Homeless homicide in Sublette County: How a dead man spent his last night alive in Jackson

DEVELOPING....

By GIL BRADY
The Cowboy Picayune-Sunny Times

Filed 4.05.07, 9:35 p.m., MST
Updated 4.06.07, 7:45 a.m., MST
Updated 4.06.07, 7:55 p.m., MST
Last update 4.09.07, 7:45 a.m., MST

JACKSON – Nothing so far revealed about the days and months before a drifter was found struck violently dead in a road outside Bondurant Tuesday evening suggests he was lucky.

From the brutal blows officials say killed him to the troubled life he reportedly ditched in northern California and recent run-ins with Jackson police, Richard Nystrom’s final days of strife and wandering were dead-on unlucky. Even the bunk he spent his last night alive in sounded fated: Number 13 at the Good Samaritan Mission on Pearl Street in Jackson, according to an innkeeper there.

“I’m fighting a spiritual battle,” assistant mission director Victor Scardella remembered last Thursday about what a man claiming to be Nystrom told him after checking in on the evening of Monday, April 2.

Scardella added that Nystrom said he had traveled from Ukiah, California—some 975 miles southwest of Teton County, Wyoming.

Sublette County authorities say a sheriff’s deputy on a property check patrol around 11:35 p.m. Tuesday discovered a 54-year old white male later identified as Richard Dean Nystrom.

The mortally bashed body was found about 48 miles south of Jackson and some ways off Highway 191 on the well-traveled Rim Road, which leads to the Hoback Ranches subdivision roughly 14 miles south of Bondurant and 32 miles north of Pinedale.

Law enforcement immediately suspected foul play in Nystrom’s unusual death. On Friday an autopsy revealed for the first time that he died of “blunt force trauma to the head and face.”

But officials who viewed the post-mortem photos say they weren’t even that pretty.

Between his arriving in Wyoming and dying here, Jackson police and other authorities say that officers reported contact with Nystrom this past week for such oddities as disorderliness to strange acts outside a local saloon. But none said Nystrom’s behavior was threatening to himself or others.

According to Scardella, police dropped Nystrom back off at the shelter after he had left to "do laundry or something" between 2 and 3 a.m. Tuesday morning. Following a minor disturbance in the mission dormitory, Scardella said Nystrom caught some sleep, got up early, passed on a “continental breakfast” and thanked him before departing around 7:30 a.m., April 3.

Witnesses reported seeing Nystrom next around 9 a.m. at the Phillips 66 gas station on Broadway in Jackson, then later in the day at Hoback Junction and walking several miles south last Tuesday on Hwy 191 after 6:30 p.m. Sublette County Sheriff Wayne "Bardy" Bardin told Casper Star-Tribune reporter Whitney Royster that he had heard Nystrom was even trying to hitch a ride on both sides of the road at one point. The sheriff also said that Nystrom's family, of which Nystrom told Scardella before he died that he didn't have any, had been contacted.

Maybe he was estranged from them; maybe life had become too strange for him to ever know for sure? Sheriff Bardin declined to pass judgment on Nystrom's mental status.

While discussing recent budget shortfalls at the mission that have made providing even milk difficult, Scardella recalled Nystrom departing last Tuesday without any baggage but wearing slacks and a light jacket.

“His knuckles were messed up, like he was beating them on brick walls, Scardella noticed as the homeless man writhed Monday night.

“I asked him what he did for a trade and he said: ‘I preach and teach the Gospel’. I told him, well, that was nice. We try and do that here too and that everyone gets 7 free days out of every six months, provided they get a job and obey the rules.”

Besides his love of the Gospel, the Mendocino, Calif., County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Friday that a man with Nystrom's name and age also had a fondness for living it up in public and had recently skipped a court date and jumped $25,000 bail for two charges of drunken and disorderly last February. According to Nevada authorities, Nystrom was wanted on a warrant there as of last Monday as well.

Nystrom’s California rap sheet described him as 5-foot-10, 150 pounds, and having gray hair. Scardella has said his hair was "salt-and-pepper".

Looking over a mission registry Thursday, Scardella recalled when asked about his family, Nystrom said: “I don’t have nobody.”

“He still had six free days when he left,” Scardella said. “I even kept a bed for him.”

Nystrom is the second Highway 191 hitchhiker to be savagely killed in the last 10 months. Last Oct.1, sightseers discovered the body of Colorado snowboarder and seasonal Jackson resident Benjamin “Ben” Bradley, about 25 miles outside of Rock Springs, Wyo., near a volcano ruin known as Boar’s Tusk. Bradley had been stabbed to death. Witnesses reported last seeing the 6-foot-3 Bradley after 9 p.m., two days before his 29^th birthday June 4, hitchhiking with his snowboard and a backpack northbound on Hwy. 191

Bradley and Nystrom were found about 130 miles apart--Nystrom 6 months and two days later.

As of late Friday, law enforcement had not reported identifying suspects or making arrests in connection with either killing. They have also not said what kind of weapon was used to strike Nystrom dead. Tipsters who may have seen a man fitting Nystrom’s description hitchhiking on Hwy 191, south of Hoback Junction, between 6 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. on April 3 can call the Sublette County Sheriff's Office at (307) 367.4378

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Photo Captions & Credits: "Good Samaritan Mission on Pearl Street in Jackson, Wyo." courtesy of the Good Samaritan Mission