Barrel Up! After 46 Years, Victim Of Triple Murder May Be Out Of Fremont Lake

PINEDALE — A barrel lifted from the depths of Wyoming’s deepest mountain lake Saturday night by a team of volunteer search and rescuers may finally solve a 46-year-old mystery of what happened to three 1980 murder victims. 

Inside the container, authorities believe may be the remains of 33-year-old Virginia Uden. 

Virginia and her sons — Richard, 11, and Reagan, 10 — of Rawlins were killed in September 1980 by her ex-husband Gerald Uden, who confessed to the murders in 2013.

For years, there was speculation about whether the bodies were actually in Fremont Lake following shifting stories from Uden as well as searches in 2013 and 2014 that came up empty — even with Uden present to guide searchers at the time.

Now, authorities are closer to determining that he may have been telling the truth following a tip he shared with Stacy Koester, president of a Gillette-based missing person nonprofit.

Seasoned search operators on the effort said the recovery operation is unprecedented, overcoming statistical odds and severe weather. 

It was led by Bill Dohse and Eric Butt of Organized Search and Rescue (O-SAR), with critical support from Dave Sparks — a prolific YouTuber and reality television star from Heavy D Sparks Recovery.

Federal and local law enforcement agencies also participated, along with Doug Bishop, a former member of Adventures With Purpose who now runs the nonprofit United Search Corps. 

The barrel was raised at about 9 p.m. Saturday and was taken into the custody of the Fremont County Coroner’s Office with results of what may — or may not — be inside the barrel pending.

Even without that confirmation, the search team is confident they may have finally put to bed part of the Wyoming cold-case murders.

“We did it,” Dohse said. “It was very much a team effort.”

Overcoming Challenges

Dohse, Koester and the other search and rescue volunteers were still riding the high of pulling off the recovery late Saturday night. 

It was an exhausting two-day effort following torrid rain and thunderstorms Friday and myriad obstacles that one-by-one they tackled over the course of the mission dubbed “Operation Cold Current.”

They battled rocking boats tossed in the waves of Fremont Lake and the sheer challenge of trying to retrieve an object dropped in water 388 feet on the granite lakebed. And it had probably been there for more than 50 years.

Bishop, who has been part of hundreds of underwater recoveries, said he’s never seen anything like this one.

Whether or not the barrel contains the remains of the victims is anyone’s guess at this point, Dohse said, but if the barrel does contain human remains, it may wrap up a decades-long mystery. 

Upon his arrest in 2013, Uden told authorities he put Virginia in a sealed 55-gallon steel drum, into which he had either shot or drilled holes to help it sink. 

He also claimed that the boys were put together in a 35-gallon steel garbage can and sunk alongside their mother.

Along with the barrel, Dohse and his crew have also located what appeared to be a trash can at more than 400 feet, which will be their next target for recovery.  

‘Fishing In The Dark’

For Dohse, this rescue ended a tiring month of the planning and coordinating assets on top of his worry that specially designed equipment would be capable of doing the job. 

This was what Dohse had been banking on when he turned to Sparks, who is a custom vehicle builder known for his role on the Discovery Channel series “Diesel Brothers.”

Outside of media, Sparks dedicates his time and effort to specialized search- and-rescue operations, frequently under extreme conditions, which is how he crossed Dohse’s radar in the past. 

This includes locating and recovering an elderly couple stranded on a remote, Nevada mountain and recovery of a dead pilot and his damaged aircraft following a crash on a rugged Utah mountainside. 

Prior to reaching out to Sparks, Dohse made inquiries to divers, offshore drilling firms, and salvage companies nationwide. 

He learned that while most were accustomed to designing equipment for large vessels and barges outfitted with heavy cranes, none could produce the specialized implement this job demanded.

Or, it was simply too expensive with some of the quotes from specialized dive teams across the country coming in at a minimum of $1.5 million.

Dohse knew that Sparks had a boat, a machine shop and a will to take on complicated projects, so he approached him with his idea.  

“I told him, ‘Let’s bang our heads together and come up with a solution to get this barrel,’” Dohse told Cowboy State Daily. 

Sparks accepted the challenge, and Dohse convened with Sparks and his team at his Salt Lake City shop to brainstorm from scratch. 

They debated the merits of going light versus heavy, each option presenting its own trade-offs, Dohse said. 

A lightweight aluminum frame could be positioned precisely by the underwater drones, whereas a heavier design would easily drop to the granite lakebed. 

Central to the design was that it withstand the lake’s unique environmental factors and water depth, including water and air pressure as well as the extreme cold temperatures at the bottom of the lake. 

The issue would not be the altitude or water density, said Michael Stoellinger, an associate professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Wyoming with knowledge of fluid dynamics.

The lake’s elevation of 7,400 feet is not a meaningful factor for the operation because water density is essentially the same, he said. 

The main technical issue would be accurately positioning a boat over the target and keeping it stable long enough to lower a recovery device onto it.

“It’s the equivalent of fishing in the dark,” he said.

Giant Claw

What they landed on was a roughly 400-pound claw-like device made of steel tubing and sheet metal — essentially a giant version of the stuffed-animal grabber you’d find at a grocery store arcade machine.

The claw’s pincers were designed to encircle the barrel with a grip both delicate and unyielding, engineered to lift against the water’s weight and the lakebed’s suction while preserving the structural integrity of an object that has rested forty-six years at the bottom.

Going with the heavy design was a tradeoff that seemed like a better option to assure that the barrels stay intact, Dohse said, but he still had his worries. 

“The disadvantage of going heavy is that the drones can probably spin it, but they can’t move it,” Dohse said. “That’s probably the biggest con of what we did.”

Going into the operation, Dohse said he knew the biggest challenges were battling winds and weather, which ended up being right on target and was the major issue they faced throughout the weekend.

To combat moving boats, Dohse found a local contractor who provided heavy concrete blocks to work as anchors. 

That did the trick, he said, and enabled Sparks’ boat to remain stable enough to position the claw directly on top of the barrel.

Once positioned, it took about 15 minutes to lift it to the surface. 

Dohse declined to provide a price tag for the cost of the operation or equipment, only to say that all the volunteers donated their time and equipment and that funding for the cost of building the claw came from a statewide grant spearheaded by Wyoming law enforcement.

He said it was very much a joint effort between his and the groups he brought in and law enforcement, particularly the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office and Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s team of cold case detectives, whose work on the case has spanned decades. 

“Everyone wanted to finish what we’ve started,” he said.  “We wanted the kids home. We wanted mom home. Everyone was behind it.”

International Drone Companies To The Rescue

None of it would have been possible without the help of Deep Trekker, a Canadian underwater drone and ROV company, and Chinese-based drone manufacturer QYSEA, which shipped in drones at no cost for the operation, Dohse said.

A third drone was donated and operated by Dale Hilton from Blue Sky Drones in Washington state.

Without these drones, that total more than $500,000 in value, the recovery would not have been possible, said Brian Cook, who ran the Deep Trekker drone for O-SAR during the mission.

It’s phenomenal that these companies shipped their equipment for this operation and loaned it at no cost, he said.

“No SAR group in America has this type of technology. It’s unbelievable what they’d done,” he said. 

Identifying Victims

Now, it’s a waiting game as Fremont County Coroner Erin Ivie conducts her investigation to examine the contents of the barrel and determine whether or not it contains remains.

If so, the victims will be easily identified, one expert said.

Uden said he initially stashed them in the Hidden Hand mine, one of hundreds of abandoned shafts that pock the old Lewiston gold-mining district near South Pass City, where they rested, covered by trash bags, 20 feet underground for eight weeks.

Under those conditions, their bodies would have been degraded by scavengers and decay, said Dr. Melissa Connor, professor of forensic anthropology at Colorado Mesa University.

Connor said that by the time of their extraction, Virginia’s and her boys’ skin would likely have mummified, and their bodies would appear “flattened,” the result of blowfly maggots consuming their internal soft tissues.

Connor said it’s likely rodents also fed on the remains. 

It would be more difficult for magpies and crows to scavenge the bodies at that depth underground, but still possible. And it would be less likely larger scavengers like coyotes and vultures would’ve gotten to the bodies at that depth.

Uden claimed he put the bodies into trash bags before pulling them out on a rope. 

Taking all that into consideration, “it suggests they were pretty much intact,” said Connor. 

Whatever their condition the night Uden allegedly pulled them from the mine is likely to resemble their condition today, because the near-freezing, low-oxygen environment at the bottom of Fremont Lake would slow decomposition dramatically, Connor said.

She believes authorities will be able to identify the bodies.

Still More In The Lake

For Koester, it’s already a win given the feat they pulled off and the cooperation of law enforcement and all the volunteer search and rescue groups that came together to raise the first barrel.

“There is nothing more beautiful than seeing so many people unite to bring potential closure to a missing-person case, especially one that has remained unresolved for 56 years,” she said. “This weekend was dedication and a true testimony of the importance of collaboration and teamwork.”

The search teams haven’t yet announced plans about a repeat effort of Saturday to retrieve the steel garbage can they found during their first pass last month and that may contain the bodies of the boys.

Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com and Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.