Murder Mystery: The Benton County 3

There were three — three souls whose journey home was not yet complete. Their bodies had been found — beaten, burned and shot — but for decades, all attempts to identify them had defied the authorities. Often referred to as the Benton County Three, comprised of John Doe, Lake Man and Bone Woman, the case represents a remarkable effort by law enforcement to return their identities back to them.

The Benton County Sheriff’s Office has no cold case unit, but it has Lt. Hunter Petray, a man who does not like his puzzles unsolved. In 2016, Petray began a review of the cases, one that proved to be timely. The new methodology of genetic genealogy debuted with the 2018 capture of the infamous Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo, something to which Petray was paying close attention. Maybe, just maybe, he could restart some justice closer to home.

In May 1990, a Maysville man out mushroom hunting found some burned human bones up against an elm tree. Despite the killer’s intent, the story the bones had to tell was not silenced. Death was by a 12-gauge shotgun blast delivered 3 to 5 feet away to the left side of the victim’s face. The damage was such that no composite, no facial reconstruction was ever possible.

Gasoline poured over the body had created a fire of such fury that even now, charred bark scars the surrounding trees. Incredibly, the ashes gave up a small remnant of women’s underwear, though not conclusive evidence of the victim’s sex. Instead, an anthropologist made the call, since the structure of a female hip bone differs from that of a male, thus Bone Woman.

By 2021, the privately funded Texas lab Othram was proving that its cutting-edge technology could get results even in the most challenging of cases. Thus the bones of Bone Woman, Lake Man and John Doe made a trip south, a trip that would return them to their real names.

BONE WOMAN

From the burned bones, Othram was able to extract DNA, which led to a familial match, and genealogists began the search to provide the identity of a living relative. A restless Petray decided to accelerate the process. In an obituary, he found a name of a living relative of the deceased, a name he was sure he had seen before. There, in the Bone Woman’s file, was the name Donna Sue Helton. Many years before, a woman who had been cold calling law enforcement agencies had left the name as she sought help in locating her missing 28-year-old daughter.

Helton was a pretty, sweet-looking kid who did not have much of an anchor growing up. As she grew older, her life began to drift her over to the wrong side of the street. That was the territory of George Alan Bruton, a man with a lengthy rap sheet headlined by his time on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. He was the man who became Helton’s lover and her killer.

In 1988, Bruton was freed from his latest incarceration but not from FBI surveillance. Through his connections to the Kansas City Mafia, Bruton was now a high-level player in a multistate drug ring. Helton and Bruton met that year and, for a time, were inseparable — that is, until 1989, when suddenly, Bruton was always seen solo.

Agents spotted him disposing of several large trash bags in an apartment dumpster. The contents of those bags turned out to be all of Helton’s belongings. That was followed by discovery of her abandoned car in a location associated with Bruton.

By the next year, drug charges had put Bruton back in the big house. Sentenced to life in prison, he told a cellmate he had killed a woman named Donna. The FBI took him at his word, searching land Bruton owned in Ozark County, Missouri. They ultimately discovered Bruton had chosen the less-obvious Maysville, just 150 miles south of his property. Remote, yes, but an area the couple were known to pass through on drug runs.

Bruton died behind bars, and his motive remains unknown, but people who kept his company often know too much. Had Bruton simply become paranoid, or was it possible that Helton contacted or had been contacted by the FBI? It is interesting to note that despite the DNA evidence, her sister firmly insisted to Petray that Helton had not been killed but was in the Witness Protection Program.

LAKE MAN

In 1996, a fisherman at Beaver Lake spotted a floating sleeping bag. Found in the area of Railroad Cut, south of Monte Ne, the bag was not empty. Cocooned inside was the body of a man whose cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma, possibly inflicted by a hammer. A composite and a facial reconstruction were made, but there was no public response. He became Lake Man.

Despite the decomposition damage from the water, Othram was able to extract DNA from Lake Man’s back molar. Once again, an obituary offered up a bread crumb. Petray began tracking the gossamer-thin lead, working every strand through dead ends and wrong turns until he located the father of John Douglas Rollins Jr., 31.

Rollins had been released from an Oklahoma prison, and his father was attempting to help him turn things around, moving him into his Springdale home and getting him a trucking job. However, suspicions were that Rollins might not have left the drug scene or his ex-wife in Oklahoma totally behind. One day, his father came home to an empty house. His son was never to return except in the case file pages in Petry’s hands.

JOHN DOE

A 33-year-old Colorado native, Fred James “Jamie” Grow, was heading home to visit family before taking a detour to infamy as John Doe. In June 1981, 10 days after he left Fayetteville, his skeleton was found in Garfield, just 30 miles away. It was death by three shots to the head from a .22 caliber weapon.

A happy, easy-going guy, Grow worked at a co-op in Fayetteville. He was last seen pulling out of the parking lot there. He was not alone; two women had asked him for a ride to Oregon, women who he had agreed to take as far as Kansas City, Missouri. Co-op employees knew the two to be trouble, since they had previously stolen merchandise and written a hot check. The duo had left Arizona to live at an all-female commune in Newton County, but their attitude found no peace and love there either. They were, as Petray described them, “militant.”

Grow never made it across the state line, but it is a pretty sure bet that his van and his wallet, which contained several thousand dollars, did. Notably, his watch was left at the crime scene.

For years, Grow’s mother traveled to multiple states, contacting law enforcement and leaving behind hand-drawn pictures of his 1965 Ford Econoline camper van. Despite the fact that the van had unique elements to it, there had never been any reported sightings of it, nor had there been a paper trail documenting registration or insurance since 1981.

Getting the victim’s DNA to Othram would prove tricky. As per protocol, the state crime lab was to be the guardian of such remains, but it was soon discovered Grow was not there. Petray literally had to go digging for him; employees at Walmart corporate headquarters must have been astonished to see a casket going in the reverse direction at the adjoining Bentonville Cemetery.

That aside, the effort was successful, giving the collaboration among Petray, Othram, and numerous state and Benton County officials a remarkable achievement — one agency positively identifying three unknown victims.

It is not over for Petray though. He is on to his next set of puzzles, the murder investigations of Grow and Rollins. His progress has been solid, but input by the public could put these cases in front of a jury sooner. Those with any information — general or specific — about either man or the events surrounding their murders are encouraged to email hunter.petray@bentoncountyar.gov or contact the Benton County Sheriff’s Office at 479-271-1009.

Othram has made more collaborations possible with its crowd-funding site, dnasolves.com. Law enforcement can submit cases to be financed, but there are many other Does whose identity is denied due to budget restraints. Just recently funded was a Poinsett County case of a John Doe found in 2021 in Marked Tree. He will join the three other souls who have made their way home due to the determination and good hearts of those who refused to let them be forgotten.