At first, John Pfeiffenberger couldn’t make sense of what he was hearing on the police scanner.
“A deputy said he saw a body in the river and then there was something about propane tanks coming down and then there’s a guy hanging in a tree,” he recalled. “I mean, there was all kinds of stuff coming out and we had no idea what it was.”
It was about 9:30 p.m. on July 31, 1976, and the weather was clear and dry in Loveland. Pfeiffenberger, the managing editor of the Reporter-Herald, was heading to his boss Tom Reeves’ house. Riding with him was police reporter Marc Crumpton, who had been at Pfeiffenberger’s house for a Saturday barbecue with their wives.
It had been a perfectly ordinary day until about 30 minutes before, when John McMaster, owner of Loveland Ambulance Service, telephoned to let the pair know about a mysterious but alarming radio call from the Big Thompson Canyon…