The first murder at Joshua Tree National Park was less than 10-years ago and remains unsolved to this day. The superstitious, new-age community that calls this otherworldly land home believes that first murder created an ominous energy vortex. Since then, seven additional murders have gone unsolved in the region...
OVERVIEW
Marko Bewersdorff’s design for life was simply to lose himself. The 46-year old psychedelic traveler wandered the West in a burly German military truck that pulled his smartly outfitted, solar-powered Airstream trailer.
But when the German-born software engineer turned pilot decided to drop-out in the High Desert community of Joshua Tree, CA he lost his life. Violently. Shot point-blank by an assailant wielding a silencer, Marko bled out in his Airstream on a seasonably warm late September night in 2014.
But who would want to slay a highly educated, tie-dyed man of the road? To High Desert-based journalist Michael DiGregorio the question presented not only an arresting through-line but a profound statement on the Human Experience and the romantic notion of freedom and sovereignty.
A MURDER MYSTERY IN REAL-TIME
It could be said, as nature abhors a vacuum so do investigative journalists.
This documentary series will play out in real-time as Michael, a grizzled local journalist, does the real detective work, wading into the High Desert underworld where San Bernardino County Sheriffs feared to tread. Where drugs and smuggled military weapons are bought and traded.
Evoking the same beguiling color, if not bewitching subcultures as Wild, Wild Country, the viewer experiences Joshua Tree--the High Desert climber nirvana, energy vortex, art and music festival destination--at its own twilight moment. And like the captivating true crime sagas Making a Murderer and The Staircase we’ll investigate an unsolved mystery by getting uncomfortably close with the potential perpetrators.
PICTURE THIS...
Amongst the iconic granite outcropping, Michael sits with Joshua Tree’s most accomplished drug dealer whose connections stretch from The Vagos outlaw motorcycle gang to The Marine Corps.
Michael enquires...
Was Marko down to his last bit of psychic rope, chasing some kind of finality in the ayahuasca scene after a bad parting with Garth, a High Desert icon who lends shelter to gay and bisexual men amidst his 640-acre Flintstones-meets-Salvador Dali realm?
Or was he simply Collateral Damage: Marko's fate, if not his occasional anti-capitalist rants, colliding headlong with that of a combat damaged hunter-killer from the nearby 29 Palms Marine Corps Weapons Station?
Or had Marko turned to drug smuggling, employing a vintage, 60-year old de Havilland twin-engine bush plane he leased, only to burn a patron who ultimately came for payback?
After a long pull of methamphetamine from a calliope-like glass pipe, chased with a ketamine vaporizer, the hardened drug lord and potential suspect contemplates his response...
THE SERIES
This Series will follow Michael as he endeavors to crack a mystery he’s been trying to solve for years.
A long-time resident of the Joshua Tree community, Michael's curiosity about this unsolved murder runs deep as he is close to the major players that were part of Marko’s life, including his widow Lisa Taranto and his closest friend Bert Lies the Snake Whisperer.
The arc of the series begins with Michael bringing us up to speed on the details of Marko’s death, the novelty of being the first murder in the Joshua Tree National Forest, and the reasons why it remains a mystery. As the series unfolds, we dig deeper to learn who Marko was and why people would want him dead as Michael unravels this world full of colorful characters and tremendous egos few get to see.
Every episode will be distinct in featuring a new subculture, personality, or a sub-plot providing an episodic arc that feeds the greater narrative. As Michael retraces Marko’s footsteps, he enters a path that leads into the vastness and lawlessness of Twentynine palms. But Marko's path also leads you into the odd subculture of the Burning Man, illegal smugglers, and sex cults. Michael’s crusade will feature outlandish personalities with provocative stories to tell.
A true Gonzo journalist, Michael explores these communities in hopes he can finally get closer to solving this crime. As new information is revealed, Michael’s thesis on Marko's demise gets revised. As scenarios play out, some theories advance while others fade away.
Bringing us into his inner circle, Michael will speak directly to us when he feels he needs to narrate certain scenarios or share what he’s processing. The interviews will be organic conversations. The cinematography will showcase amazing vistas the deserts and valleys of San Bernardino County. And to complete each story Michael will gather real photos, videos, and other artifacts to complement his investigation.
THEME
The thematic undercurrent of this story is all too relatable today. A way of life once taken for granted evaporates seemingly overnight. A place built upon shared values and beliefs invaded by corporate greed and individual selfishness. A community that feels powerless to protect their Paradise.
Michael’s journey to unearth the identity of Marko's murderer is propelled forward by this theme of Paradise Lost.
For over a century, the high desert communities used the sparse, mystical landscape to reinvent Eden. All who adopt its endless horizons as home can’t help but find their own path.
That is certainly true of Marko, who left everything behind to keep his life free from the intrusion of government, greed, and giant corporations. Although this area gifted him an exuberant amount of freedom, the endeavors he was caught up in were deadly and dangerous, and eventually the forces he fled crept into his sanctuary.
Now, years after the murder Michael looks to start the healing process for this community. To regain the sense of normalcy that was shattered by this tragedy. To push back against the invading forces of negativity. To do something we all wish we could do these days... return to our Paradise.
THE VISION
An investigative exposé folded into an art-house meditation on The Emerging West, Paradise Lost, and The Pursuit of Eden, The Joshua Tree Murder opens onto an ever conflicted desert.
Exploring this unsolved murder yields layers of compelling beats, immersive storylines, and potentially evocative vignettes:
- The neo-New Age counterculture turning Joshua Tree into the so-called “Vortex” and its embrace of psychedelics and ayahuasca.
- The Airbnb/Instagram/selfie-culture waves who threaten the community’s very soul as Burning Man crosses over into Big Business
- The singularly German romance with America’s most punishing environs through a pilot's side hustle.
- The landscape as a protagonist, using the Mojave desert as theatre and proving ground for Perpetual War execution.
THE ELEMENTS
JOURNALIST as Protagonist
Michael is our guide, a veteran journalist, and an accomplished documentarian. This is a very intimate murder investigation told through the point of view of the investigator himself.
True Crime Investigation
See the murder investigation of Marko Bewersdorff unfold before our eyes. Michael actively takes us through his investigation with each episode bringing us closer to finding the killer.
Exposure to Unique Subcultures
The high desert is a mixture of the affluent and the rebellious. Whatever someone may be into, the vastness and the freedom of this area affords many the chance to truly be themselves.
Colorful Characters
Within these communities lie the outspoken characters who will either help or harm Michael’s investigation. From Valerie "Brightheart" Gill, the community's medicine woman, to Tor Ewald, a Burner and pilot known to fly product for the local cartels. Native to these parts for several decades Michael is one of them and will be able to elicit their most cavalierly takes on the changing landscape, the murder, and the identity of the killer.
PERSONS OF INTEREST
Garth Bowles
High Desert icon Garth Bowles, a lapsed Mormon turned ascetic-mystic cult leader, has forever offered shelter to gay and bisexual men amidst his 640-acre Flinstones-meets-Salvador Dali realm.
Before departing this mortal coil, Marko had a bad parting with Garth and it has been proposed to me that the killer in fact emerge from the transient clique in Garth’s cosmic garden. While not perceived as part of his inner circle, it’s been corroborated by at least three sources that a verbal threat -- ”We’re gonna’ kill you” -- was uttered by a cult member who has since left Garth’s compound.
Dominick Cappel
A quietly confident, extremely well-armed desert pirate. Dominick, known to most as Dom, is a 30-something drug dealer who continues to land on his feet despite numerous brushes with law enforcement. Considering Dom's brother and sister-in-law are detectives in San Clemente, CA, one could infer that Dom's somehow untouchable. As of late, he has invested heavily in a permaculture site, dedicating drug proceeds towards what he calls, The Church of Freedom. At the same time, Dom's beginning to exhibit a bit of Koresh-like zeal, or a mildly Manson air.
Dom has strongly inferred that an individual within a local eco-tour business had reason to take out Marko. Put simply, the high minded German represented an impediment to the commercialization of Garth Bowles’ boulder gardens - an energy hotspot within the larger Joshua Tree vortex. Marko allegedly took issue with this potentially lucrative enterprise, asserting that it cheapened that which many High Desert dwellers consider sacred. Lo and behold, yellow HumVees now motor in and out of Garth’s compound on so-called eco-tours.
Paulie the Facilitator
Based at a small, municipal airfield outside Moab, Utah, Paulie had an extensive relationship with Marko, according to Marko’s widow Lisa Taranto. The two men shared the lease, or ownership, of an older propeller engine plane -- a DeHavilland Twin Otter used to carry “skydivers” though it is widely known within the community that Marko worked for Paulie as a pilot in a drug smuggling operation running cartel payload to local outlaw motorcycle gangs.
Only months before Marko’s murder, Paulie phoned Marko. “He wants me to stay for an entire season”, a span of three months, Marko confided to Lisa. She describes her ex as someone who “didn’t ever want to be dictated to. He was nihilist… with attitude.”
Marko didn’t want to be drawn back into Paulie’s clutches, so to physically incapacitate himself from flying, Marko threw himself off an older Kawasaki motorcycle while riding in Moab. The accident truly pissed off Paulie those with knowledge of their relationship have stated, but could Marko’s stunt have inevitably led to his demise?
Lisa Taranto
Marko's airy widow Lisa Taranto explicitly identified Marko's assailant to me -- which I found both helpful, and oddly defensive. While I do not consider Lisa a suspect, she inherently knows more about Marko than almost anyone. And for what it's worth, less than a month after Marko's death, Lisa chose to run off with an Eastern mystic and ended up in India before returning to the Low Desert.
I interviewed Lisa recently, asking her to share her intimate view of Marko and their ambiguous relationship. She described Marko as “a human body with an alien, or extraterrestrial mind.” Though an odd way of articulating it, this was a comment of endearment, as she was attracted to Marko’s enigmatic personality. “Marko was thoroughly authentic,” Lisa continued, “but with a very German temper. You couldn’t tell him anything that ran counter to his belief, or understanding of something.” She felt it was a fractured relationship with his family that had brought him to this place and “above all the psychic weight of being viewed by his father, Hartmut, as a failure.”
She went on to say, “Before our separation, you couldn’t tell one body from the other, we were so physically and psychically entwined.” But, it was an ominous phone call from Paulie the Facilitator, that led to the fissure in their relationship. Paulie insisted that Marko stay “on the job” flying for the Cartel for an extended three month span. This didn’t go over well with the staunchly independent nihilist. Reflexively, Marko and Lisa’s relationship underwent a profound shift. “Those last two or three months, after the conversation with Paulie, Marko was a different person,” Taranto said. “Pulling away from me. Not being anywhere near as protective, as well.”
Jim Queen
Part of Joshua Tree’s old guard, Queen, a 60ish rough ‘n tumble rock climber type, has been linked to the local narcotics trade, headed by the outlaw motorcycle gangs The Vagos or Mongols. Numerous locals told me Queen was always known as “the coke guy”. Queen is now front and center to the Marko narrative for these 13 words: “I know who killed Marko… and it’s going to the grave with me.”
My one and only encounter with the jocular Queen unfolded near Valerie Gill’s ayahuasca retreat. Driving a small off-road utility vehicle -- no doors, only a roof -- Queen immediately made me for “an outsider”. On a rutted dirt road, my lowered Dodge Magnum/Arizona plate gave that away immediately. Flashing a Lee Marvin-evoking grin, Queen leaned in; then said, “round here, we shoot outsiders.” The sunburnt gent gestured with a head tilt to a small calibre handgun on the passenger seat. I smiled back, only to respond, “I shoot back. You’d have to get the jump on me... and my .45.”
Unidentified Marine
One of the initial, community-held assumptions had Marko's fate collided headlong with that of a combat damaged hunter-killer from the nearby 29 Palms Base, the Marine Corps largest combat/weapons station. The stealth employed, including the presumed use of a suppressed weapon, suggests the assailant could be any one of the 35,000 Marines attached to the 1000-sq mile compound.
Both the San Bernardino County Sheriffs, and local media confirmed upwards of 30 surveillance cameras deployed--and operating--at the Joshua Tree Saloon the night Marko was seen there. Yet somehow a verbal altercation between Marko and a jarhead, reported by multiple eyewitnesses to have taken place near the dimly lit pool table area, was not captured. Or it was, and subsequently scrubbed. Could we conclude that his murder was a case of Collateral Damage covered up by local authorities?
Dustin the Hustler
Ohio native Dustin Laninger was once closely connected to Kenny the Curandera. While working with Kenny at a grow site in Mendocino County, Kenny and Dustin were arrested and locked up for a variety of offenses. Kenny’s imprisonment was brief. Owing to a cancer diagnosis, he was freed by Mendocino County Sheriff's detectives. Conversely, his pothead sidekick was sentenced to prison, losing a large amount of supremo value marijuana. Dustin seems to assume that Kenny’s early release was at his personal expense and he developed an unhealthy resentment towards his former partner.
Kenny describes Dustin as a drifter who wields true psychopathic tendencies folded into violent mood swings. And he believes that Dustin, upon his release, was out for revenge. Could Marko have been errantly killed by Dustin in a case of mistaken identity? That’s the theory presented to me by Kenny which in my early investigations has seemed to hold water.
KEY WITNESSES
Kenny the Curandera
Thoughtful and deeply authentic, Kenny was Marko's roommate for a spell. As a result of that intimacy, Marko's Mother stayed with Kenny on her repeated visits, walking back her murdered son's path across the California desert. A small-scale pot grower and gifted climber, it was Kenny who found Marko’s body the morning after his shooting along with Bert Lies.
A true curandera, Kenny lived in Peru and studied with Amazonian medicine men. A purist/doctrinaire, Kenny chafes at the commodification of ayahuasca. Thus, he won't take money for sharing or leading an ayahuasca ceremony. Marko's ex, Lisa Taranto also lived at Kenny's humble ranchette on the north edge of Joshua Tree.
"German" Bert Lies
In sum, German Bert was Marko's best friend. Marko was in his handsome, refurbed Airstream trailer, on Bert's Joshua Tree property--California Road--the night he was murdered. A snake whisperer cum pot grower, it was Bert and Kenny the medicine man who found Marko dead; beneath sheets, in bed, supine.
The pain and anguish ultimately sent Bert into a lengthy, total tailspin. The drinking cost that numbed the pain eventually cost him a job as a wildlands fire-jumper. Bert also lost a brother--an extreme athlete/iron man type--who died in Death Valley while training, prior to Marko's assault. To regather himself, find ground, Bert sold his ranchette in JT, relocating to a small village in Mexico where he tends bar.
Lara Bewersdorff
Marko’s mother Lara has returned to Joshua Tree at least three times since her son’s murder. The first trip was to repatriate Marko’s body. But the subsequent visits were for the more intangible purpose of trying to process and understand it all. Each time she revisits the places and people that came to define and impact her son’s life in Joshua Tree.
On her visits--wielding decent conversational English--Lara proved quite open, transparent, reminiscing about her son. Going through what possessions he left behind--clothing, books, a small ceramic mug he made as a boy, stippled with his name in bold, bright letters--she’d add anecdotes, backstory. The significance of each piece to the son she’d lost. However, coming from the Old World, Lara did seem to grasp “the whole Joshua Tree experience” as she labeled it. “This is the area where Marko is. The High Desert is the experience; the center of who he became.” Standing next to a Joshua tree, Lara was heard to say, “this is where he still is.”
Valerie BrightHeart Gill
A gushing, sex forward medicine woman, BrightHeart represents the colorful center of weird Joshua Tree. The old Vortex. She served Marko his first doses of ayahuasca. It was in fact the darkness, the heaviness around his reactions to aya in this first ceremony that brought Marko onto my radar. BrightHeart also serves as a psychedelic ranger at Burning Man, and its smaller spin-off events, such as Acuity. However, ostensibly to separate herself from the murder, its potential blowback on her ceremonies, BrightHeart denies hosting Marko.
BrightHeart's place in the meta-narrative is to set the context for this curious saga. How it began six-plus years ago, before Marko's murder. And how she reacted to his tragic energy, lending her hugs to comfort Marko all those years ago. Of late, ever-ethereal BrightHeart offers a soft place for Marko's visiting Mother when she travels from German seeking answers and closure.
DeLo
In a former life, 50-something Tim DeLaurier was an elite neuroscientist who concocted toxins for the CIA while at Stanford. Now a capital-B Burner, Tim's flipped the life script. Sought-after for his permaculture knowledge and life hacks, DeLo knew Marko well.
He related to me that Marko, on the night of his murder was disappointed that DeLo was leaving him to go on a date. DeLo sensed a wistfulness from the murdered German. Like Marko somehow knew his fate. DeLo also proved to be the most defensive of those in this inner circle when I began to make investigative inroads, back in 2015. Telling me repeatedly, "the community hasn't even healed yet."
Tor Ewald
Tor, a San Diego-based inventor, pilot and techie super-intuit, knew Marko as a fellow High Desert pilot. They shared a fondness for Twin Otters -- a.k.a. "Twatters"-- an older twin engine aircraft built-for abuse if not the rigors of low level, radar skirting drug runs below The Border.
Tor is just as peripheral as he is central to Marko's narrative, given his place in the upper hierarchy of the corporate restructured Burning Man phenomena, Tor can not only speak to the great value of a pilot in the extreme underground economy, but he also knows a few long-time burners gone bad, and can speak to their penchant for high crimes.
A Story IN SIX CHApters
CHAPTER ONE
A Death In Joshua Tree
Why has Marko’s murder remained unsolved? Irregardless of who or why, though, it is the stuff of a made-for murder mystery. As such, are the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s protecting a PTSD-addled United States Marine who got triggered? Did Marko get in the way of a ruthless opportunist, one in a long line of fallen gay men who took advantage of Garth’s goodness? Or was it a patron from the victim’s past, a drug dealer Marko said “no” to? Walking back Marko’s narrative, the onion that was his Neal Cassady-like arc slowly peels away, opening onto the many worlds and tribes that defined Marko.
CHAPTER TWO
Cult of The Burners
Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. The “Burner” subculture lived for the once-great Wonderland of creativity, expression, inspiration, construction-destruction, if not random promiscuity. The “dust love”, “tent trysts”, “Orgy Dome” and “Sexbus”, that were as central to America’s most hedonistic festival as MMDA, Molly, and Ecstacy. But could the lifestyle--the afterburn, questioning every broadly held assumption about existence--ultimately prove ruinous to one’s psyche… or, at least Marko’s? That notion might explain why burners have a need for two different legal teams: Lawyers for Burners and High Existence.
CHAPTER THREE
A German Nihilist in the California Desert
Who was Marko Bewersdorff? Moreover, why would at least three people want him dead? How did a Silicon Valley software engineer evolve into a burner part-time outlaw? From his High Desert friends--climber trash to pot growers, former CIA neuroscientists, medicine men to Garth the mystic--the portrait drawn is as complex as the storytellers themselves. Conversely, the suspects are every bit as varied: war-scarred Jarheads to “Drugs, Inc.” underworld types to a gay grifter trying to strike it rich.
CHAPTER FOUR
Piloting A Crime
Prior to arriving in the High Desert, Marko made a living as a pilot. The twin-engine de Havilland he leased served two ends: running sky-diving groups, as well as occasional runs for a Utah-based drug middleman. Being a burner, Marko knew well the dramatic, upswept contours of Nevada’s Black Rock Desert; and the seven-mile playa at the center of that arid back of beyond, the Burning Man stage. Did the German aviator double-cross his fallback patron who sought to drop a large load of hallucinogens on the festival? This episode sheds light on another subculture: the bush pilot getting his side hustle on.
chapter FIVE
Cold Case
Why has Marko’s murder gone unsolved: is it simply a write off by San Bernardino County Sheriff’s at the end of their limited resources; or does the lack of tangible results speak to cultural bias, indifference to the fate of a burner/modern primitive, no less a foreigner? After repatriating the body, how did the Bewersdorff family back in Germany interpret Marko’s demise? Did they, or his ex-wife find closure? The stakes rise as Michael’s investigation brings him to handcuffs.
CHAPTER SIX
Catching A Killer
Our six-part culminates with Michael hot on the tail of the Killer and finally bringing to justice Joshua Tree’s only unsolved murder. His list of suspects at the beginning of the series is narrowed down to one and we follow Michael to see if he has gathered enough evidence and can compel local authorities to arrest this suspect. As a member of this community, Michael spends his first few days post his investigation, tying up loose ends with the friends of Marko's and trying to find closure himself. He hopes this is the first step to heal this land that has been ravaged with loss, and empower this community to seek justice for the seven other victims.
Epilogue
With Marko Bewersdorff’s case closed, Michael furthers the healing of his community by investigating the seven subsequent unsolved murders.
These three stories bear example of the suspicious aura that surrounds the seven souls that were lost in this area. Each leaving little trace and many unanswered questions...
Erika Lloyd was a young mom who just wanted a trip to unplug during the stress of the pandemic. Her friends reported that she was going to “see some people”, but the investigation revealed no prior communication with anyone in the area. Three days later, her car was discovered with the windshields shattered, and it took till January to discover her skeletal remains.
The disappearance of Lauren Cho stirred up a frenzy when she went missing, seemingly steps away from her temporary residence, an Airbnb owned by filmmaker Tao Ruspoli, where she was working as a chef. Many thought Cody Orell, who ex-boyfriend who was staying with her at the time, could be responsible– especially because Lauren allegedly walked off into the desert alone after a fight with him. Cody was eventually ruled out, and no other leads were identified. Tragically, Lauren’s remains were found, only 5 miles from the Airbnb, four months later.
The strange death of Patrick Lynn Welz baffled Michael, when his body was found, smashed under a boulder, with only one arm protruding. Patrick knew the area and was driving to visit his father in Riverside, yet his vehicle and body were found in a completely different area of the desert. Interestingly, Patrick had a U.S. Marine Corps insignia tattooed on his arm that was visible upon the discovery of his body, drawing suspicion directed at the local Marines base in 29 Palms.
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