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The area each quadrant covered was based on compass directions and preestablished distances. Within each quadrant, a hands-and-knees search was conducted. This method is similar to one archaeologists use in an archeological dig. Bones and other items of evidence that we discovered in our hunt were recorded with similar identifiers—the date, the time, the location, and the finder—and would be assigned an identification number. For example, a found item would be labeled:
    09-11-74, 1010 hours, Det. Keppel found a turquoise comb near body decomposition site #1 which was 10 feet west of search base, photographed by Det. Dunn and marked by Det. Keppel as Evidence Item #5 and Search Find #305.
    The 305 referred to its respective number on the search find diagram.
    The number of discoveries these 15- and 16-year-old kids made was alarming and gruesome:
    0850 hours:  Search teams began searching.0908 hours: Found hair near where two bodies weredumped.
    0920 hours:  Found leather sheath, two feet long.
    0923 hours:  Found screwdriver.
    0924 hours:  Found blond hair near original dump area.
    0950 hours:  Found rib bone.
    1012 hours:  Found jawbone directly uphill from dump location.
    1050 hours:  Found blond hair along animal trail.
    1110 hours:  Found bird’s nest with blond hair intertwined.
    1115 hours:  Found fecal material with small hand bone.
    On and on it went, one discovery after another, day after day, for seven days. We hadn’t only uncovered a cache of human remains, we’d literally unearthed a graveyard, a killer’s lair, where he’d taken and secreted the bodies of victims.
    Typically, homicide investigators process a crime scene for evidence, not human body parts. I wondered what these teenagers were thinking and feeling with each new discovery. What would they be like after a few days of finding hundreds of animal-ravaged skeletal parts? Did they wonder how bones wind up in coyote fecal material? Or how birds know to use human hair to weave their nests? Did they think about what kind of monster would leave a once-living, vibrant human being in such a humiliating state of desiccation? Was this why primitive tribes learned to bury their dead? Whatever their thoughts were, their willingness to kneel shoulder to shoulder, meticulously inspecting every inch of hillside, fighting stinging nettles, and lifting every twig and leaf with the care of a surgeon, was unbelievable. Not one word of complaint was uttered. No police officer that I knew would have searched with such dedication from dawn till dusk for seven days straight. I would always be thankful for their help on this tedious but all-important level of the investigation.
    They were as methodical as they were dedicated. The bones and items of evidence were plotted on a diagram using the “baseline” method of sketching crime scenes. In the end, we recovered many bones, clumps of hair, fingernails, and hairs from within animal dung and fecal soil from three separate and distinct body decomposition sites. In addition to the human remains, we found a crowbar, shovel, screwdriver, female clothing (unrelated to the three victims), and many animal bones.
    What we didn’t recover was the skull of Lake Sam victim JaniceOtt—we had recovered the rest of her remains on the site—and a skull and jawbone that would have been useful in identifying a third person whose name we did not know but the rest of whose remains we found as well. We believed, at first, that these missing parts were not found because animals had taken them somewhere outside our search perimeters. Unfortunately, we didn’t even consider that they could have been buried. We had found so many bones on top of the ground we didn’t even think the killer’s modus operandi involved burial. Our inexperience was telling, and it favored the killer.
    I was the photographer most of the time and packaged all the evidence for processing. I used a Mamiya 110 camera, a clunky, boxy device