Saturday, July 26, 2008

Murder on Route 66: Budville

Who killed the gas station owner and the retired schoolteacher who worked for him?

La Historia del Rio Abajo is a monthly column about Valencia County history written by members of the Valencia County Historical Society. It is now in its 10th year, without interruption.

This month's article, the first in a two-part series, is based on information gathered from contemporary newspaper articles, interviews and Don Bullis's fictionalized account, "Bloodville."

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This month's author is a professor of history at the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus, vice president of the Valencia County Historical Society and president of the Historical Society of New Mexico.

Opinions expressed in this and all columns of La Historia del Rio Abajo are the author's alone and not necessarily those of the Valencia County Historical Society or any other group or individual.

By all accounts, Howard Neal "Bud" Rice was a big fish in a small pond in western Valencia County during the 1950s and 1960s.

Born and raised in Cubero, N.M., Rice owned and operated a trading post, a gas station, a garage and a towing business along old Route 66, about 20 miles east of Grants and 46 miles west of Albuquerque.

Completing his small empire, Rice had built his house adjacent to his trading post, with a door between for easy access in both directions.

As the dominant personality along his stretch of Route 66, it was fitting that the small community surrounding Bud's house and businesses became known as Budville.

Fifty-four-years-old in 1967, Bud Rice was well liked by many of the men and women who knew him. He counted Anglos, Indians and Hispanics among his friends and neighbors in western New Mexico.

Families recall his helping poor children in need of shoes to go to school. Neighbors recall his willingness to bail them out of jail when they occasionally ran afoul of the law.

Rice intentionally cultivated close ties to members of the New Mexico State Police Department. Rice gave each member of the force a bottle of good liquor and a carton of cigarettes each Christmas. The businessman threw a large barbecue for his state police friends each Fourth of July.

Grateful, state policemen visited Rice often; their cars — and their presence — were highly visible in Bud's parking lot at all hours of the day and night.

Rice also had friends in high political office. In 1939, he had been convicted of assault, but, thanks to well-placed connections, he received a suspended sentence and was eventually pardoned by the governor in 1942.

By the 1950s, Rice served as the local justice of the peace in Budville. And, while not a trained lawyer, Bud was known to effectively represent friends who appeared before the magistrate judge in Grants.

When the construction of I-40 threatened to destroy Bud's businesses along Route 66, he actively opposed construction of the modern highway. Rice lost the struggle (I-40 was built in the mid 1960s), but made sure that the new highway's plans included an exit to tiny Budville.

While a good many people liked and admired Bud Rice, there were just as many — or more — who had cause to dislike and distrust him over the years.

As the only wrecker on Route 66 between the Rio Puerco and Grants, Rice enjoyed a monopoly he seldom hesitated to exploit. He was notorious for not only charging high towing prices, but also charging ridiculously high prices for repairs.

According to an often-repeated story, Rice once towed a stranger's car into Budville and replaced the vehicle's fan belt. When the car owner heard the high price of the newly installed fan belt, he objected vehemently. Rice responded by taking out his pocketknife, cutting the new belt and ordering the aghast traveler to get his vehicle off Bud's property.

Rice was also known to charge drivers inordinately high prices for tire chains during even the worst winter snowstorms. He routinely told out-of-state winter drivers that they would need chains west of Gallup where the weather was "bound to be rough." Falling for this con, worried drivers readily bought chains from Rice at higher than normal prices.

Other out-of-state drivers met Rice in his equally exploitative role as justice of the peace. Justice Rice was particularly hard on out-of-town speeders, seldom fining them less than $60 a ticket, an outrageously high amount in the 1950s and 1960s. (Sixty dollars in 1967 equals about $380 in today's money.)

Enjoying extraordinary local power, Rice liked to be called "Juez de Boss," or "Judge Boss." Reminding many of Judge Roy Bean, who had been known as the "law west of the Pecos River," Rice became known as the "law west of the Rio Puerco."

Towing companies in Albuquerque also resented Rice because he arbitrarily decided that all car wrecks on Route 66 east of the Rio Puerco were theirs, while all wrecks west of the river were his to tow. This unfair arrangement gave the Albuquerque companies only eight miles of road to divide among themselves, while leaving 38 miles of highway for Rice to profit from alone.

Having angered so many people, some wondered if Bud Rice might someday go too far and suffer violent consequences, despite all his friends on the police force and in high places.

These fears were realized at last on the evening of November 18, 1967.

About 8 p.m. that Saturday, a customer reportedly drove up to Rice's trading post and gasoline station just before closing. Bud went out to pump the man's gas, while the stranger went inside to pay for his 2-gallon purchase and to buy cigarettes from Blanche Brown, an 82-year-old retired schoolteacher and longtime trading post employee.

When Rice finished pumping his customer's gas, he entered the store to find the stranger arguing with Blanche, perhaps over the price of his bill or his proper change. Seeing Bud, the man pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the trading post owner.

The two men struggled. Blanche yelled for Bud's wife, Flossie, and tried to stop the fight. Flossie ran out, but it was too late.

Five shots rang out. Two shots hit Blanche. Three hit Bud. While Bud and Blanche lay dying, the man forced Flossie to hand over as much as $450 from the cash drawer, a cigar box and her purse.

The robber put out the store's lights to discourage anyone from stopping by. No one did, as it was now past closing time and everyone — including the police — expected the outside lights to be off after 8 p.m.

The shooter tied Flossie and placed tape over her mouth before dragging his two victims' bodies to the rear of the store and, in Blanche's case, into the kitchen of the Rices' adjoining home.

Ordering Flossie not to move for at least 15 minutes, the killer warned that "If anything goes wrong, I'll come back and kill you." The young man fled into the night.

The killer could not have known that another person was in the store that evening. Nettie Buckley, the Rices' housekeeper, had rushed into the store's bathroom, unnoticed when the violence had begun.

Nettie now left her hiding place and untied Flossie. Finding both Bud and Blanche dead, Flossie called the police.

Astonished by the news of Bud Rice's murder, state and local policemen raced to Budville at speeds of over 100 miles per hour, arriving moments after Flossie's call.

Much of whatever evidence existed at the crime scene was undoubtedly compromised by the activity of so many police officers, all eager to find clues that could help them identify their friend's killer.

The police also launched a massive manhunt throughout Valencia County and beyond. Within half an hour, roadblocks were set up along Route 66 and I-40 as far west as Gallup and as far east as Albuquerque. Other blockades were placed on roads as far north as Farmington and as far south as Belen.

In the words of one press report, these roadblocks fairly "bristled with rifles and other automatic weapons." In two instances, the police fired their weapons to halt confused drivers. One car overturned. A gun was discovered in a vehicle near Gallup, but nothing about the driver connected him to the crime in Budville.

Members of the Mount Taylor Search and Rescue Unit, four small planes and students from the local Job Corps program joined 80 state, county and local police officers in an extensive search through Saturday night and all day Sunday.

Searchers looked for a man described by Flossie Rice and depicted in a composite sketch made by an Albuquerque police artist. Flossie described the assailant as a clean-shaven young man, about 5'10" tall, wearing black clothing and black pointed shoes. Somehow, Flossie had also seen a tattoo on the man's stomach. Police believed that the suspect drove a light brown or tan compact car and might still be carrying the 9-mm pistol used to commit his horrible crimes.

Finally, at about midnight on Sunday night, police grew suspicious when they stopped a 1961 pale green Comet at a roadblock about a mile east of Grants. The driver wore black clothing and supposedly resembled the image in the composite sketch based on Flossie's description.

Larry E. Bunten, a 23-year-old Navy chief petty officer, was arrested as he, his wife, their infant and his brother-in-law were heading west on the new interstate, I-40. After booking him in Grants, the police brought their suspect to Budville about 2 a.m.

Although Flossie had been given a sedative and was already asleep in bed, the police awakened her and asked her to look through her front window to take a look at Bunten, sitting in a police car with a flashlight shining on his face. Yes, Flossie said, the young man in the car resembled the cold-blooded murderer who had killed her husband and Blanche Brown.

Certain they had the right man, the police brought the sailor to Los Lunas, where he was held without bond in the Valencia County jail. The authorities were so sure that they had the culprit in custody that all roadblocks were removed and all attention was focused on Larry Bunten.

Home on leave and low on funds, Bunten requested legal assistance for his defense. Mayo T. "Terry" Boucher of Belen and James Toulouse of Albuquerque were assigned to the case. Working diligently, the attorneys gathered evidence to prove that their client had been wrongly accused.

Boucher and Toulouse produced witnesses to prove that Bunten was in Albuquerque at the time of the robbery and murders on Saturday night, Nov. 18. These witnesses testified that Bunten had been visiting his brother-in-law's family in an Albuquerque apartment at the time the crime had been committed over 40 miles away.

Bunten had, in fact, been taking home movies of his kids as they played in front of a TV set showing "Mannix," a popular detective series of the 1960s. Ironically, a fictional crime story on "Mannix" was telecast just as a real life drama unfolded in Budville.

The court-appointed lawyers also showed that Bunten had passed both truth serum (sodium pentotha) and lie detector tests administered after his arrest. Only Flossie's identification of the sailor remained.

But Flossie's identification was highly suspect. How reliable could her testimony be when she had been awakened from a drug-induced sleep to look at the accused from a window in the middle of the night with only a flashlight to illuminate Bunten while he sat in a police car?

Concluding that the latter evidence was hardly sufficient to hold Bunten, Judge Paul Tackett ordered the petty officer released 18 days after his arrest. Tackett praised Boucher and Toulouse for their work, declaring that he'd sooner let 10 guilty men walk free than have one innocent man be unfairly charged and punished.

Tears ran down Bunten's face as he was released from jail and was reunited with his family. Dreading a stressful trial, a wrongful verdict and a possible death sentence, the sailor declared that his time in jail represented "the longest weeks of my life."

But now the police were back to where they had started, if not further behind. While the authorities had focused their attention on Larry Bunten, the real killer had had plenty of time to destroy all evidence and flee the area undetected. His trail grew colder by the day.

Meanwhile, funeral services were held for Bud Rice and Blanche Brown at the Strong-Thorne Mortuary in Albuquerque. A crowd of family members and friends filled the mortuary's chapel to overflowing. More than two dozen New Mexico State Police officers attended the services. Several officers formed an honor guard.

Bud Rice's remains were cremated, with his ashes scattered over Route 66, the famous highway along which he had lived, had made a good living, had enjoyed inordinate power and had met a terribly violent death.

It would take another eight months before detectives finally arrested another suspect in the double murder and robbery. The suspect's trial at the old courthouse in Los Lunas and the surprise conclusion of this famous case will be the subject of next week's La Historia del Rio Abajo.

(Part 2 of this two-part series will appear next Saturday, Aug. 2.)

* See Historia, Page 8B

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