Community Activist Runs From Law Into Folk-Hero Status

It’s been half a year since Neil Murdoch--with U.S. marshals belatedly in pursuit--pedaled off into the remote Four Corners region of the American Southwest. That the scraggly-haired 58-year-old remains a fugitive only fuels his status as a folk hero, at least among certain circles in Colorado. Virtually no one in Crested Butte, the mountain hamlet where Murdoch spent the past 25 years, will help authorities track him down. Instead they honor him with awards and parades.

Murdoch’s story, after all, is one of redemption and transformation, mixed with a funky brand of eccentric ‘60s iconoclasm. His transgression--jumping bail in 1973 after being arrested for intent to distribute 26 pounds of cocaine--happened long ago, and he’s since carved a much-appreciated niche for himself as a community activist passionate about everything from child care to the theater. “Murdoch did a lot for this community,” declared Crested Butte’s former mayor after the U.S. marshals came to town. “He’s already paid for what he did in ways none of us could ever guess. If someone wants a manhunt, I won’t help them.”

Nonetheless, an active manhunt continues. Deprived of clues by the citizens of Crested Butte, Murdoch’s pursuers instead look to him for help. “He left a history,” explains Larry Homenick, chief deputy in the Denver office of the U.S. Marshals Service. “We start working through the life he left behind. To catch him, we try to re-create his life. We try to capture the essence of him.”

Murdoch Fit In at ‘Throwback Village’

When Murdoch arrived in Crested Butte in 1974, he took a job in a lapis mine five miles south of town and lived in a tent nearby, but this didn’t attract much attention. Back then, Crested Butte, some 250 miles southwest of Denver, was a typical “throwback” village of about 800, full of dropouts and mavericks. A “little hippie town with a few leftover miners and no law, up at the end of a dirt road,” is how one citizen described it to reporters. “Murdoch fit right in.”

He moved from his tent to town that first winter, sharing a rental home with a roommate, and opened a bike shop in the back of the house. Soon he was tinkering with old Schwinn frames, putting fat knobby tires on them so they could be pedaled through Crested Butte’s muddy roads. The notion caught on; customers started buying. In time thousands were riding a rocky 40-mile trail to Aspen in Murdoch’s annual Fat-Tire Bike Week Festival. If he wasn’t the “father of mountain biking,” as some now claim, he was certainly a pioneer.

Other businesses followed--a health food store, stage props, designer diapers--Murdoch selling each as it grew and moving on. He bought a home; he registered to vote; he acquired a wide circle of friends. He became an outspoken activist at town meetings, often campaigning for the arts. He organized children’s activities and helped out at a day-care center. He volunteered at the Crested Butte Mountain Theater, designing sets and props. One year he turned up at New Year’s Eve parties wearing nothing but a diaper. He had chronic insomnia. He loved Chuck Berry, abhorred recycling, had no serious girlfriends. His bent for volunteering often left him short of cash. He was, as a result, always taking part-time jobs.

It was that last habit that led to his discovery. Applying for paying jobs at Mountain Earth Whole Foods and CB Printing last spring, he provided a Social Security number that belonged to a Pennsylvania man, who complained to authorities. On April 28, a Social Security agent showed up at Mountain Earth while Murdoch was working behind the counter.

There must have been some kind of mix-up, Murdoch told the agent. Given Murdoch’s reputation in town, the agent could only agree. He took Murdoch’s fingerprints and picture, but let him go, assuming they’d made a mistake.

Murdoch didn’t wait for authorities to learn otherwise. Two days later, on the evening of April 30, he packed a bag and walked out of his house, leaving the front door unlocked, a computer monitor flickering. A woman friend drove him southwest through the Rockies to the Four Corners region where Colorado touches New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. In that rugged high desert surrounded by mountains, Murdoch pedaled off on his bike, pulling a small trailer. “Don’t watch which way I go,” he told his friend. “That way, you won’t know, and you won’t have to tell.”

He Had Served Time on Drug Charge

Crested Butte responded with much surprise but little disfavor to the news that Neil Murdoch was actually Richard Gordon Bannister, who’d served three years in the late ‘60s in Pennsylvania for transporting marijuana before jumping bail in New Mexico in 1973. More than a few citizens suggested Murdoch had redeemed himself with 25 years of community service. Some thought that authorities surely had bigger criminals to pursue. Typical was what Jeff Neuman, a co-worker at CB Printing, told reporters: “In a small town like Creste Butte, we take people for who they are. We don’t hold their past against them. People feel they’ve lost a valuable member of the community. We’re grieving.”

In truth, they weren’t just grieving. Folks in Crested Butte--now a growing ski town of 1,500--were also having some fun. Days after Murdoch fled, the town threw a party in his honor. Soon after, “Help Murdoch” collection cans started showing up at Crested Butte businesses. Eventually, supporters sold 2,000 “Free Murdoch” stickers, which became ubiquitous on everything in town from bikes and cars to restaurant windows. On the Fourth of July, City Council members donned Murdoch masks and marched in a parade, pursued by someone wearing an FBI hat. Officials at the Crested Butte Mountain Theater presented Murdoch in absentia a Golden Marmot award for best acting. “He did a great job of acting for 25 years,” a theater director explained.

Needless to say, none of this has gone over very well among Murdoch’s pursuers at the Denver office of the U.S. Marshals Service. It’s galling enough simply as a matter of public relations: “The legend of this man is growing fast,” Deputy Marshal Ken Deal complained to reporters. “Jeesh, he walks on water. And we’re the bad guys.” The practical effect is even more irksome. With no one in Crested Butte willing to cooperate, the marshals are left scratching for clues.

“We’re extremely frustrated,” chief deputy marshal Homenick said recently. “Obviously people know lots about him, but we’re unable to extract anything.”

So instead they pick through credit card receipts, examine odd habits, search out childhood friends. If not his essence, they at least hope to find a faint trail. They know Murdoch was considered somewhat eccentric. They know he is not a menace. They know he is well-liked, a man people seem to enjoy. They know he’ll likely fit in wherever he goes. They know he won’t likely arouse suspicions.

Homenick believes he knows something else as well: That Murdoch is a man well worth the hunt. The chief deputy marshal--who keeps a Hemingway quote on his wall that begins “There is no hunting like the hunting of man”--can’t see why so many would absolve Murdoch. “This wasn’t just a case of personal cocaine use,” he reminds. “In the early 1970s, 26 pounds wasn’t a little amount. This was a major distribution ring. He would have been put away in prison for many years.”

True enough. In telling the story of Murdoch and Crested Butte, it’s both easy and tempting to glorify a man who was, after all, a drug smuggler. Yet when Homenick says: “I think we’ll ultimately capture this fugitive,” it’s also easy to hope that he doesn’t. Who could not wish Murdoch Godspeed as he pedals alone through the desert, searching for his next community?

Despite Homenick’s dismay, it’s no puzzle why so many have closed ranks in defense of this man. Steve “Popcorn” Shaffer, owner of Mountain Spirits in Crested Butte, puts it best: “Back in the ‘70s, everybody was involved in something. There were a lot of checkered pasts. . . . We’re all Murdoch in a little way. We’re all old refugees from somewhere else.”