The cover-up of Sara and Kito’s murders and the reburial of their remains

The cover-up of Sara and Kito’s murders and the reburial of their remains turn an act of concealment into a lasting source of communal guilt and supernatural danger. In 1901, Sara Tidwell and her son Kito were killed, and their bodies were hidden in a canvas roll; later, men connected to the crime moved the bundle to the place where Mike Noonan would uncover it almost a century afterward. The account, pieced together from Jo Noonan’s notes and local testimony, also reveals how the surrounding community’s silence helped protect the perpetrators and deepen the harm to Sara’s family.

The murders and the community’s silence

By September 1901, when the Red-Tops played their last show in Castle County, nearly everyone in the TR community knew that Sara and Kito had been murdered, and many had an idea who was responsible. Son Tidwell spent much of August pressing County Sheriff Nehemiah Bannerman first to organize a search, then to find the bodies, and finally to identify the killers. He did not initially know that his sister and nephew were dead; once he accepted it, he remained convinced they had been murdered.

The Red-Tops had been treated warmly during their stay on the TR, a fact that made Jared Devore especially angry. Son Tidwell’s mistake, as Mike later explains it, was to assume that good treatment in ordinary circumstances would mean that local people would support the family when something went wrong. Instead, people in the township closed ranks. They did not necessarily approve of what Jared and the others had done, but many protected their own rather than help the Tidwells obtain justice.

Jo’s notes describe a history missing from the town records. By the time the Red-Tops played the Castle County Fair, the community around the lake was beginning to disperse. Active harassment had started by Labor Day and worsened over time. Son stayed with his relatives even as others left for safer places, unwilling to leave before learning what had happened to Sara and Kito. This increasing isolation followed the failure of the search and the refusal of the community to stand openly with the family.

The first concealment and the canvas roll

Mike reconstructs the initial concealment as a hurried, two-stage act. Devore and the others first dragged the bodies farther into the woods, perhaps to the area where the north wing of Sara Laughs would later stand, covered them with brush, and returned after dark. They then moved the bodies to a more isolated place and buried them in a roll of canvas. Jo’s notes did not identify the burial site. Mike guesses it was Bowie Ridge, where the men had spent much of the summer logging, but presents that location as an inference rather than a confirmed detail.

Years later, Mike finds the ancient canvas underground. Its stencil identifies it as belonging to J. M. McCurdie Sawmill, which had burned in the fires of 1933. The cloth is badly deteriorated, but ropes still bind its ends. When Mike hauls it from the earth, the roll splits, allowing him to open it and discover what remains inside. It contains the early remains of Sara and Kito: two skulls, two ribcages, and paired sets of long and short bones, alongside a faded red leather belt and clothing. The remains’ position and the contents establish that the canvas held a mother and child together.

The discovery occurs while Mike is trying to stop Sara’s supernatural presence from harming Kyra Devore. He persists with the burial bundle despite the struggle unfolding behind him, acting on the conviction that he must finish what he has begun. The physical evidence in the canvas gives material form to a history that Jo had been able to reconstruct only through scattered records and testimony.

Harassment, departure, and the second burial

After Sara and Kito disappeared, Son and the other family members still with him waited for answers. Their circumstances deteriorated as harassment intensified, while the wider community failed to provide the support they had expected. Son eventually left with the family members who remained, taking their clothes and guitars with them. Jo traced some descendants to North Carolina, where many still lived. The account connects the family’s departure to the loss of any prospect of justice on the TR.

The men involved in the murders were not free of the event after the bodies had been hidden. According to Mike’s account of Jo’s research, most were troubled by what they had done: they suffered bad dreams, drank and fought excessively, and reacted defensively when anyone mentioned the Red-Tops. The TR’s silence toward them compounded that unease. Jared Devore appears as an exception in Mike’s telling; he lived another ten years and apparently continued his life without the same visible disturbance.

After Draper Finney died by suicide in a quarry, Jared’s former logging men developed what Mike describes as a compulsion to dig up the bodies and rebury them where the murders had happened, believing that this would restore normality. They acted without Jared’s help. Jo’s notes place the second burial in late fall or early winter of 1902, although Mike marks the date as an estimate. The relocation did not erase the crime or bring the men peace; it placed the remains at the lake, where the buried history could return.

Discovery and narrative significance

Mike’s account separates what the records establish from what he infers. Jo’s notes document the family’s efforts, the town’s retreat into silence, and the later decision to move the remains. Mike supplies a probable first burial site at Bowie Ridge but openly acknowledges that Jo did not know where the bodies were originally hidden. That distinction matters: the canvas and its contents provide direct physical confirmation of the murders, while the precise sequence and motives emerge through a reconstruction assembled from testimony and archival research.

The reburial also binds individual guilt to collective responsibility. The killers concealed the bodies, but the wider township’s refusal to confront what had happened enabled their silence and left the Tidwell family to bear the consequences. The eventual discovery at Sara Laughs makes that suppressed history present again. For Mike, uncovering Sara and Kito’s remains is not merely the solution to an old mystery; it is an urgent action within a supernatural confrontation whose danger has been sustained by the unresolved past.