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Chapter 1: What happened during the camping trip along the Applegate River?
Hi park enthusiasts, it's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard.
On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, park enthusiasts.
I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today involves a horrible murder, but it's also a story about a father's determination to see justice served, to chronicle his family's loss in real time as the wheels of the criminal justice system move forward.
Chapter 2: How did Chris McCallum go missing after the camping trip?
I was drawn to this story for a lot of reasons. For example, the victim and I have the same birthday. He was about my age when he was killed, and he was a dedicated parent to young children. When he was presented with the opportunity to go on a getaway with his spouse in the great outdoors, he jumped at it.
The crime took place along the Applegate River in Klamath National Forest in Northern California, very close to the state's border with Oregon. The region is situated adjacent to the Red Buttes Wilderness, which, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is nearly 21,000 acres and stretches over the nearby Siskiyou Mountains.
Typically, starting around November, snow begins to cover trails and campsites in the high country of this area, and it stays that way until about May. So in terms of prime visitation windows, the winter is not necessarily the most desirable time to camp, unless you're into that kind of thing.
However, in November 2012, which was reported to be late in the season, a family did manage to squeeze in one more camping trip there before conditions worsened.
Chapter 3: What evidence was found at the campsite that raised suspicions?
And for one of them, the expedition would turn out to be his last. This is Park Predators.
Park Predators so so
Around 1130 a.m. on Monday, November 19th, 2012, a deputy with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office in Oregon named James Biddle received a call about a missing person from a 26-year-old woman named Patricia McCallum. Patricia, who often went by the nickname Trisha, told Deputy Biddle that her husband, 33-year-old Chris McCallum, was missing.
After a weekend camping at the Applegate River just over the Oregon-California border, Chris hadn't returned home or shown up to work, which was out of character for him. Trisha explained to Deputy Biddle that she and Chris had gone camping a few days earlier on Friday, November 16th.
But at some point during the outing, she decided to travel home to their kids in Medford, Oregon, because the children were young and she'd gotten cold.
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Chapter 4: What inconsistencies emerged in Trisha's account of events?
However, Chris had stayed behind because he said a friend of his was coming to meet him. Trisha said the plan was for her to return the following morning and pick up her husband. But when that time came, Trisha said when she'd arrived back at the forest where she'd last seen Chris in their tent, she didn't find him or any of their gear.
So she figured he'd found his own way home and she left to drive back to their house. When he didn't contact her or his coworkers by Monday morning, the 19th, that's when Trisha said she suspected something was amiss. The same day Chris was reported missing, Deputy Biddle generated a missing persons report for him and confirmed with his employers that he'd been a no-show.
Biddle also asked Trisha whether Chris would have had his cell phone and wallet on him, and her response was yes, he likely did have those items with him as far as she knew.
So operating on that limited information, Deputy Biddle got in touch with a search and rescue deputy named John Richards, who went to speak with Tricia and eventually dispatched another deputy to visit the spot in the National Forest where she claimed she'd last seen Chris. But when that deputy arrived, he didn't find any camping gear set up, and he definitely didn't see Chris, so he left.
Later that same day, Deputy Biddle spoke with Tricia again, and she informed him that her and Chris's toddler-age daughter had found Chris's wallet and cell phone in the center console of her car, which meant those items weren't actually with him as previously believed.
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Chapter 5: What was revealed about Trisha's relationship with Chris?
The following morning, Tuesday, November 20th, two investigators returned to the couple's campsite in the forest to look a little bit harder for clues regarding Chris's whereabouts. And this time around, law enforcement discovered something unsettling. Down a nearby cliff was a tent that appeared to have been rolled up and bound with rope.
From the looks of it, it had rolled down the embankment and come to a rest near the bottom. Just from its shape and position, the deputies staring at it could tell that it had something heavy inside. So the two investigators, suspicious the heavy object might be a body, decided to take a closer look.
One of them used a knife to cut a hole in the tent, and when he did, he saw there was blood inside as well as several spent shell casings. At that moment, the deputies decided to pull back from the scene and drive to where they were able to get cell service and call in some reinforcements.
Additional investigators arrived the next morning, Wednesday, November 21st, and began thoroughly processing the crime scene. Some of those folks descended the cliff to get the tent and eventually transported it to the Rogue Valley Medical Center where it was x-rayed.
Chapter 6: How did Amber Lubbers' testimony impact the investigation?
Not long after that, authorities moved it again to the Jackson County morgue, where staff there opened it up. Inside, they found a man's body clothed in a t-shirt and underwear. He was dead from apparent gunshot wounds and there was bullet casings scattered around him.
This discovery changed the investigation from a missing persons report to a death investigation because the victim was ID'd as Chris McCallum. Robert Scott wrote in his book that at that point, Jackson County Sheriff's Office considered his death a homicide. But other than that, they weren't telling reporters much else.
The agency was also working with the Oregon State Police, Medford Police Department, and the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office, since that was the jurisdiction where Chris's body was found. Meanwhile, back at the crime scene, forensic techs had collected and photographed pieces of evidence they suspected were connected to the campsite he'd been staying at, as well as possibly his death.
For example, there were tent stakes scattered around and in a fire pit, a folding chair nearby, a nylon bag, and a tent pole sitting in the fire pit. Naturally, the one person deputies wanted to speak with the most to figure out what happened to Chris was Tricia.
Chapter 7: What were the prosecution's arguments during the trial?
So authorities visited her at her home twice between the evening of November 20th and the morning of the 21st. And her story was not the same as the version she'd provided to Deputy Biddle when she first reported her husband missing. In her subsequent interview, she claimed that in addition to Chris being with her, her 27-year-old stepsister, Amber Lubbers, had joined them to go camping.
She explained that by Friday afternoon, she and Chris had dropped their kids off for the weekend, picked up Amber, and visited a market to buy sandwiches and alcohol, before eventually arriving at the National Forest around 2.30 p.m.
They'd prepared for the camping trip by bringing multiple sleeping bags, sleeping mats, a tent, a Coleman brand lantern, a hatchet, and a .40 caliber firearm that was registered to Tricia that had extra magazines and ammunition.
Not long after they'd settled in, the trio hiked to a nearby waterfall, took some pictures, gathered firewood, ate dinner, mixed some drinks, and bundled up in their sleeping bags. At some point around 8 p.m., though, Trisha said she and Amber had decided to leave early and go home to be with the kids.
According to her timeline, they arrived back in Medford, watched some movies, and went to a Jack in the Box restaurant. She said that the last time they'd seen Chris, he was at their campsite with food supplies, a sleeping bag, the handgun, and the lantern. She explained that when she returned on Saturday morning between 5 and 5.30 a.m.
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of Trisha's trial and what were the implications?
to pick him up and look for him, Amber was with her and the two of them got out of her car to look around but didn't see anything. Trisha stuck to this version of events when authorities asked her to do a third interview on the evening of November 21st at the police station in Medford. But when deputies spoke with Amber, her story was different from Trisha's.
She claimed she had never gotten out of the vehicle when they returned to look for Chris on the morning of the 17th. And discrepancies like this slowly became a recurring theme between the two women's accounts. There were inconsistencies in their statements, conflicting information, confusing information, and you get the picture. Which only made investigators grow more suspicious of them.
On top of that, investigators had also tracked down surveillance footage from a bank ATM in Jacksonville, Oregon. And that machine had captured footage of a roadway authorities believed Tricia should have taken to return to the campsite on the morning of the 17th.
But nowhere in that video did authorities see her vehicle pass by, which contradicted her claim that she'd gone back to look for Chris at that time. Deputies were also curious about the fact that she'd said she hadn't found anything at the campsite when she'd allegedly returned for Chris.
It seemed awfully strange that she hadn't noticed something as obvious as a tent pole in the fire pit or the tent stakes on the ground, when it seemed investigators had managed to find those items rather easily. In addition to these puzzling observations, the further investigators talked with Trisha, the more they learned about her marriage with Chris.
And that information really made them tilt their heads. According to coverage I found from a detailed blog by Chris's father, Mike, Chris and Trisha had met in September 2008 and then got married in the summer of 2009 when he was 30 and she was 24. When Tricia met Chris, she already had a son from a previous relationship, but Chris accepted the boy as if he was his own.
A few months after getting married, the couple welcomed a daughter together. From the outside looking in, the McCallums seemed to be a happy family of four. Chris's dad, Mike, said that after the couple's daughter was born, Chris was the happiest Mike had ever seen him.
Chris was described as energetic, smart, hardworking, extremely dedicated to his family, and pursued higher education in the field of dentistry so he could make more money to provide for his wife and kids. By the summer of 2010, though, the family's financial situation and living arrangements had hit a bit of a rough patch.
According to Robert Scott's book and Mike McCallum's blog, the family had been living at Trisha's grandmother's home since they'd gotten married, but in the summer of 2010, she'd forced them to move out of that residence. And after that, both Chris and Trisha had difficulty finding jobs in Medford.
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