During my investigation into the murders of Barry & Louise Berman, I ventured into the rugged desert region where they vanished in January 1986.
My goal was to retrace the Bermans’ route, look for any clues, and find the remote gravesite where their remains turned up in November 1988.
These journeys formed the foundation of my true-crime book, The Berman Murders.
On January 5, 1986, during a romantic getaway trip to the Death Valley region, Barry & Louise found their way into Saline Valley, a desert wilderness many miles from the nearest paved road.
The couple camped at hot springs that were known as a gathering place for desert rats, hippies, eccentrics and nudists.
During my investigation, I followed the same route as Barry & Louise, and I camped at the springs where they spent the last night of their lives soaking in a pool of hot mineral water before they headed off to bed.
At daybreak on Monday, January 6, 1986, Barry & Louise went for a morning hike up a jeep trail known as the Corridor.
During my investigation into the Berman murders, traveling alone, I headed up the Corridor jeep trail in my old Toyota 4WD.
A couple of miles above the hot springs, I stopped at a prospector’s shack that some people call Wolfman’s Cabin.
Wolfman, a surly prospector, was considered a possible suspect in the Berman case, but investigators ruled him out because he was incarcerated in Nevada when Barry & Louise disappeared.
In November 1988, nearly two years after Barry & Louise disappeared, a hiker spotted a human skull in rugged terrain east of the Corridor, about seven miles from the hot springs where the Bermans spent their last night.
It took me two different trips into Saline Valley, and many hours of searching, but at last I found the location where the skull turned up – and the rocks marking the spot were still there.
In 1988, when investigators arrived at the crime scene along with Tom Ganner, who at that time served as campground host in Saline Valley, it was Ganner who found the second skull.
Investigators found the bulk of Barry & Louise’s remains concealed under rocks and dirt in a cut-bank grave close to where the skulls turned up.
Most of the Bermans’ clothes were missing, but when investigators unearthed the grave they discovered a telling clue: a handcuff key.
When I located the site nearly thirty years later, I lay down inside the grave and stared up at the sky, trying to imagine the carnage that occurred there.
Not far from the gravesite I found the remains of a hunting blind, where Shoshone hunters would lie in wait for bighorn sheep or mule deer.
Barry was interested in Indian artifacts, and it’s possible that he and Louise were lured to this site before they were killed.
Amid the rocks and sand of the olden hunting blind I saw obsidian flakes, telltale signs that the site used to be frequented by Shoshone hunters.
Although we’ll never know for certain what happened to Barry & Louise on the last day of their lives, the information I gathered on my journeys into Saline Valley helped me form a credible theory about how and why they were murdered.
