The Berman’s

After braving fifty miles of challenging, off-highway driving, Barry and Louise Berman reached clothing-optional hot springs in northeastern Saline Valley – a counterculture mecca. They parked at a campground called Palm Spring.

That evening, Barry and Louise lounged in Wizard Pool, one of the concrete soaking pools at the hot springs. Also sharing the tub were two motorcycle riders from Modesto, California, and a military man named Mike.

Early the next morning, the Bermans set out on a stroll, wearing tennis shoes and carrying daypacks. Another camper saw them heading up a jeep and hiking trail known to locals as the Corridor.

Barry and Louise never returned.

The Inyo County Sheriff’s Office initiated a search that would grow to become the largest search and rescue effort in county history, involving multiple aircraft and trained teams from around Eastern California.
Download the PDF – Missing Persons Report (Jan. 1986)

The sheriff’s office searched a mining cabin frequented by a prospector called Wolfman, who had a reputation for being snarly. A stone slab covered in blood proved to be a chopping block for butchering jackrabbits, and investigators later learned that Wolfman was in jail in Las Vegas when the Bermans disappeared.
Download the PDF – Sheriff’s Supplementary Investigation Report

Despite herculean efforts to find Barry and Louise, the search failed to uncover a single clue. Some spacey Saline Valley regulars speculated that they were victims of a UFO abduction.

Deputy Leon Boyer formed a theory that someone the Bermans encountered at the clothing-optional hot springs did them harm, perhaps due to a deviant sexual motivation. The motorcycle riders who soaked with Barry and Louise proved to be guileless and cooperative witnesses, so Deputy Boyer turned his attention to finding the military man named Mike who also shared a tub with the Bermans.

Deputy Boyer, a natural born sketch artist, penned composite drawings of Mike and posted them at the hot springs in Saline Valley. He also ventured into the valley on his own time and spoke with other campers.

The extraordinary detective work by Deputy Boyer led to the identification of Michael Joseph Pepe as a possible suspect. When interviewed by investigators ten months after the search ended, Pepe gave inconsistent accounts about where he was and what he did on the day the Bermans disappeared. But the absence of bodies or other clues hampered the investigation.
Download the PDF – interview of Michael Pepe

By the time a hiker stumbled across the shallow grave where Barry and Louise’s bodies had been hidden, the degraded state of their remains meant the crime scene yielded little by way of clues. By then, nearly three years had passed since the couple walked away from the campground in Saline Valley.

In 2014, I began investigating the Berman murders. The project stretched over nine years and involved multiple crime scene visits and dozens of interviews – plus records requests, online research, and all the other digging that comes with investigative journalism.

After ICE agents hauled Michael Pepe from Cambodia to the USA to face federal charges, his victims flew to Los Angeles to testify about the horrors he inflicted upon them.