The Citation

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to cover today takes place in the vicinity of the Daniel Boone Wildlife Management Area, also known as the Daniel Boone Bear Management Area. This specific space is located in Pisgah National Forest in Burke County, North Carolina. And if that region rings a bell for you, it's likely because we've been to this general part of western North Carolina before. When I covered the 2014 murder of Forest Service law enforcement officer Jason Crisp and his canine partner, Maros. Their story was the central focus of a previous Park Predators episode titled, The Manhunt. The crime in today's episode happened 43 years earlier, but also involved the murder of a well-regarded wildlife officer. The victim, similar to Jason Crisp, was a veteran at his job, but worked for the state's conservation entity, NC Wildlife Resources Commission. The rural area he was killed in is about an hour's drive northwest of the city of Morganton, North Carolina. And it makes a lot of sense why the Wildlife Resources Commission actually named the Daniel Boone Refuge as a bear management area. Several tracts of land adjacent to it are also game lands. There are a lot of black bears in this part of the state. Same goes for various species of trout. Rainbow trout, brook trout, brown trout, they all flourish in mountain streams and lakes there. But harvesting them is strictly regulated to certain types of animals. And that was the case on Labor Day weekend back in September 1971, when a simple citation turned into a tragedy that became seared in North Carolina's history. This is Park Predators. On the afternoon of Sunday, September 5th, 1971, a teenager named Harold McCall was fishing along a body of water known as Upper Creek Falls in rural Burke County, North Carolina, when he realized the day was coming to an end. His father, 45-year-old Dewey McCall, had been fishing with him throughout that afternoon, but had gone back to where they'd parked their pickup truck. The source material isn't super clear on this next part, but I imagine after being on his own for a bit, Harold realized it was probably time to pack it in and meet up with his family. So, by 5 p.m., he made his way back to where they'd parked their pickup. But what he found there was shocking. Laying dead on the ground right beside the vehicle was his father. He was still wearing his wading boots and had a gunshot wound to his chest. Despite Harold's attempts to resuscitate him, nothing helped. Dewey was gone. Not too far away, lying next to a pool of blood, was a paper citation for a wildlife violation with the name Dallas Key, written on it. The ticket had been issued by Dewey a few hours earlier, and the specific violation was for two undersized trout. Of course, though, this Dallas Key person was nowhere in sight. It was just Harold and his dad. So, not long after making the discovery, Harold got some help, and eventually investigators with the Burke County Sheriff's Office became aware of the situation and launched a homicide investigation. The following morning, the then-sheriff told reporters some of the details about what had happened, and replied, that Dewey was dead. But thankfully, his deputies had a prime suspect in custody, 62-year-old Dallas Key. The sheriff explained that around 1 o'clock on Sunday afternoon, Dewey had stopped Dallas on a dirt road and discovered that he had two trout with him that were too small. So, he wrote Dallas a citation, and the two men went their separate ways. Dallas drove off and visited a nearby campground, and Dewey went fishing with his son. Campers hanging out at the campground, where Dallas went, told authorities that around 2 o'clock, they'd seen him show up and start talking about how he'd just been dinged for committing a wildlife violation. Then, for about 15 minutes or so, he played his harmonica for the campers, then left. According to the sheriff, around 3 o'clock, not long after leaving the campground, Dallas came across Dewey again. This time, the wildlife officer was next to his own pickup truck. A confrontation ensued between the men, and at some point, they both threw firearms at one another. Dallas pulled out a.32-caliber pistol, and Dewey armed himself with his.38-caliber handgun. Shots rang out, and Dewey, who'd been fatally wounded in his chest, hit the ground. Right afterwards, Dallas took off and went to see some relatives. According to the coverage, during the gunfight, he'd been grazed by a bullet on the right side of his forehead, and his relatives could see that when he showed up. So, they took him to an area hospital for treatment. Like Dewey, Dallas was a local resident. He was from the nearby community of Collettsville, which is about an hour southeast of the crime scene. After investigators identified him as their prime suspect, authorities went straight to the hospital where he was being treated and placed him under arrest. They couldn't formally charge him with the murder, though, until he was released from the hospital. But based on the evidence the sheriff's office had found at the crime scene, it was clear that Dallas was their man. Authorities had determined that he and Dewey had fired at least two shots at one another during their conversation, and that he was a suspect of the gunfight. It seems authorities figured this out after collecting both of the men's handguns as evidence and sent them off for testing. And it's not necessarily surprising that Dewey was armed while fishing with his son. You see, he'd been working as a wildlife officer for the state of North Carolina for 17 years, and this wasn't his first brush with death. According to the Hickory Daily Record, earlier in his career, Dewey had taken a nasty fall after a cliff gave way beneath him at nearby Harmon Den Wildlife Management Area. During that incident, his right arm had been severely injured, and he never regained use of it. Still, folks who knew him said that his physical disability never got in the way of him fulfilling his duties. And it didn't seem to deter him from passionately doing the work he loved. In the aftermath of his murder, people raised money to help provide for his widow, Amelia, and to fund the education of their three sons, 17-year-old Steve, 15-year-old Harold, and 7-year-old David. The fund was aptly named after Dewey, and one of the organizers, a Charlotte attorney and avid angler named Jack Mraz, told the Hickory Daily Record that Jack himself would bump into Dewey from time to time while fishing, and he told the newspaper that, in his opinion, Dewey seemed to enforce wildlife laws equally amongst all sportsmen. Jack said he was also very concerned about Dewey's health, and that he was very dedicated to his job, despite it not being the easiest profession for him, given the limited use of his right arm. Jack told the newspaper, Dewey was happy in what he was doing, but I've often heard him say that he wanted a better life for the boys. He later continued, He always tried, this state sportsman, we feel, to see that every hunter and fisherman who visited the Daniel Boone area enjoyed success and went away saying he had a good time. End quote. Members of a wildlife club in another western North Carolina, voted to support establishing an additional trust fund in Dewey's name. That money would go to his family, and came from sportsmen, hunters, or anglers who'd come to know Dewey well, or, for lack of a better phrase, were people who had deep pockets. Many folks in hunting clubs credited Dewey for improvements in the Daniel Boone Wildlife Management Area, specifically related to wild turkey restoration and trout fishing. Asheville Citizen Times reporter Larry Mayer explained that the then Assistant Director of the NC Wildlife Department referred to Dewey as one of the state's top game land managers, despite the fact that he didn't have a formal college education in wildlife management, biology, or the study of game. It was reportedly Dewey's natural knowledge of animals in the land that gave him an edge in his line of work. One of his co-workers told the Asheville Citizen Times, quote, He was one of the best trout and lake fishermen I ever saw. End quote. According to that same friend, Dewey had investigated previous cases, cases of illegal hunters operating at night, specifically in that region, but because he'd stayed on top of those cases, many of those activities had been eradicated. In the wake of his death, people throughout Burke County were saddened by his senseless murder. A collective desire to see justice served was definitely palpable, and it wouldn't take long to see that desire satisfied. According to coverage in the Hickory Daily Record, a few weeks after the crime, a grand jury formally indicted Dallas Key for Dewey's murder. The decision wasn't necessarily surprising, given the evidence law enforcement had against him. But something I thought was odd was that, reportedly, when the indictment came in, a copy of it had to be sent to sheriff's deputies in neighboring Caldwell County, who were then going to take Dallas into custody. Which, to me, implies that he wasn't in jail prior to that, I'm not sure where he was. Like I said earlier, the Burke County Sheriff's Office had told the press they couldn't formally serve Dallas with a murder warrant until he was released from the hospital. But it's unclear to me if Dallas was in the hospital the whole time, you know, like all the way up until he was indicted, or if he was actually discharged by doctors at some point, and then for whatever reason just not booked right away. It's strange, I know, but what I can say for sure is that by Friday, September 24th, so almost 19 days after the crime, he was finally indicted and taken into custody for Dewey's murder. However, he quickly posted a $25,000 bond and was free pending trial. His trial was originally scheduled to start in November 1971, but was later pushed to February of the following year. The delay seemed to be related to the fact that a judge had decided Dallas's jury should come from another county in North Carolina, further away from where the crime had occurred. So to accommodate that, jurors were selected from neighboring Cleveland County. which is directly south of Burke County. When testimony got underway the day after Valentine's Day 1972, some of the first witnesses to take the stand included Harold, Dewey's son who'd found his body, the medical examiner and pathologist who'd conducted Dewey's autopsy, and a deputy from Burke County Sheriff's Office. And it was that latter witness, the deputy, who Dallas's defense team really tore into. So much so, the Hickory Daily Record reported that attendees, in the courtroom, referred to the trial as the "most hotly contested legal battle to occur in a Burke County court in many years." Reason being, Dallas's defense attorneys picked apart nearly every single aspect of the state's case, including the evidence, what they claimed was law enforcement's mishandling of the scene, and whether a brief admission Dallas had made while in the hospital was even admissible. Crucial to the prosecution's case was Dewey's citation book. That was a physical piece of evidence which proved he'd written Dallas the Trout violation ticket on the day of the crime. However, the defense was able to raise some questions about that, as well as every other piece of physical evidence in the case. When the sheriff's deputy who'd seized the citation book was cross-examined by the defense, he had to admit that he'd never actually dusted the book for fingerprints, or looked for fingerprints on anything at the crime scene. His response when one of Dallas's defense attorneys asked him if Dewey's citation book was valid was, "Essentially, there wasn't anything to fingerprint." Which isn't true, because there was stuff that could have been examined for fingerprints. For example, there was the citation book, the two guns, clothing, who knows what else. Oh, and don't forget Dallas and Dewey's respective pickup trucks. Which, speaking of, turns out at some point in the investigation, law enforcement had discovered a hat with blood on it in the back of Dallas' truck. And at least one bullet hole in his vehicle, which a ballistics expert for the state testified, had come from Dewey's gun. But of course, the defense's rebuttal to these discoveries was to try and raise doubt. One of the attorneys pointed out that law enforcement had failed to take a blood sample from the hat, or test it to find out what the source of the blood was. And I think the implication there was, because Dallas was a sportsman who hunted and fished, it was important to know for sure if a bloody item, like a hat, being in the back of his truck could even be linked to the crime. And regarding the bullet hole in his truck, well, the defense had a bone to pick about that too. You see, one of Dallas' attorneys told the court that based on the state's own timeline and multiple eyewitnesses who'd testified that they'd seen Dallas on the afternoon of the murder, the earliest anyone could put him with his pickup was at 2:45 PM. And even then, those sightings were at least two miles from the crime scene. So I think the defense was trying to make the point of maybe someone else used Dallas' truck that day during the shooting and then gave it back to him. And to be fair, prosecutors couldn't say 100% that Dallas was the person who'd been operating the truck when it was shot through. It was a circumstantial point in the state's case for sure. And there was also something else kind of murky that the defense argued was problematic. It pertained to a brief comment that Dallas had made to a Caldwell County Sheriff's Office captain while he was recovering in the hospital. According to an article in the Hickory Daily Record, the captain testified that Dallas had told him, "I had a run-in with a game warden. He went for his gun and that's all I remember." Which on its face is a statement that I'm sure wasn't a great look for Dallas. However, at trial, his attorneys argued that the captain questioning him and eliciting that statement may have violated his constitutional rights. But the defense lost that argument when the judge overruled them. By the end of the third day of trial, the prosecution had rested its case and it was the defense's turn to present its side of things. And in an uncommon move, the one person whom everyone had wanted to hear from took the witness stand. Testifying in his own defense, Dallas Key told jurors that on the afternoon of September 5th, 1971, he'd shot Dewey McCall in an act of self-defense. He testified, "I thought it was either him or me." The 62-year-old sportsman's full testimony isn't chronicled in the available news coverage, and I wasn't able to retrieve a transcript of his trial since it happened so long ago. But the overarching point he was making was crystal clear. He'd believed it was either going to be his life or Dewey's. So he'd shot the wildlife officer to prove that he had shot Dewey. However, I saw at least one article that stated prosecutors suspected the bullet wound to Dallas' forehead was actually self-inflicted. Meaning they suspected he'd injured himself on purpose to perhaps make it look like Dewey had tried to kill him. There's conflicting news coverage about this detail, though. For example, articles from closer to the time of the crime state that law enforcement thought Dallas' head wound had actually been caused by Dewey's gun. So I'm not sure what the deal is. But regardless, what exactly prompted the men's violent interaction that day, other than the fact that Dallas had received that trout possession citation and might have been frustrated by that, is information I just don't have. However, given my knowledge from covering other cases similar to this, I imagine it might have had something to do with the men not seeing fishing regulations in the same way. That seems to be a common theme in similar cases I've looked into. It appears there's a higher risk of clashes, often violent ones, between officers who are charged with protecting natural resources and land and folks who push back against regulations. Anyway, right before Dallas' case went to jurors for deliberation on the afternoon of Saturday, February 19th, the presiding judge told the court that despite there being sufficient evidence of first-degree murder, he'd instruct jurors to only find the 62-year-old guilty of second-degree murder, guilty of first-degree murder, or not guilty. After that, the jury returned with their verdict: guilty of second-degree murder. And Dallas was subsequently sentenced to 10 to 18 years in prison. He immediately appealed his sentence and, while awaiting what would happen next, posted a $25,000 bond and was released from jail that very same day. He remained out on bond for a few months until he and his attorneys decided to drop his appeal. It wasn't until late June 1972 that he finally reported to prison to begin serving his time. In the meantime, hundreds of dollars in donations came into the funds that had been set up to support Dewey's wife and sons. In the years that followed, numerous memorials in North Carolina were dedicated in Dewey's honor. For example, in August 1980, nearly a decade after the murder, a bronze plaque was placed on a granite boulder near Upper Creek Falls, not far from where Dewey had been killed. The area it was erected in was maintained and landscaped to sort of look like its own little park. When the plaque was dedicated, Dewey's widow and youngest son, David, were in the crowd and thanked everyone who'd made the gesture happen. In 1981, a nature trail near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was created to honor Dewey, along with five other wildlife officers who died while in service to the state's resources commission. The following year, discourse about the safety risks to wildlife officers became a local headline. An article by the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald reported that a study by researchers at the University of Wyoming in the early 1980s reviewed that wildlife officers at that time were nine times more likely to be assaulted and killed while on the job than police officers were. The study also found that more violent assaults against wildlife officers actually happened during the daytime versus at nighttime, which is sort of the opposite of what I thought the case would be. The then-chief of North Carolina's Wildlife Resources Commission's Division of Enforcement told the newspaper he suspected there was a grim reason for this statistic. He remarked, quote, "The major difference between enforcing wildlife regulations and other laws is that wildlife officers deal with people who are usually armed and are often in remote areas. Police are assaulted more often than wildlife officers, but 80 percent of these assaults don't involve deadly weapons, which include guns, knives, and clubs. Many are just scuffles. In contrast, 80 percent of the assaults on wildlife officers involved firearms." End quote. And the University of Wyoming study corroborated that. It also found that pretty much any type of item had been used as a weapon weapon against wildlife officers. Bottles, rocks, boots, sticks, even boat paddles. The then-chief who spoke with the newspaper explained that in addition to officers of his who'd been killed on the job, there were plenty more who'd survived violent assaults and confrontations. He told the newspaper that his officers had experienced everything from being stabbed, to shot, to beaten, and on one occasion one of his guys had even been taken hostage. So yeah, I'd say that's a pretty bad track record. And I can understand why memorializing fallen wildlife officers was so important to the state. In June 1996, a four-foot granite monument was built in front of the Burke County Courthouse, with Dewey's name etched into it. It was a reminder of his sacrifice, as well as the sacrifices of several other law enforcement officers who'd died in the line of duty. Two years later, the NC Wildlife Resources Commission made a similar move and dedicated its own memorial to him at the Pisgah Center for Wildlife Education. I found a social media post on the commission's Facebook page from 2017, which showed that the entity held a wreath-laying ceremony at that memorial that year, and Dewey's youngest son, David, was in attendance. According to the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, Dallas Key remained incarcerated for six years before being paroled in December 1978. When he got out, he was 69 years old. He moved back to where he was from in Caldwell County and worked as a machinist for a few years. He was then released on bail. He was then released on bail for a few years. for a furniture manufacturer. He lived nearly 10 more years before passing away in early 1988. Like I said earlier, the details surrounding his confrontation with Dewey McCall are hard to come by, and we may never truly know what was said or not said between the two men. But an eerie comment that a former chief for North Carolina's Wildlife Resources Commission told a local newspaper back in the day that has stuck with me was, quote, end quote. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators. And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, at parkpredators.com. I think Chuck would approve.