Dogged pursuit of story paid off

A large team of reporters and editors worked the story, but the man on the scene was Mullins. He not only followed every step in person, but once even drove his photos to Salt Lake City and then drove back to the desert manhunt.

After driving all night, he was heading to the newspaper when he fell asleep at the wheel north of Orem. His car crossed two lanes before hitting the gravel of the roadside, which jolted him awake.

"It was all right," Mullins said. "I didn't have a wreck."

Reaching Salt Lake City, "man, I was tired," he recalled. "I tried to do a story and I think I fell asleep on the desk."

Liddle told him to go to the Hotel Utah, get a room and take a rest. After a nap there, Mullins was on his way back to Moab.

Reporter instincts

Police determined a man had flagged down visitors from Connecticut near Dead Horse Point.

The man pretended to need help with car trouble. But after they stopped, he pulled out a .22-caliber rifle and demanded money. Jeannette Sullivan, a divorced mother from Rockville, Conn., threw $250 on the road, made some comment about the man and turned to get into her car. She was fatally shot in the back of the head.

The man shot her companion, Charles Boothroyd, in the face twice. The Rockville resident was left for dead, but he survived to tell officers about the crime.

Sullivan's 15-year-old daughter, Denise, had stayed in the car. The terrified girl started the vehicle and tried to drive away, although she had never driven.

The gunman chased her down in his car, forced the car off the road and kidnapped her. Her body was never recovered.

"They had posses all over Grand County looking for him," Mullins said.

The suspect was Able B. Aragon, 35, an unemployed WWII Marine Corps veteran from Price who had earned the Navy Cross. He was known as a nice guy, a family man. He was missing, and his license plate matched the partial number that was reported.

About 10:30 p.m. on July 7, 1961, lawmen stopped the suspect's car at a roadblock at Crescent Junction.

When an FBI agent tried to question him, the suspect shot himself in the head with a pistol. Denise Sullivan and the .22-caliber rifle were not in the car.

Authorities transported him to the Moab hospital but told news media "it was just somebody (who) had an accident," Mullins said. His reporter's instincts, however, had him wondering why this accident victim was the center of so much attention.

"I thought I better go over," he said. "You can't have too many coincidences in a little area like that."