Delia D'Ambra

After returning home from such a whirlwind of a night, Jim Stevens had a crisis of conscience and decided that someone in law enforcement should probably know about what Claude had done.

So later that day, he visited Liz Nielsen, where she worked at a local hospital.

And together, the two of them came to the conclusion that they needed to speak with an attorney and notify the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department, which in turn, I believe, got in touch with the Owyhee County Sheriff's Office.

In his statement to investigators, Jim laid out what he'd seen and heard at Claude's trapping compound, including the fact that he wasn't sure whether Bill Pogue had actually displayed a firearm first, like Claude claimed.

The Nielsens gave statements to the sheriff's department too, and George admitted to his role in helping Claude flee, but he explained that he had no idea where the 30-year-old had gone.

After gathering these interviews, the sheriff of Hawaii County asked for help from the Idaho Department of Law Enforcement because that agency had more experience investigating crime scenes.

A special agent with the FBI based in Nevada also joined the case to assist in both the murder investigation and the manhunt for Claude.

Authorities were confident that Claude had crossed state lines after fleeing, so that's one of the reasons why federal investigators handled that aspect of the investigation.

Anyway, by midday on Tuesday, law enforcement's two most pressing priorities were finding Claude Dallas Jr.

and recovering the bodies of his victims.

It took a few hours, but eventually sheriff's deputies and forensic experts from the State Department of Law Enforcement made it out to the section of the county where Claude's trapping compound was located.

When they arrived, no one was around, but there were still animal skins sitting where Claude had left them, which I imagine indicated to police that he had not returned to retrieve them after going on the run.

Investigators made note of the pelts and began combing the compound for physical evidence.

They especially wanted to find anything that could prove Claude had personally been there.

They didn't want to only rely on Jim Stevens' witness account.

They needed evidence that backed up his version of events.

Around noon the following day, Wednesday, January 7th, investigators rode in a helicopter above the landscape to try and locate Conley Elms' body.

And after flying around for a short while, they spotted him.

His corpse had become lodged under a submerged tree branch in the river, about a quarter of a mile downstream from Claude's trapping compound.

He hadn't been weighted down with anything when he'd been put in the water, so it hadn't taken long for his body to surface and get snagged on the branch.