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The Dark History of the Mojave Desert: The Last Great Manhunt
The Mojave Desert has served as the backdrop for many disturbing events in California history. From body dumps to the filming of Western films, the Mojave Desert is know for many things.
To understand what happens in the Mojave Desert requires you to first understand where the desert actually is. You will find the stark, dry land about an hour and a half outside Los Angeles as you drive to Las Vegas. The area can feel isolated, which means it makes sense that crimes can go 25 to 60 years before they are solved.
My attention was first brought to the Mojave Desert and its surroundings when I heard about the McStay family’s disappearance. I’d followed their case until the news came in that the family of four had been found buried near Victorville.
Today, so many crimes have occurred in and around Mojave that it’s hard to keep up. In researching these cases, I found so many that had more information available than I could fit in a single post. I hope to come back to those cases later on.
In this series, I will share some of the darkest stories associated with the Mojave Desert. They are intriguing and disturbing, and some of them have been solved after years of investigation. Others remain unsolved, at least for now.
The Last Great Manhunt of the West
If you love Westerns, you may have already heard the story of Willie Boy, an antihero for the ages. Willie Boy was a young Chemehuevi man who would lead a group of men on a trek across the desert, perhaps over a span of 500 miles, in 1909.
Before Willie Boy became infamous, he was working in the town of Banning, picking fruit. Willie had a reputation for being a quiet and hard-working man. At the age of 19, he’d taken in some boys without parents and provided for them. He also had a marriage that had failed.
But let’s get back to 1909.
He’d been courting a woman named Carlota, but her family and the tribe was unhappy about it because the two were related. On September 26, 1909, Willie went to Gilman Ranch and spoke to Carlota’s father, Mike Boniface.
