Grizzlies on Trial

In 1972, a grizzly bear killed twenty-five year old Harry Walker in Yellowstone National Park. His family thought it was a tragic, random death. But the Walkers soon learned that Harry's death was part of a larger conversation about how to manage bears in national parks. Could suing the National Park Service for Harry's death change policies and save lives -- both human and bear?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You were listening to History on Trial, a production of
iHeart Podcasts. Listener Discretion advised. Vicky Schlicht and Harry Walker
were almost back to her dorm when he leaned close
and asked if he could kiss her. She was pleasantly surprised.

(00:25):
Boys didn't always ask first, but Harry was thoughtful like that.
Vicky couldn't believe she'd only known him for two and
a half days. Their connection felt much deeper than that.
Maybe it was everything they had in common. Both of
them were farm kids, away from home for the first time.

(00:46):
Maybe it was the hours they'd spent talking, sharing stories
of their families and their likes and dislikes. Maybe it
was the magical setting midsummer in Yellowstone National the geothermal
pools gently steaming beside them, the deep, black, star spangled

(01:07):
night sky stretching above them. Whatever it was, this connection,
this moment felt special. So Vicky said yes, Harry could
kiss her. He leaned down and they kissed, holding each
other tight in the shadow of the tall pines. After

(01:28):
a minute, Vicky reluctantly pulled back. She had to work
the next day and needed to get some sleep. Harry
took her home, then gently kissed her good night. After
leaving Vicky, Harry walked back to the Old Faithful Inn,
where his friend Philip Bradbury was waiting at the bar.

(01:49):
Philip was easy to spot, six feet tall and skinny
with a shock of red hair. Harry and Philip headed
out of the inn into the darkness sometime after midnight.
It was June twenty fifth, nineteen seventy two, a week
or so earlier when the pair had decided to go

(02:10):
to Yellowstone. They'd made a plan to hike out into
the back country and camp there, far from the tourist crowds.
But then, on June twenty second, while picking up groceries
in Livingstone, Montana, Harry had met Vicky. She'd given him
a ride to the park and they'd hit it off.

(02:31):
Vicky had a summer job at the Old Faithful Inn
and Harry wanted to stay near her, so Harry and
Philip had ducked under the barrier ropes by the geothermal
pools and headed up a forested ridge near Guyser Hill.
Camping like this near a developed area but not in
an official campsite wasn't allowed, but lots of people did it.

(02:55):
Philip and Harry had found a nice flat spot hidden
amongst the pines and slept there for two nights without incident.
But tonight there was a problem. They couldn't remember exactly
where their campsite was. They had had a few drinks
at the inn with Vicki, and the darkness was impenetrable.

(03:16):
Harry shone his flashlight at the trees, hoping to spot
something familiar. They weren't worried. They had nowhere to be,
nothing to do all the time in the world. Philip
and Harry walked side by side, singing camp songs and laughing,
and then suddenly a shadow in the pines, something moving.

(03:41):
Harry pointed his flashlight at it, but before his brain
could process what he was seeing, it was on him,
its teeth and claws and great stinking mass enveloping him
a grizzly bear. Philip either fell or was struck by
the bear and began rolling down the ridge. He heard
Harry scream for help. Philip managed to get to his

(04:04):
feet and run. When he felt safe, he stopped and
turned and called Harry, is there a bear up there?
Harry didn't answer. It took park rangers four and a
half hours to find Harry's body. He was lying on
his back one hundred and sixty five feet away from

(04:24):
his campsite. His face was peaceful, like he was sleeping,
but his body was a gory mess. The bear had
eaten his internal organs. An autopsy would later reveal that
the bear had crushed his throat, likely only moments after
he screamed. Harry's death was tragic, but it was the

(04:48):
kind of horrible accident that happens in the wilderness, sometimes
an unavoidable consequence of the collision between humans and nature.
That's what Harry's family thought, at least at first. But
a month after his funeral, they got a strange phone call.

(05:09):
On the other end of the line. A woman told
them that Harry's death could have been avoided. According to her,
Harry's death was quote part of a larger pattern of
government misconduct and a big cover up. As the walkers
would soon learn, Harry's death was only the latest in

(05:32):
a long line of troubling interactions between humans and bears
at Yellowstone. Over the past five years, the park management
had radically and controversially changed its bear management policies. Biologists
and wildlife managers and environmental advocates were locked in a

(05:53):
heated debate over the policy changes. Critics of the new policy,
including the woman who who called the Walkers, believed that
it was dangerous for humans and bears alike, and they
thought that Harry's death proved their case. What was more,
they thought that Harry's death could change things. If the

(06:17):
Walkers were willing to soothe the National Park Service, maybe
they could bring attention to the bear issue and get
Yellowstone to switch directions. The Walkers were hesitant. They were
dairy farmers from Alabama. Could they take on the federal government?
After thinking it over, they thought maybe they could, as

(06:41):
long as it meant getting justice for Harry. It would
take three years for their case to go to court,
but when it finally did in nineteen seventy five, it
would draw some of the nation's top wildlife biologists to
a courtroom in California and help change the conversation of
about bears forever. Welcome to History on Trial. I'm your host,

(07:06):
Mira Hayward. This week Martin v. United States. At its inception,
Yellowstone National Park was given two missions. The bill creating Yellowstone,
signed by President Grant on March first, eighteen seventy two

(07:27):
tasked the park with being both quote a public park
or pleasuring ground, and also with quote the preservation from
injury or spoliation of all natural curiosities or wonders within
said park and their retention in their natural condition. Quickly,

(07:47):
it became clear that these two goals might contradict each other.
The needs of tourists and the needs of nature are
not always the same. Tourism needs infrastructure, roads, bridges, hotels, campgrounds,
and bathrooms, all of which require modification of the natural environment.

(08:09):
There's also the question of what exactly natural means. Is
the natural condition of Yellowstone the condition that government surveyors
founded in in eighteen seventy two, or is it the
condition of the primeval land hundreds or thousands of years before.
By the eighteen seventies, many species native to Yellowstone, including bison,

(08:33):
had been nearly eradicated by white settlers. Thus the question
of restoration versus preservation arose. Should species be reintroduced to
Yellowstone and should invasive methods be taken to preserve the environment,
measures like spraying pesticides, administering controlled burns, or culling the

(08:56):
elkurds that rapidly multiplied after the park's creation. Generations of
wildlife managers, government officials, and environmental advocates have struggled to
find the right answer to these questions. There is perhaps
no issue that exemplifies the debates over people's needs versus
nature's needs and intervention verse preservation in Yellowstone than the

(09:21):
issue of bear management. Yellowstone is home to black bears
and grizzly bears, both of which are omnivorous eaters. In
the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties, as the first Yellowstone
hotels were erected, Yellowstone bears found a delicious new food source,

(09:42):
human trash. Piles of food scraps discarded by hotel kitchens
drew swarms of bears. The bears, in turn attracted more
tourists who loved to watch the giant predators delicately gnaw
on chicken bones. Being a commercial opportunity, hotels created feeding

(10:03):
shows makeshift amphitheaters in which tourists could sit on bleachers
and watch bears eat trash on raised stages. Bears also
found other ways of getting human food, such as by
begging tourists who would feed the bears out of their
car windows. Despite the charming appearance of a begging bear.

(10:26):
These were still wild animals. Once skittish around humans, Yellowstones
bears had by the nineteen thirties lost most of their fear.
Black bears in particular, grew comfortable and even bold around people,
and in their eagerness for human food, injuries were bound

(10:46):
to happen. The bears didn't mean to hurt people, they
were usually just startled or impatient. Between nineteen thirty one
and nineteen thirty nine, five hundred and twenty seven people
were injured by bears. Besides the injuries, there were growing
concerns amongst National Park Service biologists that getting bears hooked

(11:10):
on human food would be bad for the animals. The
Service in general had been slowly adopting a more non
interventionist policy towards wildlife management. In nineteen thirty nine, Park
Service Director Arno Camera released a policy memorandum declaring that
quote every species shall be left to carry on its

(11:33):
existence unaided. Two years later, in accordance with this directive,
all bear feeding shows at Yellowstone were shut down. But
by this point the Yellowstone bears were conditioned to expect
human food when they did not get it at the
feeding shows, they began prowling campgrounds and scrounging around trash dumps.

(11:56):
In response, park rangers began killing bears who kept returning
to human areas, but this couldn't keep every bear away.
In nineteen forty two, a grizzly bear killed forty five
year old nurse Martha Henson near the Old Faithful campground.
Next year, the Park Service hired a biologist to study

(12:16):
the bear problem. The biologists recommended that the parks shut
down hand feeding by visitors, but officials were reluctant to
enforce a hand feeding ban because bear feeding was one
of the park's largest draws. There was another component to
the bear problem. The parks had a responsibility not just

(12:37):
to protect their visitors, but also to protect bears. But
the park didn't know exactly how many bears it had,
or where they lived, or what their behaviors were. This
was especially true of the park's grizzly population, who kept
to the shadows more than black bears did. By the
late nineteen fifties, Yellowstone's chief naturalist, David Kahn, decided that

(13:01):
a comprehensive survey was needed. He hired John and Frank Craighead,
pioneering wildlife biologists to study yellowstones grizzlies and make recommendations
for conserving them. John and Frank Craighead were identical twins
born in nineteen sixteen. They'd grown up outdoors, cultivating a

(13:24):
love for wildlife and a willingness to get their hands dirty,
scaling cliffs and reaching into eagles nests while studying birds
of prey. By age twenty five, they'd been published in
National Geographic, and their celebrity only rose from there. With
their handsome, weathered faces, the Craigheads made excellent poster boys

(13:45):
for the burgeoning field of wildlife management in the nineteen fifties.
After a stint developing wilderness survival training programs for the
military and completing their PhDs at the University of Michigan,
the Craigheads built neighboring laws cabins in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
and settled down with their wives and children. The grizzly

(14:06):
research was the perfect study for the Craigheads. Frank was
interested in the application of technology to wildlife management, and
he began developing a radio collar large enough for grizzly bears.
The first of its kind. In nineteen sixty one, the
Craigheads fitted their first collar. They also developed a system

(14:27):
for identifying bears. Before the Craigheads, the standard practice was
tagging bears ears with small, metallic numbered ear tags, but
these tags were impossible to tell apart at a distance.
The Craigheads began using colored plastic ear loops instead. Over
the next eight years, they would capture and track scores

(14:50):
of grizzlies, gaining great insight into the bears' lives. In
nineteen sixty seven, the Craigheads turned in an one hundred
and thirteen page report to Yellowstone leadership. Besides a collection
of observations on grizzly behavior, including the fact that they
had enormous ranges and that they often returned to where

(15:10):
they came from after they were relocated, the report contained
recommendations for grizzly management. Many of the Kraigheads recommendations were
about Yellowstones dumps. In the wake of the Feeding Show's closure,
dumps had become a major food source for bears, but
the dumps were unnatural, unsightly, and promoted bears dependence on

(15:34):
human food. The park wanted to close them. The Cragheads
agreed that the dumps should be closed, but they advocated
for a gradual, careful closure plan. They recommended placing elk
carcasses in the backwoods to attract bears away from the dump.
They also recommended that all other sources of human food

(15:55):
be eliminated so that bears would not turn to campgrounds
or trash cans as subsidance for the dumps. While the
dump slowly closed, the Craigheads concluded the park should continue
to carefully monitor and track the grizzlies. These recommendations may
not seem controversial on the surface, but the atmosphere at

(16:15):
Yellowstone was very different in nineteen sixty seven than it
had been when the Craigheads began their study in nineteen
fifty nine. In nineteen sixty six, Glenn Cole became the
park's head wildlife manager. Jordan Fisher Smith, in his book
Engineering Eden, describes Cole as quote a champion of a

(16:38):
let nature take its course philosophy. This philosophy was shared
by Jack Anderson, who became Yellowstone superintendent in nineteen sixty seven.
Cole and Anderson wanted Yellowstone to be as free from
human influence as possible. Yellowstone's centennial was only five years

(16:59):
away in nineteen seventy two, and by that year Cole
and Anderson hoped that the park would be a pristine
vision of untouched wilderness, minus the hotels and rangers. Of course,
so the Craighead's idea of gradually closing the dumps was
a non starter. If they wanted bears to be weaned

(17:20):
off human food in five years, the dumps would have
to close now. Cole and Andersen thought. The Craigheads cautioned
that this could be dangerous. The bears would search for
other sources of human food, increasing the likelihood of dangerous
encounters with humans, but Cole and Anderson were convinced that
they just needed to rip the band aid off. They

(17:43):
also vetoed continued tracking of the bears. The craigheads garishly
colored ear loops and bulky radio colors didn't align with
their vision for the park. Cole and Anderson were not
alone in their passion for removing human influence from the
National parks. Non intervention was an increasingly popular philosophy amongst

(18:05):
ecologists and park managers. In the words of Howard Zoenheiser,
chief author of the Wilderness Act and Executive Secretary of
the Wilderness Society. With regard to areas of wilderness, we
should be guardians, not gardeners. Cole and Anderson also received
backing from one of the most prominent figures in their field,

(18:27):
a Starker Leopold. Leopold had not always favored this kind
of thinking. In nineteen sixty three, Leopold had written a
report for the federal government's Advisory Board on Wildlife Management
that had become the guiding document for the ecological management
of national parks. In it, Leopold had supported intervention as

(18:50):
long as it was used to simulate earlier, more natural conditions,
cutting down trees to clear historic viewpoints or using bulldozers
to recreate buffalo wallows, for example. But by the late sixties,
after coming under public criticism for certain park practices, including
the mass killing of elk which had begun to overrun Yellowstone,

(19:13):
Leopold had softened his views. He was also good friends
with Glenn Cole. The two went fishing in Yellowstone every year.
In nineteen sixty nine, after a meeting about bear management
at the park, Leopold, in his highly influential role as
head of the Natural Science's Advisory Committee presented a report

(19:33):
to the National Park Service in which he did not
take a position on whether fast or slow closure of
the dumps was better, essentially leaving the decision in Coal
and Anderson's hands. Leopold did, however, endorse the Craighead's ideas
about establishing elk bait stations in the back country and
continuing to track the bears, But Cole and Anderson did

(19:57):
not set up the bait stations, and they directed rangers
to remove any colored markings from the bears they captured.
Over the next three years, Cole and Anderson put their
dump closure plan into action. They put electric fences around
some dumps and covered others with dirt. The Craigheads vehemently

(20:19):
objected and raised their concerns publicly. Tensions between the brothers
and the park administration grew quickly. In nineteen seventy one,
Superintendent Andersen refused to renew their Grizzly study contract. To
underline his point, he bulldozed and burned the Craighead's lab
in the park. The Craigheads were heartbroken and furious. The bears, too,

(20:46):
did not seem happy with developments. More and more bears
were showing up at campgrounds to look for food. Rangers
tried to tranquilize and relocate these bears, but bears had
an uncanny knack for quickly making their way back to
where they'd been picked up. If a bear was an
habitual offender and refused to stay away, or if it

(21:07):
threatened visitors, rangers would kill it, But rangers couldn't be
everywhere at once. All it took was a second for
a bear to inflict fatal injuries on a human. As
encounters between bears and tourists increased, many feared that bears
would not be the only casualty of the new policy.

(21:28):
It was into this environment that Harry Walker, blissfully unaware
of anything to do with bears, arrived at Yellowstone in
the summer of nineteen seventy two. Harry Walker loved the farm,
but he also desperately wanted to get away from it.

(21:51):
Harry loved the farm's gently rolling fields, its lush grass
that people said produced the sweetest milk in Alabama Chocalaca Valley.
He loved working with animals, delivering calves, and riding his
horse Comanche. He loved his family. His father Wallace and
mother Louise, his three sisters, Betty, Carolyn, and Jenny. So

(22:16):
why did he want to leave? Well, to begin with,
there was the pressure. Twenty five year old Harry knew
that his father Wallace expected him to take over the
farm one day. That was fine with Harry, except that
before he settled down in Alabama, he wanted to see
a little of the world first. And then there was

(22:37):
the work. Running a farm is hard physical labor. When
Harry was fourteen, a horse had kicked his arm, breaking it.
The arm had pained him ever since. By early nineteen
seventy two, Harry could barely lift a glass of iced
tea without wincing from watching his father stoop and rub

(22:57):
his aching back. Harry knew that the physical challenges would
only continue. The work also didn't pay well. The money
the family made from its milk wasn't enough to pay
Harry a full time salary, so he had to take
on part time jobs too, at a pipe foundry, in
a pool hall, at a construction site in the summer.

(23:21):
Harry sometimes worked twenty two hours a day, and that
was on top of his service with the National Guard.
Because National guardsmen did not serve abroad at this time,
Joining the National Guard meant that you could avoid being
sent to Vietnam. The local Guard commander, knowing how much
Wallace needed Harry at home, had recruited Harry in nineteen

(23:42):
sixty seven. Harry had a complicated relationship with the Guard.
He excelled in his first years, winning awards for his sharpshooting,
but he grew increasingly frustrated with what he saw as
the Guard's arbitrary rules and regulations. He clashed with a
new commander in the summer of nineteen seventy one over
a rule requiring short hair. By nineteen seventy two, Harry

(24:07):
had reached a breaking point. He started spending more time
at a friend's house, which had become a sort of
hippie magnet, drawing in care free kids traveling across the country.
He stopped showing up at National Guard assemblies and was
declared absent without official leave. He told his father Wallace,
that he was thinking about taking a vacation. Wallace supported

(24:30):
the vacation idea he knew how hard Harry was working.
He told his son to enjoy some time off and
promised that he would secure a bank loan so that
he could begin paying Harry a full time salary. On
June sixth, Harry hopped in a gray Buick along with
four other young adults, including his high school classmate Philip Bradbury.

(24:54):
He hadn't told his mother, Louise that he was leaving
because he knew she'd try to stop him. The group
stayed overnight in Louisville with Harry's older sister, Carolyn and
her husband. Then they drove north with no real plan.
For the next few weeks, the group bounced across the
Northeast and Midwest, staying with friends. Eventually they headed to Colorado.

(25:18):
At a campground outside Aspen, they met a girl who
told them that they'd just had to see Yellowstone, the
most beautiful place on Earth. Philip and Harry were sold.
Harry called his father and asked Wallace to mail his
camping gear to Cheyenne, Wyoming. He told his father that
he was as happy as he'd ever been and that

(25:40):
he wished Wallace could someday see the beautiful Rocky Mountains.
Philip and Harry split up from the rest of their
group in Boulder and hitchhiked the rest of the way
to Cheyenne. Once there, Harry picked up his camping gear
and called his father once more. Wallace told him that
the bank loan had come through. That great Daddy, Harry

(26:01):
said they would never speak again. Three days later, on
June twenty second, Harry was standing by the side of
the road in Livingston, Montana, with his thumb stuck out.
Pretty brunette eighteen year old Vicky Schlicht pulled over. Harry
said he was hoping for a ride to a nearby
campground to pick up Philip. Vicky said she could do that,

(26:23):
and that she could also drive them into Yellowstone after
where she was working for the summer at the Old
Faithful Inn. The trio spent much of the next two
and a half days together. Harry and Vicki hid it off.
She liked his long eyelashes, his shaggy, light brown hair,
his kindness, the way he really listened to her. He

(26:44):
talked about the farm, how he wanted to take her
there and introduce her to his family and to his
beloved horse, Comanche. They were cautiously but willingly imagining a
future together that that future would never come. Shortly before
one a m on June twenty fifth, not long after

(27:07):
the pair had their first kiss, a grizzly bear killed Harry.
The Walker family was devastated by Harry's death. Wallace used
the money he'd secured from the bank loan to ship
Harry's body home from Yellowstone. The family's loss was twofold.
They'd lost their precious son, and they'd lost a future too.

(27:32):
Wallace and Louise had counted on Harry taking over the farm.
They had counted on his labor to help support the family.
In the swipe of a paw, these dreams were gone.
A month after Harry's funeral, Louise Walker picked up the
ringing telephone. On the other end was a woman named

(27:53):
Martha Shell. Martha Shell was a fifty seven year old
housewife from Kansas City, Missouri. She and her husband spent
part of the year at their cabin in Colorado and
took frequent excursions to Yellowstone, where they loved to watch wildlife,
especially bears. But in the late nineteen sixties they'd notice
that the bear population seemed to be dropping. The Shells

(28:16):
weren't the only ones to notice this decline. Visitors to
Yellowstone were writing complaint letters to the park Service saying
that they weren't seeing any of the park's fabled bears.
Once Martha Shell learned that the Park Service was killing
bears who did not stay away from humans, she was
certain that this was the cause of the problem. She

(28:36):
began advocating for policy changes at Yellowstone and eventually connected
with John and Frank Craighead. When Martha heard about Harry
Walker's death, she was certain that Glenn Cole and Jack
Anderson's bear policy was to blame. The abrupted dumb closures
and the subsequent loss of food she and the Craigheads

(28:58):
believed had made bears desperate and reckless. On the phone
to Louise Walker, Martha Shell explained that the Park Service
was blaming her son for his death. This was true.
The Park Service had released statements claiming that Harry and
Philip's choice to leave food out in their campsite and
to camp illegally were the reasons Harry had died. Martha

(29:22):
also told Louise that her son was not the first
casualty of the Park Service's mismanagement of bears. In nineteen
sixty seven, two young women, Michelle Coons and Julie Helgeson,
were killed in separate attacks on the same night in
Glacier National Park in Montana. The Park Service had blamed

(29:42):
coons and helgeson for their fates, too, saying that the
women were menstruating attracting bears. But investigative journalist Jack Olsen
had discovered that before the attacks, there had been numerous
incidents with grizzlies at the park, especially in areas where
humans were feeding bear. Olsen's book about the incident, Knight

(30:03):
of the Grizzlies, received national attention upon its publication in
nineteen sixty nine. Martha Shell told Louise Walker that she
was going to send her Olsen's book. After all. The
Walkers had read the book and been horrified by what
they learned. They asked Shelle what to do. Sue, she said,

(30:25):
sue the Park service for the wrongful death of your son.
When Louise said she wouldn't even know how to find
an attorney, Martha told her not to worry about it.
She had an attorney in mind. His name was Steven Zetterberg,
Martha said, and he was an expert in national park cases.

(30:51):
Thirty years earlier, there had been no such thing as
a national parks case. That was because before nineteen forty six,
private citizens could not sue the federal government. The only
avenue for compensation if you suffered loss or harm due
to a federal employee's actions was getting Congress to pass

(31:11):
a private relief bill. But in nineteen forty six, motivated
by public pressure, the Federal Tort Claims Act was enacted,
allowing private citizens to sue the federal government. Two years later,
the law had its first application to a bear incident.
In nineteen forty eight, twenty three year old William Claypool

(31:31):
sued the National Park Service after a grizzly seriously injured
him in a campsite near Old Faithful. The night before
Claypool and his family had arrived in Yellowstone, a grizzly
bear had injured several people at the same campground, but
rangers told the Claypools that the site was safe. A
judge ruled that the Park Service employees had failed to

(31:52):
adequately warn Claypool of the danger opposed by bears, and
awarded him five thousand dollars. Over the next twelve years,
the claims against the Park Service for bear injuries would
total nearly a million dollars. Stephen Zetterberg, a tall Lean
lawyer in his late fifties, with curly gray hair and

(32:14):
an affinity for underdogs, took on his first National Parks
case in nineteen sixty four. Four years earlier, then ten
year old Smitty Parrot had been mauled by a grizzly
bear in Glacier National Park. Smitty had lost an eye
and a lung and endured years of reconstructive surgeries and
physical rehabilitation. His medical bills had nearly bankrupted his family.

(32:39):
Zetterberg filed a demand letter asking for three hundred and
twenty nine thousand dollars arguing that Glacier Rangers should have
closed the trail Smitty was mauled on after a bear
attack on the same trail ten days earlier. The case
was assigned to Assistant United States Attorney William Spivac and
was eventually settled out of court for one hundred thousand

(33:01):
dollars close to a million dollars today. Zetterberg faced speedback
again later that year, filing suit on behalf of a
boy named Mark Vaughn, who had fallen into an improperly
marked thermal pool in Yellowstone and suffered horrific burns. Again,
the case settled out of court this time for fifty

(33:21):
six thousand dollars. Zetterberg and Speedback, a methodical man in
his mid thirties, would be facing off again in the
Walker case, but this time they were going to trial.
They would be arguing their case in the United States
District Court in Los Angeles. You might be wondering why

(33:41):
was the death of an Alabama man in Wyoming being
argued in Los Angeles. This was due to some complicated
legal maneuvering on Stephen Zetterberg's part. After speaking to the
Walkers in nineteen seventy two, Zetterberg had agreed to take
their case, but he could only practice law in Calais.
To get the case moved to California, he appointed one

(34:04):
of his associates, Dennis Martin, as administrator of Harry Walker's estate.
Dennis Martin then submitted documents saying, in essence, the estate
plans to sue the government. If we win, the winnings
will go to the estate. Because I, the administrator of
the state am in California, the case should be decided here.

(34:25):
Jordan Fisher Smith describes this logic as quote a mobius
strip a snake eating its own tail. But it worked.
Martin's role in administering the estate is why this case
is called Martin v. United States. As with the Parrot
and Vaughan cases, Zetterberg was using the Federal Torts Claim

(34:45):
Act to try to get compensation for his clients. In
his suit, he explained how he believed the actions of
federal employees had caused Walker's death. The open garbage operations
were closed, the suit charge, and the bears, which hitherto
had congregated there were forced to seek other food sources.

(35:06):
Not being able to support themselves on their natural fodder
and being used to scraps from the tables of humans,
Grizzly bears increasingly invaded visitors campsites. The closure of the
dumps was negligent, and that defendant knew or should have known,
that it would substantially increase the number of grizzly bear
attacks on visitors. Defendants' activities constituted an ultra hazardous activity.

(35:33):
On January ninth, nineteen seventy five, Steven Zetterberg, accompanied by
Wallace Walker, arrived at Judge Andrew Hawk's courtroom to begin
the trial. There would be no jury for this trial,
only a judge. The Walkers, Wallace Louise and their youngest daughter, Jenny,
had flown to Los Angeles for the trial, their first

(35:54):
time on an airplane. Zetterberg's wife had taken Louise and
Jenny sightseeing, but Wallace wanted to be in the courtroom.
Shortly after proceedings began, though Zetterberg asked Wallace to leave.
He was submitting Harry's autopsy into evidence and didn't want
the grieving father to have to hear the details. Zetterberg

(36:16):
had a specific reason for admitting the autopsy. He wanted
to point out that though Harry had been torn apart,
there were no puncture marks indicative of large canine teeth,
which you would usually see with a bear attack. The
day after Harry's death, Yellowstone Rangers had set up a
number of cage traps around the campsite. One of these

(36:38):
cages caught a female grizzly Rangers using the small numbered
metal tag in her ear. The only form of grizzly
tracking at this point, identified the bear as number seventeen
ninety two, twenty two years old, elderly in grizzly terms,
seventeen ninety two's canine teeth were worn down to stumps,

(37:02):
rangers shot the bear, and a necropsy uncovered human hair
in her digestive track and on her claws. Identifying Bear
seventeen ninety two as Harry's killer was important for Zetterberg's
case because it was, in his view, another example of
mismanagement by the park. Bear seventeen ninety two had first

(37:22):
been identified in October nineteen seventy, when she had repeatedly
been found scavenging behind a cafe near Old Faithful. Rangers
had trapped and tranquilized her, and then transported her via
helicopter into the back country. This was standard practice for
bears who were found by human food, but according to
Frank Craighead in his testimony in the trial, this was

(37:46):
not a sustainable method of relocating grizzlies his research had found.
He explained on the stand that grizzlies would almost always
return to the spot from which they had been captured.
Frank Craighead had quite a bit more to say about
Yellowstone's management. He laid out for Judge Hawk how he
and his brother had raised their concerns about the abrupt

(38:07):
closure of the dumps, but the park, he said, had
not been receptive. Even more than that craig had claimed,
the park's management had warned the brothers to keep quiet
about potential risks. In August nineteen sixty eight, Glacier National
Park released a report into the deaths of Michelle Coon's
and Julie Helgeson. This report claimed that the bears may

(38:31):
have been attracted to the victim's menstrual blood and their
perfumed cosmetics. I'll note here that later studies have shown
that there is no correlation between menstruation and bear attacks,
but at the time it was both a commonly believed
myth and a helpful way for the park service to
divert blame for the deaths. Glen Cole, Yellowstone's chief biologist,

(38:53):
admitted to Frank Craighead per Craighead's testimony, that the Glacier
report was quote whitewash. Nevertheless, Cole told Craighead that he
and his brother needed to publicly back the report's finding.
If they didn't, Cole threatened the Craigheads would be kicked
out of Yellowstone. This story hinted at doubts over the

(39:15):
park's policy within Glen Cole himself, but he was only
willing to admit this doubt in private. In public, he
presented the policy of dumb closure as a total success.
In December nineteen seventy one, Glen Cole had announced at
a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of

(39:36):
Science that no human being had been injured by a
grizzly that year in Yellowstone. This Cole said was proof
that their bear management program was working. Speback submitted the
zero injury record at trial to show that the Park
Service did not need to warn visitors, including Harry Walker,

(39:56):
of unusual danger from bears, but argued that only considering
injuries resulted in an incomplete image of the bear situation.
To prove his point, he asked Frank Craighead to analyze
Yellowstone's bear logs from nineteen sixty six to nineteen seventy one.
These were ledgers maintained by rangers in each district of

(40:18):
the park which recorded bear incidents. The term incident includes
many kinds of bear activity, from property damage to threatening behavior, relocations,
and injuries. The bear management logs showed the scope of
bear activity in Yellowstone. There may have been no injuries
by grizzlies in nineteen seventy one but that did not

(40:41):
mean that there were no grizzly encounters. Craighead showed Judge
Hawk that rangers in the district closest to one of
the closed dumps had logged one hundred and one incidents
in nineteen seventy one, and that was only in one district.
In the two years preceding the closure of the DYEP
nineteen sixty six and nineteen sixty seven, the district had

(41:04):
logged an average of only twenty one incidents a year.
Despite Cole and Anderson's public proclamations of success, bear incidents
in the park had only risen in recent years. The
more grizzlies that came into contact with humans, the greater
the chance of an injury or killing. But the government
claimed that it wasn't policy that had caused Harry Walker's death,

(41:28):
it was Harry Walker. In a deposition, Glenn Cole stated
that improperly stored food and an illegally established campsite attracted
the bear, and that the bear was apparently defending this
food when it attacked. The government called on Canadian grizzly
biologist Andrew Pearson to support this point about Walker's responsibility

(41:50):
to store his food safely wherever grizzlies occur. Pierson testified
it is essential that precautions be taken by campers and
developers to keep garbage and other potential bear foods inaccessible,
because the presence of such an alternative food source may
predispose a bear, through no fault of its own, to
an encounter with a human. Food safety wasn't the only

(42:13):
area where the government believed that Harry Walker had been negligent.
William Spivack argued that the park would have warned Harry
Walker about the danger of bears if he had properly
engaged with park authorities during his visit instead of visiting
a ranger station and getting a camping permit. When they
arrived at the park, Harry and Philip had camped illegally,

(42:34):
and when Vicki Schlicht had driven Harry and Philip into Yellowstone,
the park ranger at the entrance gate had seen the
employee sticker on her car, assuming that Harry and Philip
were also employees, he hadn't given the young men the
standard lecture about the dangers of bears in geothermal pools,
nor the accompanying brochures. Steven Zetterberg argued that even if

(42:56):
Harry had received these warnings, they wouldn't be enough. The
Park Service's message in these communications, Zetterberg said, had more
to do with leaving bears alone, not feeding them or
harassing them. It said nothing about the fact that a
bear might attack you unprovoked, and unlike at other parks,
including Glacier, there were no signs in high traffic grizzly

(43:19):
areas at Yellowstone to warn visitors of increased risk. Even
though the government was arguing that the dump closure policy
had nothing to do with Harry's death, several witnesses still
made a point of defending the policy. Glen Cole said
that the grizzlies visited the area around Old Faithful to
quote prey upon the elk population that also frequents the area,

(43:42):
implying that bears would be in the area even without
the dump closures. Also testifying in defense of the policy
was Starker Leopold, one of the highest profile, most powerful
figures in wildlife ecology. Leopold testified that the danger to
humans was greatest when the dumps first closed, but that
over time the risk decreased because quote, young bears were

(44:06):
not learning to eat garbage. Leopold believed that this theory
had been proven right, given that there had been no
bear injuries in nineteen seventy one, although he had not
seen the bear incident logs. On cross examination, Zetterberg pushed
Leopold for his true feelings about bear management. He asked
Leopold if bears could really be weaned from garbage. Quickly,

(44:30):
Leopold said they could. Looking down at a piece of paper,
Zeterberg read aloud quote, bears conditioned by years of human
handouts can hardly be expected to abandon their old handouts
on command. Now, He asked Leopold, would you agree with
that statement? Leopold admitted that he did agree. He had

(44:51):
to because he was the one who had written that
statement two years earlier. Zetterberg also got Leopold to admit
that he had disagreed with some of the Cole and
Anderson's other decisions. Leopold had recommended, in accordance with the Craigheads,
that backcountry bait station should be set up. Colan Anderson
had not done so. Leopold had also recommended that monitoring

(45:14):
of bears, including radio callers, should continue after the dumb closures.
Col and Anderson had ended all radio tracking and removed
visible markings from bears so that, in Zetterberg's words, bears
would look spruced up for the centennial. Is that worth
the price of bad figures and bad results in terms
of record keeping? Zetterberg asked Judge Hawk had a similar

(45:38):
question about Cole and Anderson's cost benefit analysis. He asked
Frank Craighead how much one of the radio callers cost
about three thousand dollars per animal. Craig had said, whatever
the cost, Hawk replied, I suspect that radio collaring grizzlies
might be considerably cheaper than paying off bereaved families of

(46:00):
bear attack victims. In court, Hawks certainly seemed sympathetic to
Zetterberg's case. Frank Craighead's testimony, as well as emotional testimony
by Harry's sister Jenny, who explained how she now planned
to forego college in order to help her parents keep
the farm running, made for a compelling narrative. But William

(46:23):
Spovac still had a few legal tricks up his sleeve,
and he planned to deploy his strongest points during closing arguments,
which began on February twenty fourth, nineteen seventy five, Stephen
Zetterberg presented his closing. First, he spoke about Harry's hard working,
friendly nature and about how much Harry's family missed him.

(46:44):
He talked about all the times that the part could
have warned visitors about the increased danger from grizzlies, about
how there were no signs discussing the danger, no literature
on it, only warnings not to feed bears from their cars.
The point is, this said, the government was taking a
risk by closing the dumps and sending bears hungry into

(47:05):
the park. That risky decision had killed Harry Walker. It
had devastated the Walker family, and unless the park changed course,
they might not be the last family to suffer in
this way. I hope your Honor will send a message
to the Interior Department via a substantial award, Zetterberg concluded,

(47:28):
so that this kind of thing will never happen again.
William Spivack had a message of his own to send,
but his was for future campers. If you obey the rules,
Spevack argued, you will be safer. If Harry and Philip
had gone into a ranger's office and gotten a camping permit,

(47:48):
like they were supposed to. They would have been advised
by a ranger to hang their food in a tree,
not stored on the ground of their campsite like they had.
There is a brand new visitors center open at Old
Faithful if Harry and Philip wanted to be informed responsible visitors,
Spevac said they could have gone in at any time.

(48:09):
Spevac had a theory for why they hadn't. Before Harry
had left Alabama, he had been marked absent without official
leave a wall by the National Guard. At the time
a wall, guardsmen who were located were sent to the
regular Army, and this might mean being shipped to Vietnam.

(48:30):
Harry Walker wasn't a young man on one last vacation
before he settled down. Spevac said he was a man
on the run from military service. He had avoided the
park rangers in Spevak's portrayal because he was afraid of
getting caught. Spevac had one last argument to make. The

(48:50):
nineteen forty six Federal Torque Claims Act had a discretionary
function exception. This exception, broadly speaking, states that the government
is not liable for policy related actions that government employees
choose to take If this seems confusing and vague to you,

(49:11):
I agree. Courts have long debated over how to define
this exception, but generally, as long as a federal employee's
action was an exercise of their own judgment and was
not mandated by a federal statute, policy, or regulation, it
is seen to be discretionary. In this case, Spevac argued

(49:33):
the decision to close the dumps was a discretionary function
of the Park Service and thus exempt from liability. It
would be up to Judge Hawk to determine if the
dump closure decision was indeed exempt. He didn't make the
lawyers wait. Shortly after closing arguments concluded, Judge Hawk said,

(49:54):
I will never know any more about this case than
I do right now. I am ready to rule. In
the case of Martin v. United States, Judge Andrew Hawk
had found that in the wrongful death of Harry Eugene Walker,
the National Park Service was responsible. Judge Hawk's ruling was

(50:22):
not just a victory for the Walkers, it was also
a victory for the Craigheads. Hawk had agreed with all
of their findings, stating that the park had been warned
about the dangers of abruptly closing the dumps, but had
not adequately notified visitors of these dangers. Yellowstone officials had
also failed to take precautions, such as establishing backcountry base

(50:44):
stations or monitoring the bear population with radio callers. After
his ruling, Judge Hawk awarded the Walker family eighty seven thousand,
four hundred and seventeen dollars and sixty seven cents, equivalent
to about half a million dollars today, an amount meant
to encompass the life value of Harry's work on the farm,

(51:05):
the loss of Harry's companionship, and his burial expenses, but
the Walkers would never receive this money. The government appealed
the decision, and in December nineteen seventy six, an appellate
court reversed Judge Hawk's decision. This court ruled that Speback's
argument that the decision to close the dumps was a

(51:25):
discretionary function immune from liability was correct. Further, they found
that Harry had contributed to his own death. This appeals
case was determined using Wyoming law, not California law as
in the first case, and under Wyoming law, anyone who
contributed at all to their own injury or death could

(51:47):
not collect money. Stephen Zetterberg tried to appeal the case
to the Supreme Court, but in nineteen seventy seven, the
court declined to hear the case. Knowing that the money
was crucial for the Walker to keep their farm running,
Zetterberg lobbied for a relief bill in which the government
would directly grant the walker's money. Alabama Senator John Sparkman

(52:10):
introduced the relief bill. It should have been an uncontroversial
bill that passed easily, but a former Yellowstone ranger named
Jerry Tayes, who now worked for the Park Services Legislative Office,
thought that the bill was wrong. Tays believed that Harry,
not the Park, was the one responsible for his death.

(52:31):
Tays raised his concerns to Wyoming Senator Malcolm Wallop. Wallops
strongly opposed the bill, seeing it to be an unjust
government handout, and raised objections to it. Junior Alabama Senator
James Allen planned to defend the bill on the Senate
floor in the summer of nineteen seventy eight, but the
day before the debate, he died of a heart attack.

(52:54):
The bill never passed. Without the money, the Walkers could
not afford to maintain their farm, they sold off the
land acre by acre until by nineteen seventy seven, as
Jenny Walker told the Aniston Star newspaper quote, there was
nothing else to sell. The loss wasn't only financial. Wallace

(53:15):
Walker told the Star that after Harry's death, the joy
had gone out of farming for him. He helped so much.
Wallace said, it was the kind of help only a
sun could give. With both of us working, it wasn't
bad at all. It was fun then, but now it's murder.

(53:37):
As the Walkers struggled to keep their heads above water,
the Park Service continued to struggle with bears. Shortly after
the Walker verdict, in July nineteen seventy five, grizzly bears
were named as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act,
granting them new protections. The Forest Service brought John and
Frank Craig Head in to help with grizzly management and

(54:00):
agan work on a project to map grizzly habitats in Montana.
At the same time, public criticism of the Park Services
bear management was growing. Harry Walker's death and the subsequent
trial helped raise awareness of the issue, as did Jack
Olsen's book on the Glacier deaths, as well as horrifying

(54:20):
photographs of a mass grave of black bears killed by
rangers at Yosemite. Starter Leopold sent a graduate student of
his named David Graeber to help with the bear situation
at Yosemite, and Graber would soon make a simple intervention
that changed everything. Graber developed a bear proof food storage box.

(54:43):
The first boxes were installed in nineteen seventy seven in
Yosemite and are now common at campsites across the country.
With easy access to food, shut off, bears stopped frequenting campgrounds.
The combination of improved bear monitoring and a sustained solution
to keeping bears away from popular human areas meant good

(55:04):
things for human safety. Bear injuries and deaths still occur,
though rarely in the national parks, but very few of
these deaths occur due to bears seeking out human food.
These changes were also good for grizzlies, though grizzly populations
continued to decline through the nineteen seventies and eighties, reaching

(55:28):
a low of an estimated ninety nine bears in the
Greater Yellowstone ecosystem in nineteen ninety. Their populations have rebounded.
As of twenty twenty two, the ecosystem is home to
an estimated nine hundred and sixty five grizzlies. Back in Alabama,
the Walker daughters rallied around their parents. All three girls

(55:52):
and their families got houses nearby, and eventually Jenny and
her husband bought the farm, moving into a mobile home
next to the farmhouse so that Wallace and Louise could
stay put. Wallace Walker died in September two thousand and four.
Louise followed him less than a month later. Today, thanks

(56:12):
to the intervention of conservationists, much of the farm makes
up part of the Chocalaca Creek Watershed Alliance, a protected
wildlife refuge. One of the conservationists involved in the creation
of the alliance was Harry's niece, Renee Simmons Rainey, an
environmental educator whose career path was inspired by Harry's life

(56:35):
and death. In twenty sixteen, she spoke about her memories
of Harry to the Anniston Star quote, I'm standing hand
in hand with Harry and walking around the farm as
he identified animal tracks and talked to me about the
hawks and what they were doing. He was always paying
attention to the habitat. If there's a lesson from Harry

(56:58):
Walker's story, says Geordan Fisher Smith, it's to be like
Harry to always pay attention to our habitats. Everybody's personal
story exists in a biological context, Smith says, and nature
and its fate is connected to our fates. That's the

(57:19):
story of Martin v. United States. Stay with me after
the Break to hear about lawyer Stephen Zetterberg's battle with
one of America's most infamous politicians. In nineteen forty eight,
thirty two year old Stephen Zetterberg was very worried. There

(57:42):
were only six weeks left in the primary for California's
twelfth congressional district, and there was no Democratic candidate on
the ballot. If no one stepped up, the seat's incumbent,
a Republican, would cruise to reelection. Zetterberg didn't want that
to happen. This incumbent had showed, in Zetterberg's mind a

(58:03):
concerning willingness to align himself with the tyrannical anti communist
House on American Activities Committee. Zetterberg asked the seat's former occupant,
a Democrat, to try to run again when this man declined,
Zetterberg decided he'd just have to do it himself and
declared his candidacy. Zetterberg was new to campaigning. He threw

(58:27):
square dances to drum up support. His opponent, a seasoned pro,
took a more aggressive approach. In California, at the time,
candidates could cross file or register under both parties for
primary elections. Zetterberg's opponent did just that, listing himself as
both a Democrat and a Republican and sending mailers that

(58:50):
described himself as a Democrat to Democratic voters despite his
true Republican affiliation. As a result, he won both the
Republican and Democratic primaries that spring, guaranteeing him reelection in
the fall. Two years later, this representative ran for the
Senate and employed the same cross filing strategy that he'd

(59:13):
perfected against Zetterberg. This time people took notice. Democrats coined
a nickname for this man, Tricky Dick. But Tricky Dick
wasn't one to be dragged down by name calling. He
won the election, and that was only the start. The
man star kept rising, and in nineteen sixty eight he

(59:35):
was elected President of the United States. Stephen Zetterberg's primary opponent,
as you may have guessed by now, was none other
than Richard Nixon. Thank you for listening to History on Trial.
My main sources for this episode were Jordan Fisher Smith's
book Engineering Eden, The True Story of a violent Death,

(59:57):
a Trial, and the Fight over Controlling Nature, as well
as coverage of the story by Harry Walker's hometown newspaper,
The Aniston Star. For a full bibliography, as well as
a transcript of this episode with citations, please visit our
website History on Trial podcast dot com. History on Trial

(01:00:18):
is written and hosted by me Mira Hayward. The show
is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer
Trevor Young and executive producers Dana Schwartz, Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick,
and Mira Hayward. Learn more about the show at History
on Trial podcast dot com and follow us on Instagram

(01:00:39):
at History on Trial and on Twitter at Underscore History
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