Big crime happens in small places. Multiple-victim, multiple-offender crimes don’t just plague cities, they erupt in towns with more cows than people. And yet, when it’s time to budget for officer training and equipment in rural and remote areas, it still seems valid to say, “Nothing like that can happen here.” Why? Because the dots don’t connect when the national media doesn’t notice.
Trucker serial killers are great fodder for YouTube, but who investigates crimes committed along lonely stretches of highway? Most people live in cities. Roads go through the country, where officers are few, backup is far, and caseloads go cold fast — even when there’s real evidence. Without headlines or sustained attention, many rural cases remain theoretical in the public’s mind.
But the truth is: major — really, really major — crimes have always happened in rural America.
The deadliest school massacre in U.S. history? A truck bombing and shooting in 1927 that killed a quarter of the children in a tiny Michigan town and injured nearly 60 more residents.
In the 1980s, a pair of serial killers filled the Sierra foothills with unmarked graves. One of the largest mass kidnappings in US history — a school bus hijacking — began in a town of just 5,000 in 1976. In 2024, the vast San Bernardino County desert became the site of a gangland massacre of six Central American men, who died in a dispute with five others over black market weed. Even our national parks and forests aren’t immune from murder and serial rapists.
Let’s take a look at some other major rural crimes that flew below the radar of your morning newsfeed.
The murder of NPS Ranger Kris Eggle
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona is the nation’s deadliest national park. All national parks are prone to death and violence; nature is risky, and park gates don’t change terrain to zoos and Disneyland. But Organ Pipe is in a different class, closed for 11 years by the crime and traffic that come with proximity to the southern border, and one notorious crime in particular: the 2002 murder of a National Park Service law enforcement ranger.
Ranger Kris Eggle, a 28-year-old Michigan native, was a literal Boy Scout: an Eagle scout, an honor student with a degree in wildlife biology, an EMT and firefighter, and a border crimefighter in the wildest wilderness of the southern desert. He kept the parkland safe, intercepted thousands of pounds of drugs coming across the border, and he answered the Border Patrol’s call for backup when cartel assassins fled Mexico with Sonoran police on their trail.
One fugitive ran from their disabled SUV and was later arrested. The other emerged with a rifle, and killed Ranger Eggle. The gunman ran again for Mexico and was cut down by gunfire from the Sonoran police.
Eggle’s parents honor his legacy by advocating for increased border security and improved safety for the nation’s rangers.
The cross-country kidnapping
Cecilville, California, is a Gold Rush town on the south fork of the Salmon River, so far north it’s nearly Oregon. It’s so small, there’s is no population listed for it. There’s a saloon and a disc golf course, some abandoned trailers and a cabin. Cell service is uncertain. It’s a two-hour drive to the county seat, where the sheriff’s office is located. In places so small, strangers stick out, and that’s what happened in 2017 when a high school teacher from Culleoka, Tennessee (population ~5000) abducted his 15-year-old student and tried to hide there. A local recognized the girl from an Amber Alert and notified deputies.
The naive, neglected girl had been homeschooled most of her life; the science teacher cultivated a relationship with her, then used threats to take her on a 2,500-mile drive to a remote cabin in the Klamath National Forest. Tad Cummins told sympathetic locals that they had lost everything in a Colorado fire, and was allowed shelter in the vacant cabin. When deputies converged on the place, Cummins surrendered. Two guns and a chunk of cash were found with him. Elizabeth Thomas had been assaulted, but was alive.
Cummins was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The Delphi murders
Two young teenage girls were dropped off at a local trail system by an older sibling for an easy afternoon hike. They were found the next day, one nude, the other dressed in her friend’s clothing, murdered. Their throats had been slashed and their bodies were partially covered with sticks.
Initially, the 2017 crime garnered lots of media attention, not just because it happened in the idyllic little town of Delphi, Indiana, but also because 14-year-old Libby German captured a 43-second video of an older man on her phone. It was small evidence, but it captured the public’s imagination. He was dubbed “The Bridge Guy” and he was the only suspect. Tip lines were set up. Rewards were offered. Then the trail went cold for five years.
A man named Richard Allen had called the tip line and said he was on the trail that day; the tip was misfiled and sat in a box of thousands of others till a volunteer entering notes into a database noticed the time correlation and passed it along to a detective who still worked the cold case. Allen had been working at a local pharmacy all along.
He was arrested. An unfired .40 caliber cartridge taken from the crime scene matched a gun found in Allen’s possession. Allen confessed that he was responsible for the murders several times while in prison; in 2024, he was finally convicted at trial and sentenced to 130 years in prison.
The Pike County massacre and the God’s Misfits case
A tiny Ohio town and a remote Oklahoma crossroad hosted multiple murders in bizarre circumstances, seven years apart.
The two crimes didn’t look alike at all: the 2016 Pike County Massacre had eight victims spread over four crime scenes (all family members) and so many suspects (also all related to each other) that it seemed a better fit for an Appalachian feud from a century ago. Journalists needed a flowchart to keep the players straight. Hundreds of investigators from dozens of agencies were involved in trying to solve the grisly crime that left only the three youngest children alive.
The Oklahoma murders (the 2023 “God’s Misfits” case) were simpler: two women ambushed as they traveled from Kansas, found murdered and buried in a locked freezer in a field. Eventually five suspects emerged, connected by family ties and involvement with a prayer-and-politics group heavily influenced by sovereign citizen ideology and QAnon conspiracy.
Nevertheless, as the court cases proceeded, two common threads emerged. Both crimes were catalyzed by custody battles, and in both cases, grandmothers were heavily involved, one planning the Oklahoma murders, and two more covering up the Ohio massacre.
In the Pike County case, family members were sentenced variously from life to probation, while the Oklahoma case is still working its way through the courts.
The cop-killing extremist case that crossed the globe
Wieambilla is the threshold between the coastal city of Brisbane and Queensland’s most remote rangeland in northeastern Australia. A few dozen people live there, raising crops and sheep in the dry, sparse Western Downs Region, but coal seam gas extraction brings in better money. It’s the kind of place people go when they’re done with people.
In December 2022, brothers Gareth and Nathaniel Train, and Gareth’s wife Stacey, lived on a remote compound there, posting extremist content on forums and conspiracy boards, and chatting remotely with a sympathetic true believer in Arizona’s arid, high-altitude forest. They hated the government, especially cops and stirred each others’ apocalyptic paranoia. But Nathaniel’s wife was worried; it was a long time since she’d seen him, with no explanation. That was how four police constables arrived at the compound to check on his welfare.
The trio opened fire on the officers as they approached, killing two of them and wounding a third. They set a grass fire to flush out the fourth officer as she tried to find cover in the grass. A neighbor saw the smoke and heard the shots, and came to see what was wrong. He was shot and killed as well.
The ambush devolved into a standoff, with the extremists shooting at arriving backup officers, vehicles, an armored truck and a police helicopter. Hours later, all three suspects died by police gunfire.
The incident was declared an act of terrorism by Australian authorities. The US citizen involved was arrested and charged with various interstate communication of threats and firearms violations. He is still fighting his case in court.
Queensland’s Police Union plans to buy the property where their officers fell and repurpose it as a memorial, retreat and training facility. Mostly, they want to keep other terrorists from buying it and glorifying the Trains as martyrs.
Some crime happens in cities because crowds create both stress and opportunity — plenty of victims, plenty of money, plenty of drugs. Some crime happens in rural areas because offenders seek isolation, believing it will help them avoid detection. And some crimes happen anywhere people live, driven by timeless human motives like greed, envy and revenge.
No matter where the crime occurs — city or country — rural officers are there, working to bring justice to those who need it.
