April 2002

April 2002 marks the return of retired former sheriff Brandon Walker to a case that had remained unresolved for more than three decades: the murder of Roseanne Orozco. His work with Roseanne’s mother, Emma Orozco, links a present-day investigation to the uneven treatment of reservation homicides in 1970. The month’s arc turns on both the possibility of recovering overlooked evidence and the difficulty of doing so without repeating the dismissals and procedural harms that helped leave the case unsolved.

A retired investigator returns to work

The April narrative opens with Brandon, then sixty-one, swimming laps in a newly installed heated pool at his home near Gates Pass. He swims for endurance rather than speed or a counted distance, while managing pain in his right hip and left knee. His doctor has raised the possibility of joint-replacement surgery, but Brandon avoids taking the suggestion seriously and hopes to spare Diana Ladd another appointment to arrange. The domestic routine establishes a man adapting to retirement, even as old professional habits remain close at hand.

Brandon’s retirement followed a failed reelection bid for Pima County sheriff. By the time Emma comes to him, he has been out of the loop for years; her request nevertheless makes him too excited to sleep. He revisits their conversation through the night, and the prospect of investigating again gives his days a new direction. His return is not an official reopening by the department: Emma seeks help from Brandon and The Last Chance, the group associated with old murder cases.

Emma Orozco asks to know

When Brandon meets Emma, she is looking at a basket made by Rita Antone: a medallion bearing the Man in the Maze, with a red pattern woven from yucca root. The basket’s red color recalls the explanation Brandon once heard from Nana Dahd that, for this basket, the yucca had to die. Emma’s gaze toward the design suggests no ready answer, while the scene places her search within a cultural setting Brandon has learned to approach with care.

Rather than put a direct question to Emma, Brandon makes a single observation that she has waited a long time to speak about the case. She explains that her late husband, Henry, had wanted the family to forget what happened. Now that he is dead, she says, she is Roseanne’s mother and wants to know. Brandon watches her reflection rather than looking directly at her, understanding that speaking to a white stranger about the past runs against a lifetime of teaching. Her grip on her walker accompanies the effort it takes to pursue the matter. Even the word murder is difficult for her to say, but Brandon recognizes that a child’s death remains central to the lives of those left behind long after public attention has moved on.

Emma’s request also stirs Brandon’s own history. He had not handled Roseanne’s case in 1970. The year before, he had investigated the murder of Gina Antone, which fell under the Pima County Sheriff’s Department because Gina was killed off the reservation by Anglos. That investigation led from Andrew Philip Carlisle, a University of Arizona professor, to his student Garrison Ladd, Diana’s first husband. Garrison died in what was mistakenly believed to be a suicide, and Brandon remained dissatisfied with the outcome and Carlisle’s plea bargain. When Roseanne’s body was found, Brandon was newly divorced, financially strained, and caring for his ailing father; he was relieved not to receive the case.

The record of a neglected investigation

The division of jurisdiction in Roseanne’s case shaped what followed. Although the murder site was never found, investigators assumed Roseanne had died on the reservation and had been killed by another Indian. Such cases fell to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or local tribal police, rather than the county department. Brandon recalls that FBI investigations into reservation murders were often cursory, and that the Papago Tribal Police Force, called Law and Order, lacked training, equipment, and money. Its investigation had produced no resolution. Emma’s account makes clear to Brandon that he had not even known for certain how thoroughly the case had stalled.

In the present, records offer a possible way past some of the limitations of the original inquiry. A study funded by a grant from Arizona State University had digitized health records from the Sells Indian Health Services Hospital, including records dating to the 1950s. Intended to compare longevity and track causes of death, the study also helped support the hospital’s kidney-dialysis center, alongside money from tribal casino operations. Roseanne’s appendectomy in July 1970 should therefore be recorded in the system. Yet the existence of a record does not guarantee access: Brandon expects a request from him, as a white outsider, to be politely refused. He hopes Emma will encounter less resistance.

Evidence recovered—and the cost of recovery

By 2002, investigators can use tools unavailable in 1970, but putting them to work means entering an emotional as well as procedural minefield. Brandon learns that the original theory had centered on the father of Roseanne’s baby. When investigators discovered that Roseanne’s father was not the father, the inquiry lost momentum. Emma identifies Roseanne’s grave in a small cemetery enclosed by barbed wire and notes that her father is buried there too. The baby’s remains are separate from her mother’s, a fact that makes further examination possible, though Emma does not know whether the baby was embalmed.

Emma takes action without waiting for formal authorization. After dark, Sam Tashquinth and Emma’s grandson dig up the baby’s remains; Emma explains that seeking permission from the tribal council would take too long. Their decision brings the remains to Brandon, but it also compromises the chain of evidence. As a member of The Last Chance rather than a sworn officer, he is caught between the urgency of helping survivors and the need for evidence that can hold up in court. He thanks Emma and acknowledges the difficulty of her decision without pretending that the procedural problem has disappeared.

A separate examination of the LaGrange-house evidence shows the promise and limits of forensic work. Alvin Miller finds the presumed murder weapon, a machete, soaking in soapy water in a kitchen sink. The soap has removed some blood, but the weapon yields no usable fingerprints. Plates and silverware, by contrast, provide two relatively clear sets. Alvin enhances the prints by hand before submitting them for comparison. He identifies the suspect’s prints on both sets of dishes, likely from serving and clearing the meal, and sets those matches aside while the unknown prints are checked.

A reversal in the investigation

The developing comparisons unsettle Brandon’s expectation that Larry Stryker is the killer. None of the prints from the Orozco case matches the prints on the Burger King cup associated with Larry. Instead, one Orozco print matches an unidentified print recovered from Erik LaGrange’s house; another comparison links an Orozco print to evidence from Yuma County. Brandon has invested so much belief and emotion in Larry’s guilt that he cannot immediately let the theory go. Brian Fellows tells him that the results leave one viable suspect: someone present in 1970 when Roseanne was killed and at LaGrange’s house on Saturday night.

April 2002 therefore carries the investigation from a mother’s long-delayed question to a substantial change in its evidentiary direction. The records and forensic tools offer possibilities the original investigation lacked, but access and procedure remain consequential: Emma’s grave-digging act creates a chain-of-evidence problem, and the fingerprint results do not validate Brandon’s favored suspicion. The month’s central movement is not a simple recovery of certainty; it is the reopening of a neglected case through collaboration, with each new lead requiring the investigators to reconsider what they thought they knew.