Book Description

The Sandy Knoll Murder, Legacy of the Sheepshooters is the true story of the high-profile 1904 murder of John Creed Conn, who disappeared in the midst of central Oregon's bloody range war period. That circumstance has always been believed to have precipitated his death. Sensational and intriguing, the details of the murder held the reading public in rapt attention with articles appearing on the front page of the Oregonian for nine months after Conn's mysterious disappearance. It is not very often that a prominent man, a celebrity, vanishes from the main street of an Oregon town in broad daylight. And even less often does a missing man's body reappear on a small, sandy knoll outside of that same town seven weeks later. This work is the result of six years of painstaking research that encompassed eighty other homicides and suspicious deaths of the period, Conn's life and relationships, the circumstances of his death, and all that was ever written by and about the sheepshooters. All of the planning that the killer put into making Conn vanish showed a high level of control and organization on his part. But, he did unwittingly leave some clues to his identity, and they could be traced like fingerprints through the ink of the newspapers of the day. Other clues were left like footprints in the soil surrounding the Sandy Knoll and in the behaviors that he exhibited there. Conn was the brother of a district attorney and a member of a politically prominent and well-connected family. He was a local celebrity and a respected figure, and there could be no doubt that a massive man hunt and investigation would ensue. Every effort has been made to adhere to the facts of the case, long-held as the legacy of the sheepshooters. The Creed Conn murder was then, and remains today, one of the most sensational in the history of the state of Oregon.