****30 YEARS AGO TODAY****
Dave Lovely was last heard from by his family on August 5, 1985. He was 19.
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To his family: your lost Dave is a terrible blow, but I know you're thankful for the short time you had him with you. Won't you interact with us some more?....because I think you have some important knowledge you may not consider relevant.
I have a little bit of insight to the area around Rock Springs and a bit more contacts with Biker Culture, which to me seems pivotal in this case, I offer what I have concluded below:
The biker world is the KEY to this mystery.
Rock Springs was featured on the likes of 60 Minutes and A&E for it’s terrible crime and corruption. Drugs and organized crime ruled the town and Sweetwater County, supported by corrupt police. Of course no one moving coast-to-coast would really be expected to know this about such a small town in a bleak Wyoming desert, but having a breakdown in the area is similar to getting stranded in the Bronx or hitchhiking in Bedford-Stuy. Trouble is about a 50/50 chance for strangers here, and the place attracted all types of criminals, but it especially attracted the mobile type who hid in plain sight roaming the interstates – bad bikers and bad truckers.
I trust Dave’s first impression. We all know within a minute or so of meeting someone whether they are a friend or enemy, whether they are here to help or hurt. When Dave tells his aunt he's afraid of the guy who fixes his bike, this obviously is the beginning of the tragedy. There is a reason to be afraid of the man who fixes his bike, who is apparently another biker himself. I wish Dave would have trusted his first impression because I think things might have turned out a lot differently. Very often a kind personality is too easy in thinking others are also kind. When the couple camping around Baxter Road sees a long-haired rider on a big fancy chrome bike coming from the area where they would shortly find Dave’s Yamaha, it’s clear this whole case starts and ends with the motorcycles and bikers.
Somehow, a man on a motorcycle convinced Dave to ride way way the heck out of his way, well off the interstate - to a draw off Baxter Road. It seems this person is either the man who fixes Dave’s bike or a “colleague.” I know many bikers, my brother is a hardcore biker. There are two basic types who ride the big bikes: dentists who like to act bad on the weekends on the one hand and hard-core criminals living off the grid and under the radar on the other hand. The bad kind is always on the move, but they usually have something of a home base. In the 1980s, Rock Springs is the home base for many bikers all over the mountain west who are making a living off crime because the policing is bought off. I feel certain Dave drove himself out to the Baxter Road area. Why? Because the camping couple saw only a SINGLE biker leave and absent a truck (with helpers) the only way Dave’s bike gets out to Baxter Road is if he rides it himself.
What makes Dave go out there in the middle of nowhere? The offer of money, a free place to stay, a fixed motorcycle or some other reward might work. Alternatively, perhaps the bad biker used a variation of “help me look for my lost puppy” and played on Dave’s sense of gratitude for getting a repaired bike. In other words maybe the criminal said, “Since I helped you, would you mind helping me with this one little thing, its back here a ways….”
If I currently lived in Rock Springs, the place where Dave’s bike is found would probably be noticeable to me as popular biker route. But I can’t say for sure. Bikers very often establish long, hilly, curving remote routes where they can cruise, speed and stop off to do things without attracting attention…and these routes are widely known in every local biker community. I am confident where Dave’s bike was found is on or near a regular bike route. The road where the Yamaha is found and where the campers are is not a random place a random drive-by biker from far away accidentally discovers. Dave is brought to this place by someone local, or at least with local knowledge, and this person very much knows the countryside.
It doesn’t matter much to finding the criminal how things ended up this way, but once he got Dave to the remote location, something happened which left Dave dead - I'm certain. I feel it was a deliberate set up. $140 is worth $300 today and if Dave was carrying that much, this alone might be worth killing for. Bikers are not generally the type to fit the common characteristics of child sexual molesters, but since David is really a young adult it is also possible sexual violence is at play here. I kind of doubt it, though. It is also possible, this was in some ways an accident and that Dave was “only” a robbery victim, but a victim who died unintentionally through accident or the infliction of force not intended to be deadly. Finally, it is possible that it was a total accident – in this case Dave voluntarily goes out to the desert, perhaps to camp for the night with a true Good Samaritan, and then injures himself beyond recovery. If this is about money, it takes a very bad mindset to kill someone, when you can just mug them. But killing them leaves no witnesses – except for the campers who saw the man on the big fancy bike leave the area. Bikers are not the type to stay around and expain things to the cops, even if they are legitimately innocent of all wrongdoing.
I really think that besides the overall biker world here, the other big point is to understand everything the two campers can say. Can we get in touch with them?
Really, in every scenario here, there is some level of deception and foul play. At minimum someone let Dave die without helping him or alerting others. I'm confident Dave's final resting place is close to his bike. He drove his bike there, then died there. The man who took him there, and was seen driving back out is the man with the answers. He is probably the one who fixed the bike. I don’t think there is any way Dave goes off the interstate so far, unless he was led there. The person who led him there, almost certainly the long haired gent on the big bike, holds the big answer we’re looking for.
…The key to this is bikers. The chrome bike, long haired guy. Alternatively, the greater biker community is plausibly aware of Dave’s story and at least further details. Rumors may still be flying around that have some basis in truth. If there is a scary biker bar in Rock Springs, that's were to start.
I plan to visit both the truck stop and Baxter Road area when I’m next in Rock Springs. I’ll try to post here what I discover.
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