When a husband and wife are gunned down at their campsite in Ouachita National Forest, the hunt for their killer leads authorities to a man with a peculiar collection of homemade hunting gear. View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-suit Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators | /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck
Chapter 1: What happened in Ouachita National Forest?
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place in Ouachita National Forest in Oklahoma. There's a significant portion of the forest that exists in Arkansas, too, but the crime I'm going to be talking about happened in a section located in Oklahoma.
The 1.8 million-acre forest is generally known for having great mountain views and plenty of places to soak in the scenic landscape while driving. Visitors can camp in pretty much any style they want. There are designated camping areas that have rustic tent pads, but there are also spots where you can pull up in an RV and essentially glamp in style if you prefer that. According to the U.S.
Forest Service's website, Ouachita National Forest is the oldest and largest national forest in the southern United States. A lot of people like to experience the great outdoors there in more secluded, quiet spaces that sit outside of designated campgrounds.
This is what's referred to as dispersed camping, and although the experience may bring solitude, it does mean that you volunteered to essentially be on your own. I personally know a lot of folks who choose this option when they visit national forests, but in the summer of 2003, a couple on a camping trip in Ouachita didn't go that route.
so so
On the afternoon of Friday, July 11th, 2003, a man riding his motorcycle through the Winding Stair Campground in Washington National Forest came upon a campsite. Right away, he noticed a person lying on the ground and realized something was very wrong. He quickly left and reported what he'd found to the authorities.
And not long after that, personnel from the Leflore County Sheriff's Office and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation arrived. What investigators found was a man lying face down next to a picnic table, and his right foot was missing a shoe. A short distance away, they located a woman's body near a 1996 Ford Econoline van.
Both were dead from apparent gunshot wounds, and sitting in the area around the bodies were some camping supplies and a tent. When investigators examined what they assumed was the victim's van, they noticed it had a Texas license plate on it and the driver's side window had been busted out.
There was glass scattered inside and a few pieces had landed in a pool of dried blood near the runners of the passenger side door well and on some sandals sitting in the same area. Special agents with the OSBI found registration information that indicated the vehicle belonged to 47-year-old Charles Chick and his wife, 50-year-old Shirley Chick.
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Chapter 2: Who were the victims in this case?
From Tuesday night, July 15th, into Wednesday morning, July 16th, investigators were able to successfully match the chick's dental records with their bodies. And that's when they issued an update to the media. A spokeswoman for the OSBI announced that Charles and Shirley had both died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head, which authorities believed had been fired from a small caliber firearm.
Winding Stairs records showed that Charles and Shirley had registered at the campground three days before they were discovered dead. So if my math is right, that would mean they'd arrived sometime on July 8th. Finding anyone who may have interacted with them after that was a top priority for investigators.
So detectives spent Wednesday, July 16th interviewing people, and a spokeswoman for the OSPI told news publications that investigators had developed the names of a few people they thought could help them identify new leads. But she stopped short of labeling those individuals as suspects.
Tulsa World reported that the OSPI wanted to speak with any visitors to the National Forest who may have interacted with the chicks or spoken with them during their trip. The OSBI emphasized that detectives were chasing any and all information that came in, including leads that were outside the state of Oklahoma.
The agency's spokeswoman told the Associated Press, "...we're following leads left and right, hot and heavy." In the wake of the murders, the Leflore County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Forest Service beefed up patrols in recreation areas surrounding the Winding Stair Campground.
A federal official told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the killings were the first murders to occur in the National Forest since it opened in 1907. So I imagine this crime was truly foreign territory for investigators. Meanwhile, news had spread to Texas about the couple's deaths.
The maintenance manager of the apartment building they lived at in the city of Hearst told Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter Domingo Ramirez Jr. that Charles and Shirley were both really big outdoor enthusiasts. He said he'd known them for 20 years, and in that time, he felt like he'd seen them go camping just about every weekend.
When they weren't traveling, Shirley worked as a freelance computer programmer and Charles wrote instruction manuals for F-16 aircrafts at Lockheed Martin, which is an aerospace and defense technology company with a global and domestic footprint.
According to an article Kerry Kopernol wrote for the Daily Oklahoman, the pair had grown up in the same Detroit, Michigan neighborhood together, but didn't really come to know one another until they were older. They eventually got married in a small sunrise elopement ceremony in Big Bend National Park in the mid-1980s. And after that, they set out to travel as much as possible.
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Chapter 3: What led authorities to the suspects?
A spokeswoman for the OSBI told reporters that investigators believed Edward had seemingly chosen Charles and Shirley at random because there didn't appear to be any connection between him and the couple. What was clear, though, from the evidence the OSBI had gathered so far was that Edward had apparently premeditated the crime.
Clues that agents felt confident pointed to that were the .22 caliber rifle and the camouflage suit they'd found in his truck. Most of the source material refers to this suit as a ghillie suit, which, if you've never Googled what that is, stop right now and look it up, because it's pretty wild. Literally, it's a full-body disguise that makes a person blend into vegetation or a forest environment.
It's the stuff of my nightmares, but I know it's mostly used by hunters so they can go unseen by game. Something else investigators used to establish probable cause to arrest Edward was that Carol Lamb, his ex-partner or roommate, I'm not really sure what they were, had mentioned that the week of the killings, he told her he was going to take his own life.
And then shortly after the chicks were killed, she'd met up with him and he told her that on the evening of July 10th, he crept up on a couple in their car and watched them, then retreated to his truck to put on his ghillie suit and returned to where the couple was and done, quote, something real bad. End quote.
Now, if you ask me, that's pretty damning testimony and grounds for investigators to take a hard look at Edward. What no one could quite figure out, though, was why. Why had Edward done this?
The Daily Oklahoman in Tulsa World reported that he'd worked for the state's Department of Corrections as a prison guard and food service supervisor from 1995 until 1999, and he had no criminal history that the OSBI could find. Apparently, when he left the Department of Corrections, there was no bad blood or any major event that would have sent him down a bad path.
But on Wednesday, July 23rd, right before a detention hearing in federal court, Edward's mental competency came into question when he attempted suicide. An article by Rod Walton explained that just a few hours before he was due in court, Edward got a hold of a sharp object in his jail cell and cut himself.
Later reporting by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram confirmed that object was a blade from a plastic razor. The coverage also details that Edward had claimed to be hearing voices. His arm was treated with staples and stitches at a local hospital and he survived.
A few days later at a competency hearing, the judge presiding over his case determined that despite his suicide attempt, he was competent to stand trial. He was eligible to receive the death penalty if convicted, with the alternative being life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Chapter 4: What evidence linked Edward Fields to the crime?
And because no evidence was ever found that supported Edward had gone on a fishing trip, that's why prosecutors thought all those comments he'd made to Danny and Michelle appeared as if he'd been trying to set up an alibi for himself. In later testimony, Danny remarked that it wasn't all that strange for Edward to have a ghillie suit and camouflaged rifle with a scope on it.
Those were things he said a lot of hunters used. Danny explained that he'd gone hunting for squirrels with Edward in the past, and during those trips, Edward had been in his ghillie suit carrying his camouflaged gun. Danny said he knew Edward preferred to hide and wait for squirrels to come to him.
But prosecutors pushed the narrative that Edwards' desire to blend in with the environment around him had graduated to a new level by July 2003. One attorney for the government said, quote, he had mastered his craft, he had practiced with squirrels, and now he was moving to humans, end quote.
The government's lawyers made sure to bring Edwards' homemade ghillie suit in for the jury to view, so that they could see its hundreds of head-to-toe strands of yarn that made it fairly indistinguishable from the forest that surrounded the crime scene.
Referring to what Shirley's last moments alive would have been like, one prosecutor pointed at the suit and told the courtroom in part, quote, This is what she sees, this creature coming from the woods toward her. For Shirley Chick, death took this form, end quote.
On the other side of the aisle, though, was Edward's defense attorney, who argued that starting at the age of 16, her client had suffered from chronic depression, and as a newborn baby, he'd suffered from a respiratory distress syndrome that was known to cut off oxygen to the brain for stretches of time and could cause brain damage.
The defense also explained that Edward had injured his head multiple times during his youth and experienced a loss of consciousness while he'd served in the Navy. His medical records showed that he'd been prescribed at least five different antidepressants throughout his life, including one drug called Effexor.
The defense claimed that Effexor was what had set off a bad chain of events that led to the bloodshed at the Winding Stair Campground on July 10th, 2003. The defense argued that leading up to the murders while taking Effexor, Edward had experienced hallucinations, insomnia, and dramatic weight loss.
He was reported to have taken an increased amount of the drug prior to the crimes, which medical studies indicated was associated with behavioral side effects like compulsive aggression and violent behavior. His attorney called two psychiatrists to testify about their client's documented history of mental illness and the potential side effects of the antidepressant.
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Chapter 5: What were the circumstances of Edward's arrest?
When Edward's ex-wife testified at his sentencing hearing, she told the court that prior to the murders, Edward was often moody, depressed, and sometimes angry. But after his arrest, when he was put on new medication, he was capable of having normal conversations with her about their kids.
The government's experts agreed with the defense's argument that Edward had been diagnosed with depression, but they stopped short of conceding that the drug Effexor and its side effects were why he'd murdered Charles and Shirley. Essentially, prosecutors told the jurors that Edward couldn't blame the antidepressant for his homicidal actions.
Ultimately, on July 22, 2005, jurors voted in favor of capital punishment. Kerry Kopernol reported for the Daily Oklahoman that it was the first time in 12 years a jury had sentenced a defendant to death. Edward became the 41st person to be sent to Oklahoma's death row in the federal system.
After the sentence was handed down, Shirley Chick's sister told reporters that she was grateful for the jury's decision, but it was all just very bittersweet. She said, quote, we can't bring them back. That in itself is an injustice, end quote.
Three years later, in 2008, Edward appealed his death sentence by claiming the federal government should not have had jurisdiction over the case and he didn't get a fair trial in the sentencing phase. But an appeals court denied his petition and ordered that a panel of judges not rehear his case.
In April 2010, almost seven years after the murders, a federal defense attorney submitted a filing to get Edward's death sentence vacated or corrected. In that document, the lawyer claimed that in addition to his client's history with depression and bipolar disorder in 2003 and prior to 2003, he'd also had organic brain damage, which impaired his frontal lobes.
The attorney explained that Edward had grown up in a dysfunctional household and both his parents had come from families where gambling, mental health conditions, alcohol use, sexual abuse, and violence had been present.
A big claim the appellate attorney made in this motion was that Edward's original trial attorney, a court-appointed public defender, had failed to appropriately incorporate his background as part of his mental illness defense.
This attorney felt that jurors should have known more about Edward's childhood, the issues that his family struggled with, and the fact that his own sister had admitted their household had not been a nurturing or loving one to grow up in.
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Chapter 6: What charges did Edward Fields face?
Essentially, the point was that all of Edward's past psychiatric history needed to be evaluated, separate from whether or not he'd suffered a manic flip after taking an increased dose of Effexor prior to the murders.
The other big point the defense made in their motion to vacate was that they said it was unconstitutional in the state of Oklahoma to execute a person who was severely mentally ill and could be considered incompetent.
The federal court in the Eastern District of Oklahoma had a lot of time to review this motion because for several years, prosecutors for the government and Edward's post-conviction defense attorney kept submitting a bunch of new exhibits and filings. In the end though, on December 15th, 2016, Edward lost his bid to have his death sentence set aside or corrected.
He filed more post-conviction motions in 2019 and a higher court actually ended up sending his case back to a lower district court for an evidentiary hearing. That court was tasked with deciding whether or not his original public defender had been ineffective for failing to investigate and present evidence of his organic brain damage during his sentencing hearing in 2005.
As recent as early December 2024, an evidentiary hearing was being held in federal court in the Eastern District of Oklahoma. But then, on December 23rd, 2024, the White House announced that President Joe Biden had chosen to commute 37 federal death row inmate sentences. They would all get life without the possibility of parole instead of execution. And one of those 37 inmates was Edward.
At last check, he's still serving his time at a federal prison. He's currently 57 years old. As I wrap up this episode, I can't help but reflect on just how much Charles and Shirley's life story is reflective of my own experiences in the outdoors.
They were avid campers who were doing what so many of us do on a regular basis, visiting a serene landscape and spending nightfall enjoying nature at a campsite. They were innocent victims who were killed in a brutal way, a truly heartless way.
I hope that despite the legal battle that's still waging in Oklahoma, their families have found peace over these 21 years that have passed since their deaths. I saw a quote while researching this story that I think we should all remember.
It came from a spokeswoman for the National Forest who told the Associated Press after the murders, quote, This reminds us that evil doesn't just live in the city. It comes to the country, too. End quote. Park Predators is an Audiochuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.
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