I posted this in 2012:
"Most of my cousins on my mother's side of the family are cowboys and farmers. Some of them are very intelligent, and the one who is a veterinarian pioneered arthroscopic surgery on race horses. His brother, my cousin Norman, was a math genius in college and could have gone far in the field of computer science. But his dad told him computers were just a fad and he was better off being a cowboy.

So Norm worked for the Ute Indian tribe, running their range cattle. They wintered in Cuba, New Mexico, and then he trailered them up near Blue Mesa Reservoir in southern Colorado (near Gunnison) for summer range.

Things were going along for him until the late 1970s when a neighboring rancher, who had been rustling the Utes' cattle, disappeared. Norm was the last person seen with the guy, and he was a suspect, except they never found a body, so it's just a mystery. Norm moved to South Dakota, got married, and has lived there ever since."

Norm still lives up there in South Dakota, lost 180 pounds in 18 months, and divorced his wife after 25 years or so.

He has 2 relatively normal sons. One has a phD in statistics and a steady job, wife, and family. The other son was a professional poker player, said he swore off it, then went back to it, lives as a nomad. To me, they represent the two sides of their father's personality - the extremely intelligent mathematical side, and the risk-taking rakish side. This is Norm with the poker player:



Here is how Norm described it on Facebook in 2020: "I started working for the Utes after I got out of the Army, January 1, 1970 and quit in 1978, moved to South Dakota. I loved that job and hated to leave, but a neighbor on Blue Mesa, Ben Gray, had mysteriously disappeared that summer and someone put a bullet through the cab of my pickup just in front of the driver's side ... Bill felt that it was too dangerous for me to continue. As far as I know no one has found nor heard from Ben Gray, now 40 years later."

Last December I received an anonymous letter with copies of documents about that murder back in 1978, and information about another cowboy from that area whom it said was a friend or acquaintance of my cousin Norm, and on his deathbed in 2008 confessed that he helped my cousin dispose of the body - with considerable detail.

The letter said that the investigation of my cousin is being re-opened, implying that the deathbed confession triggered it. But why wait 15 years from when that so-called accomplice died? I discovered there is a song about the case - on YouTube.

I don't know how the letter sender got my name and address - did they look at Norm's Facebook page and send one to all his 'friends' that they could figure out an address for?

And no, I didn't reach out to Norm to let him know I'd received it, nor did I contact other cousins to ask if they received a similar letter. I think it would stir things up more than it would solve. I'll just watch and see what happens next. If anything.