When Evil Came: Sisters Kidnapped, Thrown Off Bridge Haunt Casper 52 Years Later

CASPER — Memories fade and the old saying goes that time heals all wounds.

But the wound and resulting scar inflicted on Casper 52 years ago this month can still be tender for those who lived through it.

Those who walk through Casper’s Highland Cemetery in Section 182 see the evidence of two lives taken way too soon on an oval gravestone that simply states: “Sisters.”

Below that etched onto the stone are two bouquets and a heart followed by their names and the date they died.

Amy Allice Burridge Nov. 16, 1961 — Sept. 25, 1973.

Becky Thomson Brown June 19, 1955 — July 31, 1992.

Best-selling author and former Casper resident Ron Franscell wrote about the kidnapping and murder of an 11-year-old girl who lived next door and played baseball with him and other guys on the block.

Amy Burridge was thrown off a more than 100-foot-high bridge in Fremont Canyon southwest of Alcova with her body ending up in the North Platte River. 

He also chronicled the kidnapping and rape of her 18-year-old half-sister Becky Thomson, whom he had admired and respected when he was 16. She also was thrown off the bridge and somehow survived.

His 282-page account of the crimes, “The Darkest Night,” published in 2008 made The New York Times Best-Seller List. It also catapulted Franscell into the true crime genre alongside noted authors such as Vincent Bugliosi, who wrote about the Charles Manson killings.

Count him among those who will never forget, but who has long since come to terms with a world where evil manifests such as it did Sept. 25, 1973, in the criminal minds of Jerry Jenkins and Ronald Kennedy after a day of drinking.

Those minds descended further into the depths of the depravity they had flirted with for much of their lives.

Both men, then in their late 20s, had several encounters with the law and had spent significant time behind bars.

Franscell recounted how while coming back from a Middle East assignment with The Denver Post after 9/11, he saw a publication that had photos of people falling from the World Trade Center towers.

He then thought about the terror his former neighbors experienced on that dark night at the bridge.

‘Evil Was There’

“When I came back without doing any research or anything, I described this book as, ‘When evil came to my hometown,’” he said. “It doesn’t take but a day of research to realize that the evil was there.”

Franscell wrote his book 30 years after Amy and Becky experienced their horror.

He had worked with Becky for a time at the Casper Star-Tribune and recalls normal conversations and a woman who appeared on the surface to have overcome the horrific trauma of her past.

But when he dug into the story starting around 2003 and 2004, after Becky apparently took her own life in 1992 falling from the bridge for a second time, he learned about her hidden struggles.

“It’s a story about Becky’s search for equilibrium,” he said. “She just wanted to have solid ground underneath her feet. She really, obviously never found whatever answers she was seeking.”

Casper College Public Relations Editor and News Coordinator Lisa Icenogle knew Becky Thomson Brown as a friend. She was a girl when she  met Amy at a friend’s house and knew her from a distance.

As for Becky, they worked together at a Casper radio station for a while as young women, then at different stations. She was among the last people to talk with Becky.

One day, Becky confided with Icenogle about the events that had happened years before.

“It was just something she shared with me,” Icenogle said. “I don’t remember how we got into the conversation. I remember the conversation and what she told me about that night.”

Icenogle characterizes Becky as a good listener with a funny sense of humor and someone who was “really a lovely person on the inside and out" as well as a “really great person whose life was cut way too short.”

Trying To Help

Their friendship led to Icenogle trying to help Becky in her last days. Becky had received notice that one of her assailants was going before the parole board.

“That was really freaking her out,” Icenogle said. “She was definitely dealing with it, and it still haunted her.”

Icenogle said she received a call from Becky with a message to give her a call the day that she died. She tried to call Becky several times at her work and at home and got no answer. 

The pair had a secret ring code that they would use so Becky knew it was her, but Icenogle said Becky never picked up the phone.

“Several days before that, she told me she needed my strength,” Icenogle said. “I thought, 'I really let her down.'”

Icenogle said now 52 years removed from the the girls’ kidnapping, murder and attempted murder, the story has faded from most people’s minds.

“I remember it, but I don’t dwell on it,” she said. "If I think about Becky, I think about the fact that I lost a really good friend the night that she died and that was really hard.

“I don’t go back to 1973. I go back to when she passed away.”

Franscell believes a time may come when the horrific acts of Jenkins and Kennedy and the suffering of their victims will be forgotten, but 52 years is not enough space.

The now New Mexico-based author wrote how the pair slashed Becky’s station wagon tire at a Casper store to create a need for help. The girls had been on an errand for their mom.

They then deceived the sisters, saying they were going to help fix the tire, then kidnapped them at knifepoint.

Kennedy beat them as Jenkins drove through the dark night to the even darker Fremont Canyon, both lying to the girls about their intentions as they went.

At the canyon bridge site, they acted out their lust, cowardice, selfishness and fed their demons.

One sister died physically, the other was mortally wounded to her soul, burdened with the weight of survivor’s guilt for a sister she couldn’t save.

The criminal pair were tried, convicted, and initially sentenced to die. Their terms were converted to life sentences after a Wyoming Supreme Court ruling a few years later.

Bungee Jump

Franscell points to an Idaho bungee jumping company that scheduled jumps from the bridge in 2024.

It brought back the memories and events of 1973 for many, causing several Casper residents to voice opposition to the event.

The owner of the bungee jumping company called Franscell with a similar question. He pointed out the crimes were 50 years ago and asked: “When are you going to let go of this thing?”

“All I could say is, when the memory doesn’t have any meaning anymore, when people stop talking about it,” he said. “When parents stop telling their kids to be careful going to the store.”

In his book, Franscell recounts how the two suspects were secretly sent out of Natrona County to be housed at separate jails in Fremont and Hot Springs counties to keep them from vigilante justice.

The Casper Star-Tribune reported Sept. 1, 1973, that Natrona County Sheriff Bill Estes said “feelings are running very high.”

The article stated that there had been a fire started at the home of one of the suspects.

As the 52nd anniversary comes, the lone person still alive responsible for the crimes, Kennedy, is listed as a prisoner at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution. He is 79.

Jerry Jenkins died of a heart attack in prison Oct. 28, 1998.

On the crime’s 30th anniversary in 2003, Franscell climbed down into the river gorge to spend a dark and cold night in same spot where a severely injured and violated Becky Thomson courageously shivered through a September night to await another dawn.

Her testimony was key to convicting the pair.

Franscell believes it would be appropriate to put a plaque marking the spot “for a few hundred years what happened there.”

“At some point, people will have forgotten and it will just be a plaque,” he said. “I don’t think we need to forget. I think we just need to give up the fear and the hate.

"It doesn’t help that one of the two killers is still alive. And I imagine there will be a day when he isn’t. That might begin the process of setting this memory aside.”

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.