The Rio Grande Murders

Send us Fan MailIt is May 1935. The Great Depression is still exhaling its last, ragged breath across the American Midwest. Four people, two middle-class couples from Illinois, load up a 1929 Nash automobile and point it west on Route 66. They are going to see the Boulder Dam, Which is now known as Hoover Dam. They are going to see the future.George and Laura Lorius from East St. Louis. Albert and Tillie Heberer from Du Quoin. Ordinary people. Decent people. The kind of people who send postcards home.On May 22, 1935, they mailed their last postcards from Albuquerque. George signed his with his initials — "G.M.L." — the branding instinct of a successful businessman who couldn't stop working even on vacation. Albert wrote that everybody was fine. No trouble of any kind. They were going to Boulder Dam.They never arrived. Within five days, a nervous young man with a scar on his cheek was driving their car across Texas, forging their traveler's checks at every gas station and hotel between Socorro and Dallas. The car was found abandoned, bloodstained. The man — who called himself "James Sullivan" — was never found. The bodies were never found.●     Source citations: KRQE News 13 / Larry Barker investigation (August 2025)