One More For The Road

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One more for the road no play 11 21 22 scaled

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Monday, November 21, 2022 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When the ducks meet cold weather...

One More For The Road: Monday, November 21, 2022

Kerry Drake

Wyoming Life

John Adolfi, a creationist in Syracuse, New York, searched for many years for Noah’s Ark and a race of giants who supposedly walked the Earth. But until he died last November, the elusive Pedro Mountain Mummy found in Wyoming in 1932 still clearly haunted him.

In 2005, Adolfi posted a $10,000 reward for the tiny mummified remains of the 

” as he came to be known in the region. Pedro hasn’t been seen in public since 1950, but in the past 76 years the mummy has been the source of extraordinary speculation about its origin.

Adolfi’s goal was to have the mummy tested through DNA samples, magnetic resonance imaging, and improved X-ray technology to establish exactly what it was so he could disprove the theory of evolution.

Countless newspaper and magazine articles have been written about Pedro, who is also the subject of a host of videos on YouTube and was featured on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1994. 

Some of the videos make sensational claims, including that he was a member of a tribe of 

But was the human-like Pedro an example of the Nimerigar, a mythical tribe of savage pygmies with sharp teeth that Native Americans thought were hiding in the mountains? 

Nimerigar is literally translated as “people eaters,” and it’s said they shot their Indian prey with tiny bows and poisoned arrows. 

In 1941, the Milwaukee Journal asked in a headline, “Did a Race of Pygmies Once Live in America?” According to this account, the preserved mummy was a 65-year-old man.

Most disturbing was the article’s claim that X-rays showed “food in the stomach appears to have been raw meat. The teeth in the front of the mouth are pointed and of the flesh-eating variety.”

Or was the mummy an example of a benign race of humanoid pranksters? 

One aspect of the legend is that people who go near the San Pedro Mountains in southern Wyoming should carry something shiny to offer the Little People as a gift, so they knew no harm would come to them.

Perhaps all the fascination is due to the fact that while so little is known about the mummy, including its whereabouts, there is no doubt that it existed, that it looked freakish, and there are still copies of X-rays — but not the X-rays themselves — that have led to scientific speculation that Pedro was either a full-grown adult or an infant with an abnormality called anencephalus, in which only the brain stem develops. 

Complicating matters was the appearance of a large wound on top of its head.

There is just enough photographic and other evidence left for people to claim Pedro was anything they want it to be.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wanted To Disprove Evolution"}]

Two decades ago, Adolphi told then-Casper Star-Tribune reporter Brendan Burke — who became so curious about the mummy that he added Pedro to his unofficial beat — that he realized proof of a previously unknown prehistoric relative of man would not disprove evolution.

But Adolphi maintained that a new humanoid species would poke holes in the paradigm evolutionists have created regarding human origins.

Six months later he was interviewed again by Burke, who reported that while Adolfi said he received many leads, none had panned out.

A Wyoming woman told him the mummy was in the possession of an Indian tribe not based in Wyoming. But Adolfi investigated and determined that tip was a dead end.

So was another person who reported seeing Pedro at a garage sale in New Jersey. And an 86-year-old Wyoming man who had what appeared to be a hominoid mummy that could fit in the palm of one’s hand.

But the man was not willing to have the artifact X-rayed, Adolfi said, because he didn’t want to know if it was an authentic Nimerigar corpse or a vegetable carving. And the man wanted to continue believing that his mummy was “the real deal.”

Adolfi said he was willing to pay less money for evidence of other pygmy mummies, but he apparently never got his hands on one.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Middle Eastern Cousin?"}]

 on his YouTube channel Lost World Museum, though, is fascinating. 

Adolfi interviews a man with a Middle Eastern accent and wearing clear plastic gloves who wants to show him his own find. The man speaks in a foreign language to someone off camera, and relays the answers in English.

The man unwraps what looks much like Pedro from Wyoming, but in a slightly different pose and with a lot more hair. He says the artifact was discovered about a half-meter underground by accident.

“Unfortunately, we can’t share too much with (viewers) about location or what’s going to happen with this little fella,” Adolfi says. “But I wanted you to see this for yourself, examine it, and ask yourself, ‘Is this a full-grown human? Or is it just a mummified fetus?’"

“The doctor here says it is fully human,” the man volunteers. “It’s estimated to be 1,500 years old.”

“They do have plans for it,” Adolfi says when the man is gone. “I know there are some questions about the legalities of it. I know if this was in the United States, such as the Pedro Mountain Mummy, there’s Native American rights there, and obviously there's archaeological rights there, there are human rights there.

“But over in the Middle East, Far East, there are laws and whatnot that you have to follow. But they’re big boys, and they’re going to do whatever they’re going to do, I guess.”

Adolfi speculates that the mummy “is going to be put in someone’s private collection, and it’s never going to be seen again.”

Wherever Pedro is, or whether he still even exists, George Gill, a University of Wyoming anthropology professor, has seen the medical research and he said it’s definitely an anencephalic infant. 

He said in 2013 that further testing on a female pygmy mummy later brought to Gill and sent to Children’s Hospital in Denver to obtain X-rays, a DNA sample and a radiocarbon date yielded the same result.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Pedro’s Strange Journey"}]

The Pedro Mountain Mummy was discovered in 1932 by two gold prospectors, Cecil Main and Frank Carr, who detonated some explosives near the Pathfinder Reservoir and opened up a cave, according to an article in the Oct. 21, 1932, Casper Tribune-Herald.

Inside on a ledge by itself was Pedro, sitting with his feet tucked under him and his arms crossed. 

In 2013, the website Atlas Obscura described Pedro: “His skin was brown and dried by the arid Wyoming climate, his mouth was drawn into a placid scowl — a lean Buddha with a misshapen head.”

It was estimated that if the mummy had been standing, it would be about 17 inches tall. It weighed less than a pound.

The prospectors brought their find to Casper, where some were sure it was a hoax and others didn’t know what they were looking at. The pair sold it for the not-too-princely sum of $25.

The mummy apparently exchanged hands several times and was seen at various sideshow exhibits in the region. 

It wound up at the Jones Drug Store in Meeteetse for several years before a curious Casper car salesman named Ivan Goodman paid several thousands of dollars for it and brought it back to his showroom, where it acted as a mascot for the dealership.

It was also a place guaranteed to attract business, and Goodman was a showman of sorts. The most well-known photo of the Pedro Mountain Mummy depicts Goodman holding it in a glass case.

Main once signed an affidavit in 1941 that said the mummy was brought to the Chicago Field Museum, but there was no record of it ever being seen there. 

It’s known that Goodman did have the artifact analyzed on one of at least two trips he made with it to New York City, where it was X-rayed and examined by scientists.

“After an exhaustive study by the scientists it was agreed that it was the only specimen known of a human race of that type which perhaps dated back a million years,” Goodman told the Tribune-Herald on March 5, 1950.

The car dealer didn’t leave New York City with Pedro. It’s not clear whether he was swindled by a con man, as one story purported, or he sold it to a man named Leonard Wadler, who according to a 1979 Casper Star-Tribune article took it to Florida.

Only two things are certain: Goodman died in 1950, and Adolfi’s research showed Wadler died in the Sunshine State in the 1980s. The creationist told reporters he always expected Pedro to show up somewhere in Florida.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"True Believer In Montana"}]

Interest in the mummy has remained high in the Rocky Mountains. 

One of the foremost true believers in the region in the existence of the Little People was Shirley Smith, who owned the Little Cowboy Bar and Museum in Fromberg, Montana, for decades before it burned down in 2013.

Smith had many exhibits in her museum related to Little People of the Pryor Mountains, but apparently none survived the flames.

Her longtime partner, John Hanson of Bridger, said school children would visit the museum, and Smith had a popcorn machine. 

“She would make sure that every kid got a bag of popcorn so they could give it to the little people,” Hanson told Cowboy State Daily with a laugh.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Hanson said it was all a myth. "}]

“I think every civilization … the people of Hawaii have their little people, the Irish have their little people. I think it’s a worldwide phenomenon in that sense," he said. "Everyone seems to have some kind of little people.”

Smith grew up near Byron, in the boondocks, Hanson said.

“She spent all her life calling to (the Little People] and going up and down the mountains,” he said. “She would get some of the Crows to come over, and some of the older ones were true believers. Shirley and them would be thick as thieves talking about them. She was a true believer too.”

Diana Shaffer of Thermopolis was one of Smith’s daughters. 

“She told me that when she was young, someone brought a mummy of one to school,” Shaffer told Cowboy State Daily. 

That was an experience Adolfi couldn’t claim. Nobody ever claimed his $10,000 reward, either, though many people tried to get in on his treasure hunt but never passed his truthfulness test. 

Then again, he never met Smith, who died in Thermopolis in 2022. If her finds hadn’t been destroyed in the fire that claimed virtually everything in her museum, one can bet they would have found plenty to talk about.

Pedro Mountains and mummy 8 16 26

<title>Nobody Will Ever Claim $10K Reward For Wyoming's Missing Pedro Mountain Mummy | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In 2005 New York creationist John Adolfi offered a $10,000 reward if someone brought him the "Pedro Mountain Mummy" found in Wyoming in 1932 but never seen in public after 1950. With Adolfi's death in November, no one will ever claim the reward.

Nobody Will Ever Claim $10K Reward For Wyoming's Missing Pedro Mountain Mummy

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

After the engines shut down and 19-year-old Jerahleigh Johnson climbs out of her demolition derby car, people finally get a good look at the person who has been smashing them into oblivion.

[{"type":"text","text":"Off comes the helmet and out falls her long blonde hair."}]

“I've had grown men say, ‘I haven't been hit that hard in years, let alone to have it be some little girl,’” said her dad, Jeremiah Johnson.

Jerahleigh lives in Saratoga and spends her summers fixing up old cars for the express purpose of busting the crap out of them in dirt arenas around the West.

Her latest machine is a hulking early-1980s Cadillac painted red, white and blue, with white stars scattered across its rear quarter panels and two exhaust stacks punching through the hood.

[{"type":"text","text":"It started the season looking downright patriotic."}]

Today, the hood is buckled, the doors are cratered and the front end looks like it has been worked over with a giant sledgehammer, which is the whole point.

[{"type":"text","text":"“You're going into a purposeful car wreck,” she said."}]

Then she grinned, because for Jerahleigh, the part most people would consider horrifying is the funnest.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"She Wanted In"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Jerahleigh grew up in the garage."}]

Her dad got into demolition derby about 20 years ago, so her childhood was surrounded by tools and old cars waiting to be torn apart and rebuilt, with nights and weekends spent turning ordinary automobiles into Mad Max machines.

One of her younger brothers started driving before she did, climbing behind the wheel around age 11 or 12. By about 15, Jerahleigh had watched enough.

[{"type":"text","text":"She wanted in."}]

There was no grand rebellion involved, no moment when the sweet Saratoga girl shocked her horrified parents by announcing she wanted to smash automobiles for fun.

Her dad was already smashing automobiles for fun. Her brother was smashing automobiles for fun.

[{"type":"text","text":"Some families play golf."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The Johnsons “do derby.”"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Holding The Flashlight"}]

Spend enough time talking to Jerahleigh about derby and it becomes clear the crashing is only half of it.

Long before No. 15 rolls onto the dirt, hundreds of hours of labor are invested in making sure it can survive once the smashing starts.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Cadillac had to be gutted. "}]

Glass came out. Seats came out. The dashboard and much of the interior disappeared. 

A steel cage went in around the driver's compartment, and the car was rebuilt according to the rules of Jerahleigh's class.

[{"type":"text","text":"The family has put about $15,000 into the smasher."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And Jerahleigh isn't just standing around holding the flashlight for Dad."}]

“The motor that she runs, she put it together herself,” Jeremiah said. “She can do it all.”

She can grind and prepare metal, change her own oil and spark plugs, do a tuneup, install an engine and weld in the roll cage that might ultimately be responsible for keeping her alive.

Jeremiah said her mechanical ability is “above most of the guys, guaranteed.”

That makes the sight of Jerahleigh standing beside No. 15 slightly deceptive. The young woman with the long blonde hair and easy smile didn't just climb into the monster.

[{"type":"text","text":"She helped build it."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Peach Rings "}]

For somebody preparing to intentionally wreck a car, Jerahleigh has a remarkably gentle pregame ritual.

She drinks water, eats gummy peach rings and would appreciate it if everybody left her alone for a little while.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then the fire suit and helmet go on."}]

When Jerahleigh climbs through the gutted shell of the cab and settles into the driver's seat, she might have a strategy, but she knows it won't last.

“It changes the second you strap in the car and they say go,” she said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Everything becomes noise, mud, smoke and split-second decisions."}]

Jerahleigh watches the other cars and looks for openings, trying to protect the parts of the Cadillac she needs to keep moving while searching for opportunities to deliver a hard shot with the parts she can afford to lose.

[{"type":"text","text":"Steve “Grumpy” Diorio noticed that the first time he watched her."}]

The owner of The Grumpy Italian pizzeria in Saratoga, and now one of Jerahleigh's sponsors, knew almost nothing about demolition derby when he met her. The Johnsons had become regulars at his restaurant, and eventually conversation wandered into what their families did for fun.

He went to watch her compete, discovering demolition derby was louder and crazier than anything he had expected. But underneath the chaos, he noticed Jerahleigh wasn't simply barreling blindly around the arena. She waited for her opportunities and picked her shots.

[{"type":"text","text":"Now he's one of her biggest fans."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I want to see her become a star,” Diorio said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Blood On Her Face"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Jerahleigh knows exactly what can go wrong."}]

Her biggest fear in the arena was getting hurt, but she's already checked that box.

At a derby in Utah, another car hit her hard enough that she bit through her lip.

[{"type":"text","text":"She kept driving."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"In fact, she kept driving well enough to finish second."}]

Jeremiah remembers his daughter finally climbing out of the car with a big smile and blood running down her face while everybody around her watched in horror. Jerahleigh was so busy talking to the other young drivers and congratulating them that she hardly seemed to notice.

“She didn't even realize that she was needing to go get stitches,” Jeremiah said.

[{"type":"text","text":"She wears a mouth guard now."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Problem solved."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not For The Money"}]

Jerahleigh figures she's competed in somewhere around a dozen derbies, and she's loved them all.

But despite the occasional giant check, she insists anybody who thinks derby is a clever way to make money has profoundly misunderstood the economics of spending $15,000 on a car and then encouraging people to smash into it.

“We do it for fun,” she said. “If we were doing it for the money, shoot, we'd be losing. We would have quit a long time ago.”

What keeps her coming back is the entire strange, noisy circus of it — the smell of hot engines, mud flying from tires, radiators breaking open and throwing steam, cars disappearing into clouds of dust, and funnel cakes, hot dogs and beer in the stands while the machines below slowly beat one another into junk.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then there are the people."}]

Her father calls them the “derby family” — all those people they race against, compete against or, as he quickly corrected himself, “crash against.”

Jerahleigh's own family is almost always there, too: her mom, her dad and her brothers.

[{"type":"text","text":"And now Grumpy."}]

“I'm not a real big race enthusiast,” Diorio said. “What I am is a family enthusiast.”

That's what drew him to Jerahleigh in the first place. He watched the Johnsons work together — Jerahleigh behind the wheel, her father building alongside her, her brothers helping in the pits, everybody contributing — and saw something he recognized from his own family-run restaurant.

Jerahleigh is the one behind the wheel, but there are always people waiting when she climbs back out.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Cars To Wreck"}]

At 19, Jerahleigh doesn't pretend to have the rest of her life mapped out.

College never called to her, and rather than go simply because that's what young people are expected to do, she decided to work and figure things out as she went.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I'm kind of just feeling everything out,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Ask about derby, however, and the future gets much clearer."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She wants more."}]

Jerahleigh wants to move into bigger classes with more elaborate builds, tougher competition and, as she readily acknowledges, considerably more money disappearing into cars destined for violent deaths.

[{"type":"text","text":"She wants to get better at building them and better at driving them."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And she wants to keep hitting."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Overcome And Conquer’"}]

Her father believes the sport has already taught her something considerably more valuable than how to weld or where to aim a Cadillac.

In demolition derby, even a good night goes wrong. You can build the car perfectly, have a plan and execute it well, and still come out of a heat with the front end folded, the wheels pointed in different directions and something important hanging on by a thread.

If you've qualified for the next round, there isn't much time to feel sorry for yourself.

[{"type":"text","text":"You figure out what's broken, fix what you can and go again."}]

“Not everything's going to be perfect,” Jeremiah said. “Not everything's going to be the way it's written in the book how it should be, and you just kind of have to overcome and conquer.”

Jeremiah sees that quality in Jerahleigh, whether she's underneath a car building it, behind the wheel smashing it or climbing back out after something has gone wrong.

[{"type":"text","text":"The car will get mangled. That's inevitable."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She'll fix what she can."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Then she'll get back in."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“You got to just stand up and keep going,” Jeremiah said."}]

Jerahleigh Johnson derb5 8 16 26

<title>19-Year-Old Saratoga Woman Rebuilds Cars Just To Beat The Crap Out Of Them | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Saratoga 19-year-old Jerahleigh Johnson can weld a roll cage, rebuild an engine and smash a Cadillac with the best of them. “I’ve had grown men say, ‘I haven’t been hit that hard in years,’” her dad says of Jarahleigh's demolition derby domination.

19-Year-Old Saratoga Woman Rebuilds Cars Just To Beat The Crap Out Of Them

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Around Wyoming

Editor's note: This story includes graphic and disturbing descriptions of torture and inhumane prisoner of war conditions. Read at your discretion. 

After more than 80 years, a 32-year-old Casper man believed to have been killed as a prisoner of war aboard one of the infamous Japanese “hell ships” during World War II may finally be close to being found. 

John Clarke Goldtrap, a young husband and father, was listed by his captors as one of the 284 Americans who died after the Japanese hell ship the Oryoku Maru was destroyed on Dec. 15, 1944.

The POW transport ship sunk to the bottom of the ocean and has remained there, virtually undisturbed, until now.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), working with the Navy and the Philippine government, are 

Divers have recovered American military footwear, an identification bracelet, broken eyeglasses, medical equipment and material that may be human bone. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The work is expected to continue in the coming year."}]

The DPAA said that the recovery effort has significant challenges that will require its team to employ advanced underwater recovery and identification techniques to ensure the mission is conducted with the utmost care and dignity.

Modern archaeology and DNA testing may then restore names to some of those remains, correct wartime records and allow families to bury men who have been listed officially as missing for nearly 82 years. 

For Goldtrap, it could finally reveal whether he died inside one the hell ship, in the water or after reaching shore. 

It is the fulfillment of the promise made to American servicemen that those missing in action will not be forgotten.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sinking The Oroku Maru"}]

The air strike in which Goldtrap was killed is known as the Oroyku Maru Disaster because it was Allies who sunk the ship. 

Another Wyoming solider, Staff Sgt. Joseph Henry Robertson of Rock Springs, survived by swimming to shore and enduring another hellish eight months as a prisoner of war of the Japanese.

According to the Department of the Army, on Dec. 13, 1944, Japanese forces in the Philippines began the transfer of 1,621 Allied prisoners of war to Japan.

Goldtrap, Robertson and the other POWs were to make the journey aboard transport ships whose harsh conditions and extreme overcrowding led survivors to refer to them as “hell ships.” 

These ships lacked markings that would distinguish them from any other military target and were often attacked by Allied forces who could not identify them as POW transports.

On Dec. 14, 1944, Allied aircraft attacked the first of these transport ship, the Oryoku Maru, in Subic Bay in the Philippines, killing many of Allied POWs on board. 

War crimes were committed on that day as Japanese soldiers shot many of the escaping prisoners as they tried to swim to safety, while others drowned in the attempt.  

, the officer was listed as dead by his Japanese captors, but the information was unreliable since the first number of dead was listed as “about 250.”  

As a commanding officer, Goldtrap was confined in the ship’s rear hold, although it is unknown just how he met his death.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Worse Than Bataan Death March"}]

The stories shared by hell ship survivors paint a horrific picture of human brutality and suffering.

Ben Skardon was one of these men packed into the rear hold of the Oroku Maru where Goldtrap was believed to have been kept.

In a 2015 interview with the National World War II Museum, Skardon said that it was total chaos of the worst type as they were loaded into the hold.

He had found a spot pressed against another soldier on the floor, “one in the crotch of the other.” 

All around him, men were breaking down, going crazy, yelling and pleading. Skardon passed out from lack of oxygen and others helped move him to where he could get air.

Many of the men on the Oryoku Maru had survived the Bataan Death March and described the conditions crammed into the ship a living hell, worse than the infamous march.  

First-person accounts were preserved in the book “The Rising Sun” by John Toland from men who kept forbidden journals and recorded the hell they barely survived.

Major Virgil McCollum, wrote Toland, was a veteran of Bataan who said the hell ship was “the most horrible experience imaginable and probably unprecedented in the annals of civilization.” 

As the dim light of dawn filtered through the hatch, several score bodies lay lifeless — suffocated or murdered.

For 82 years, Lt. Col. John Clarke Goldtrap of Casper has been in a watery grave as a POW on the sunken wreck of the brutal Japanese “hell ship” Oryoku Maru. Now his remains may finally be ID'd and brought home. Another Wyoming serviceman on the ship survived.

One More For The Road: Monday, November 21, 2022

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