The Ballad of Pete Hauer
$23.00
We all knew Pete Hauer. With a foot solidly planted in two unique communities, cave explorers and hippie homesteaders, he was a gentle Pacifist, yet he supposedly murdered a young man he barely knew, an unpremeditated killing, with no discernible motive. In his informal will, he admitted to it. This solved the case for the police, but for everyone else, as many doors were opened as closed. Before Pete’s remains were found, the case involved witches, drugs, caves, and homosexuality-and the FBI’s search had spread across the US.
We all knew Pete Hauer. With a foot solidly planted in two unique communities, cave explorers and hippie homesteaders, he was a gentle Pacifist, yet he supposedly murdered a young man he barely knew, an unpremeditated killing, with no discernible motive. In his informal will, he admitted to it. This solved the case for the police, but for everyone else, as many doors were opened as closed. Before Pete's remains were found, the case involved witches, drugs, caves, and homosexuality-and the FBI's search had spread across the US.
That was in 1975; weird things started to happen as strange people, witches, moved into this quiet rural West Virginia county. Pete's livestock were brutally slaughtered. Emotions skyrocketed. As we tried to make sense of the events, pet theories formed, each with drawbacks, ad we still wrangle over "What really happened?"
Copyright 2020 Roland Vinyard
Published by the National Speleological Society
Paperback/237 pages
