Delia D'Ambra

If, in fact, that's where he was still hiding out.

To make matters even more challenging, people from the region who knew Claude were openly expressing that they hoped he wouldn't be caught.

They sided with him in the narrative that he'd been defending himself against the law.

Now, as wild as that may seem to some of you, I've been doing this long enough to know that oftentimes in remote areas like this where locals feel a strong sense of pride and ownership for the land they believe they have the right to live off of,

anti-regulation sentiments with regards to wildlife restrictions can run deep.

So it's not necessarily surprising that folks in this part of the country were rooting for Claude, despite the fact that he stood accused of murdering two men in cold blood.

A spokesman for Idaho's Fish and Game Department told the Times News that the double murder was the first time the department had lost personnel enforcing the state's fish and game laws due to a violent crime.

The only losses the agency had documented prior to Conley and Bill's murders were two officers who died in an automobile accident and a plane crash.

There had been some previous incidents of people threatening game wardens with firearms or assaulting them, but nothing as serious as murder.

A sheriff's deputy at the time told the Idaho statesman that the loss of two game wardens was a major blow to the Fish and Game Department.

At that time, he said there were only about 10 officers who worked in the southwest part of the state, so losing two at the same time was devastating.

As the manhunt for Claude dragged on, time seemed to move in slow motion, and the conditions for searching only became that much more challenging.

For example, authorities attempted to search a reservoir in the Bilt Creek Mountains, but it was completely frozen over.

Still, a diver descended into the icy body of water to check for Claude or anything that might be tied to him.

And you guessed it, nothing useful came from that.

As reality began to set in that Claude was essentially a ghost, for lack of a better term, everyone began to develop an opinion about the elusive trapper and his origin story.

According to an Idaho Department of Law Enforcement agent who'd interviewed locals and an article by Charles Etlinger, Claude had just shown up one day in either 1969 or 1970 in Humboldt County.

He was riding a horse and driving some pack mules.

It was like he'd just materialized out of nowhere, and there was so much mystery around him.

Steven Anderson and Mark Crane explained in articles for the Idaho Statesman that by January 11th, 1981, authorities working the murder investigation were considering disbanding the manhunt because no sign of Claude had surfaced.