcement into a frenzy in March 1999, when he volunteered a confession that he'd shot Curtis after chloroforming him at Hash's house. The confession was later discounted, but only after Nancy Huntzinger was asked to pore through piles of pictures of naked, unconscious young boys looking for Curtis.
This drove Nancy Huntzinger to the edge, and the next month she confronted Hash at his house.
”I fell down on my knees crying, asking him where he is,” Nancy Huntzinger recalled. “I said, 'I'll dig him up -- I won't tell anyone.' I just needed him back.”
According to court documents, she also told Hash that she forgave him, which brought the man to his knees and tears to his eyes.
”OK,” Hash responded, according to the documents, “give me a few days to take care of some things.”
Appearing true to his word, Hash later took Nancy Huntzinger up to Demonstration Forest, a stretch of young redwoods in a logging area off of old State Route 299 between Blue Lake and Korbel, and pointed out the spot where he'd buried Curtis.
Hash then asked Nancy Huntzinger to give him 24 hours before notifying law enforcement, enough time to kill himself.
But, Nancy Huntzinger said she instead took Hash to her church to be baptized. That way, whatever fate befell him, at least he would be in God's hands, she felt.
Nancy Huntzinger notified the authorities, and a search ensued. Cadaver dogs were called in from out of the area, and Hash's home was searched, items seized, but nothing ever came of it. Hash remained alive and refused to talk to authorities.
Numerous family members also searched the area, spending hours and days digging through the dirt, desperately looking for any sign of Curtis.
After being so close, Curtis' family again found a resolution and justice beyond reach.
”To tell you the honest truth, I never thought the case was going to be solved,” Joe Huntzinger, Curtis' younger brother, said. “From all the highs and lows, I really felt I would never be able to go to my brother's grave site and talk to him.”
That feeling would last another nine years.
The case goes cold
In the years following Hash's confession, the case sputtered to a halt.
The FBI got involved briefly, raising the Huntzinger family's hopes, but ultimately could not crack the case, according to court documents. There was also a changing of the guard at the Blue Lake Police Department, with David Gundersen coming in as the town's new police chief.
”Whenever there was a new police chief, I was down there on the doorstep,” Nancy Huntzinger said, explaining that the case remained in Blue Lake's jurisdiction, making any other local law enforcement agency reticent to get involved. “Everything I did had to go through Blue Lake PD.”
But, according to the Huntzinger family, the new administration was just more of the same.
Nancy Huntzinger said that Sgt. Darcie Seal, Gundersen's wife and top officer, repeatedly promised her she would solve the case of her missing son, but didn't appear to gain any ground. At one point, she said Seal promised to have the case solved in 60 days. Another time, she said, Seal and Gundersen told her Hash was living in Ukiah, and that they were keeping tabs on him.
Clutching at straws, Nancy Huntzinger said she went to the Ukiah Police Department to see if she could find any information on Hash. She said officers there told her they had no record of a Stephen Hash living in town, and that she should consider seeing a psychiatrist.
But then something unexpected happened: Gundersen was arrested on suspicion of spousal rape, which lead to a trial and, ultimately, the disbanding of the department in May 2008. Gundersen was acquitted of the rape charges.
True to form, when called to testify at Gundersen's trial, Nancy Huntzinger did so intent on making a point.
Frustrated that the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office hadn't taken on her son's case, or returned many of her phone calls, she wore a T-shirt emblazoned with Curtis' image.
What Nancy Huntzinger didn't know is the tide had already begun to change.
After the Blue Lake Police Department was disbanded, she was surprised to answer her door one day to find District Attorney Chief Investigator Mike Hislop and investigator Wayne Cox looking to talk to her about Curtis. At first, they say she tried to slam the door in their faces.
She eventually let them in, and heard them out. They said they were picking up the case, and that they were going to try to find Curtis. Having heard all that before, Nancy Huntzinger felt them out.
She asked the two investigators to promise they would find Curtis.
”(Wayne Cox) didn't promise me a thing,” Nancy Huntzinger recalled with a smile. “He said, 'I can't tell you we'll find the body, but I can tell you we'll try.' Then, I knew he was serious. Then, I knew. This was the man who was going to find my Curtis.”

Thadeus Greenson can be reached at 441-0509 or tgreenson@times-standard.com.

If You Go:
What: A public memorial and potluck dinner for Curtis Anthony Huntzinger
When: May 19, 4 p.m.
Where: Blue Lake Elementary School, 111 Greenwood
For more info: Call 668-1993

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12337891

[sarahhod]

Curtis Huntzinger: A portrait of a boy

Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard
Posted: 05/10/2009 01:27:27 AM PDT



As one of 14 Huntzinger children, Curtis never seemed to have trouble being noticed.
”He was a clown,” Curtis' older sister, Cindy Lee Devore, said in an e-mail to the Times-Standard. “He made the greatest funny faces. He loved life and the outdoors. He was a good boy, a handsome boy with a sweet smile and awesome eyes.”
Curtis' remains will be laid to rest Friday, almost 19 years to the day after he went missing. Over the last week, members of the Huntzinger family took some time to remember Curtis -- not his gruesome death or the 18-year search that consumed their lives -- but the son and brother they cherished until he was taken from them before his 15th birthday.
According to his family, wherever Curtis was, laughter wasn't far behind.
Nancy Huntzinger, Curtis' mom, remembers standing in the kitchen one night, cooking a massive pot of beans for the family dinner. Keenly aware that his family was unusually large, Curtis stood next to his mom and peered into the pot, which was brimming with beans.
”Oh, we're only going to get two beans each?” Nancy Huntzinger recalls him saying, laughing.
Family members said it seemed Curtis loved nothing more than grabbing a pole and heading down to the river to fish with his dad, Charles. He lived for large gatherings, they said, and relished the family's big picnics, Easter egg hunts, jack-o-lantern carving contests and July 4 fireworks displays.
As he grew older, they said he developed a love for music, specifically rock 'n' roll, with Soul Asylum and Guns and Roses being his favorite bands. Joe Huntzinger, Curtis' younger brother, was only 5 when Curtis disappeared, but he has one vivid memory of his older brother that he says he will never forget.
”The only memory I really have was watching Guns and Roses with him on MTV,” Joe Huntzinger said. “We'd grab broomsticks and play the guitar.”

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12337877

[sarahhod]

A timeline of the Curtis Huntzinger case

The Times-Standard
Posted: 05/11/2009 01:27:19 AM PDT


Early May, 1990 -- 14-year-old Curtis Huntzinger reportedly tells his parents he has been molested by family acquaintance Stephen Hash, then 35, for whom Curtis was working.

May 11, 1990 -- Curtis reportedly recants the allegations when asked about them by then-Blue Lake Police Chief Donald Trumble.

May 18, 1990 -- Curtis, an Arcata High School freshman, is last seen at his sister's Blue Lake home and is reported missing the next day. It is initially believed by authorities that Curtis, who had some trouble in school and a recent brush with the law, ran away from home. Trumble said at the time he was confident Curtis was not a victim of foul play.

May 4, 1993 -- Feeling Curtis' case has not been adequately investigated, the Huntzinger family organizes a protest in front of Blue Lake City Hall that draws hundreds.

May 14, 1993 -- Then Blue Lake Police Chief Ken McKinney announces that he is forming a multi-agency task force to look into Curtis' disappearance and rumors of his death.

Aug. 2, 1993 -- The task force disbands, stating that it was unable to find any evidence that Curtis was the victim of foul play.

Feb. 18, 1999 -- Thomas Michael Fox, who was serving life in prison for the killing of 11-year old Danny Williams of Eureka, reportedly confesses to having killed Huntzinger. As a part of the confession, Fox reportedly admitted to shooting Huntzinger and fingered the accomplices, including Hash, who he said helped him bury the boy. Fox later recanted, saying he lied in order to draw more attention to the case.

April 24, 1999 -- During a confrontation with Huntzinger's mom, Nancy, Hash reportedly admits to killing Curtis, even taking Nancy Huntzinger to her son's burial site. Hash, however, refuses to talk to law enforcement about the case.
Over the ensuing weeks, police investigators search Hash's property, even removing the floorboards of his house and sending its carpets to the Department of Justice Crime Lab for testing. The area where Hash claimed to have buried Huntzinger is searched by members of the California Conservation Corps, police and the Huntzinger family. Several bones, including a vertebra, are found, and believed to be those of Curtis Huntzinger. “This could be over in a few weeks,” then Blue Lake Police Chief Floyd Stokes said. The bones are later determined to be animal remains, and the case goes dormant.

May 31, 2001 -- Deann Hash, Hash's wife, tells the FBI that her husband has made admissions to her that he killed and buried Curtis.

Aug. 16, 2001 -- FBI agents interview Stephen Hash in Healdsburg. Hash reportedly refuses to make any self-incriminating remarks, but doesn't deny having killed Curtis. He tells the agents he plans to hire a lawyer and turn himself in to the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office.

June 5, 2003 -- Deann Hash files a declaration in family law court stating that Stephen Hash, now her ex-husband, is the prime suspect in the Curtis Huntzinger case and that he has made confessions to her regarding his involvement.

March, 2007 -- DA Investigator Wayne Cox picks up Curtis' case file, and begins reviewing it in his spare time.

Feb. 8, 2008 -- Blue Lake Police Chief David Gundersen is arrested on suspicion of raping his spouse and sergeant, Darcie Seal. Gundersen is later acquitted of the charges.

May 2008 -- The Blue Lake Police Department is disbanded due to Gundersen's ongoing trial, and the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office officially takes on the Huntzinger case.

September, 2008 -- Cox contacts the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and requests help with the Curtis Huntzinger case.

Nov. 19, 2008 -- Cox talks to Deann Hash, according to court documents, and gets enough evidence to put together an arrest warrant for Stephen Hash.

Dec. 3, 2008 -- Hash is arrested on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter by District Attorney's Office investigators after reportedly giving a “complete confession” and showing them where Huntzinger was buried.

Dec. 9, 2008 -- Investigators find a body identified to be Curtis Huntzinger's, located off old State Route 299 between Blue Lake and Korbel in the location Hash had led them to.

May 15, 2009 -- A burial is planned for Curtis Huntzinger.

May 19, 2009 -- A memorial service, open to the community, is planned to celebrate the life of Curtis Huntzinger.

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12342005

[sarahhod]

A long, winding road: A look at law enforcement's efforts to find Curtis

Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard
Posted: 05/11/2009 01:30:30 AM PDT



Editor's Note: This is the first in a three-part series looking at the disappearance of Curtis Huntzinger and his family's decades-long journey to find him in advance of a May 19 memorial service to celebrate his life. Tomorrow's installment details how two dedicated investigators broke the case and brought Curtis back to his family.

The way the Huntzinger family sees it, a police department had to crumble out of existence for Curtis' case to see the light of day.
“The Blue Lake Police Department has done nothing but ridicule me and lie to me,” said Curtis' mother Nancy Huntzinger, who spent more than 18 years lobbying various police chiefs, agencies and even the city council to help find her son. “They just went defunct right at the right time.”
Curtis Huntzinger went missing May 19, 1990, days after making allegations that Stephen Hash, a trusted family friend, had molested him. Over the next 18 and a half years, Curtis' family never stopped trying to push the investigation forward, but feel they got little help.
In December 2008 -- about eight months after the disbanding of the Blue Lake Police Department -- Hash confessed to the killing in a Sebastopol, Calif., Starbucks, telling district attorney investigators where he'd buried 14-year-old Curtis, more than 18 years after crushing his skull with a barbell.
But the family and others contend the case should have been solved long ago.
”We should have found Curtis the same year he was killed,” Curtis' older sister, Cindy Lee Devore, said in an e-mail to the Times-Standard. “Our family has suffered greatly because of what Stephen Hash did and because of what the Blue Lake Police Department didn't do.” 3 years, 47 words
If former Blue Lake Police Chief Donald Trumble wrote a single word about Curtis' disappearance in an official report, it's long since vanished.
According to court documents, when district attorney investigators officially took over the case in May 2008, they were unable to find a single report authored by Trumble in the almost six months he served as chief of police after Curtis disappeared.
Contacted last week at his California City home, Trumble said he remembers the Huntzinger case, and insisted that he authored a suspected runaway report on Curtis very shortly after he went missing.
The notion that Curtis was dismissed as a runaway incenses Devore.
”Two weeks prior to my brother being gone, Curtis told of horrendous things that an adult male was doing to him,” she said. “And then he vanished. There was more evidence pointing to Steve Hash killing him than at Curtis being a runaway. And, now we know that there was a murder weapon, blood, a shovel, a vehicle that transported my brother's body and a murderer all less than a mile away from the police department.”
Trumble said he initially suspected that Curtis ran away because he'd had some trouble with the law and had run away before. He began to suspect otherwise after the Huntzingers hadn't heard from him in a couple of months. But, Trumble said he sometimes suspected that the family knew where Curtis was, and wouldn't tell him.
The Huntzinger family vehemently denies that Curtis had ever run away from home, saying it just wasn't his nature.
Trumble claims that, some time after he authored the report labeling Curtis' case as that of an endangered runaway, he confronted Hash about the molestation allegations and asked if he knew where Curtis was.
”He denied molesting Curtis,” Trumble said, adding that he knew Hash to be a very good liar. “Hash said he'd heard Curtis had stolen somebody's stash and ran away.”
Trumble said he'd heard that rumor from other places as well, with some saying Curtis had been killed for taking somebody's drugs. But, Trumble said as a one-man police department, he didn't really have time to investigate.
Blue Lake had a new police chief by May 1993, but it seems not much had changed with the Curtis Huntzinger case. Frustrated with what they felt was a lack of attention from new Chief Ken McKinney, the Huntzinger family showed up in front of Blue Lake City Hall with a couple hundred protesters demanding justice for Curtis.
Within two weeks, on May 14, 1993, McKinney announced that he was forming a multi-agency task force to look into the disappearance and rumored death of Curtis Huntzinger. Up to that point -- three years after Curtis went missing -- it appears a total of 47 words had been written in law enforcement case files about the disappearance and rumored death that spawned the task force, according to Hash's court file.
At some point during the investigation, the task force took a look at Hash, interviewing him extensively and asking him to take a polygraph test. Hash denied any involvement with Curtis' disappearance, according to court documents. The results of his polygraph test came back inconclusive.
The task force attempted to bring Hash back in for another polygraph test, but Hash declined, reportedly saying “inconclusive was good enough for him,” according to the documents.
Apparently, inconclusive was good enough for the task force as well. Less than three months after it was formed, the task force disbanded, finding that it had produced no evidence that could establish Curtis was the victim of a homicide.
A red herring
For six more years, no movement was evident in the case until, out of the blue, a San Quentin inmate confessed to killing Curtis. He was lying.
In 1997, it came out that Thomas Michael Fox had been drugging young boys with chloroform, rendering them unconscious so he could take naked photographs of them to sell. Fox's clandestine business was outed after he killed 11-year-old Eurekan Danny Williams with an overdose of the drug.
In 1999, seemingly out of nowhere, Fox told investigators that he shot and killed Curtis at Hash's home while the boy and Hash were fighting. Fox said that Hash panicked, packing Curtis into a garbage bag and taking him away with the help of another adult male, according to court documents.
Then-Blue Lake Police Chief Floyd Stokes served a search warrant on Hash's home, reportedly pulling up the floor and sending carpets to the Department of Justice for forensic testing, but made no arrests. According to court documents, Fox later recanted his confession, saying he'd lied in the hopes of drawing more attention to Curtis' case and putting the “heat” on Hash.
It worked, but just briefly.
Drawn into despair by Fox's emotional detour, Nancy Huntzinger found herself at the end of her rope, and found herself confronting the man who killed her son.
Nancy Huntzinger fell to her knees, begging Hash to tell her where her son was and what happened to him, and something apparently touched Hash's conscience. He too fell to his knees and began to weep, agreeing to show Nancy Huntzinger where he'd buried her son nine years earlier.
But that didn't work out either. Cadaver dogs and search crews came up empty after searching for an unknown amount of time. No reports were found documenting the search efforts, according to court documents.
Although Hash refused to cooperate with authorities at that point, according to the report, he later assisted the Huntzinger family with its own search of the site, and made confessions about how he had a sexual relationship with Curtis, killed him the night of May 18, 1990, and buried him in a dirt grave just miles from the family home.
The case goes federal
If inconclusive was good enough for the 1993 multi-agency task force, it also appears to have been good enough for the FBI.
Around the same time that search teams were scouring the hillside for Curtis' body, the FBI took a stab at the case, interviewing several people, including Hash.
According to court documents, FBI agents first approached Hash's wife, Deann, who told them Hash had made confessions to her regarding the Huntzinger case. She told agents, according to the documents, that Hash told her he acted alone in killing Curtis, hitting him over the head with a barbell in the garage of his Redwood Avenue home in Blue Lake. She said Hash told her he then loaded Curtis' body into his old 1952 Chevrolet pickup, and buried him off old highway 299.
A couple of months later, FBI agents confronted Hash at a drug rehabilitation center in Healdsburg.
According to court documents, Hash told the agents that he understood that Curtis' unresolved case was having a negative impact on the people connected to Curtis, but said he wasn't going to go to jail for the rest of his life. Hash said he knew that if the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office had anything on him, he would have already been arrested.
Asked directly if he had anything to do with Curtis' disappearance, Hash said, “I don't want to answer that right now,” according to the documents.
Hash then reportedly told the agents that he wanted to cooperate with law enforcement, but had to make enough money to hire a lawyer first. He refused to make any incriminating statements, according to Hash's case file, but said he would soon turn himself in to the district attorney's office to resolve the case.
According to the court documents, Hash then folded up Curtis' missing person flier, which the agents had given him at the beginning of the interview, put it in his pocket and left.
When investigators from the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office picked up Curtis' case seven years later, Hash hadn't turned himself in and they were unable to find any documentation of any police work done on the case since that interview.
Raised by the prospect of a federal investigation, the Huntzinger family's hopes were dashed again.
”When the FBI is involved, you think there are going to be answers, but no,” Nancy Huntzinger said.
The light
Nancy Huntzinger said she had come to know better than to expect answers from the Blue Lake Police Department, but she kept trying anyway.
From time to time over the ensuing years, she said she would bring documents down to the station to give to Chief David Gundersen or Sgt. Darcie Seal, Gundersen's wife. But, she never felt much was being done. She felt lied to and ignored, and was generally growing despondent.
Nancy Huntzinger said she always kept hope alive, but that her and her family's quest was taking a toll.
Then, in February 2008, Gundersen was arrested. Within months the Blue Lake Police Department had been disbanded, and a door opened.
Although district attorney investigator Wayne Cox had already been researching the case behind the scenes since March 2007, the dissolving of the Blue Lake Police Department created an opportunity for the District Attorney's Office to officially take over the case.
”It was just the sun's light coming through the clouds,” Nancy Huntzinger recalled, unable to contain her smile.

Thadeus Greenson can be reached at 441-0509 or tgreenson@times-standard.com

If You Go:
What: A public memorial and potluck dinner for Curtis Anthony Huntzinger
When: 4 p.m. May 19, 2009
Where: Blue Lake Elementary School, 111 Greenwood
For more info: Call 668-1993

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12342050

[sarahhod]

Moving a mountain: The Humboldt County DA's Office brings Curtis home

Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard
Posted: 05/12/2009 01:30:17 AM PDT


http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site127/2009/0512/20090512__local_huntzingerpart3jf_Viewer.jpg
Editor's Note: This is the last installment in a three-part series looking at the disappearance of Curtis Huntzinger and his family's decades-long journey to find him in advance of a May 19 memorial service to celebrate his life.



To Curtis Huntzinger's older sister, Cindy Lee Devore, it wasn't a question of evidence or leads that ultimately led to the discovery of her brother's remains more than 18 years after his death.
To Devore, it came down to a question of worth.
”Wayne Cox believed my brother was worth searching for and he didn't stop until Curtis was found,” Devore said in an e-mail to the Times-Standard. “I could never express in words what that means to me. Wayne Cox is my hero.”
Almost 19 years to the day after he went missing, Curtis Huntzinger's cremated remains will be laid to rest in a private ceremony Friday. Curtis' road home was long, and ultimately aided by countless officers from a variety of agencies and a small army of volunteers. But virtually everyone agrees, Curtis would not have been found if it weren't for the efforts of Cox, an investigator with the Humboldt County District Attorney's Office.
Five months after the discovery of her son's shallow grave, Nancy Huntzinger also still has trouble finding the words.
”I can't even say how much I love him,” she said. “That's the man. He brought my son back.”

If you ask Cox, he will shrug off any hero talk. He will say he didn't do anything extraordinary, just doggedly worked an old case. He will also point to literally dozens of people.
Cox said that without their help, Stephen Hash, an old acquaintance of the Huntzinger family, would never have been arrested in December 2008, would never have confessed to crushing Curtis' skull with a barbell weight during an argument, and would never have helped law enforcement find the missing 14-year-old.
In fact, when Cox found out he had been nominated for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's prestigious Law Enforcement Excellence Award -- given to one law enforcement officer every year who embodies the organization's mission -- Cox turned around and nominated the center, because he believes it was the center's help that really brought Curtis home.
The center's President Ernie Allen doesn't want to hear any of that.
”I think (the story) is, frankly, right out of network television's Cold Case,” said Allen. “Because of Wayne Cox, this family has obtained some solace and an offender who killed a little boy many years ago has been brought to justice. That's why we think investigator Cox is such a hero. He's a model for the nation.”
The foundation
When Cox started reviewing Curtis Huntzinger's case, the name wasn't new to him -- he'd been hearing it for years.
Cox said he remembered the case from his first days as a police officer, back in the early 1990s when he was working as a Eureka beat cop.
”It was widely believed throughout law enforcement that (Curtis) was a runaway,” Cox said, adding that he remembers hearing of the case repeatedly in briefing meetings. “I just remember going, 'Wow, we really need to find that boy.'”
It wasn't until more than a decade later that Cox would set about doing just that.
In March 2007, Cox, now a district attorney investigator, said he happened to be at the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office talking to a detective when he noticed a binder containing the Huntzinger case file sitting on a desk.
He asked the detective what was happening with the case, and was told it was still open, but there was no fresh information and that nobody there was actively working it. Cox asked if he could take the file, and spent the next year studying the case in his free time, trying to digest every detail.
After the Blue Lake Police Department disbanded about a year later in the wake of then-Chief David Gundersen's arrest, Cox seized an opportunity.
He went to his bosses, Chief Investigator Mike Hislop, Assistant District Attorney Wes Keat and District Attorney Paul Gallegos, and made a pitch: He wanted the office to officially take on the Huntzinger case, but only on the condition that he would be given the time and resources to investigate it properly.
They quickly agreed.
The case breaks
A short time later, Cox was at the Blue Lake Police Department investigating the Gundersen case when a break fell into his lap from the unlikeliest of places.
”Investigator Cox saw the disarray (at the department), and found these cardboard boxes full of information and (Huntzinger) case files that were being stored in the lunchroom of the Blue Lake Police Department,” said Allen. “It was evident to him really quickly that the evidence hadn't been kept up and he really needed to recreate the case from the beginning.”
In September, Cox reached out to Allen's National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for help. Allen said the center quickly deployed members of its Project Alert, which supplies law enforcement agencies with retired investigators to help work old cases at no cost.
To aid Cox, Allen said the center deployed retired investigators Bob Tauson and Bill Gleason, who during his career as a sergeant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office had been instrumental in cracking open the Charles Manson case.
The first task, Cox said, was to sort through almost five feet of documents, getting rid of duplicates and essentially reorganizing the case from scratch.
The team quickly found two things: documentation of Hash's now-ex-wife's interview with FBI agents in which she claimed that Hash described to her in detail how he killed Curtis Huntzinger, and an old photograph from a 1994 parole search of Hash's home. The picture, taken four years after Curtis' death, showed a calendar pinned up in what appeared to be a bedroom of Hash's home, with two pictures of the Huntzinger boy pinned up next to it.
Cox said a series of breaks led him to interview a key witness in the case in November 2008, but he declined to identify the witness. According to court documents, he talked to Hash's ex-wife, Deann, who by that time had also made allegations in a 2003 declaration filed with a family law court that her ex-husband had confessed his involvement in Curtis' disappearance.
According to court documents, Cox and Hislop tracked down Deann Hash, and she relayed to them what Hash had told her. In fact, she recounted Hash's confessions in vivid detail.
Upon arriving back in Humboldt County, Cox and Hislop decided they had enough evidence to get an arrest warrant for Hash, but they knew the road ahead would be difficult.
After all these years, they knew they were only going to get one bite at the apple.
One shot
The situation was a tricky one: The investigators knew the most important thing to Nancy Huntzinger was not bringing Hash to justice, but finding her son. And, they knew Hash was the only person who could help them do that.
They needed to find a way to exert maximum leverage on Hash. Gallegos and Keat helped in that regard, agreeing to take on the onerous task of prosecuting Hash on murder charges even if Curtis' body was never found.
With that leverage in hand, the investigators needed a plan.
Cox and Hislop said all the office's investigators were brought in for their input on the best way to confront Hash. Each had their own styles and skill sets, so the opinions differed.
”I can say we had some heated conversations about how to approach Stephen Hash,” Hislop said.
They knew Hash was no stranger to police interrogations, so they developed four or five alternate plans based on how Hash would react to their arrival.
They spent hours and hours role playing the confrontation, trying to prepare for any possible response.
Then, on Dec. 3, 2008, Hislop, Cox and Keat made the four-hour drive south to Sebastopol to confront the man who had been the prime suspect in the case for 18 years.
”We knew we had one shot -- that was it,” Hislop said. “If we missed, it was done.”
Starbucks confession
Rather than taking Hash directly into custody, or hauling him down to a police station for questioning, the trio opted for a more informal setting: the local Starbucks.
Hislop and Cox said that, in the early part of the conversation, it became apparent that Hash was surprised with how much they knew about the case. Finally, realizing the investigators had their sights set on more than a friendly chat, Cox said Hash recoiled.
”He got this funny look, got up and said, 'You're BS-ing me,' he said, 'You want me to tell on myself,'” Cox recalled. “He said, 'You're just like everybody else -- you don't have anything on me or you'd of already arrested me.'”
At that point, Cox said he calmly got up, walked out to his car and returned with the murder warrant. He set it in front of Hash, asking, “You still think we're (BS-ing) you?”
Hislop said Hash studied the document with a fearful look in his eye.
”He looked scared -- relieved and scared,” Hislop said. “Relieved, because he knew the gig was up, and scared because he knew what he was about to say to us was going to send him to prison.”
Hash sat quietly for a couple of minutes.
”Then, he got up and said, 'I'll take you to him,'” Cox said. “I said, 'Wait a minute. You can't take us out to him until you tell us how he got there.'”
According to Cox and Hislop, Hash spent the next hour and a half recounting the killing of Curtis Huntzinger. Hash told them Curtis was angry when he showed up at his house the night of May 18, 1990, and that an altercation ensued, escalating into a fight.
In the heat of the moment, Hash said he picked up a barbell weight and swung it at Curtis' head, crushing his skull and killing him. The investigators said Hash then told them he buried Curtis in a shallow grave just off old Highway 299.
Less than three hours after they had contacted Hash, the investigators had him in custody, confession in hand, and were making the 240-mile drive to Blue Lake to start the process of finding Curtis.
Moving a mountain
When the investigators told people they were going to be searching California Redwood Co.'s stretch of land off of old Highway 299 for Curtis Huntzinger's body, they weren't met with much optimism.
”There were tons of people telling us, 'You're never going to find that body -- it's a needle in a haystack,'” Hislop recalled.
But they had planned ahead. Before heading down to Sebastopol, Cox and Hislop had essentially gotten a search-and-rescue team ready to deploy with a variety of gadgets and equipment on loan from the national center.
They knew that when Hash buried Huntzinger in 1990, the landscape was barren after being clear-cut and burned. But, almost 19 years later, a fledgling forest had regrown, covering the ground in blackberry brambles and poison oak. The area was hard to traverse, and seemed nearly impossible to search.
Hash brought the investigators to just about the same place he had brought Nancy Huntzinger almost a decade earlier, and the search began. With the assistance of a pair of California Redwood Co. employees, district attorney investigators cleared a couple of acres of ground. Volunteers began testing the soil for anomalies that could indicate where Curtis was buried and flagging them. Metal detector operators then passed over the flagged sites, hoping to capture a trace from Huntzinger's zipper or watch.
The team came up empty the first day, but Nancy Huntzinger, who had been through this before, was not deterred.
”Wayne said, 'I don't care if we have to dig up this mountain -- we'll do it. We'll move a mountain,'” she recalled. “That was probably the strongest thing I've ever been told.”
Cox says he meant it, having received assurances from Hislop and Gallegos that they would do whatever it took, for however long it took, to find Curtis.
Two days later, after district attorney investigators and swarms of volunteers had worked nearly around the clock, getting poison oak in the process, an amateur metal detector operator got a faint reading.
Danny Walker set down the metal detector, fell to his knees and slowly moved away some dirt, revealing Curtis' left femur bone.
After almost 19 years, Curtis Huntzinger had been found. But, instead of elation or celebration, an eerie quite fell over the investigators and volunteers as they gathered around Curtis' grave site, standing in a disbelieving and solemn silence.
Over the ensuing hours, the team set about the arduous task of trying to remove Curtis' body from the earth, and from the massive web of roots that had grown to encase it. But first, they let the Huntzinger family have a moment with Curtis.
The family gathered around the grave site, and in the Native American tradition, honored Curtis and the earth with an offer of tobacco, thanking the earth for caring for Curtis for all these years.
After giving the family time, the search-and-rescue team worked into the night under flood lights, cautiously excavating the 400-pound root ball containing Curtis' remains. After a stretch of unseasonably warm weather throughout the search, the day after Curtis was found, the skies opened up and rain came pouring down.
Curtis' body was later transported to the Humboldt County Coroner's Office, where a team from the Anthropology Department at Humboldt State University painstakingly removed all the dirt and roots. Amazingly, they recovered every bone in Curtis' body.
Some time after the team found Curtis, with the afternoon light filtering through the young redwoods, Nancy Huntzinger said she walked over to Cox and told him he could let Hash go. She'd been given all she needed.
Cox said he couldn't do that, but added he knew Curtis would never have been found without Hash's help.
”There was only one person in the world who could get us there, and he got us within about 25 feet,” Cox said, adding that Hash also showed a great deal of remorse for his actions. “He made a comment that Curtis wasn't the only one that died that night.”
A sister's hope
Within a few weeks of admitting to killing Curtis, Hash pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge in a deal that carried an 11-year sentence.
In open court, Hash apologized to Nancy Huntzinger, thanked Cox and Hislop for their competent and thorough investigation and said he didn't know why he'd been free for 18 years.
Nancy Huntzinger's forgiveness aside, most members of the Huntzinger family feel that Hash got off easy, and that justice will forever remain elusive in Curtis' case.
”I don't think it's fair, and I don't think it's just, but that's what we have to deal with,” said Joe Huntzinger, Curtis' younger brother.
Now, the Huntzinger family has a chance to heal and move forward. Curtis will be buried Friday, laid to rest with his sister, and a memorial service is scheduled for May 19 to honor his life.
But, the closing of the Huntzinger case also leaves a void in Nancy Huntzinger's life. For more than 18 years, she was consumed with the case, filled with anguish and grief, pushing at every turn for help finding her son. Now, she doesn't know what to do with herself.
She said she might volunteer her time with an organization working to find missing children, saying she's developed a knack for investigating. But, really, she doesn't know where life will take her now that her quest is done.
Curtis' sister, Cherri Lee Hairston, has a unique perspective. Nancy Huntzinger's daughter from a previous relationship, Hairston said she was put up for adoption at birth, and only searched out her biological family in 1997, seven years after Curtis went missing.
Over the last 12 years, Hairston said she has come to love her biological family, but also recognizes the devastation Curtis' disappearance had caused. Her hope today is that happier times are ahead for her family, and that, eventually, smiles will replace tears and laughter will come to replace anger when Curtis' name comes up in conversation.
”The only hope I am now holding onto is this: Whenever any of us spoke of Curtis before, it was usually in relation to a search, or in the same sentence with Steve's name, but not often enough in just relaying a memory,” Hairston said in an e-mail to the Times-Standard. “I am hoping that after we lay him to rest, we can start coming together and sharing stories of him.
”I want to know more about my brother. I want my brothers and sisters to be able to tell me stories without so much of the pain of knowing he is out there somewhere and we can't find him. I imagine us sitting around and someone sharing with me what a clown he was and us all laughing, and maybe we will start healing and coming together again.”

If You Go:
What: A public memorial and potluck dinner for Curtis Anthony Huntzinger
When: May 19, 4 p.m.
Where: Blue Lake Elementary School, 111 Greenwood
For more info: Call 668-1993

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12349638

[sarahhod]

Huntzinger case: A team effort

Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard
Posted: 05/12/2009 01:15:37 AM PDT



http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site127/2009/0512/20090512__local_teameffort_Viewer.jpg


Humboldt County District Attorney's Office Investigator Wayne Cox will be getting a national award today for his work solving the Curtis Huntzinger case, but in his mind, something isn't right.
”I couldn't have done it alone, and I wish the award from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had all of our names on it,” Cox said. “There wasn't a single person on our team who didn't invest a lot of time into this.”
When Cox, Chief Investigator Mike Hislop and Assistant District Attorney Wes Keat drove down to Sebastopol to get Stephen Hash to confess to killing Curtis, they didn't go alone. DA investigators Rick Grimm and Billy Honsal went too, getting the less glamorous, but no less important, job of searching Hash's home after the arrest.
But, even before that, others helped too. Cox got the assistance of the Sonoma County District Attorney's Office to conduct surveillance on Hash.
And after getting the confession, Cox said, a virtual army of people chipped in to help find Curtis' remains.
The young redwood grove near old Highway 299 where Curtis was buried was covered in a thicket of poison oak and blackberry brambles. With the help of a couple of California Redwood Co. employees, DA investigators cleared the way for the search, many of them getting a nasty case of poison oak in the process.
Cox escaped unscathed, largely because he was relying on the help of his colleagues and orchestrating the search from the safety of the road, making sure the team had everything it needed. Ultimately, it was a volunteer metal detector operator, Danny Walker, who found Curtis' remains.
”People have given me lots of credit for bringing Curtis home, and I appreciate that -- but I didn't do it alone,” Cox said.
Cox said special thanks are in order for District Attorney Paul Gallegos, Keat, Hislop, Honsal, Grimm, investigators Mike Stone, Mike Losey, Ben Nord and Steve Dunn. Cox also thanked the law enforcement agencies coast to coast who gave their time to help with Curtis' case.
”Each of them put aside their own duties to help me when I needed it,” Cox said.


http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12349601
(tgreenson@times-standard.com)