An Idaho-based bungee-jumping company organized a few fun sessions this past weekend — on a bridge where one of Wyoming’s most infamous crimes unfolded more than a half century before.
“Don’t miss your chance to throw your meat from this awesome bridge near Casper, Wyoming,” reads a Friday Facebook post by Over The Edge Inc., featuring photographs of the group’s most recent jump from Fremont Canyon Bridge. It also advertised two more sessions slated for Saturday and Sunday. “It is hard to beat the thrill of bungee jumping. From complete stillness into the open air enhances the acceleration of gravity … Don’t miss this life-changing experience. $100 for two jumps.”
Fremont Canyon Bridge was the scene of a 1973 crime so tragic that its chronicler, true-crime writer Ron Franscell, said it marked “the loss of innocence for a whole community.”
Some in Wyoming reacted to the company bungee jumping from the bridge, calling the company’s location choice disrespectful. Others said it’s time to move on from the horrors of 51 years ago and use the site for recreation again.
Back Up 51 Years
On Sept. 24, 1973, 11-year-old Amy Burridge went to the grocery store with her 18-year-old sister, Becky. When a tire on Becky’s car went flat, two men politely offered them a ride home.
Instead of taking them home, Ronald Kennedy, 27, and Jerry Jenkins, 29, drove the girls 40 miles southwest to Fremont Canyon Bridge.
They walked Amy to the middle of the bridge. She cried out, “I love you Becky!” just before the men pushed her from 112 feet above and into the water, where she died.
Jenkins and Kennedy then took turns raping Becky before pushing her over the railing.
Miraculously, Becky survived. With her legs temporarily disabled and a broken hip, she clawed through the water and over the rocks to the riverbank. An elderly couple found her half-naked and badly hurt the next morning.
Becky married and had a child, but later divorced.
One day she traveled to that same bridge and jumped or fell over the edge. This time she did not survive.
‘We Woke Up’
Franscell, who wrote the girls’ story in his true-crime book “The Darkest Night,” lived next door to the girls as a child growing up in Casper.
Amy was part of the neighborhood kids’ games: building forts, riding bicycles, playing ball at the sandlot. Becky was older than Franscell and his other childhood friends, and they all admired her as a beauty, Franscell told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.
“We went to bed the night of Sept. 23, 1973, in one place (mentally),” he said. “You could play outside ’til the street lights came on. We woke up the next day in a very different place. I would argue that we have never — Casper has never — gone back to that idyllic little town.”
For Franscell, seeing photos of people bungee jumping from the bridge was “gut-wrenching,” he said.
But he also said he’s reluctant to criticize the out-of-state company, because it probably didn’t know the significance of the place when planning the jump.
“And that’s an easy assumption to make because it’s been 50 years,” he said. Though, he said, it’s only been 32 years since Becky Burridge’s second, and fatal, descent from the bridge.
Maybe the bungee-jump leaders weren’t even alive when the crime unfolded, he said. But if they do learn of the gravity of the site, he hopes they’ll respect it, Franscell added.
“It’s one of those haunted places that should remind us of both the worst we can be, and the best we can be,” he said.
‘What’s Wrong With Fremont Canyon?’
Eric Lyman, owner of Over The Edge Bungee, told Cowboy State Daily he didn't find the jump disrespectful, just as he doesn't find driving over the bridge and picnicking in the area disrespectful.
"It is significant (as a site) but it has nothing to do with me," he said. "The history of it matters. I'm very touched by the history. In fact, we were thinking of doing a jump in homage to those two ladies."
Rock climbers often climb the area as well.
"Should we send off all the rock climbers and tell them they're being disrespectful?" said Lyman. He said he and the other jumpers discussed the gravity of the site while they were there this weekend. But he didn't see the logic in cutting the bridge off from recreation 50 years after the crime, he said.
"We didn't kill anyone," Lyman added.
The company's Facebook interaction also suggests the company did not realize the site was an emotional one for longtime Casper residents.
“Not cool. So obviously Fremont Canyon,” commented longtime Casper resident Rose Fry under the post.
“What’s wrong with Fremont Canyon?” asked the bungee company in response.
The company’s post had 26 comments and 18 shares as of Monday afternoon, many by people inviting their friends to the jump or making plans to do it themselves.
“Most of Casper is a crime scene at one point in time or another,” Casper resident Lisa Romfo told Cowboy State Daily in a Monday message. “We can’t let that get in the way of the future.”
Romfo said she missed out on the jump, but figures after 50 years, “it’s time to use the bridge again.”
Another woman who wanted to make the jump but couldn’t, Cassie Witt, told the outlet she doesn’t find the location choice disrespectful, and hopes the company returns for another, as long as county regulations allow the jump — which was another controversy social media users posed this weekend.
The Natrona County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to a Cowboy State Daily call for comment on the legality of bridge bungee jumps in the area.
‘Maybe When I’m Dead And Gone’
Rose Fry told Cowboy State Daily the jumpers have no business leaping off Fremont Canyon Bridge.
The crime’s fallout was a bad era for Casper residents, she said.
Fry wasn’t sure the place will ever be ripe for a recreational jump.
“It’s always going to be a sad place, I think,” she said. “Maybe, when — you know — I’m dead and gone, and so are all the other people that remember it, maybe then.”
Update - This story has been updated to include a post-publication comment by Over The Edge Bungee owner Eric Lyman.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
